The Bower & Collier Family History
Research by Colin Bower
Silk Weavers named Collier
British History Online
Bethnal Green: Economic History
Extracts
INDUSTRY.
….industries were located in Bethnal Green because of its closeness to the London market, its plentiful labour, and the ease of canal transport, particularly from the docks. Most raw materials and finished goods, however were carted or taken by hand to warehouses and middlemen there or in neighbouring districts.
The dominant industry for nearly two centuries was silkweaving. Traditionally ascribed to the Huguenot influx into Spitalfields after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, it originated earlier, possibly in Jacobean mulberrygrowing at Bishop's Hall. Weavers were recorded in Bethnal Green from 1604 and silkweavers from 1612, the earliest at Bishop's Hall. They were present in the western parts, in Collier's Row, Stepney Rents, Cock Lane and Brick Lane by the 1640s. The Dolphin in Cock Lane, a well-known weavers' resort in the 18th century, may have been connected with the old Dolphin inn in Bishopsgate, a district settled by weavers in the 16th.
The building which spread from Spitalfields in the 1660s and 1670s was mostly for weavers. London weavers, like Solomon Bonner in Great Haresmarsh in 1675 and Miles White in Hare Street in 1680, began to acquire property. By 1684 it was said of Bethnal Green that 'the people for the most part consist of weavers'.
The early weavers included foreigners like Gerrard Vanton, a Walloon living in Bethnal Green in 1635. The main influx of Huguenot silkweavers came later, when English masters welcomed cheap, skilled labourers during the dominance of French fashion, which depended on pattern rather than cut. The immigrants' skill in figured silk, brocades, and lustrings brought a boom to the industry in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Silkweaving then was small-scale and paternalistic with masters and journeymen usually working in the master's house, itself set among the smaller journeymen's houses. Although most immigrants were poor, a few brought capital or, with some English weavers, prospered to become masters. Master weavers included the Garretts, who had lived in Bethnal Green since the 1670s, had property in Castle Street in 1694 and tenements in Weaver Street in the mid 18th century. Others were John Rondeau 1694-1706) and, in the 1740s, Peter Triquet in St. John Street, James Sufflee and Abraham Jemmett in Fleet Street, Jonathan Pulley in New Cock Lane, William Grinsell in Turvey (? Turville) Street, Jonathan Hauchecorne of New Cock Lane and Isaac Dupree, whose family had property in St. John Street and Carter's Rents in 1694.
Bethnal Green, although not named, may have been a scene of the riots against mechanized silk looms in 1675. In 1697 it petitioned against the import of materials from India and Persia, which had 'extinguished' weaving and its dependent trades. In 1719-20 there were violent protests, with attacks on women wearing calico, and in 1721 legislation forbade its manufacture.
The industry changed in the mid 18th century, partly because the most successful masters tended to leave for the land or liberal professions, being replaced by humbler journeymen, usually Englishmen. The spread of more cramped houses for journeymen made Bethnal Green a less desirable residence, from which the departure of the 'better sort' by 1743 was leaving a population chiefly of journeymen and 'other inferior artificers belonging to the weaving trade'. Giles Bigot (d. 1742), for example, whose family came from Poitou, moved to Spital Square in 1739. His son Peter, a master weaver, leased a building with five tenements and two back rooms at the corner of Swan and Bacon streets but by 1761 when he bought Great Haresmarsh he had moved to Essex and apparently left the industry. By 1788 there was said to be not one silk master or manufacturer resident in Bethnal Green, the weavers working in their homes, sometimes the tenemented houses of former masters, for employers in Spitalfields or the City.
The rift between masters and men exacerbated the turbulence which followed the end of the Seven Years' War, with journeymen combining to sabotage those paying or accepting reduced wages. After riots in 1763, 1765, and 1766, the single-handed weavers organized themselves as the Bold Defiance with their headquarters at the Dolphin in Cock Lane, raised a strike fund, and smashed engine looms. The military raided the Dolphin and two of the weavers' leaders, Doyle and Valline, were hanged before a great crowd near the Salmon and Ball. Some 15 months later the mob murdered a witness against the hanged men. David Wilmot was the magistrate active in apprehending two culprits, whose execution in 1771 led troops to guard his house. In 1773 weavers allied with coal heavers to press for lower food prices and help for the weaving industry but the Bethnal Green magistrates prevented assemblies which might have led to riot. In 1773 a Spitalfields Act banned foreign silks and in 1792 and 1801 further Acts regulated prices and wages, whereupon the weavers' riots came to an end.
