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Images from the Pitman Collection

The collection is based on the library, correspondence and papers of three generations of the Pitman family; Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897), the inventor of a globally adopted shorthand system; his sons, Alfred (1862-1952) and Ernest Pitman (1864-1948), directors of the Pitman printing and publishing business; and his grandson, Sir James Pitman (1901-1985), MP for Bath and campaigning educationalist. It includes a wide range of material dating from the 16th century to the 1980s broadly grouped into the four main subject areas described below.

The shorthand section of the collection was transferred as a gift to the Library in 1970. The records of the Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation were donated by Sir James Pitman in 1977. Supplemental donations from the Pitman Company and private individuals, including members of the Pitman family, were received throughout the 1980s.

The archival material is not yet fully catalogued. Please email the University Archivist for further details.
View all books in the collection
Size: 6000 published works and over 3500 archival items (approx).

Shorthand and phonography

Sir Isaac Pitman, who was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, trained and worked as a teacher but is best known for the invention of a phonetic system of shorthand. 'Stenographic Soundhand' quickly became widely popular and commercially successful. The collection contains material relating to the design and development of his new system of shorthand writing, the establishment of a Pitman family business based on shorthand instruction and promotion, and the management of an expanding printing and publishing empire. Sir Isaac Pitman's comprehensive collection of shorthand-related books and journals is also held in the Library.

Initial teaching alphabet (ita) and spelling reform

Sir James Pitman was MP for Bath between 1945 and 1964 and served on the boards of several large public companies while working as a campaigner for educational reform. He was Pro-Chancellor of the University of Bath from 1966 to 1981. The collection contains records relating to the initial teaching alphabet (ita), a phonetically augmented alphabet designed to minimise the discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation that can cause problems in the early development of reading skills. In 1963 the Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation was established to realise the teaching potential of ita and by 1970 it was being used in approximately 4000 schools in the UK as well as teaching projects in North America, Australia and Africa.

George Bernard Shaw and the Shavian alphabet

As a result of his growing interest in the phonetic reform of the alphabet, Sir James Pitman was invited to become a trustee under the terms of the will of George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). His duties in this capacity included involvement in the administration and judging of a competition, devised by Shaw, to design an improved, more economical alphabet. The collection contains over 400 entries from around the world (ranging from published texts to single sides of writing paper), material relating to the transliteration of shorthand notes by Shaw and disputes arising from conflicting interpretations of his will.

Biographical material

The collection also contains biographical and personal material relating to members of the Pitman family. It includes notebooks, private correspondence, financial records, photographs, press cuttings and commemorative tributes.

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The collection is based on the library, correspondence and papers of three generations of the Pitman family; Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897), the inventor of a globally adopted shorthand system; his sons, Alfred (1862-1952) and Ernest Pitman (1864-1948), directors of the Pitman printing and publishing business; and his grandson, Sir James Pitman (1901-1985), MP for Bath and campaigning educationalist.

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For more than 2,000 years people have used shorthand to make note-taking quicker and more reliable. It's a skill that has weathered being banned by a Roman emperor and associations with witchcraft, but could technology finally kill it?

To the uninitiated it looks like gobbledegook, an alien language with an indecipherable alphabet. But the squiggles and lines on the page are actually a version of English.

Shorthand is a method of quickly writing down information. It has roots in the Senate of ancient Rome and allows the annotation of more than 200 words a minute by top exponents. It enables secretaries to transcribe meetings and dictated letters. Newspaper reporters can get down details of court case proceedings or interviews.

But, in an age of electronic voice recording and instant tweeting of events, is shorthand becoming obsolete?

The UK vocational education group City and Guilds says there's been "a steady decrease in the number of people taking shorthand courses over the past 10 years". Although it's reluctant to release what it says is commercially sensitive information, it adds that "technical solutions", such as voice recording, are the "main cause for the decline".

"Honestly, shorthand? Who still writes that stuff?" one blogger has written. "Who even reads it? The art of shorthand doesn't just have one foot in the grave, it has the other planted firmly on a banana peel."

But shorthand is still mandatory in some professions. The National Council for the Training of Journalists insists trainees achieve a written speed of 100 words per minute to pass its diploma. It remains "indispensable for any court reporter, and a vital skill for journalists in all sectors who need an easily accessible and permanent note of every conversation in their working day", the organisation insists.

It's three times quicker to type out shorthand notes than to listen back to audio recordings, says Mary Sorene, secretary of the British Institute of Verbatim Reporters. It's also illegal to make audio or video recordings of most proceedings in UK courts, although this type of coverage has been allowed in English councils since last year.

"Shorthand will be included in NCTJ qualifications as long as there remains a demand for it," says the organisation's chairman, Kim Fletcher.

But there are several types. The NCTJ uses the Teeline system. It's based on a combination of outlines representing individual letters. Some sounds, usually vowels, are removed to aid speed. For example, the word "father" will involve writing simply a letter "f" and an elongated "t" representing the "ther" sound.

Teeline is now the most popular system in the UK. Formerly, the most heavily used form of shorthand was Pitman, which dates back to the 19th Century.

In business, shorthand has traditionally been seen as a secretarial skill, but, according to Sarah Austin, operating director at Page Personnel Secretarial and Business Support, it's becoming more important "at the senior end of the jobs market".

"The role of the personal assistant and executive assistant has evolved and there are more business assistants, which means the need to record detailed accurate minutes from board meetings, client pitches or confidential meetings is more important than ever," she says.

Shorthand can be a tedious skill to learn. It requires practising until a decent word speed and level of accuracy is achieved, which usually takes several months. TV presenter Piers Morgan, a former Daily Mirror editor, has urged trainee journalists: "Work hard, play hard & do your Teeline!"

The initial stage of Teeline training is relatively simple, involving learning the basic letters, with users moving on to extra abbreviations. For instance, the letter "x" on its own can denote the word "emergency" and an "s" on its own can denote the suffix "-shall" or "-cial".

Students learning Teeline often experience the same pattern, improving rapidly before struggling to get past 80 words a minute. This is often referred to as the "80 plateau" and some have suggested it's a barrier because that's about the fastest speed that longhand can be written.

Pitman is said to involve more initial learning, as it includes special "logograms" - short forms - for common words.

Alison Berglas, who runs the teaching website Teeline Online, thinks it's "rubbish" to say shorthand is dying. "It's useful in business for the large number of meetings executives have to attend," she adds. "It's also incredibly useful for students, who can use it for note-taking during lectures. You don't need to record the whole thing before transcribing it, which is very time-consuming. Shorthand notes can't go wrong, unlike recordings, either."

But attitudes to study have altered, Berglas says. Pitman takes about a year to learn, but as it's quicker to grasp the basics of Teeline there are even one-day "masterclasses" offered. "One businessman was surprised that it was so simple," says Berglas. "He didn't realise it wasn't tech-speak or a completely different language."

Berglas's clients include companies and councils. "When I watch The Apprentice, I see Karren Brady taking notes about the group she's observing," says Berglas. "I just want to get beside her and tell her that shorthand would make her job much easier."

The first fully formulated shorthand system, it's widely agreed, started in 63BC when the philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero wanted a reliable way to cover debates in Rome's Senate. Marcus Tullius Tiro, a learned freeman living in Cicero's house, obliged, inventing what became known as Tironian Notes.

This method was officially adopted, but shorthand had a difficult time. The Byzantine Emperor Justinian forbade its use after 534 AD, as it had come to be seen as a secretive code, encouraging subversion. It became associated with witchcraft and magic during the early medieval period and largely disappeared.

In 1180 the monk John of Tilbury published an abbreviated word system, prompted by the late Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket's interest in preserving sermons.

In the 15th Century, the discovery of a book of psalms written in Tironian Notes in a Benedictine monastery led to a renewal of interest in shorthand. By 1588 physician Timothy Bright had devised an English system consisting of lines, circles and half-circles. The 17th Century diarist Samuel Pepys used a form of shorthand.

Several other variations developed until Isaac Pitman, from Trowbridge, Wiltshire, came up with a phonetic system, Stenographic Sound-Hand, in the 1830s. It was exported to the US, becoming the dominant system there.

Irish-born Robert Gregg was 18 when he invented his own phonetic system, Light-Line Phonography, in the 1880s, which gradually supplanted Pitman in the US.

In the 1920s Emma Dearborn, an instructor at Colombia University, started Speedwriting, allowing more than 20,000 different words to be written once the user has learned 60 rules and a list of about 100 brief forms.

Lots of other systems have come along, but the most popular in the UK today, Teeline, was first published in 1968 by shorthand teacher James Hill, who wanted a system that was easier for beginners to grasp than Pitman. Some users of Pitman argue that Teeline is inferior, limiting exponents to lower word speeds.

Mary Sorene worked as a shorthand writer at the Old Bailey for 11 years from the early 1970s. At one point she could write 210 words per minute using Pitman.

"People, even when I was training, were saying there's no use learning it, as they thought it wouldn't be long before words could be turned into text automatically," she says. "Well, we're here 54 years later and we're still waiting for that to appear. I don't think shorthand has died at all. I think it will be going on long after I'm carted off."

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For more than 2,000 years people have used shorthand to make note-taking quicker and more reliable. But is it in danger of dying out?

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By Tim Lambert
Early Trowbridge

At the time of the Domesday Book (1086), Trowbridge was a typical settlement with a population of about 120. However, during the 12th century, Trowbridge became a focal point for the surrounding villages. In 1200 the Lord of the Manor was granted the right to hold markets in Trowbridge and it grew into a small town.

As well as weekly markets Trowbridge had an annual fair. In the Middle Ages fairs were like markets but they were held only once a year. A Trowbridge fair attracted buyers and sellers from a wide area.

By the early 12th century a castle was erected at Trowbridge. It was first recorded in 1139 when it was besieged during a civil war.

At first, Trowbridge was a farming settlement but by the 14th century, it was a centre of the wool industry. In 1540 a man named Leland said that Trowbridge 'flourished by drapery.' There was also a leather tanning industry in Trowbridge. To us, Trowbridge would seem tiny. In 1500 it probably had a population of no more than 1,000. However, settlements were very small in those days.

In the late 17th and 18th centuries, Trowbridge grew much larger. By the mid-18th century, Trowbridge probably had a population of about 3,000. It was a prosperous town due to the wool industry. Meanwhile, in 1700 an Act of Parliament set up a body of men called Commissioners with powers to pave, clean, and light the streets of Trowbridge.

Blind House was built in 1757 to hold prisoners. Polebarn House was built in 1789. Rodney House followed in 1790.

Modern Trowbridge

At the time of the first census in 1801 Trowbridge had a population of 5,799. By the standards of the time, it was a fair-sized town. By 1831 the population had grown to almost 11,000. However, the population then stagnated for a hundred years. In 1951 the population of Trowbridge was still less than 14,000.

During the 19th century, the wool industry continued to dominate Trowbridge. (Although machinery was now powered by steam engines rather than being worked by hand). However, the cloth industry began to decline at the end of the century. There was also a brewing industry in Trowbridge during the 19th century.

Sir Isaac Pitman, who invented Pitman shorthand was born in Nash Yard in Trowbridge in 1813.

George Crabbe, the poet, was a rector of Trowbridge from 1814 to 1832.

In the 19th-century amenities in Trowbridge improved. The railway reached Trowbridge in 1848 and Market House was built in 1861. The first hospital in Trowbridge opened in 1870.

Trowbridge gained a gas supply (for lighting) in 1824. From 1874 Trowbridge had a piped water supply. The People's Park opened in 1884.

In the 20th century, the old wool industry in Trowbridge declined. It ended altogether in 1982. Today industries in Trowbridge include a call centre, food processing, bedding, and light engineering.

County Hall was built in 1940.

In the late 20th century Trowbridge grew rapidly. By 1981 its population reached 23,000.

Castle Place shopping centre was built in 1974. Trowbridge Museum opened in 1990. The Shires shopping centre also opened in 1990.

Today the population of Trowbridge is 33,000. The population of nearby Westbury is about 11,350. In 2009 Trowbridge was twinned with the city of Oujda in Morocco.

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A History of Trowbridge - Local Histories

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By Tim Lambert Early Trowbridge At the time of the Domesday Book (1086), Trowbridge was a typical settlement with a population of about 120. However, during the 12th century, Trowbridge became a focal point for the surrounding villages. In 1200 the Lord of the Manor was granted the right to hold markets in Trowbridge and...

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A GOLD-NIBBED pen belonging to Trowbridge-born shorthand pioneer Sir Isaac Pitman fetched six times its asking price at an auction on Monday.

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In 1837 Isaac Pitman published Stenographic Sound-Handin London at the press of Samuel Bagster, introducing Pitman shorthand, a shorthand system for the English language. Pitman's first pamphlet on the system, issued in London by Samuel Bagster, a publisher of bibles and related books on religion, consisted of only 11 pages and two lithographed plates. In contrast to previous shorthand writing systems, which were mostly orthographic, or based on short-cuts in spelling, Pitman's system was mostly phonetic.

In the 1840s Pitman offered instruction in his shorthand system by correspondence course. This was the first widely adopted practice of distance education, responsible, to a large extent, for the successful dissemination of Pitman's system.

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Pitman Shorthand, & The First “Correspondence Course” : History of Information

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New Threads: Uncovering the Stories of England's Past Weaving Industry

Hanne Dahl, Collections and Exhibitions Officer at Trowbridge Museum

For centuries, cloth production was the main industry in and around Trowbridge. Many local people can still trace ancestors connected to the weaving trade, from its origins as a predominantly cottage industry, through to the appearance of the first mills, and on to large scale industrialisation.

Trowbridge's weaving mills began to close down one by one in the 1960s and 1970s. Fortunately some enlightened mill workers saw the historical significance of their cloth samples, tools and machinery. Sometimes, with only a day's warning of imminent closure, they would hastily fill their cars with items from the mill, thereby saving them from the skip and preserving this significant heritage for future generations.

The last working mill in Trowbridge, owned by the company Samuel Salter Ltd and situated in Home Mill, finally ceased to operate in 1982, thereby ending centuries of tradition. This had a long-lasting impact on the declining prosperity of the town and its community. However, in 1990 Trowbridge Museum opened in Home Mill, thus returning life to a building that had come to symbolise the end of a once dominant industry.

The museum displays tell the story of the West of England woollen cloth production and those who worked in the industry. Thanks to the rescue of industrial artefacts by those insightful former mill workers, these items now form a significant part of the Trowbridge Museum collection.

1950's Gor-ray dirndl-style skirt from the musuem's collection (Photo copyright: Trowbridge Museum)

The museum was recently granted a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £1,172,500 to expand into the third floor of Home Mill. This space used to be filled with spinning mules preparing yarn for the cloth, but was unused since the Mill closed in 1982. The planned expansion will return life to the factory floor through imaginative displays exploring the uniqueness of the factory setting and the views of the many textile-related buildings that still exist. There will be weaving demonstrations, displays of the unique West of England textile machinery and collections, state of the art learning facilities, and an expanded temporary exhibition space. The library and research facility will become a focal point in the South West for the many fascinating stories associated with West of England woollen cloth production.

