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This article utilises male occupational data recorded in the baptism registers of England and Wales, 1813–1820, to locate the geographical distribution of the textile manufacturing industry at that time. By comparison with female and male occupations abstracted from the 1851 census, it shows that the location was set at least as early as the second decade of the nineteenth century, and before the introduction of steam power or the mechanisation of weaving could have played significant roles. By 1813–1820, the once great regional textile centres of East Anglia and the West Country were no more. Approximately sixty-six per cent of fathers employed in the textile industry lived in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Moreover, textile manufacturing was further concentrated into a small number of parishes. Two-thirds of fathers lived in thirty-six parishes, and fifty per cent resided in only nineteen parishes. An association between the location of the main textile parishes and the proximity of the coal measures is evident. The registers contain a large number of entries for male spinners, reflecting the extent of uptake of Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule. The data confirm that the mule was dominant in cotton spinning within at least thirty years or so of its introduction. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, cotton spinning by hand was a redundant occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this article is to estimate the workforce involved in spinning from the late sixteenth century until the eve of mechanization. In addition, the potential contribution to family earnings from spinning will be examined. Just about all of the millions of yards of woollen yarn that went into making English cloth had to be spun by women and children, but this activity has not been investigated to the extent that it deserves. Spinning was a skilled occupation where there was a great demand for the best quality product. Sources exist which make it possible to make general estimates of the amount of spinning needed in the economy, and its cost. This evidence shows that employment in spinning increased dramatically from the late seventeenth century, and continued to increase until there were probably over one million women and children employed in spinning by the mid-eighteenth century. In addition earnings increased to the extent whereby earnings from spinning could contribute over 30 per cent of household income for poorer families. This has implications for looking at trends in real wages over time, as well as for the concept of the industrious revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elk Mill. Oldman, built 1925-1928, was the last traditional cotton spinning mill to be built in Lancashire, the last to spin cotton on mules and when it ceased operations at the end of 1998 it was one of the last cotton spinning mills still operating in Lancashire. The mill was traditional in construction with cast iron columns supporting steel girders, although the floors were of mesh reinforced concrete. Also, although spinning coarse to medium counts of yarn, it was equipped in a traditional way with spinning mules, which were still considered to provide the best way of producing the types of yarn the mill was to produce. The only non-traditional feature was the power plant: this was a steam turbine but it still drove the mill via a rope race. From the late 1950s onwards the mill was progressively modernised, enabling it to survive in operation until 1998. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to provide some assessment of the suitability of re-equipment as a strategy for survival by spinning firms in Lancashire, England. Section I of the article examines the need for re-equipment in the industry and the forces which operated to encourage re-equipment. Section II outlines the main trends in re-equipment. It also presents an analysis of the number of mule and ring spindles in the industry and their capacity utilization. Section III provides some explanations of why the scale of re-equipment was insubstantial.

The article focuses on the Ditherington Flax Mill in Shrewbury, England. The mill's significance was recognized by Turpin Bannister of the University of Illinois who showed in 1950 that it was the one of the first iron-framed buildings adapted for use as a maltings in the area. Several papers followed suit such as those by Skempton and W. G. Rimmer. The building was constructed on the northern outskirts of Shrewsbury for the flax spinners Marshall, Benyon and Bage in 1796-1797, incorporating the design of Charles Bage. The foundry in Coleham, Shrewsbury owned by William Hazledine was responsible for the casting of the building's iron columns and iron cross-beams.

The article explains the decline of the Lancashire, England textile industry in the twentieth century and the economic structure of the industry post-1945. Section I will discuss the industry before 1900 and of vertical specialization of spinning firms in the twentieth century. Section II presents evidence on the ownership of mule and ring spindles by specialized spinning firms for the whole country in the period 1956-68, and for the three spinning towns of Bolton, Oldham, and Rochdale for 1946-58. Though the two series do not cover an identical period, because the national data obtained from the British Textile Employers Association survived only from the mid 1950s. Sections III and IV attempt to explain, by reference to a variety of business records and trade material, the observed pattern of spindle ownership. The evidence suggests that vertical integration was not a necessary condition for the adoption of ring spindles in the period after 1945. This makes doubtful the hypothesis that the vertical specialization, which had developed in the industry prior to 1914, imposed constraints on the later adoption of ring spindles by specialized spinning firms.

This article discusses why the English cotton industry was so much slower than the rest of the world to make the switch from mules to ring-frame spinning. This article presents the records of six textile machinery companies. These records are now available at the Lancashire Record Office in Preston. The new figures show that Lancashire's commitment to mule-spinning prior to World War I was indeed overwhelming, so much so that it calls into question attempts to explain the choice in terms of demand patterns and labour skills. The data also allows the direct testing of subsidiary hypotheses in a comparative international setting. In trying to make sense of these diverse national adoption patterns, it is helpful to remember that the ring and the mule represented basically different principles of spinning which had been in competition since the early days of the Industrial Revolution. The mule is based on the principle of intermittent spinning, in which spinning and winding operations alternated. The late nineteenth-century ring-spinning machine, on the other hand, rested on more than one hundred years of development of the principle of continuous spinning.

A review of the article ""Th'ancient distaff" and "whirling spindle": measuring the contribution of spinning to household earnings and the national economy in England, 1550-1770," by C. Muldrew, which appeared within the journal "Economic History review," volume 65, is presented.

The article reports on the system developed by the Hosiery & Allied Trades Research Institute, a Nottingham, England-based textile research center, to economize the yarn feeds to knitting machine and to achieve better quality of the yarn. The institute introduces the no-touch system in the whole processing of yarn in the machine. The measurement of the yarn can be acquired without marking the yarn in any way since it functions through the application of static charge and detecting the passage of the static charge electronically. The signal used in the processing can be compared with either a fixed time signal or alternately with a variable such as the number of needles on the knitting machine.