The Act of 1773 brought some stability, although the industry remained vulnerable to changes in fashion and by c. 1800 expertise had declined as demand for elaborate materials dwindled. The independent weaver more and more fell into the power of a middleman, the factor who procured woven material at the lowest possible price to supply wholesale dealers. By 1816 the weavers were in greater distress than for many years.
A related decline took place in the specialized occupations that had formed part of the early silk industry. Framework knitters, who produced stockings and gloves, were recorded in 1660, 1671, and 1685, when three worked at 'engines wherewith to make knitwork' belonging to a victualler, and 1734, when there was a stockingmaker in Bacon Street. In 1763 many knitters worked privately at home for the capital's shops, although none of the manufacturers lived in Bethnal Green. Their occupation had ceased to be recorded by 1800.
Silk throwsters, who twisted the raw silk into thread, were recorded from 1631 and were often men of position: James Church (d. 1686) left money and property in the City and several counties. In the 1720s John (d. 1732) and Matthew Oakey were men of substance in the western part of Bethnal Green; John, also styled a merchant, was a justice. After c. 1760 the industry, by then usually called silkwinding, declined in status, being carried on in small factories or in the weaver's home, usually by his wife and children. The Cranfields of Hare Street were throwsters, Jeremiah being described as a worsted thrower in 1817 although Isaac Cranfield & Sons were among London's very few surviving silk-throwing firms in 1832. In 1851 there was a silkwinder, along with two silk manufacturers, in Paradise Row, whose widow was still in business in 1863. Other silkwinders in 1851 were William Engleburtt of Elizabeth Street off Hackney Road, with 15 employees, and another in Sebright Street, with 5. Only two silkwinders were recorded in 1863 and none by 1879.
The chief and longest lasting related industry was dyeing. A dyehouse stood on the east side of George Street near St. John Street, probably by 1694; it lasted until Ham's Alley was built between 1783 and 1791. William Lee (d. 1720), its first dyer, was in partnership with John Ham, and a John Ham retained considerable property there in 1783. A second dyehouse nearby belonged by 1751 to another prominent parishioner, Vincent Beverley (d. 1772), whose successor John Beverley had a dyehouse in 1775. One of the two dyehouses was occupied in 1818 by Powell. John Wright had a dyehouse in Hare Street in 1775 , perhaps that owned by the only identifiable Huguenot dyers, James Racine and Frank Jacques, whose dyehouse was variously described as in Hare Street or next to the French chapel in St. John Street from c. 1817-1846/50. Other dyers included John Hilliard at no. 10 London Terrace, Hackney Road, and Thomas Stracey at no. 23 George Street, possibly a successor of Ham or Beverley, in 1817 and 1826-7, W. Tillett in South Conduit Street in 1826-7 and 1836, John Barker at no. 2 Winchester Street in 1826-7 and no. 5 Bacon Street and Spicer Street in 1832-4, Edmund Reynolds in Durham Place, Hackney Road, in 1832-4 and 1863, and James Elkins at no. 11 Weaver street in 1863 and 1879.
An estimated 68 per cent of adult males were employed in clothing (59 per cent in silk) in 1770 and only 48 per cent (39 per cent in silk) in 1813. The repeal of the Spitalfields Acts in 1824, which led to a steady drop in wages, and the treaty of 1860, which opened English markets to French silk, furthered the decline, as did fashion's favouring other fabrics over silk and the spread of cheap factory production elsewhere, notably in the north of England. In 1838 nearly 11 per cent of the parish's population worked as silkweavers. Bethnal Green dominated the Spitalfields weaving industry, having 77 per cent of the looms and 82 per cent of the families employed. The industry had spread to all parts of the parish although it was still densest in the south and west, where the finest goods were produced. Of a total of 7,847 working looms, 2,932 were in Church and 2,703 in Town ward. Besides the 7,847 people employed as weavers (4,232 men, 2,897 women, and the rest children and apprentices), there were 776 unemployed weavers and 189 who called themselves weavers but had had to part with their looms; 3,512 families were at work, most owning one or two looms. Nine per cent of the looms in Church ward and 5 per cent in Town ward produced Jacquard velvet or figured silk, compared with 4 per cent in Hackney Road and barely 3 per cent in Green ward. By far the largest output was of plain goods, ranging from 61 per cent in Church ward to 86 per cent in Hackney Road. Velvets, which made up the rest, in 1867 required 600 distinct operations to make 1".