In preparation for the new displays, museum staff are conducting research into the textile collections, seeking to discover more about the weaving mills, their history, the cloth designers who worked in the mills, and their clients.

George Charmbury designs from the musuem's collection (Photo copyright: Trowbridge Museum)

From the many sample books and lengths of cloth held in the museum's collection, there emerges a strong visual story of woollen cloth production and the changing demands of fashion. The mills did not just produce traditional cloths like tweeds, tartans and checks. After the Second World War, production changed to include lighter and brighter cloth for the ever-expanding ladies' fashion market. The patterns became far more experimental and the colours changed to satisfy the whims of the latest fashion. Thanks to a Creative Wiltshire grant ¹ the museum has been able to purchase garments made with cloth from the Trowbridge Mills. A recent acquisition of a 1950s Gor-Ray dirndl-style skirt shows the bright and colourful ladies' fashion of the time ². The skirt has a pastel blue ground cloth with a decorative supplementary warp border in a rainbow of colours. Through the records and samples in the museum's collection, it is known that the skirt was created by the designer and subsequently Managing Director of Samuel Salter Ltd, Kenneth Ponting ³. One of the sample books of his designs also shows a fantastic range of variations of the colour-and-weave technique, sometimes in the soft pastel colours of the time but also in more dramatic and bold hues.

Cloth designs by Kenneth Ponting from the 1950's from the museum collection (Photo copyright: Trowbridge Museum)

It is exciting to locate relevant garments and to follow the progression from one particular design within a sample book that has been used by a designer to create a fashionable complete piece. The search is now focused on locating garments that were made as part of the iconic 1960s designer Mary Quant's Ginger Group range. Mary Quant Ltd was an important client for the mills in Trowbridge and, together with a group of young English designers, she helped the British 'rag trade' industry flourish 4.

The museum is also fortunate to have sample books from George Charmbury, which span his five decades as a cloth designer at the Trowbridge mills between the 1930s and 1970s. The books give a fantastic overview of the changing developments in design, but also show how individuality could still be expressed within the designs. One of George's signature designs involved the creation of small motifs, especially of animals, using a supplementary warp. This particular cloth is of a lightweight quality and would probably have been used for ladies' garments.

Design motifs from the museum's collection (Photo copyright: Trowbridge Museum)

The museum has an extensive oral history archive of the museum workers. Interviews recorded with George shortly before he died explain that he would design with a maximum of 16-shafts, and would always try to economize by producing several fabric patterns in one warp, just by changing the weft and 'peg' or lifting plan. The mill's imperative was time and money and they had to ensure that fabric was produced as efficiently as possible. Consequently, designers had little time to go into the details of a design or even to spend time weaving samples before it had to go into production. The only significant preparation was in yarn wraps, and colouring in the design on paper. The rest was down to an individual designer's level of qualifications and skills.

The museum is extremely fortunate to continue to have contact with George Charmbury's family and, together with them, George's own words and the many objects he left to the museum, a detailed picture is starting to emerge of the life of a cloth designer in Britain's once busy and thriving weaving industry. This story is just one of many that will form part of the new and expanded displays, and Trowbridge Museum is looking forward to welcoming visitors to discover more when it re-opens in May 2020.

Check the Museum website for more information about the planned activities and updates about the expansion project: www.trowbridgemuseum.co.uk

See Diary, p.48.

1. Creative Wiltshire is a Heritage Lottery Funded project running from 2014 to 2019 which aims to collect and celebrate the work of the county's creative people. The Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Chippenham, is working with project partner Swindon Museum & Art Gallery and other participating museums, archives and local studies libraries to widen collections, fill gaps and ensure that creativity is better represented for the benefit of all to enjoy. See www.creativewiltshire.com for further information.

2. Gor-Ray was established in the 1920s and produced ladies' skirts. It was one of the main clients of the mills in Trowbridge, especially in the 1950s and 1960s.

3. Kenneth Ponting later wrote a book about the weaving industry in the West of England: Ponting, K.G. (1957): A History of the West of England Cloth Industry. London: Macdonald.

4. An article in the Sunday Times from 1966 traced the rise in exports of garments between 1954 and 1965, stating that the 'British rag-trade' was in a 'euphoric and bouncy mood', and had reached a value of around £49.6 million by 1965. The article also pointed towards one of the major contributors: the young designer Mary Quant.

About the author: Hanne Dahl is the Collections and Exhibitions Officer at Trowbridge Museum where she has been researching the collection since 2015. Some of this research was included in the recent V&A Museum's Mary Quant exhibition.
She is currently organising a study day on woollen cloth production in the west of England, to take place at Trowbridge Museum in 2020. Contact Hanne with any questions or for more information. hanne.dahl@trowbridge.gov.uk

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New Threads: Uncovering the Stories of England's Past Weaving Industry

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New Threads: Uncovering the Stories of England's Past Weaving Industry Hanne Dahl, Collections and Exhibitions Officer at Trowbridge Museum For centuries, cloth production was the main industry in and around Trowbridge. Many local people can still trace ancestors connected to the weaving trade, from its origins as a predominantly cottage industry, through to the appearance of the first mills, and on to large scale industrialisation.

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TEXTILE INDUSTRIES SINCE 1550

Cloth 1550-1640, p. 148. Cloth 1640-1790, p. 155. Cloth since 1790, p. 167. Silk, p. 176. Linen, p. 178. Cotton, p. 179. Lace, p. 180. Carpets, p. 181.

Cloth 1550-1640

The trading conditions for the cloth industry (fn. 1) grew less favourable during the second half of the 16th century.(fn. 2) The export trade in undressed cloth, which had grown with the growth of Antwerp, had suffered several setbacks in the decade before 1550; and the reform of the currency in that year brought further difficulties. The unemployment which occurred at every check to this trade alarmed the authorities, and there were frequent complaints about the poor quality of the cloth produced, owing, in contemporary opinion, to lack of proper regulation. These facts had repercussions in Wiltshire. The size and weight of Wiltshire cloth was fixed in 1552,(fn. 3) and in 1555 the Weavers' Act, repeated with amendments in 1557, (fn. 4) was intended to encourage the industry in corporate and market-towns to limit the number of looms and apprentices who might be employed by country masters, and to ensure that different branches of the industry were not engrossed in the hands of the same employer. The impossibility of eradicating the great clothiers from the country districts was realized and provided for, but both Acts, the later one especially, aimed at preventing the growth of such unrestricted manufactures. It was, of course, far too late to do so, and the Government was forced to recognize this in 1576, after an informer had attacked several country clothiers.(fn. 5) It could not risk the dislocation and unemployment which would have followed an attempt to interfere, and a new Act exempted Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Somerset from the operation of the limiting clauses in the previous one,(fn. 6) though, even so, it restricted clothmaking to places where it had been carried on for ten years. Nothing more, however, is heard of this restriction.

In fact, industrial society in Wiltshire was still extremely fluid. It contained many wealthy clothiers both in town and country, men like the Swaddens and Formans of Calne, the Chivers of Quemerford (Calne), the Whittakers of Tinhead, the Topps and Potticarys of Stockton, but, alongside these, the medium clothier and the small independent or semi-independent weaver who was also a farmer survived in considerable numbers, even though the statement, made in 1615, that they produced half the cloth made in the three counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Somerset, (fn. 11) need not be taken literally. Their presence may be inferred from the number of men who are described indiscriminately as 'weaver', 'clothman', or 'clothier', and from those weavers, sometimes called 'yeomen', sometimes 'husbandmen', whose wills show the possession of goods to the value of £20 or £40. But although all grades of independent and semiindependent producers existed, there was a cleavage between the wealthy capitalists and the smaller men. One aspect of this is to be found in the repeated petitions against the wool broggers and yarn jobbers who sold wool and yarn in the markets and furnished credit to the smaller producers. They were constantly accused of engrossing wool and of contributing to the faulty making of cloth by enabling the poorer men to get their raw material in small quantities which would not mix properly; but the attempts to do away with them were never successful.(fn. 12)

It is hard to say how far the small producers were bound to wealthier men by bonds of credit, but there is no doubt about the position occupied by that part of the population which was mainly or entirely dependent on wages. Its size cannot be estimated, but it was large enough to give the Government some uneasiness. In spite of the upward movement of prices, wages rose little, if at all, between the middle of the 16th and the first ten years of the 17th century. (fn. 13) In the last decade of the 16th century the Government was seriously concerned about the position and in 1593 provisions for regulating wages were inserted in a draft Bill intended to prevent bad workmanship;(fn. 14) but Parliament rose before it became law. In 1597 the problem was dealt with by an Act, renewed with greater scope in 1604, which expressly directed the justices to apply to spinners, weavers, and other textile workers the provisions of the Statute of Apprentices about rating wages.(fn. 15) It was in conformity with this Act that the Wiltshire justices issued, in 1602 and 1603, the wage rates which have been preserved in the sessions rolls.(fn. 16) The rates of 1602, which were agreed between the weavers and clothiers of Trowbridge, are repeated in greater detail in the following year and correspond pretty well with those incorporated in the draft Bill of 1593; but it is not possible to calculate with any exactness the amount each week which a master weaver could retain for himself out of the piecework rate paid to him. For the product of one broad loom it could not have been much above the wage of a husbandman; and the impression that rates were low is confirmed by a comparison between those for various classes of journeymen maintained in their masters' houses. Chief weavers, fullers, and shearmen took only 40 s. a year as compared with 50 s. for dyers, brewers, tanners, and linenweavers; and journeymen in the clothing crafts only 26 s. 8 d. a year as compared with 40 s. in other trades. (fn. 17) It is doubtful, moreover, whether the rates laid down were really paid; 40 clothiers were fined for not paying them in 1605.(fn. 18) It is easy to see why the common complaint of the gentry against the clothiers was that the low wages they paid drove their workmen to behave like common hedge-thieves. On the other hand, the workers had some support from authority and they often looked to the justices for intervention in disputes. In 1607, for instance, the Judges of Assize responded to a complaint from some Bradford weavers that the clothiers had put them off their work, and ordered the bench to investigate the case.(fn. 19) There is, too, an appearance of organization by educated persons in the petitions which were sent up in times of distress. The Government, though always nervous of possible trouble-makers,(fn. 20) took care that the justices did something to ensure fair treatment from the employers. In 1595, after corn riots had taken place at Warminster, it sent orders 'to deal earnestly with the clothiers ... procuring them to yield to such reasonable increases of wages to workmen and artificers as they may have no just cause to think themselves unreasonably dealt with'.(fn. 21) How far such intervention was effective is another matter.

There is no evidence that there was any change in the organization of the industry during the second half of the 16th century. The repeated difficulties in the export trade which are described below did not make for the accumulation of large fortunes, and the small producers, if they possessed enough land to keep them, had some advantage in bad times. Although there was still some grouping of looms in workshops, (fn. 22) the Weavers' Act may have been instrumental in preventing an extension of the practice outside market-towns. It may also have been the cause of the division of function observable in many clothing families, where one member is described as 'clothier' and another as 'fuller', a distinction which was probably legal rather than real.(fn. 23) We have no clear evidence that numbers of independent fullers still existed,(fn. 24) although they certainly did in later centuries; but if they did not, the smaller clothier never seems to have had difficulty in getting cloth fulled on commission.

There were difficult years in the fifties and sixties owing to the religious wars on the Continent and the fall of Antwerp. Exports fell at times to a very low level, although they always recovered and even profited by the disorganization of the industry in the Netherlands. Later, the outbreak of war with Spain in 1586 led to a serious crisis in the following year. Better times came with the peace after the accession of James I, and until 1614 the industry seems to have been prosperous. The quantity of Wiltshire white cloth exported by the Merchant Adventurers in 1606 and 1614 has been calculated from the port books as approximately 45,390 pieces for the earlier and 41,758 for the later year, (fn. 29) or nearly 60 per cent. in 1606 and over 58 per cent. in 1614 of their total exports of undressed cloth. These may have been peak years(fn. 30) and there is a considerable margin of error in the calculations: they depend upon the assumption that when a number of cloths is entered as coming from more than one county, the proportions for each are equal. No account is taken of the fact that much more long cloth was exported in 1614. It seems certain, however, that the recovery of the woollen industries of France and Holland after the religious wars meant that by the beginning of the 17th century exporters were facing difficulties with import duties and other restrictions imposed by both countries, ostensibly to protect themselves against faulty cloth but in reality, it was suspected, to support their own manufactures.(fn. 31) The lighter 'new draperies', now established in England as well as abroad, were also attracting buyers who had previously worn broadcloth.

With the depression came official inquiries into its origin. 'Foreign wars' were recognized as playing a part, (fn. 36) but the most important factors, to judge from the number of times they were repeated, were claimed to be the high price of cloth and its poor quality. These were the arguments of the clothiers and the Merchant Adventurers respectively, and each side had an axe to grind. The poor quality of cloth was a complaint with a long history. The Act of 1555 had established searchers who were to replace the medieval aulnagers in the duty of inspecting cloth at the fulling-mill. They often displayed great activity which was much resented by the clothiers, who sometimes resisted or clandestinely removed their cloth before search;(fn. 37) but country searchers were too much exposed to the clothiers' influence to remain independent for long. In 1560 the practice of search in London was introduced, but even the London searchers relaxed their vigilance in time. A recrudescence of their activity in 1589 led to a struggle in which some of the largest Wiltshire clothiers took a leading part; and they won a complete victory in 1607, when the claim to search in London was abandoned.(fn. 38) This was not due to a lessening of complaints, for they grew in volume from the latter part of the century onwards; and it is often supposed that the increase was due to a deterioration in craftsmanship consequent on the hard times experienced during the war with Spain and the still greater depressions after 1614. The number of Wiltshire clothiers fined for cloth lacking in length or weight in years when searchers were active shows how common it was to produce pieces which were not up to standard; for instance, there were 72 charges at the Epiphany Sessions in 1603(fn. 39) and 28 from Calne alone in the following May.(fn. 40) In the early years of the 17th century there may have been an effort to economize in wool, for its price rose from 20 s. or 22 s. a tod in 1587 to 33 s. at some unspecified time before 1620, when the depression had brought it down again to under 20 s. (fn. 41) There was also the necessity of keeping the price down; (fn. 42) it was on cheap cloth for the armies and the bourgeoisie of Europe, not on fine cloth, which was now better made by the French and Dutch, that the export trade depended. Fraud there certainly was, but the technique and organization of the industry made it inevitable that much cloth should be imperfect,(fn. 43) and in times of depression buyers had their own reasons for making much of its imperfections.

It was Parliament, always sensitive to the country interest, which got in the first blow for the clothiers, with the allegation that it was the high price in continental markets which made cloth so difficult to sell. It has recently been pointed out that a probable cause of the crisis was the depreciation of the currency in some of the states at war, leading to a higher import price for foreign commodities. (fn. 44) But this was not realized by contemporaries and the advocates of the high-price theory laid the blame nearer home. It had cost the Merchant Adventurers a large sum to regain their privileges after the failure of Cockayne's experiment, and the company was trying to recoup itself by a heavy levy on the cloth exported by its members. This levy, which according to its enemies made cloth expensive abroad, was voted a grievance in 1624 and again in 1626, but no remedy was obtained.(fn. 45) When the period of the king's personal rule arrived, from 1629 onwards, it was the turn of the company to get the ear of the Privy Council for its complaint about the poor quality of cloth, and, as shown below, it was more successful in obtaining action.

By this time a new development was taking place in the Wiltshire industry with the introduction of 'mingled or medley cloth', for which the wool was first dyed and the colours mixed before spinning. Medleys were not new, for they were exported to France in the 15th century, (fn. 46) and may well have been made in the area before the expanding market for white cloth caused clothiers to concentrate upon it; but the significance of the new development for Wiltshire lay in the introduction of fine Spanish wool, which produced cloth with a softer 'face' than could be obtained otherwise. It has been suggested that its use was due to a deterioration in the quality of English wool caused by the practise of inclosure.(fn. 47) Certainly in 1586 Wiltshire clothiers were complaining that their English wool had become coarser,(fn. 48) but it does not seem probable that it had ever been as fine as the best Spanish had become by the middle of the 16th century. Apart from its use by Flemish refugees in 1567,(fn. 49) the only evidence of cloth being made from it in England in the 16th century lies in the claim of Benedict Webb of Kingswood (then a detached portion of Wiltshire) to have been the first to make Spanish cloth when he was living at Taunton in the mid-eighties.(fn. 50) Local tradition preserved this claim,(fn. 51) perhaps relying on Webb's own statement, though no date is given; but there is no other evidence of the use of Spanish wool in cloth until after 1620.(fn. 52) In 1626 it yielded a higher price in England than if re-exported.(fn. 53) By 1630 the manufacture of medleys was well established in north-west Wiltshire. In 1633(fn. 54) it was said to have grown up 'since any Parliament took care of the business', which probably meant since the Clothing Statute of 1624.(fn. 55) The manufacture was a natural move on the part of clothiers who were hit by the depression and it need not have involved the use of Spanish wool. The next 'Spanish cloth' manufacturers, at least on a large scale, were James and John Ash of Freshford, just over the Somerset border, who made a large fortune out of it in the thirties.(fn. 56) It was a highly priced material which sold in London in 1638 for 35 s. a yard; (fn. 57) and it was successful enough to be imitated by coloured cloth dyed 'in the say' before being fulled and made up to look like a medley. During the thirties the Ash family and some of their neighbours in Freshford carried on a lively campaign against the Brewers of Beckington and Lullington who were the pioneers of this imitation.(fn. 58) By 1640, in spite of prohibitions, the making of say-dyed cloth had spread over much of the old white-cloth area, and in that year the Privy Council finally legalized its production if it was clearly distinguished from the true medley Spanish cloth.(fn. 59) It is impossible to identify all the clothiers from Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire who signed a petition praying to be allowed to continue its manufacture, but among them was Christopher Potticary of Stockton who, in the twenties, had been one of the greatest of the white clothiers.(fn. 60)

If reliance can be placed on the information which Wither's activities have provided, it appears that the manufacture of medleys had taken firm hold and was in a prosperous state, since manufacturers could afford to pay more for spinning coloured yarn. (fn. 66) Its rise was assisted by the great increase in market-spinners, who were said to control two-thirds of the trade, especially in coloured yarn. Some kept spinning establishments of their own(fn. 67) as well as putting out wool to be spun and buying up yarn from independent spinners. How much, if any, of the coloured yarn provided contained Spanish wool there is no means of judging, but there would be sound technical reasons for the new and more difficult spinning of fine dyed wool being left in the hands of specialists.

Cloth 1640-1790

After the outbreak of the Civil War, the trade was plunged into difficulties by the interruption of communications. From 1643 to 1645 the county was one of the theatres of war, and both armies drew heavily on unemployed weavers; while the predicament of Edmund Stephens, a Salisbury clothier, who 'to avoid his creditors entered the army under the Earl of Essex', cannot have been an unusual one. (fn. 73) There were clothiers on both sides, but instances of rancour were few. Paul Methuen and other Bradford clothiers bore witness to the 'leniency and good neighbourhood' of Edward Yerbury when he was commissioner for the king there;(fn. 74) and when John Ash was chairman of the Commission for Compounding he used his influence for the remission of his neighbours' fines.(fn. 75) Recovery was slow after the close of hostilities, but trade had revived by 1650, and from that time onwards the manufacture of medley and Spanish cloths steadily expanded, while the old white-cloth export industry declined. There were occasional complaints about the latter from the London dyers and clothworkers,(fn. 76) but the shrinkage in exports robbed them of importance. In 1674, 30,000 people in Wiltshire were said to be concerned in making white cloth; but there is likely to be more truth in the counter-allegation that this was a very exaggerated number for the production of the mere 6,000 pieces which now constituted the annual export.(fn. 77) In 1698 only 4,330 pieces were entered in the Custom House Books.(fn. 78) The patent under which export took place expired in 1706, and the consequent confiscation of cloth at the Custom House led to much unemployment, followed by a parliamentary inquiry which showed that the trade, now confined to coarse white cloth at under £6 the piece, was only a shadow of what it had been in the past.(fn. 79) In 1711 it was still being carried on in Chippenham, Corsham, and Castle Combe;(fn. 80) but, although export was permitted after 1707 under a duty of 5 s. a piece (fn. 81) -which took the place of the previous payment to the patentee-the manufacture continued to decay. Finer white cloth was made at Salisbury and in the west of the county by the same clothiers who made medleys, but it was mainly dyed in London and little was exported undressed.(fn. 82)

From the Restoration onwards the bulk of the Wiltshire cloth was woven of dyed wool. There were no further complaints about market-spinners (fn. 83) nor of say-dyed cloth. It is not surprising that the latter should have been superseded by medleys, since the uneven colour sometimes produced by dyeing in hard water was easier to deal with in wool than in cloth. The use of Spanish wool was increasing, but England was inferior to France and Holland in knowledge of how best to use it. It was either carded with English wool or formed the weft to an English warp,(fn. 84) and it is not until just after 1700 that there is indisputable evidence of cloth made wholly of it.(fn. 85) Although such cloth was common by 1720, many clothiers throughout the 18th century only used Spanish wool in small quantities to mix in the weft in order to give their cloth a softer finish; and by no means all the cloth called 'Spanish' was fine cloth.(fn. 86) Bradford, Trowbridge, and Melksham were pre-eminently the Spanish cloth towns, but even Bradford did not use Spanish wool exclusively, though its clothiers liked to pretend that they did.(fn. 87) Much use was made of the fine Herefordshire and Shropshire wools, especially if Spanish were dear or in short supply.(fn. 88) Both Wiltshire and Sussex wool was largely used for the bulk of the county's production. In the late 17th century there seems to have been no difference in quality between the two,(fn. 89) but the wool of the old Wiltshire breed of horned sheep became coarser as the 18th century progressed and by the 1780's Sussex Down wool was considerably finer. Sheep from these flocks were introduced into Wiltshire in 1789(fn. 90) and ultimately supplanted the Wiltshire breed altogether.

It was probably to teach the spinning of warps from Spanish wool that the great Bradford clothier, Paul Methuen, introduced the 'spinner' Derricke Jonsen, from Amsterdam, in 1659. (fn. 91) In the late forties, probably just after the end of the Civil War, Methuen married a daughter of John Ash and must have inherited Ash's connexions;(fn. 92) none of Ash's sons carried on his business, and his younger daughter, who also married a clothier, did not do so until after her father's death. It may have been Methuen who was responsible for the introduction of the Spanish cloth manufacture into Bradford; he was settled in Bradford before 1630, but there is no evidence that medleys were made there before the Civil War.(fn. 93) Methuen was, in any case, an important figure in the Spanish cloth trade. After his death in 1666 his place as what Aubrey called 'the greatest clothier of his time' was taken by William Brewer of Trowbridge, 'who drove the greatest trade for medleys of any clothier in England'.(fn. 94) All we know of Brewer confirms Aubrey's estimate.(fn. 95) He introduced another foreign element into Bradford with the three men for whom he gave a bond in 1674, 'Adolfe, Gregorius and Jone, Dutchmen by nation or of Poland';(fn. 96) but the main Dutch settlement in Wiltshire was the result of a proclamation issued by Charles II in 1672, inviting Dutch artisans, whose country was being devastated by the war with France, to settle in England.(fn. 97) In response to it a body of 23 Dutchmen 'skilled in the art of making fine cloth', with about 15 dependants, arrived in London in 1673. The Privy Council, after consultation with London merchants, recommended them to 'the care and direction of Mr Brewer of Trowbridge', gave them £5 each for the journey, and exhorted the justices to give them a kind reception, since the king made himself personally liable for them.(fn. 98) A year later another body of ten came over and were also consigned to Brewer. Their arrival was not popular, and in 1675 the Privy Council ordered the neighbouring justices to desist from supporting an attempt to remove them.(fn. 99) Tradition places a colony of Dutch workers at Avoncliff (Westwood), and the remaining buildings,(fn. 100) which have a strong suggestion of continental influence in their architecture and layout, may well mark the site where Brewer placed these immigrants.

In later years the beginning of the fine-cloth industry was dated from the arrival of these Dutchmen, but it would be more correct to regard them as having contributed the finishing touches to a branch of the industry which had already been considerably improved. The expansion of Bradford had begun by 1672, and it continued throughout the decade. Parish records for the years between 1672 and 1679 show 97 immigrants, including 49 clothworkers and 10 weavers, besides an assortment of wool-breakers, scribblers, fullers, and cardmakers. (fn. 101) There was a similar, though smaller, influx into Trowbridge in the years 1675-9, including 19 clothworkers out of 56 persons who brought settlement certificates there.(fn. 102) The impetus given to the industry by the improvements introduced by the Dutch was, no doubt, a main cause in this expansion, but in the early part of the decade the devastation of Holland may have given England a temporary advantage in the continental trade of which Bradford was already able to avail itself.

To judge by the arrivals of clothworkers in both towns one would say that the chief contribution of the Dutch was in finishing, but they also assisted the improvement of spinning, which was a notable feature towards the end of the century. About 1685 Aubrey was told by Samuel Ash that 'the art of spinning is so much improved within these last 40 years that one pound of wool makes twice as much cloth (as to the extent) as it did before the Civil War'. (fn. 103) Whether or not this improvement was begun by Methuen's Dutch spinner, it is clear that the later Dutch arrivals played a part in it, for we learn from a curious little controversy in 1710 between the cardmakers and wiredrawers of Frome and the Spanish clothiers(fn. 104) that one of Brewer's Dutchmen was a cardmaker and that cards had been so much improved since his arrival that the illicit import of foreign cards and wire had ceased. By the late 17th century the wool was prepared in the clothier's workshop by being mixed or scribbled on a frame called a horse before being given out to the spinner, who had to card it on hand-cards before it was spun; and fine cards played an indispensable part in fine spinning.

After a period of depression soon after the Restoration, (fn. 105) an era of prosperity set in for the fine-cloth trade. Its degree may be judged from the fact that, among the many complaints from the woollen industry which reached Parliament during the recurrent depressions of the later 17th century, few came from Wiltshire and none at all from Trowbridge or Bradford.(fn. 106) At the end of the century, when the prohibition of bone lace from Flanders led to retaliatory measures against English woollen goods, a few petitions were sent up,(fn. 107) but they were few indeed in comparison with those from other places. This apparent contentment was probably due to the fact that Wiltshire's chief market was now at home and not abroad. Exports were not unimportant and Salisbury, whose 'whites' were dyed in London by the Levant Company for the eastern Mediterranean, depended largely upon them;(fn. 108) but it was the home market which formed the chief support of the county's industry for the next hundred years. In 1676 medley cloth was given an advertisement by Charles II who wore it during a depression to encourage the trade.(fn. 109) In 1678 the Levant Company said that it was the only woollen material besides camblets to be worn by persons of quality;(fn. 110) and in 1726 Defoe noted that 'all the gentlemen and persons of any fashion in England' wore Spanish cloth, while their servants' liveries were of 'seconds' made of English wool.(fn. 111)

During the whole of the 17th century the medley manufacture remained free from regulation, in spite of a few abortive attempts to bring it under legal control. (fn. 112) A renewed agitation for this purpose, in 1712, came mainly from Gloucestershire and Somerset, although Westbury also petitioned;(fn. 113) but the reasons which prompted it are obscure and the legislation which followed, prescribing a certain length and breadth for all medleys to be measured at the fulling-mill,(fn. 114) was ineffective. The controversy went on until 1715,(fn. 115) when it resulted in an equally ineffective compromise. (fn. 116) Most individual complaints of bad making must always have been adjusted privately, but when legislation about wages and conditions took place in 1727 renewed provision was made for measurement by inspectors appointed at quarter sessions, whose salary was to be paid by a levy of 2 d. per cloth. (fn. 117) The following list of the nine divisions into which the county was divided for this purpose shows the areas in which medleys were being made at this date:(fn. 118)

Audley Mill and all the mills in Trowbridge, Wingfield, and North Bradley.

Bradford (except Audley Mill).

Bull Mill and Sherewater Mill in Crockerton (Longbridge Deverill), and Horningsham Mill.

Mills in the parish of Boyton, 'Mount Mill', and Norton (Norton Bavant).

Westbury.

Melksham and Seend, and South Newton.

Slaughterford and Colerne.

Bremhill, Chippenham, Lacock, and Corsham.

Kingswood.