Only two wealthy silkmasters were said to live in Bethnal Green in 1834. Although the industry in London remained overwhelmingly domestic, a few factories were opened. There were Bethnal Green residents during most of the 19th century who called themselves silk manufacturers but most firms were small-scale and short lived. They included one in Elizabeth Street, off Hackney Road, in 1821, five in 1832-4 (two in Pollard Row, and one each in Bethnal Green Road, Church Street, and Tyssen Street), 10 in 1851, 3 in 1863, and 5 in 1879. Charles Tripany in Sebright Street in 1851 employed 5 men but references to a foreman or watchman in a silk factory, numerous in 1851, imply that there were factories. One of the manufacturers of 1851 was John Warner, who lived in Northampton House, Elizabeth Terrace, off Hackney Road, with servants. By 1872 Messrs. Warner & Ramm had built the East London silk mills in Hollybush Gardens, where by 1876 nearly 100 in- and out-workers produced furniture silk. In 1895 the firm, the last to leave the parish, acquired mills in Braintree (Essex) to which it soon transferred 60 silkweavers from Bethnal Green.
After the collapse of the plain silk market after 1860, the East London industry concentrated on furniture silk and on handkerchiefs, ties, and scarves, such as those produced by Slater, Buckingham & Co. of Spitalfields at a factory in Lark Row, Cambridge Road, in 1876. Vavasseur, Carter & Collier made a variety of silks in the Nichol c. 1876-1902. By the late 1880s 284 households were employed in silkweaving, forming 1 per cent of the population. Only two manufacturers were listed in 1902 although the borough still had more silk workers than any other in London. By 1914 114 weavers occupied 46 workshops, mostly in Cranbrook Street and Alma Road in the eastern part, but by 1931 there were only 11 elderly weavers. Efforts to revive the industry in the 1930s failed and it finally ended in 1940 when France could no longer supply the raw material.
…Factories employed only a minority of the workforce. Large numbers affected by the decline of silkweaving in the 1820s and 1830s were absorbed into home- or workshop-based industries. The chief manufactures, lacking the monopoly position of silk, were furniture, clothing, and shoemaking.
One cabinet maker and several weavers were among 14 people eligible for parish office in 1756. William Blunt, formerly of St. Botolph's Bishopsgate, was a cabinet maker in Bethnal Green in 1772.
…The clothing industry arose from the secondhand trade which had existed around Houndsditch since the 16th century and spread eastward to focus on Petticoat Lane. By the early 19th century clothes were 'clobbered' or renovated and a market developed for cheap clothing, including uniforms. There were a haberdasher and worsted manufacturer, a stay manufacturer, a hosier and glover, and a cotton and hosiery warehouse in Bethnal Green Road in 1817 and three tailors there, two in Hackney Road, and one each in Cambridge Road, Cambridge Heath, and Stepney Rents by the early 1830s. In 1833 there were attempts to train unemployed weavers in the workhouse in skills which included the 'making of workmen's apparel'. The tailor's condition, like the weaver's, was then beginning to decline, as work paid for daily by the master tailor on his premises gave way to piece work at home. The change, origin of the sweating system, was owed to middlemen who commissioned the work as cheaply as possible.
Although less numerous than weavers or wood workers, clothing workers were in all districts by 1851. The large number called tailors probably reflected their change in status, while there were also needlewomen, dressmakers, seamstresses, and makers of individual garments: waistcoats, shirts, headgear, collars, stays and, more rarely, trousers and shawls….
Colin Bower
5 June 2023
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