Wiltshire made other materials as well as cloth, but its excursions into the field of the new draperies were confined to goods made with a woollen weft and finished in the same way as cloth, although the warp might be of worsted. Even before the Civil War there had been woolcombers and serge-weavers in the county and in the later 17th century they were scattered all over it; (fn. 123) but in the early 18th century the chief centre for serge was Devizes, which made a strong variety known as 'German Serge' at 4 s. to 5 s. a yard, largely used by the country people. (fn. 124) Druggets, a narrow material finished like cloth but with a worsted warp, were made in all qualities. Some patterns produced by a Warminster clothier in 1695(fn. 125) have survived to show that they were, in effect, a less closely woven species of cloth, popular because of its lighter weight.(fn. 126) In 1726 Defoe noted that Devizes had 'run pretty much into the drugget making trade'.(fn. 127) Another material, produced all over the county, was linsey-woolsey with a linen warp, used for furnishing goods and for the gowns and petticoats of the poorer classes. Some of this was made by independent weavers who probably sold it direct to the consumers and were potential buyers of stolen yarn.(fn. 128) Flannels were made at Salisbury, where they are said to have been introduced as early as 1680(fn. 129) during one of the depressions caused by the vicissitudes of the Levant trade, for which the greater part of the 'Salisbury whites' were made. Such depressions gave the city at times the reputation of being 'much decayed',(fn. 130) but they seem to have been temporary until the mid-18th century, when successful French competition killed the trade to the Levant.(fn. 131) In 1754 all branches of the trade in Salisbury were said to be in decay,(fn. 132) but in the eighties the industry was flourishing again with the manufacture both of flannels and of the fine cloth which had been developed in the west of the county. It is said, perhaps with some exaggeration, to have employed at that time a quarter of the city's population.(fn. 133) Wilton was slow in recovering from the depressed state of which it complained in 1666,(fn. 134) and in 1699 it obtained a charter of incorporation for a Fellowship of Clothiers and Weavers.(fn. 135) The main object of such fellowships or companies was the limitation of competition; but the older companies at Salisbury and Devizes seem by this time to have been nearly moribund. By 1719 Salisbury had abandoned any attempt to keep out strangers,(fn. 136) and although the drapers' section of the Devizes guild lasted until 1769 its activities in the 18th century were very few.(fn. 137) Records of admission to the Wilton Fellowship exist (with gaps) up to 1809,(fn. 138) but there is no evidence that it promoted the town's prosperity. The introduction in 1741 of what came to be known as Wilton carpets(fn. 139) did something to this end; and one of the two Frenchmen who came over in connexion with them is said to have begun the manufacture of the dark mottled 'marble cloth' well known as a Wilton and Salisbury speciality.(fn. 140) Towards the end of the century there were several substantial clothiers in Wilton making broadcloth and fancy cloth as well as carpets.(fn. 141)

Although the manufacture was still widely spread, it seems unlikely that the county's production in the early 18th century was as great as it had been a hundred years earlier. The opinion of Robert Scott of Heddington, who told Aubrey about 1685 that there was less clothing than there had been, (fn. 142) may have been based on the decline of the white cloth branch, of which the Devizes-Calne area had been almost the centre; but it may be significant that in 1689 the aulnage for Wiltshire was only reckoned as worth half that for Gloucestershire.(fn. 143) In any case, the centre of the industry had shifted towards the Avon valley. In 1705 Defoe was writing of 'that great vale of trade extending from Warminster to Cirencester',(fn. 144) and in 1726 he reported that 'the increasing and flourishing circumstances of this trade are happily visible by the great concourse of people to and great increase of buildings and inhabitants in these principal clothing towns'.(fn. 145) Not all parts of the 'great vale' remained equally prosperous and the eastern and northern limits of the industry contracted as the century progressed. Some of this contraction may have been the result of a setback in the second quarter of the century, for writers of 1730 to 1750 agree that the industry was not so prosperous as it had been. In the thirties Henry Wansey of Warminster suffered from 'some peculiar disabilities his branch of the trade lay under',(fn. 146) and in 1739 it was said that Spanish cloth at 5 s. to 8 s. a yard had almost been superseded by a host of cheaper stuffs running from 2 s. 6 d. to 4 s., (fn. 147) of which only German serge and possibly some coarse druggets were made in the county. In 1751 Postlethwayt declared that the sale of Spanish cloth had decreased by two-fifths owing to a change in fashion.(fn. 148) He was speaking of fine cloth but his estimate may be exaggerated, for Smith, writing in 1756, still maintains that 'not only persons of distinction and property wear the superfine Spanish cloths but innumerable others'.(fn. 149) The export trade also ran into difficulties. In the later 17th century English medleys had had a reputation abroad and they continued popular well into the 18th century, in spite of the imposition of tariffs(fn. 150) and the interruptions caused by wars. From the early 1690's, when it was said that the English were surpassing the Dutch in Spanish cloth,(fn. 151) to about 1720 appears to have been a period of expansion which was looked back to as a golden age in the less prosperous days of the forties. From the later twenties French and Dutch competition was increasingly felt,(fn. 152) especially in the finer varieties. Black cloth was unsaleable in Lisbon in the mid-18th century if it cost over 5 s. or 5 s. 6 d. a yard. 'The fine won't answer here, the Dutch and French outdo us greatly in that article' reported a Lisbon factor in 1756;(fn. 153) and it was low-priced cloth which was demanded both in Lisbon and Hamburg as late as 1770.(fn. 154) Between 1738 and 1742 exports to Europe were adversely affected by the war(fn. 155) and there was another depression ten years later.(fn. 156) Yorkshire competition, which was being talked of as early as the 17th century,(fn. 157) was serious in some branches of the western woollen industry by 1742; (fn. 158) and by 1753 Tucker was referring to Yorkshiremen running away with the trade of the western counties as if it were a well-known thing.(fn. 159) No doubt the clothiers grumbled, but, as far as Wiltshire is concerned, the decline seems to have been less serious than he suggests. The only Wiltshire clothiers who have left any records for the thirties and forties increased their trade on the whole during these years. The Clarks of Trowbridge(fn. 160) sent up 92 cloths to London in 1734, then, after a drop to 75 in 1738, rose to 100 in 1739 and increased steadily thereafter to 158 in 1743,(fn. 161) in spite of one or two very bad periods. George Wansey found difficulties in the early forties, but after 1745 he went steadily ahead. The industry at Corsley also grew in the reign of George II.(fn. 162) On the other hand we hear nothing of druggets after the middle of the century. German serge, after surviving a bad period about 1740,(fn. 163) was still being made in Devizes in 1754,(fn. 164) but died out soon afterwards. (fn. 165) Outlying places making coarse goods undoubtedly lost trade, but even here the decline seems to have been exaggerated. Coarse cloths and half-worsteds were being made late in the century.(fn. 166) In fine goods Yorkshire could not compete at all and it was probably for this reason that there was a distinct movement from coarse to fine clothmaking in the latter part of the century, especially after the invention of 'cassimeres' by Francis Yerbury in 1766.(fn. 167) This was a narrow twilled cloth which could be woven finer than any hitherto made and was soon diversified by the introduction of fancy varieties, patterned and sometimes mixed with silk, cotton, or mohair for coats and waistcoats. The pioneer in this was John Anstie of Devizes who produced a cloth with a silk stripe which sold well in Russia;(fn. 168) but they were also made in Salisbury and Trowbridge. In 1786 a Salisbury draper, Thomas Ogden, was summoned to show his patterns to the king and was appointed Draper to His Majesty.(fn. 169) About 1770 there was a rush to make superfines to the neglect of lower qualities;(fn. 170) and when trade was good Henry Hindley of Mere found great difficulty in getting clothiers to make the 'interfines' at 5 s. 6 d. to 6 s. 6 d. a yard which were wanted in Lisbon. During the controversy about the export of wool in 1787 it was cited as a reproach to Wiltshire clothiers that Yorkshiremen could buy wool in Wiltshire, make it into cloth in Yorkshire, and bring it back to sell where the wool had been grown.(fn. 171) Such criticism ignored the fact that Wiltshire manufacturers were using finer wool to produce, in increasing quantities, material which Yorkshire did not and so far could not make. The import of Spanish wool markedly increased after a drop during the American war; over 4 million lb., the greatest quantity so far known, was imported both in 1787 and 1788.(fn. 172)

It was the use of Spanish and short English wool which accounted for the comparative lack of complaints from Wiltshire about the smuggling of wool to France, (fn. 177) since it was the export of long wool which did the industry most harm. Nevertheless it was a Wiltshireman, John Anstie, who was made chairman of the western manufacturers in 1784-7, when the high price of wool led to a renewed effort to obtain more effectual legislation against smuggling. Anstie took much trouble over the business, although, as a manufacturer of short wool, he was not himself much injured.(fn. 178) His activities brought him into conflict with the landowners who had always been jealous of the protection which the prohibition of export gave to the manufacturers at their expense; and his proceedings were violently attacked by Arthur Young and others, who represented them as aimed less at the smuggling of wool to France than at its transport to rivals in Yorkshire.(fn. 179) This incident may account for Young's contemptuous and undeserved references to the unenterprising nature of West of England clothiers in general and those of Wiltshire in particular.(fn. 180) But the contrast between the capitalist structure of the West of England woollen industry, which was believed to lead to stagnation, and the apparent independence of the small Yorkshire clothier, which made him enterprising and hardworking, was a commonplace of contemporary opinion.(fn. 181) This view, which was only partly true of Yorkshire, requires some qualification for Wiltshire also. Although the structure of the industry had been capitalist for centuries, there was the same mixture of large and small clothiers, and even of clothier-weavers, as existed in Yorkshire; but the large capitalists were more important. They set the tone of the industry; but they were still a minority of the clothiers. Below them came smaller clothiers of every description whose continued existence was made possible by the fact that most of the processes in the industry could be carried out on a commission basis by specialists. This was especially true of fulling, but both Wansey and the Clarks sent some of their cloth to be dressed by independent clothworkers, and even at the end of the century many clothiers relied on such men.(fn. 182) By this time there was a distinct cleavage between the small clothiers and the wealthy ones, or, as they liked to call themselves, the 'respectable clothiers'.

A survival of the farmer-clothiers who had existed in some numbers in the 16th century may be found after the Civil War in William Gaby of Netherstreet near Devizes, a fairly substantial farmer, whose dealings in the woollen manufacture from 1656 to 1684 were only one of several activities. It is rather unsafe to draw conclusions from the random entries in the notebook which his descendants have preserved, (fn. 183) but it looks as if he ceased to sell cloth in London after the sixties and confined himself to dealing in yarn. He may already have been something of an anachronism. In Corsley, the only village of which a detailed study has been made, the clothiers in the 18th century often farmed as a secondary occupation and weavers sometimes owned a little land.(fn. 184) The same is probably true of other country places; but this was a reversal of the former relationship between farming and manufacturing. There was, however, little difficulty in good times about setting up as a clothier. In 1803 there were many in Trowbridge who 'manufactured in their own families'(fn. 185) and can have been little removed from weavers in status or fortune. The men from whom Hindley bought his cloth for export in the sixties and seventies were 'necessitous and can't stay for their money until they complete an order'; and he had to pay some of them as soon as the cloth was brought in.(fn. 186) The ease with which credit could be obtained in good times attracted 'interlopers', especially shopkeepers, who formed a convenient scapegoat for all the evils of which clothiers were accused, from faulty cloth to payment in truck.(fn. 187) Perhaps the most usual method of rising was from the ranks of the overseers whom many of the wealthy clothiers employed to look after their businesses and who might alternate, as fortune willed, between a paid position and that of an independent clothier.(fn. 188) Above them came a large section of medium capitalists such as the mid-century Clarks, or the third George Wansey, who produced, on an average, 130 cloths a year between 1737 and 1752. At the beginning of this period his output must have been well under 2 cloths a week. The business of the larger capitalists was of course on a much more extended scale; and advertisements in the Salisbury Journal in the eighties and nineties show that premises suitable for the manufacture of 10 or 12 cloths a week were common.

The credit on which the whole industry relied came mainly from the factors who played a very important part in the trade from the Restoration onwards. During the 17th century a change took place in the method of marketing. Even before the Civil War it had been possible to consign cloth to a factor for sale instead of bringing it up oneself to Blackwell Hall, (fn. 189) and after the Restoration this method grew more and more common. In return the factor supplied the clothier's wants in Spanish wool and sometimes in other commodities such as oil and dye-stuffs. He was not the clothier's only outlet, for the latter often travelled to visit individual customers,(fn. 190) and generally attended the fairs at Salisbury and Bristol. He might sell all his produce direct to customers in the country as did Messrs. Salter of Trowbridge in the 1780's.(fn. 191) Sometimes he even sold abroad directly. In 1664 foreigners were said to be buying up cloth in the country.(fn. 192) In 1740 they had ceased to do so, (fn. 193) but at least two Wiltshiremen, George Wansey and Henry Hindley, were exporting cloth direct in the mid-18th century and it is improbable that they were the only persons to do so. Hindley was, however, not a clothier but a merchant who sent cloth both to Lisbon and Hamburg, to the latter in part return for the linen yarn he bought there. By 1790 John Anstie was trading extensively with the Continent.(fn. 194) But the most general method of sale was through the London factors; and, as discontent with the middleman is a natural phenomenon, a long series of complaints in the later 17th century relating especially to the long credit which the clothier was forced to accept and the factors' alleged engrossing of the raw materials, resulted at last, in 1697, in an Act to restore Blackwell Hall to the clothiers and for regulating the factors there'.(fn. 195) This Act was not effective and complaints against the factors continued to be heard up to the middle of the next century. It is doubtful whether they were as significant as they appear. The most serious complaint was the delay in payment, and the period seems to have shortened a little by the mid-18th century.(fn. 196) Most clothiers, too, were at liberty to draw on their factors if necessary, though they sometimes apologized for doing so.(fn. 197) The surviving clothiers' books show that they were generally on good terms with their factors,(fn. 198) and many of the latter came from Wiltshire. A number of those with whom the Wiltshire clothiers dealt bore familiar names and were, in fact, scions of clothing families.(fn. 199)

Although industrial society in Wiltshire was far more diversified than has been supposed, contemporary opinion was correct in its estimate of the poverty-stricken condition of the mass of spinners and weavers. In 1655 a new wage assessment was issued by the justices which shows a basic increase from the rates of 1603 of 1 s. a cloth for weaving and of about ½ d. a pound for spinning. (fn. 200) Board wages of fullers and clothworkers had risen by £1 a year and they were now all rated at the same figure as other craftsmen. These rates were maximum ones and it would be unsafe to conclude that they were paid. They were repeated down to 1685; but when new and, in part, higher rates were made in that year for agricultural labourers, there was no mention of any kind of labour in the woollen manufacture, and the Wiltshire justices never again attempted to rate wages in it. This did not mean that the workers regarded their earnings as satisfactory, for in 1677 a mob of shearmen was parading the streets of Trowbridge and vainly demanding an extra 6 d. to raise their wages to 6 s. 6 d. a week. (fn. 201) Towards the end of the century complaints of truck became frequent and continued at intervals for the next hundred years; but, so far as we know, the first direct clash between employers and workpeople occurred in 1726, when a depression in trade coincided with a bad harvest. In November there was rioting in Bradford, Trowbridge, Melksham, and Frome, and a man was killed in Wiltshire when the troops fired on the mob. The Government was afraid of Jacobite influence and commissioned Giles Earle, M.P. for Malmesbury, to investigate. His reports and those of other observers who included John Cooper, a Trowbridge clothier and magistrate, were unanimous in accusing some clothiers of oppression by increasing the length of the warp without raising the price for weaving the piece.(fn. 202) The rioters were treated with great leniency and the only one arrested in Wiltshire received a free pardon.(fn. 203) A petition to the Government was signed by over 1,100 weavers,(fn. 204) and representatives of both sides were summoned to an inquiry where, at the bidding of the Privy Council, they came to an agreement on which legislative action was immediately taken.(fn. 205) This remarkable instance of conciliation appears to be the only one of its date; unfortunately it is unique in the history of industrial relations in Wiltshire during the 18th century.

Parts of the Act seem to have been effective. Soon after the riots Francis Yerbury, a leading Bradford clothier, was summoned to quarter sessions on the information of a labourer and found guilty of paying a fuller in goods instead of money. (fn. 206) Twelve years later it was said by William Temple, the apologist for the clothiers, that to summon workpeople before the magistrates was useless, since the clothier never obtained justice and workers could be insolent with impunity.(fn. 207) The provision made by the Act for payment by the yard appears to have been observed in the county from this time onwards. But it did not stop truck or settle wage rates. In 1738 at the beginning of another depression, a mob cut the chains in the looms round Trowbridge and attacked the shop of a Melksham clothier who was accused of lowering prices.(fn. 208) The Government's attitude was strikingly different from what it had been in 1727 and three ringleaders were arrested and hanged; but feeling was deeply divided and the case was debated at length in the press and in pamphlets.(fn. 209) The miseries of the weavers were convincingly portrayed and the clothiers' case came off badly in comparison. The latter certainly had some grievances. Embezzlement was common and very difficult to prove. Although 'end gatherers' were often committed to prison,(fn. 210) those who had sold them the ends often escaped. Moreover, in good times weavers had no scruples about delaying the return of a piece to one master while they worked on a piece for another,(fn. 211) and when prices of provisions were low they did not work the whole week. But when prices rose, the earnings of a man with a single broad loom were only tolerable if he were in constant employment and did not suffer from deductions. Temple advanced an estimate which would allow the master weaver to retain about 7 s. to 7 s. 6 d. a week, if he had to pay a journeyman, but its accuracy was hotly contested.(fn. 212) Various authorities in the sixties put earnings between 6 s. 6 d. and 10 s. a week, according to the nature of the cloth, (fn. 213) but these are employers' estimates and probably do not allow for deductions. From evidence given by weavers in 1803 it looks as if, after 1738, the normal price for weaving superfine broadcloth was 1 s. 3 d. a yard and correspondingly less for other sorts, and it remained the same at the end of the century,(fn. 214) in spite of the great rise in the cost of living and the increasing fineness of the cloth. A larger weekly wage could only be obtained by working longer hours, and in 1803 a day of 13 to 16 or even 17 hours was not uncommon.(fn. 215) Weekly earnings of broadloom weavers at this date, according to themselves, might be anything from 7 s. 6 d. to 10 s. (fn. 216) but stretches of unemployment reduced annual earnings considerably. Comparison with agricultural workers' wages, about 8 s. a week in the nineties, (fn. 217) does not suggest that weavers were much better off, though their families could supplement the father's earnings in a way which was becoming impossible for the labourer's family owing to the loss of spinning.

There were many riots after 1739, not all directly concerned with conditions in the industry. (fn. 218) Wiltshire remained quiet at the time of the great Gloucestershire disturbances in 1756-7, when the weavers demanded that the justices should rate wages, (fn. 219) and legislation was actually passed in this sense for all three counties.(fn. 220) The Gloucestershire magistrates issued wage rates, the Somerset bench decided that it was impossible to do so, and the Wiltshire justices took no notice at all.(fn. 221) In fact, the only reaction from Wiltshire was a petition from Chippenham representing the impossibility of rating wages in this way.(fn. 222) The complexity of the industry did, in fact, make it certain that regulation by any outside body would be unworkable, and the Statute was repealed the following year.(fn. 223)

In 1787 there was a concerted effort by the Trowbridge narrow weavers to compel employers to abandon the growing practice of grouping narrow looms in shops. This appears to have been a recent development, perhaps due to the cost of the treadle loom used for fancy cloth and the desirability of keeping the pattern under the employers' eye, although the practice had also spread to plain cassimeres. (fn. 224) No agreement was reached and some shops appear to have remained;(fn. 225) but the overwhelming majority of weavers continued to work in their own homes. In 1788 it was the turn of the clothworkers who were introducing by-laws to limit apprentices and sending threatening letters to masters who would not conform.(fn. 226) They seem to have carried their point, in spite of a conviction at the assizes. In 1803 wages of clothworkers were about 12 s. a week.(fn. 227) The difference between this figure and that of the weavers' earnings reflects the relatively strong position of a body of men who were in a position to control entry to their craft.(fn. 228) Nevertheless, a fair comment on the position of the workers in Wiltshire is to be found in a letter from Joseph Clark, who was a maker of 'shags' in Banbury, to his brother in Trowbridge. 'Banbury', he wrote, 'is not the place for a manufactory, the masters being so much under the control of the men, [I] wish I could meet with a situation in your part of the country . . . . I could make shags full 20 per cent. cheaper there than at Banbury.'(fn. 229)

Cloth since 1790

Wiltshire, which had had its share of earlier inventors, (fn. 230) was not apathetic about the machinery which began, about 1770, to revolutionize the process of spinning. It was, however, in Somerset, at Shepton Mallet in 1776, not long after jennies and the carding machine had come into use in the Yorkshire woollen industry, that the first attempt to introduce them in the west was made; and it provoked a riot in which men from the Warminster district of Wiltshire took part.(fn. 231) The chief clothiers of the three counties then met at Bristol and issued a statement of their intention of introducing the machines.(fn. 232) That there was some sale for jennies at this time is shown by an advertisement of a maker at Bridgwater which appeared in the Salisbury Journal; (fn. 233) but after April 1777, when the same paper was informed that jennies were 'introducing in this city and neighbourhood with the greatest success',(fn. 234) no further information is available and the advertisements soon ceased. Success seems only to have come some ten years later, with the expansion of the trade in the late eighties. Early in 1787 there were spinning machines at Twerton just over the Somerset border,(fn. 235) and an advertisement in December 1788 suggests that they were familiar in the neighbourhood of Hilperton. (fn. 236) After this date they are frequently mentioned. Some were set up at fulling-mills where the carding engine could be turned by water,(fn. 237) but others were worked by hand or horsepower. Up to 1791 the change was accomplished without disturbance, probably because the people affected were mainly women scattered over the countryside and unable to make their sufferings effectively felt. It was the landlords and parish officers who took alarm at the rise in the poor rates, protesting in 1793 against the loss of spinning in the villages and offering to pay the clothiers a subsidy if they would still send it out.(fn. 238) It was only when machinery began to interfere with men's work that riots were provoked, and the first took place in Bradford in 1791 over the adaptation by a clothier named Phelps of a carding machine for use in scribbling, which was already a workshop process. The machine was burnt by the mob,(fn. 239) but there seems to have been no further opposition. Fifteen years later scribbling and carding machinery and spinning-jennies had been installed 'long ago'.(fn. 240)

Towards the end of the century Wiltshire lost trade to Gloucestershire, where clothiers were obtaining a better finish to their cloth by using the gig-mill. This piece of machinery had never wholly disappeared in spite of earlier prohibitions. In the early 18th century it was used in both counties for raising the nap on the coarse white cloth intended for export; (fn. 250) but the area which knew it must have been limited, for when William Everett, a wealthy Horningsham clothier, tried to set one up in 1767 it was quickly destroyed by a mob.(fn. 251) The Gloucestershire clothiers who began to use it for fine cloth in the nineties suffered no interference from the men, but their Wiltshire neighbours, who followed their example during the depression after the Peace of Amiens in 1801, were not so fortunate. By 1802 a few machines had been set up,(fn. 252) but many clothiers preferred to avoid trouble by sending medleys to be dressed elsewhere,(fn. 253) sometimes without success, for there were technical difficulties in using the gig-mill on fine cloth made of dyed wool without previous experience with the tougher piece-dyed cloth.(fn. 254) In 1802 the clothworkers made a determined effort to resist its introduction both by legal and illegal means, but they were not successful then or later. Nor were the weavers, who had started their own movement for the enforcement of long disused statutes, any more fortunate, though it was not until 1809, after two parliamentary inquiries, that the employers succeeded in getting the restrictive statutes abolished.(fn. 255) Much of the county agreed with the workers and neither the magistrates nor the nonmanufacturing members of the public were anxious to help the clothiers in times of disturbance.(fn. 256) There was also a division among the manufacturers themselves, for the smaller ones were not all in favour of measures which would give the wealthier an advantage.(fn. 257)

Although the clothworkers were defeated, the events of 1802 had a delaying effect on the introduction of dressing machinery; and it is not clear how quickly the various machines came into general use. Thomas Jotham, a Bradford clothier, patented a gigmill in 1801, (fn. 258) but we do not know in what his improvement consisted. Samuel Godwin of Avoncliff (Westwood) included dressing and brushing machinery in his patent of 1804.(fn. 259) Messrs. J. & T. Clark had a gig-mill in the same year, (fn. 260) but it is not impossible that their abandonment of dressing for themselves in 1808 was connected with a renewed outbreak of violence in that year.(fn. 261) Wiltshire was quiet in 1812, when the Luddite riots in Yorkshire were aimed particularly at dressing machinery, but the calm may have been due to the fact that, in the towns at least, there was not much in use.(fn. 262) Country mills probably had less difficulty in introducing it.(fn. 263) The shearing frame, at any rate, was slow in arriving in Trowbridge, but it spread rapidly after 1816, the year in which the Clarks bought the early 'list-to-list' type.(fn. 264) The rotary cutter followed, in some factories, between 1825 and 1830, with more displacement of labour(fn. 265) but apparently without disturbance. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of hand-dressing survived until a later date, even after 1840.(fn. 266)

Any backwardness in the introduction of machinery does not appear to have interfered with the prosperity of the trade during the war. It revived in 1803 and continued to flourish, except in 1808-9 when the Milan Decrees had a serious but transitory effect. The scarcity and high price of Spanish wool was inconvenient but not fatal. In 1801 a parliamentary election was enlivened at Chippenham by charges that the candidate who challenged the sitting members had used his position as a broker to enhance the price; (fn. 267) but it went much higher between 1802 and 1814, and in 1808 and 1811-12 the quantity imported sank very low.(fn. 268) Many manufacturers who normally used Spanish wool must, like the Clarks, have turned to English wool and even to cotton for warps for the time being. Saxony wool was coming in, but during the war it did not arrive in sufficient quantity to make up the deficiency in Spanish, and the fact that it needed more cleaning at first made it unpopular.(fn. 269)

It is from the still surviving books of Messrs. J. & T. Clark that one may see the opportunities which lay before hardworking and enterprising manufacturers in these years. (fn. 270) They began in 1801 with £500 lent them by their uncle, and in 1804, when the younger was just out of his apprenticeship, their capital was £1,634. At the end of 1815 it was £10,929. After 1809 the prosperity of Trowbridge steadily increased, culminating in the boom of 1814, when there was a scramble for land along the river bank.(fn. 271) But the good times did not last. 'In 1816 the trade began to stagnate, since 1820 it has retrograded' said the Commissioners for Handloom Weavers in 1840.(fn. 272) The diminution in the number of clothiers up to 1816 was due to concentration rather than stagnation; most of the decline took place before 1816 and was in reality less spectacular than it seemed.(fn. 273) In Trowbridge at least the existence of small masters who undertook one process in the industry continued for a considerable time. Weaving was often put out in bulk to master weavers who divided it between their employees;(fn. 274) and there were also independent spinners.(fn. 275) The separate firms of clothworkers gradually disappeared, as more, and more expensive, machinery came into use. But with the peace the industry entered on a long period of fluctuation, and after every depression fewer clothiers were left in business. The fly-shuttle had quickened the pace of weaving, and there can be little doubt that up to 1815 the quantity of cloth produced was much greater than it had been before machinery appeared; but the almost continuous unemployment among weavers after that date suggests that in the next 35 years or so there may have been an actual recession and not merely a failure to increase production as fast as Yorkshire. All the same, there were many good years. This was particularly true of Trowbridge up to 1825, with the exception of 1819 and 1823. The Clarks had increased their capital to £59,000 by 1824, and a remarkable improvement in the town's appearance was said to have taken place in the twelve years before 1826.(fn. 276) Its population increased by 50 per cent. between 1810 and 1820 and by another 12 per cent. in the next decade, which, in view of the severe depression of 1826, argues a considerable growth in the early twenties. Probably this may be connected with the fact that exports of cassimeres, which were pre-eminently the manufacture of Trowbridge, were increasing up to the end of 1824.(fn. 277)

Elsewhere in the county the decline began almost immediately after 1815. In the early years of the century Salisbury's flannel industry had been flourishing (fn. 292) and had made use of machinery and some steam-power;(fn. 293) but the recovery reported after the depression of 1815-16(fn. 294) was very short-lived. Cotton was a serious competitor, and flannel exports fell disastrously after 1816. The demolition of a number of country mills in the neighbourhood during the agricultural riots of 1830 merely added another burden to a fast-decaying industry. A water-mill at Harnham survived in 1838 but it employed only 15 people; and by 1840 hardly anything was left.(fn. 295) Wilton, apart from its carpet manufacture, suffered a similar fate; from 6 employers with 200 looms in 1810 the industry had dwindled to one with 40 in 1840, and only 10 of those had work.(fn. 296) Throughout the rest of the county, outside the main centres in the west, the same thing happened. By 1840 one mill at Chippenham, one or two at Calne,(fn. 297) one at Malmesbury, (fn. 298) and one at Upton Lovell on the Wylye were all that survived. Those at Chippenham and Upton Lovell, which were large concerns,(fn. 299) continued to work until the 20th century; the others turned over to silk or paper about 1850. Corsley also, probably because of its proximity to Frome, retained some part of its industry until about the same date;(fn. 300) but its neighbours Horningsham and Crockerton, which, like the rest of the cloth district including Corsley itself, experienced a period of great distress and much emigration in 1829-30,(fn. 301) seem to have kept nothing of it afterwards.

The woollen industry was nowhere fully mechanized in the thirties, far less so than cotton or worsted. Wiltshire manufacturers were quite as much alive to its deficiencies as those elsewhere. In 1827 W. J. Dowding of Poulshot mill took out a patent for making a continuous roll of the wool from the carding machine; (fn. 302) but he cannot have been successful, for this problem was not solved until the arrival of the condenser after the middle of the century. Nor was the actual spinning done by power.(fn. 303) Jennies were sometimes placed in small workshops away from the main factory(fn. 304) or even in the workers' cottages.(fn. 305) Mules are said to have been introduced in 1828 (fn. 306) though it is not clear whether they were hand machines (which because of their size were always factory machines) or the semi-power driven type. The latter must have spread in the thirties if it is true that spinning in Trowbridge was mainly done by power in 1840.(fn. 307) This was quite as early as similar developments in Yorkshire,(fn. 308) and in both places some handdriven mules survived throughout the 19th century. (fn. 309) The use of mules by some manufacturers is probably reflected in the very different proportions between the number of factory workers and others employed by various firms in 1833.(fn. 310) At Staverton the division was about half and half. At other factories (including all those at Trowbridge for which figures are given) there were far more employees outside the factory than in.(fn. 311) In that of the Clarks, whose original return has survived, the only factory processes were those preparatory to spinning and those concerned with finishing, which occupied 167 workers as compared with 800-900 outside. The Clarks did not introduce mules until 1837. Another cause of the different proportions between factory and cottage workers lies in the extent to which looms were grouped in workshops. Some firms made a practice of setting up 'factory looms', though they employed home weavers as well; others employed the latter entirely. The use of factory looms does not imply the powerloom, although patents taken out by J. C. Daniel of Limpley Stoke between 1824 and 1828(fn. 312) show that he was experimenting with it. If he had been successful, Wiltshire would have been in the van of progress in this respect, for power was not commercially used for woollen weaving until the thirties and then only rarely. It arrived in Wiltshire in 1839,(fn. 313) but as in Yorkshire, the number of power-looms was small until the fifties, since for the woollen manufacture it was only after improvements made in the forties that their use introduced any considerable economy.

One result of the bad times after the great depression of 1826 was that children were no longer severely overworked; only one small mill was considered to deserve censure in that respect in 1833. (fn. 319) The general rule was 12 hours, with 6 or 8 on Saturdays, but some mills worked 13½ on the other hand, in slack periods many only worked ten. Much longer hours had been usual in the flourishing period at the beginning of the century, especially when the irregularity of water-power is taken into account.(fn. 320) In 1833 many employers said that they did not like employing children under nine; but it is obvious from the evidence as well as from the Clarks' return that this was a very recent development. The result of the Factory Act of 1833, in Wiltshire as elsewhere, was a sharp fall in child employment; in 1839 there were only 130 under thirteen in mills over the whole county.(fn. 321)

The depressions in the industry gave rise to numerous riots, notably in 1808, 1816, 1819-20, 1826, and early in 1830. It was only by a very small margin of time that the disturbances of the latter year failed to coincide with the agricultural riots, which would have produced a far more inflammatory situation than was actually the case. (fn. 322) The general decline in prosperity was accompanied by one in wages(fn. 323) and in 1833 the Clarks' return shows that, although a few men earned upwards of £1 a week, the average for 24 cutters and 17 gigmen, aged 19 to 60, was only 12 s. 11 d. Hand-loom weavers were, of course, worse off. Up to 1815 they had been scarce and correspondingly prosperous; and the memory of a time when they kept their ponies on the common and drove to Trowbridge with their pieces lingered in Broughton Gifford as late as 1859.(fn. 324) After the peace full employment can only have prevailed for relatively short periods. In 1840 the average full-time wage, clear of deductions, for a man in his prime was put by the Trowbridge weavers at just over 11 s. a week on broadcloth and a little less on kerseymeres. Older men could earn 9 s. 5½ d. Unemployment had reduced these figures to an average of 5 s. 6½ d. and 4 s. 11½ d. a week over the whole year.(fn. 325)

The year 1842 is often cited as marking the catastrophic decline of the industry in Bradford. In fact it only marked the culmination of a process which had been going on since 1815. (fn. 326) The crisis is generally ascribed to the failure of the bank of Hobhouse & Co. in the previous autumn; but this failure was itself caused by the insolvency of two of the largest factories, Coopers of Staverton and Saunders of Bradford, which the bank had been supporting for the past five years.(fn. 327) Distress in Bradford was extreme, and in the next decade the population fell by about 25 per cent.(fn. 328) Trowbridge was less affected.(fn. 329) In 1848 it had 20 manufacturers as against 25 in 1842. (fn. 330) Westbury suffered almost as severely as Bradford(fn. 331) but the largest firm there did not collapse until 1847. (fn. 332) The general recovery in trade after 1850 was reflected in better times for both places. At Westbury the two largest mills came successively into the hands of Abraham Laverton, a native of Trowbridge and a self-made man of a kind more familiar in the north of England than in the west.(fn. 333) At Bradford three new firms joined the two which had survived, and Staverton mill, after changing hands, continued at work until late in the century. In 1850 there were 36 mills of all kinds in the county, a decrease of 17 since 1838; but the number of workers in them had only declined by about three hundred.(fn. 334)

Money wages did not rise much, if at all, in the latter part of the century, but the cost of living had fallen. In 1886 the United States Consul made a report on Trowbridge as showing factory life in its most favourable aspect; but he reckoned that the wage was a family one and only barely sufficed. (fn. 345) He gave the average for men as 23 s. a week and for women 12 s. or 12 s. 6 d. The highest family earnings were 32 s. and 29 s. These rates seem high when compared with the recollections of men still in the trade, who recall that about 1900 a good male hand could be got for 16 s. This was certainly lower than what was paid in Yorkshire and may have been due to the depression.(fn. 346) There was very little trade union organization, but there was not much anywhere in the woollen industry. Occasional strikes took place at single factories; one in 1863 led to talk of a general organization of factory weavers, but nothing came of it.(fn. 347)

The five firms which have survived have done so on the quality of their products. Some have changed hands more than once; others have received a succession of new partners with fresh capital. The quantity produced by these five mills today is greater than the output at any time under the less efficient methods of the past, but the labour employed is far less; in 1948 there were just under 2,000 people in the county connected with the industry. (fn. 348)

Until far more research has been done, on the Yorkshire industry as well as on that of the West of England, it is not possible to give any accurate summary of the reasons for the relative decline of the latter. It does not appear to have been due to backwardness in the adoption of new machinery. Up to 1900 or later both areas could show many instances of obsolete machines still in use. (fn. 349) The reason usually assigned, a disadvantage in fuel supplies, was of importance in the early stages, but it should not be overstressed. There is no evidence that Wiltshire was any slower than Yorkshire in adopting Australian wool, which became available in bulk about the middle of the century; in fact Wiltshire manufacturers seem to have been very much alive to fluctuations in woolsupply. It is said to have been largely by speculation in wool that Abraham Laverton at Westbury and Sir Roger Brown at Trowbridge acquired their fortunes. It seems probable that the concentration of the industry on fine cloth, for which the market could not be greatly expanded, had a good deal to do with the decline. So has the competition of worsteds. It is not entirely clear why they have only been successfully acclimatized at Westbury, though the distance of the Wiltshire mills from Yorkshire worsted spinners has had something to do with it. For the last 30 years, however, the industry has not looked like dying out, and as far as it is safe to prophesy, it seems likely to maintain itself on a basis of technical efficiency and a widely known name for cloth of the finest quality.

Silk

The first mention of silk manufacture in Wiltshire is in 1613 when silk-weavers in Salisbury were incorporated with some other trades. (fn. 350) The industry continued there during the 17th century, being mentioned in 1655,(fn. 351) 1664, and 1674; (fn. 352) and there were also silk-weavers at Warminster in 1637,(fn. 353) at Bishop's Cannings in 1682, (fn. 354) and at Malmesbury in 1687.(fn. 355) We have no information about the kind of material produced or of the organization of the trade, nor do we know whether silk-throwing was done locally. In the 18th century there is no mention of the industry until the last decade, except possibly at Hindon which may have had a manufacture of silk twist.(fn. 356) Silk does not appear in the Universal British Directory of 1791, in spite of the facts that the fancy cloth made at Salisbury and Devizes incorporated a good deal of it,(fn. 357) and that mills for throwing and making organzine on Lombe's principle had been established in Somerset soon after the middle of the century. In 1792, however, Marlborough was discussing the introduction of a silk-mill by subscription to relieve the poverty of the town.(fn. 358)

In 1833 there were two factories large enough to be reported on by the Factory Commissioners, one at 'Deverill' and one at Chippenham. The Deverill mill was for throwing, which was mainly an employment for children. The owner, G. P. Ward, had another mill at Frome, and the two together employed 300 factory workers and another 300 outside. It worked a twelve-hour day with a night shift, but the Commissioners reported very favourably upon it, and Ward was evidently a good employer who did not accept children under nine and provided free milk and a lending library. (fn. 363) The Chippenham mill, started in 1827, included weaving and worked by steam, employing 120 women and girls; but only 8 were under twelve.(fn. 364) In 1838 three more mills were mentioned, at Calne, Devizes, and Mere. (fn. 365) In the factory returns for 1850 the total number was only three, with over 20,000 spindles between them; and they employed 300 people.(fn. 366) Between 1850 and 1855 Hill's old cloth-mill at Malmesbury was bought by a Derby firm and turned over to silk.(fn. 367) In 1862 it had 56 power-looms and the whole industry employed over 700 factory workers of whom 281 were in Malmesbury.(fn. 368) According to the census of 1861 about 835 workers were employed. This marked the height of the industry, and in 1867 only two mills with about 530 workpeople are mentioned.(fn. 369) Although this is inaccurate since mills at Chippenham, Mere, and Malmesbury were all in existence, the decline is not surprising, since, after the withdrawal of the tariff in 1860, silk-manufacturers found it hard to compete with France and the numbers employed fell progressively throughout the country.(fn. 370) The Chippenham mill, which was still working in 1894,(fn. 371) had closed before the end of the century. That at Malmesbury changed hands in 1867 and is said, probably with some exaggeration, to have employed about 400 people under its new owners,(fn. 372) but it failed in 1889. (fn. 373) Some time between 1891 and 1900 it was taken over by a member of the Jupe family from Mere,(fn. 374) which had started the industry there in the thirties. At one time there had been three mills in Mere itself and one at Crockerton (Longbridge Deverill), but they had all closed in 1891.(fn. 375) In 1900 wages for girls at Malmesbury were given as 7 s. 6 d. to 10 s. a week, and, again with some apparent exaggeration, 150 were said to be employed.(fn. 376) Japanese competition is said to have caused this mill to close in the early part of the century, but after a considerable interval it reopened under different ownership,(fn. 377) and continued until the beginning of the Second World War, when it employed about 83 workers.(fn. 378) There was also in the twenties and possibly later a small mill at Sherston. (fn. 379) In 1925 silk, rayon, and wool weaving was started at Warminster by a Macclesfield firm which still continues the industry there, employing about 90 people.(fn. 380)

Linen

Flax was grown in parts of Wiltshire during the Middle Ages, though much Wiltshire soil was unsuited to it. There were linen-drapers in Salisbury in 1306, (fn. 381) who at this early date were probably producers as well as merchants; and it is said (but on what authority does not appear) that the linen-weavers were the oldest craft in the city.(fn. 382) Flax-dressers were incorporated there, among several other trades, in 1612.(fn. 383) In 1603 the wages of linen-weavers maintained in their masters' houses were rated by the justices at 10 s. a year more than those of cloth-weavers. (fn. 384) Later in the 17th century linenweavers were scattered over the county, particularly in the south, and more are mentioned at Mere than at any other place.(fn. 385) This was no doubt because the soil in the neighbourhood was suitable for flax. It had been grown there in considerable quantity in 1340, (fn. 386) and it would not be surprising if it had been manufactured on the spot from that time onwards. In the 18th century Mere and Hindon formed the north-east point of an industry which was widespread in Dorset and east Somerset. Downton was also a centre of linen-weaving.

Hindley's books bear out the evidence of the depression of the coarse linen trade in 1773, but he took no part in the petition to Parliament which ascribed it to the import of foreign linen. (fn. 392) No legislation resulted, but the industry seems to have recovered. By 1791 Hindley's son had himself become a manufacturer of tick at Wolverton and was accorded a special mention for excellence by the Universal British Directory. (fn. 393) Of the other makers listed in this directory 2 at Mere are described as bed-tick manufacturers, and 3 at Mere and 1 at Hindon(fn. 394) as linen-drapers. By contrast the 6 makers at Downton (fn. 395) are all described as weavers, which suggests that they worked for Salisbury drapers; but it is probably unsafe to draw such a conclusion. In 1801 there had been 'for many years' a tick factory at Downton.(fn. 396)

The depressions of 1816 and 1826 affected this industry severely. Thirty persons were said to be preparing to depart from Mere in 1817. (fn. 397) In 1820 the industry at Hindon was almost extinct,(fn. 398) and in 1826 twenty of the principal manufacturers of the border between the three counties, including those at Mere, decided that they must dismiss half their 2,000 hands.(fn. 399) But again there was some recovery. In 1814 the industry seems to have been still dependent on Hamburg yarn,(fn. 400) but machine spinning, which had begun in the north soon after 1800, is said to have been introduced to work by water at Mere in 1837;(fn. 401) and in 1840 the Commissioners for hand-loom weavers found that there were still 500 looms there and in neighbouring villages.(fn. 402) The weavers, who had always done agricultural work during part of the year, made no complaint of poverty, and their wages when weaving were given as 11 s. to 11 s. 6 d. a week.

Cotton

Little information is available about this industry, but it survived throughout the 18th century and well into the 19th century. In 1709 it was mentioned in a petition from Aldbourne in favour of the project for making the Kennet navigable; (fn. 411) and in 1757 Bishop Pococke noted that 'they spin cotton for candles, for cotton cloth and stockings; and the carriers go with cotton backwards and forwards through this place [Lambourn] to and from London'.(fn. 412) The industry was also established in Marlborough, for in 1760 a tender from Mr. Crook of that place for cotton spun in the Bristol workhouse was accepted by the authorities,(fn. 413) and cotton-spinning was begun at this time in the Marlborough workhouse also. (fn. 414) In the same year a fire at Aldbourne consumed warehouses with cotton and fustian, as well as houses and barns full of corn, to the total value of £20,000;(fn. 415) and fustian and cotton were also lost in a fire in 1777. (fn. 416) The place never entirely recovered, but in 1791 a considerable trade in fustians was still carried on, and there were seven manufacturers.(fn. 417) There is no record of machinery having been introduced, but it is possible that machine-spun yarn was imported from other places in the 19th century, though in Marlborough hand-spinning is said to have continued 'until the death of Jane Jefferies in 1855'.(fn. 418) In 1840 there were 154 women cotton-weavers in the county, and ten years later there were sixty-one. The statement that weaving was widespread in Aldbourne in 1880(fn. 419) is not borne out by the census return, which shows only one woman and one man in the industry at that date, though some of the very few weavers in undefined textiles may have been weaving fustians. Even in 1860 there were only ten workers, and the industry must have effectively ended about this time.

The cotton-manufacturer at Bradford mentioned in a directory just before 1840 (fn. 420) seems to have made a short-lived and isolated endeavour to associate cotton manufacturing with a woollen mill, but he did not survive the depression of 1842.

Lace

Bone lace was made in England in Tudor times, if not earlier, but it does not occur in Wiltshire until the 17th century. It was made there before the Civil War, (fn. 421) especially, it seems, in the north of the county.(fn. 422) After the Restoration the industry was encouraged by the prohibition of the import of foreign bone lace;(fn. 423) and about 1680, according to Aubrey, 'our shepherdesses of late years do begin to work point whereas before they did only knit coarse stockings'.(fn. 424) There are a number of records of girls being apprenticed to bone-lace makers in Marlborough between 1662 and 1694;(fn. 425) and Salisbury served as an important centre for merchants collecting lace from makers both in Wiltshire and Dorset.(fn. 426) In 1700, after a renewed prohibition on imported bone lace had evoked reprisals from Flanders, a Salisbury lace dealer said that over a thousand people in the city and many others in places adjacent were engaged in lace-making, and that he and his partner sent up lace to London to the value of £60 to £80 a week.(fn. 427) The prohibition on imports had to be withdrawn but the industry maintained itself, and lace remained an important trade at Salisbury throughout the 18th century.(fn. 428) One lace-manufacturer there is mentioned in 1791(fn. 429) and there was at least one other whose death is noted in 1794.(fn. 430) Among the 'places adjacent' mentioned in 1700 must have been Downton, where the trade had at one time been universal among the cottagers; but it had much diminished by 1833.(fn. 431) Some lace was made there, however, up to 1919 or later. (fn. 432) We do not know when the industry was established at Malmesbury but it was one of the chief occupations of the place in 1791, when the inhabitants said that they could get more by it than by working in Hill's cloth factory.(fn. 433)

The industry was gradually killed by the competition of machine-made lace. In 1826 it was noted that 'the best hands who formerly earned 8 s. to 10 s. a week can now earn no more than 2 s. 6 d. or 3 s.; (fn. 434) but there was a recovery afterwards, and as late as 1848 lace-making was extensively carried on in Malmesbury.(fn. 435) By 1876 it had been almost superseded by silk.(fn. 436) The census returns show a steep decline after 1850, when there were three dealers in the county and 391 lace-makers. In 1871 there were only 35 makers and in 1900 only six. About 1908 there was some revival in Malmesbury under the encouragement of Lady Suffolk,(fn. 437) but the industry has now died out again.

Carpets

There is no evidence to confirm the story, so frequently repeated, that the making of carpets was begun by Huguenot weavers who settled in Wilton towards the end of the 17th century. (fn. 438) The Charter granted in 1699 mentions nothing but the clothing trade. (fn. 439) It is not improbable, however, that flat carpets of the kind known as 'Kidderminster' or 'Scotch' may have been made there in the early 18th century, as they certainly were in the latter part of it;(fn. 440) and there is no reason to disbelieve the story that Lord Pembroke, seeing how much inferior they were to French carpets, took steps to introduce weavers from France.(fn. 441) The first written evidence comes from the patent granted in 1741 to Ignatius Couran of London, merchant, John Barford of Wilton, upholder, and William Moody of Wilton, clothier, for 'our new invention of making carpeting commonly called French carpeting or Moccadoes and in France moucades or moquets'. (fn. 442) This material had originally been used for upholstery but had been adapted in France for carpets;(fn. 443) and it seems probable that Wilton produced it for both purposes, since the manufacture is sometimes referred to as one of 'tapestry'.(fn. 444) The loom depicted in the specification has no device for cutting the loops in order to make the plush-like surface which distinguishes the Wilton from the Brussels carpet, and it has been conjectured that this feature was invented at Wilton;(fn. 445) but it was more probably a feature of the moquettes made in France. (fn. 446)

Wilton carpets soon became well known. They represented the first attempt to introduce the making of carpets as practised abroad, and a keen rivalry soon developed with Kidderminster which had introduced a Belgian weaver and had begun to weave Brussels carpets in 1749. (fn. 447) When the original factory at Wilton was burnt down in 1769 it was referred to as 'the great carpet factory'(fn. 448) and it may still have been the only one at Wilton.(fn. 449) In the previous year 60 to 80 journeymen had been employed at 10 s. 6 d. to 12 s. a week, (fn. 450) a much higher figure than the ordinary weaver could earn. After 1769 the manufacture spread into several hands(fn. 451) and was also carried on in Salisbury and Southampton,(fn. 452) but it seems to have suffered from some setbacks possibly due to Kidderminster's competition; and by 1799 a German traveller could observe that Wilton carpets were now best made there.(fn. 453) But the two principal manufacturers in Wilton were reputed to have turnovers of £15,000 and £20,000 a year in 1805,(fn. 454) and the industry must have benefited by the cessation of competition from France owing to the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. This probably accounts for the high wages of 1½ to 2 guineas a week which the weavers were said to earn in 1801, though the statement that 1,000 people were employed may well be exaggerated.(fn. 455)

The peace of 1815 struck this industry a severe blow, for it had to meet renewed French competition as well as the general depression of the following year. There was great distress in 1817, (fn. 456) and in 1818 the decline of the manufacture is noted. (fn. 457) For the next 20 or 30 years it continued on a very small scale. A carpet was presented to Queen Caroline in 1825,(fn. 458) and in 1830 Messrs. Stevens, Blackmore & Sons exhibited patterns of 'the improved Wilton carpet made entirely of Southdown wool' to the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria when they passed through Salisbury.(fn. 459) In spite of the fact that in 1833 the Factory Commissioners reported that 'two factories on a very small scale' were all that remained,(fn. 460) Blackmore had enterprise enough to buy the looms and transfer many of the workpeople when the manufacture at Axminster was given up in 1835.(fn. 461) Axminster carpets were hand-made in one piece on the model of Turkey carpets, and their manufacture has been carried on at Wilton ever since. The other factory at this time was that of Wood & Ogilvie in West Street,(fn. 462) but it must have been equally small, for in 1840 the Commissioners for Handloom Weavers reported that only 25 to 30 men in all, besides many young people, were employed, the men earning about 15 s. a week. (fn. 463) By this time the Jacquard loom (fn. 464) had been introduced and Wood took out three patents for improvements to it between 1840 and 1842;(fn. 465) but he migrated to the north soon afterwards.(fn. 466) In 1860 Blackmore sold his premises to Alfred Lapworth, a London carpet manufacturer, and in 1871 the latter's executors sold to Yates & Wills.(fn. 467) Numbers employed, according to the census returns, rose fairly consistently after 1840 and reached their height at 268 in 1890. Under various styles this firm remained in possession until 1904 when they were obliged to close; but with Lord Pembroke's assistance a new company, the Wilton Royal Carpet Factory, was formed and has continued successfully until the present day. Before the war it had various branches, of which those at Tisbury, Downton, and Mere were in Wiltshire; but these have now been closed.

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Textile industries since 1550 | British History Online

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WEFT 2019 explores the forgotten stories of the people working in Trowbridge mills to create designs for brands such as Mary Quant, Marks & Spencer, Gor-Ray and Burberry - just some of the many discerning clients of the once booming textile industry in Trowbridge. The stories will be explored together with cloth examples from our collection; and to celebrate this rich weaving heritage, Trowbridge Museum invited local weavers to view the museum collection to inspire new work, reflecting how past designs can influence today. The new work will be on display and for sale.

As Trowbridge Museum is currently closed for refurbishment, the exhibition is being held in the Project Space at Drawing Projects UK. On the 14th of September you can meet the weavers and watch demonstrations during the Heritage Open Day/Explore Art Trowbridge event from 10am - 1pm.

Join Mayumi Kaneko at 2pm for her Paper Textile - transforming paper into yarn demonstration. Please see the Trowbridge Museum website for details of how to book and for details about the other WEFT Workshops.

Exhibition open: Thursdays to Sundays, 10am - 4pm (except Friday 6th September when open 5 - 7pm).

Image (below): Mayumi Kaneko, paper textile, installed, WEFT 2019, Drawing Projects UK

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West of England Festival of Textiles - 6 to 28 September 2019

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WEFT 2019 explores the forgotten stories of the people working in Trowbridge mills to create designs for brands such as Mary Quant, Marks & Spencer, Gor-Ray and Burberry - just some of the many discerning clients of the once booming textile industry in Trowbridge.

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Welcome to Trowbridge Museum where you can discover 1000 years of the town's history. Discover how Trowbridge was shaped by the scale of production and quality of its West of England woollen cloth and became the county town of Wiltshire.

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Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 - 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in Stenographic Soundhand in 1837. He was also the vice-president of the Vegetarian Society. Pitman was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1894.

Pitman was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire in England. One of his cousins was Abraham Laverton. In 1831 he had five months' training at the Training College of the British and Foreign School Society, which was sufficient to qualify him as a teacher. He started teaching at Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire. In 1835 he married a widow, and moved in 1836 to Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, where he started his own school. In 1839 he moved to Bath, where he opened a small school.

In the 1851 census he appears in Bath aged 38, living with his wife, Mary, aged 58, born in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire. He married Isabella Masters in 1861, and he appears in the 1871 census, aged 58, with his new wife Isabella, aged 46.

Pitman was a lifelong advocate of spelling reform for the English language, producing many pamphlets during his lifetime on spelling reform. His motto was "time saved is life gained".

One of the outcomes of his interest in spelling reform was the creation of his system of phonetic shorthand which he first published in 1837, in a pamphlet titled Sound-Hand. Among the examples in this pamphlet, were Psalm 100, the Lord's Prayer, and Swedenborg's Rules of Life.

By 1843 his business of preparing and publishing had expanded sufficiently for him to give up teaching and to set up his own printing press, as well as compositing and binding.

In 1844 he published Phonotypy, his major work on spelling reform. In 1845 he published the first version of the English Phonotypic Alphabet.

In the 1881 census his name was spelled phonetically as Eisak Pitman. In the 1891 census he was again listed as Isaac, but his birthplace was changed to Bath.[citation needed ]

In 1886 Pitman went into partnership with his sons Alfred and Ernest to form Isaac Pitman and Sons. In the same year the millionth copy of the Phonographic Teacher was sold in Great Britain. Isaac Pitman and Sons was to become one of the world's leading educational publishers and training businesses with offices in London, Bath, New York City, Melbourne, Johannesburg, Toronto and Tokyo. The publishing division was bought by rival Pearson Plc in 1985. The training business evolved into two separate businesses: Pitman Training Group and JHP Training (now learndirect).

The first distance education course in the modern sense was provided by Sir Isaac Pitman in the 1840s, who taught a system of shorthand by mailing texts transcribed into shorthand on postcards and receiving transcriptions from his students in return for correction. The element of student feedback was a crucial innovation of Pitman's system. This scheme was made possible by the introduction of uniform postage rates across Britain in 1840.

Isaac Pitman was fervently Swedenborgian. Not only did he read The Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg daily, he also devoted much time and energy to educating the world about them. He published and distributed books and tracts by and about Swedenborg. Among the authors he encouraged was Thomas Child.

Pitman was active in the local New Church congregation in Bath while living on Royal Crescent. He was one of the founding members, when this congregation was formed in 1841. He served as president of this society from 1887 to his death in 1897. His contribution to this church was honoured by the congregation with a stained glass window depicting the golden cherub in the temple of wisdom described in Swedenborg's True Christian Religion No. 508. The window was dedicated on 5 September 1909.

His memorial plaque on the north wall of Bath Abbey reads, "His aims were steadfast, his mind original, his work prodigious, the achievement world-wide. His life was ordered in service to God and duty to man."

Pitman was the grandfather of James Pitman, who developed the Initial Teaching Alphabet. His grand-daughter, Honor Isabel Salmon (b.1912, née Pitman) was killed while piloting an Airspeed Oxford for the Air Transport Auxiliary in 1943.

His great-grandson John Hugh Pitman was appointed an OBE in 2010 for services to vocational training.

In 1837, Pitman discontinued the use of all alcoholic beverages and became a vegetarian, both lifelong practices. He also did not smoke.

Pitman advocated a simple vegetarian diet. He was Vice-President of the Vegetarian Society. In an 1879 letter to (London), he attributed his excellent health and his ability to work long hours to his vegetarian diet and abstinence from alcohol. His brother Benjamin noted that Pitman "became a vegetarian, not for religious, but humanitarian and physiological reasons".

The Pitman Vegetarian Hotel was named after Pitman.

Jacob Pitman (1810-1890) a settler in South Australia, founded a Swedenborg Church there, and taught Pitman shorthand in New South Wales. Mentions Uncle William (1801-1859), who also emigrated to South Australia with his large family.

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Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 - 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in Stenographic Soundhand in 1837. He was also the vice-president of the Vegetarian Society.

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FR   Kiösk (Elsa Aupetit & Martin Plagnol) est un studio de design graphique basé à Paris. Le duo dessine des identités visuelles, des sites internet, des affiches, des éditions, des signalétiques, dans le cadre de la commande publique comme privée. Elsa Aupetit & Martin Plagnol partagent leur pratique professionnelle avec celle de l'enseignement. Leurs expériences pédagogiques sont énumérées ici. Ils ont également fondé la maison d'édition indépendante Dumpling Books.

EN   Kiösk (Elsa Aupetit & Martin Plagnol) is a graphic design studio based in Paris. They realize a wide variety of projects including identities, websites, posters, books and signage. They work both for public and private clients. Otherwise Elsa Aupetit & Martin Plagnol share their professional practice with teaching. These experiences are listed here. They also founded the independent publishing house Dumpling Books.

Références
Bernard Chauveau édition * École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs * Ozu * Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry - Le Crédac * Chose Commune: maison d'édition * Coco Amardeil: photographe * Académie Nationale de Chirurgie * La Fabrique du regard / plateforme pédagogique du BAL * Ministère de la Culture * Cnap: centre national des arts plastiques * Colophon: librairie d'arts visuels * Copilote: production en théâtre * Garde robe: production en danse * C-E-A: Commissaires d'Exposition Associés * Un Institut Métaphorique: groupe de recherche * AFLK * Ann Stouvenel: commissaire d'exposition * Suspended Spaces: commissaires d'exposition * Mains d'Œuvres * Musée des Beaux-arts de Dole * EnsAD Lab * Galerie Le Huit * Galerie Made in Town * Nicolas Fox Weber : écrivain * Gilles Plagnol: photographe

Résidences
Le Bel Ordinaire: résidence, Billère, 2019 * Mains d'Œuvres: résidence, Saint-Ouen, 2015-2016 * Aux demeurants: résidence, Neublans-Abergement, 2013

Expositions / Évènements
La vie des tables, Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry - Le Crédac, 2020 * Puces typo Nº10: salon de typographie et d'édition, en ligne, 2020 * Floréal Belleville: salon d'édition indépendant, Paris, 2020 * Offprint Paris: salon d'édition indépendant, Paris, 2019 * Nuit de l'année: projection vidéo de Paréidolie aux Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles, 2019 * Puces typo Nº9: salon de typographie et d'édition, Bagnolet, 2019 * Graphic design festival Scotland: exposition d'affiches internationales, Glasgow, Écosse, 2018 * Video Activity: cycle de projection de vidéos de la collection du Frac Lorraine, Mains d'Œuvres, Saint-Ouen, 2016 * Petrus picnic: exposition, Mains d'Œuvres, Saint-Ouen, 2016 * Autonome: exposition, Galerie Le Huit, Paris, 2014 * Script: workshop / exposition, Galerie Made in Town, Paris, 2013 * Aux demeurants: exposition, Neublans-Abergement, 2013

Conférences
EESAB (Rennes), 09.03.2022 * Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet), 19.12.2018 * Université Paris VIII (Saint-Denis), 18.10.2018 * Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet), 05.12.2017

Enseignement
Elsa Aupetit - Ensad (Paris): Édition et typographie, 2e et 3e année Design graphique * Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet): Co-référence pédagogique du Master DCDG, depuis 2020 * Direction éditoriale de la revue Composite avec Christophe Lemaitre, Master 1 DCDG, depuis 2020 * Édition et typographie, Master 1 & 2 DCDG, depuis 2017
Martin Plagnol - Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet): Identité visuelle et suivi de diplôme, Master 1 & 2 DCDG, depuis 2019

Jurys
ENSAD (Paris): Jury de Licence, 2023 * ÉSAD (Valence): Jury de DNA, 2023 * Charles de Gaulle (Chaumont): Jury de DSAA, 2022 * ÉSAD (Amiens): Jury de DNSEP, 2022 * ÉESAB (Rennes): Jury de DNA, 2022 * Eugénie Cotton (Montreuil): Jury de DNMADE, 2021 * École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD Paris): Jury de Master, 2020 * ECV (Paris): Jury de Master 2 Typographie, 2019 * Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet): Jury de Mastère DCDG, 2017

Workshops
Haute École des Arts du Rhin (HEAR Strasbourg): "Essai visuel", workshop édition, 4e année Communication graphique, 2023 * Le Louvre, dispositif PRÉAC: Atelier image et typographie, 3e UPE2A & 1re 1MS1, Lycée Théophile Gautier, Paris, 2023 * École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ÉSAD Amiens): "Cabinet de curiosités", workshop inter-années, 2023 * École Européenne Supérieure d'Art de Bretagne (EESAB Rennes): "Expliquer pour concevoir, concevoir pour expliquer", workshop édition, 4e année Communication, 2022 * École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD Paris): "Les maîtres ignorants", workshop intersecteur 2e & 3e années, 2021 * ECV (Paris): "Composition, recomposition", workshop édition, Master 2 Design graphique, 2021 * Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet): "Concevoir un dispositif de reproduction", Master 1 DCDG, 2020 * ECV (Paris): "Calendrier 2020", workshop affiche, Master 2 Design graphique, 2020 * École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD Paris): "La bibliothèque comme atelier", workshop typographie, Master design graphique, 2020 * ECV (Paris): "Imprimer wikipédia", workshop édition, Master 2 design graphique, 2019 * Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet): "Macules #2", workshop édition, BTS 1, 2018 * La Fabrique du regard, plateforme pédagogique du BAL: Atelier édition, Seconde Bac pro, Lycée Escoffier, Éragny sur Oise, 2018 * ECV (Paris): "Collections", workshop édition, Master 2 Design graphique, 2018 * Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet): "Macules", workshop édition, Master 1 DCDG, 2017 * ESBA TALM (Angers): "Atelier éditorial expérimental", workshop édition inter-années, 2017 * Campus de la Fonderie de l'Image (Bagnolet): "P(l)ages d'histoire", workshop édition, Master 1 DCDG, 2017

Publications
Étapes Nº266, Images didactiques: Au Crédac, la lumière se diffracte * Le Signe: Viral, catalogue de la Biennale internationale de design graphique de Chaumont 2021 * It's Nice That: Studio Kiösk uses reference and diversion as its tools of choice * Revue Diorama Nº2: Geometric city * Intramuros Nº201: Graphistes à bonne école ?, Nouvelles pratiques * Klikkenthèke: site Kiösk * Fonts in use: Visual identity of Mains d'Œuvres * Graphisme & interactivité: Logos et identités visuelles, Graphisme en France Nº23 * Étapes graphiques: Logos et identités visuelles, Graphisme en France Nº23 * Index Grafik: Logos et identités visuelles, Graphisme en France Nº23 * Cnap / Graphisme en France: Logos et identités visuelles, Graphisme en France Nº23 * Les Inrocks: Video Activity * Mains d'Œuvres: Video Activity * Anna Principaud: Entrez.ées en métaphores * L'Atelier des jours à venir: Entrez.ées en métaphores * Mains d'Œuvres: Kiösk * Holoholo Books: Comment section Nº2 * Holoholo Books: Comment section Nº1 * EnsAD: catalogue des diplômés 2012 * Le Monde: diplôme

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Stages / Alternances
L'atelier n'accueille ni stagiaire, ni alternant.

Crédits
Programmation: Olivier J * Conception graphique et prises de vues: Kiösk

© 2012 - 2023
Ce site et son contenu sont la propriété de Kiösk (Elsa Aupetit & Martin Plagnol). Toute distribution, reproduction partielle ou complète du contenu de ce site sous quelque forme que ce soit est interdite. Aucune exploitation à des fins commerciales, transmission ou détention du contenu n'est autorisée sans une permission écrite préalable.

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Studio de design graphique basé à Paris. / Paris based graphic design studio.

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Graphic Designer Frauke Stegmann visited the studio to show us her portfolio. See what she shows potential clients.

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Situated Between (Treacy & Ozkal), Crayonograph, Le Gun no. 6, a journal from The Pre-Vinylite Society ... and a typeset rectangular doily

Here are a few miscellaneous graphic artefacts that caught our attention in recent weeks.

Situated Between is a saddle-stitched, folded 34-page publication that records some freewheeling collaborations involving fifteen designers, writers and image-makers. They are Bethany Johns, Gail Swanlund, Krishna Balakrishnan, Lana Lé, Margo Halverson, Mark Zurolo, Nathan Davis, Peter Hall, Rebecca Ross, Sarah Elawad, Stuart Henley, Victoria Grimwood and Luke Waller, as well as Arzu Ozkal and Tricia Treacy, who put the whole thing together.

Treacy and Ozkal are planning a second volume for later in 2019 with a fresh set of collaborators.

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Situated Between (Treacy & Ozkal), Crayonograph, Le Gun no. 6, a journal from The Pre-Vinylite Society ... and a typeset rectangular doily Here are a few miscellaneous graphic artefacts that caught our attention in recent weeks. Situated Between is a saddle-stitched, folded 34-page publication that records some freewheeling collaborations involving fifteen designers, writers and image-makers.

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Evelin Kasikov is a London-based Graphic Designer and creator of CMYK embroidery

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Info Projects Photos

Type of Work: Typographic Drawings

Medium: Black Pen

Size: A4

Occasion: RCA2020 Online Exhibition

This ongoing experimental drawing series follows the design methodology inspired by "white box testing". The process takes ideas which can be considered as the internal system and enters a variety of inputs through a series of tests to produce successful and unsuccessful outputs. Themes include traditional formal type design, dimensionality and movement.

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Info Projects Photos Type of Work: Typographic Drawings Medium: Black Pen Size: A4 Occasion: RCA2020 Online Exhibition This ongoing experimental drawing series follows the design methodology inspired by "white box testing". The process takes ideas which can be considered as the internal system and enters a variety of inputs through a series of tests to produce successful and unsuccessful outputs.

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Albers was one of the most esteemed students of the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus, the influential German school of modern art, architecture, and design that she first attended beginning in 1922 and subsequently taught at starting in 1928. She often began her weaving projects with design sketches, such as this drawing for a rug. In this study, she explored the theme of horizontal-vertical construction using color, shape, proportion, and rhythm. The design reveals her admiration for the work of the painter Paul Klee, who also taught at the school.

Of the weaving workshop, she later observed, "Technique was acquired as it was needed and as a foundation for future attempts. Unburdened by any practical considerations, this play with materials produced amazing results, textiles striking in their novelty, their fullness of color and texture, and possessing often a quite barbaric beauty."

Albers used textiles as her primary artistic medium for almost forty years, experimenting directly with innovative materials and creating prototypes for industrial production. She was as acclaimed for her activities as a teacher and writer on design and weaving as she was for her textile designs. Albers continued to explore relationships of color and line, most markedly after 1963, when her interest shifted to printmaking.

Publication excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)

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Anni Albers. Design for Smyrna Rug. 1925 | MoMA

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Anni Albers. Design for Smyrna Rug. 1925. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper. 8 1/8 x 6 9/16" (20.6 x 16.7 cm). Gift of the designer. 394.1951. © 2022 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Architecture and Design

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Man and His Mark was the title of Impressions Number Three from February 1970.

Each Impressions issue was given a specific theme, and some of Australia's most revered designers were commissioned for the project. This issue featured trademarks and symbols designed by the late American graphic designer Les Mason (1924-2009) who moved from Los Angeles to Melbourne in 1961.

It's an interesting read, with some content retyped below.

Man and his mark: Recently a TV panel show involved three husband and wife teams in a word association game designed to indicate a couple's emotional compatibility. The MC would say a word, then each contestant had to immediately write down the first word that came to mind. Among the leads were the words 'penguin' and 'shell'. When the former was mentioned three of the people wrote down 'books'. The latter brought five responses reading 'petrol'. This result may not have proved anything about compatibility but it was irrevocable proof of the imprint that trademarks can make on the public's subconscious.
Ceramic marks
Excavations have shown that over 2,000 years ago clay bricks and roof tiles from areas in Mesopotamia and Egypt had marks impressed into them before they were baked. These declared the name of the artisan who made the products and the factory of their origin. Similar marks were also found on Roman terracotta tiles (5). They were usually made up of letters within a panel or a circle.

Ordinary household utensils such as oil lamps and amphoras also had these kinds of trademarks and other symbols stamped on them. Jars of the prized Thasos wine displayed signs showing dolphins and kneeling archers (20), while amphoras from Rhodes always carried a rose symbol.

One type of particularly good oil lamp, that was found over very widespread areas, had the name Fortis stamped above a sign of a wreath encompassing a palm leaf (1). It was obviously a big seller for many years until cheap copies from the provinces appropriated the Fortis trademark and flooded the market.

Other famous ceramic marks are those found on French Sevres porcelain of the 18th century and later. The king of France held a monopoly on Sevres porcelain as only factories belonging to him were allowed to manufacture it. Every piece was carefully marked with a sign that usually indicated the king in power at the time.
Stonemasons' signs
The stonemasons of medieval Europe were renowned for the signs that they carved on their finished works (6). These signs can still be seen on many German cathedrals and buildings of the period. Masonry was a highly skilled art that required many years apprenticeship. Masons, perhaps because of their specialised knowledge in an age of illiteracy, founded powerful guilds or lodges that developed secret and ritualistic styles of communication to which their signs were allied.

It is interesting to note that in his A History of Aesthetic, Bosanquet says, "Symbols have for unlettered minds an extraordinary power of comfort and fascination." The masonic lodges were strongly religious in nature and survived for several centuries. Signs were given to journeymen by their master on the completion of their apprenticeship. If a lodge disapproved of a member's conduct he could be expelled and his sign taken from him. This virtually removed his identity as a mason and stopped him from working. Stone cutters' marks were in evidence for a period ranging over six hundred years and were the prototypes of all kinds of later signs.

Many other guilds also had their marks and compelled members to use them as a proprietary mark so as to enforce their monopolies and control the trade. In guild economy these amounted to police marks. Examples were found in the gold and silversmiths' guilds of the French and Italian states, the woollen and linen weavers in England, the Hammersmith's in Austria, and most of the German guilds.
Coats of arms
Heraldry is a hereditary system of personal recognition that developed among the nobles of medieval Christendom when they began to paint their shields with colourful designs or "arms" of identification.

It evolved for a number of reasons. The feudal system of 12th century Western Europe enabled noblemen to be rulers of their own domain. Their serfs and private soldiers were invariably illiterate but they could recognise a coat of arms to which they had to pay homage. They, in turn, wore badges on their uniforms that were taken from their lord's arms.

The coats of arms were used as identifying marks at the great tournaments of the period and in times of warfare. They came into special prominence during the Crusades when armies from many countries and principalities combined to march on Jerusalem.

The wearing of colourful symbols on shields also befitted the pomp and ceremony of the day and indicated precedence at assemblies. Later these arms were adapted to seals to give authentication to documents.

Although coats of arms were common by the end of the 12th century and had become indispensable to feudal society throughout Europe, it was not until several centuries later that the strict laws of inheritance and complex rules of design became under a central authority of control.

In England the final authority is the College of Heralds that was made a corporation in 1484 by Richard III. Only the college can grant new arms.

As trading practices expanded over the centuries arms were needed more and more as seals on documents and, but he 15th century, companies were frequently granted arms to facilitate business transactions. The practice has continued to the present time and many banks, insurance companies, and corporations have coats of arms.
What is a trademark?
A word, letter, group of letters, symbol, or any combination of these used to identify the origin or ownership of the article to which it is applied. Examples are the Coca-Cola nameplate, the Westinghouse W, the IBM letters, the Mercedes star, and the Shell name within the symbol.

A trademark is created by a designer but made by a corporation.
How should a trademark be used?
A trademark may be used on letterheads and business forms, on packaging and vehicles, on plants and offices, on posters and advertisements, on signboards and neon displays, on films and television commercials, on matchbooks, menus, labels, cheques - in short, there is no limitation to the possibilities for using a trademark. The extent of its use will be governed by the nature of the service or product, the size of the company, its financial means, and other associated factors.

If the exposure of the trademark is limited then it is preferable to use a nameplate, initials, or pictorial mark, rather than an abstract symbol, or to use the latter in conjunction with the former.

With intelligent use a trademark is more than an identifying sign. It services as an effective advertisement, creates good will, sells products, and keeps the company in the public eye.
What makes a good trademark?
It must set the company apart from other companies. It must present the desired image of the company to the public. It should be simple in form because (a) simple forms make the strongest impression on the eye and mind (b) it must be identifiable instantly under the unfavourable conditions in which it will be viewed: from a passing train, among other communications on flipped pages, a brief glimpse on a TV spot, etc. (c) it must retain its form when reduced to its smallest size.

It must be designed for its widest range of applications. It may be required for large neon signs as well as for extreme reduction and it may be intended for use in varying colour programmes.

An up to date symbol is essential, therefore current and datable design fashions should be avoided. The mark may need occasional modification to keep the company's image progressive.

Art direction: Geoffrey Digby
Text: Rennie Ellis
Design: Les Mason
Type: Helvetica Light and Medium
Studio: Les Mason Graphic Design
Date: 1970

Via Re:collection, the online archive of Australian graphic design created between 1960-1990.

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Man and His Mark, by Les Mason Graphic Design | Logo Design Love

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Man and His Mark was the title of Impressions Number Three from February 1970. Each Impressions issue was given a specific theme, and some of Australia's most revered designers were commissioned for the project. This issue featured trademarks and symbols designed by the late American graphic designer Les Mason (1924-2009) who moved from Los Angeles to Melbourne in 1961.

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Darren Wall is a graphic designer, art director and publisher. He is also the editor-in-chief of videogame history publisher Read-Only Memory.