There's also a book in the Guild library about (I think this is the title, but not sure, it's been a while...) The History of the Nottingham Lace Industry - which goes through the trials and tribulations of those lace makers who worked with machines rather than bobbins. From the cottage industries with stocking frames in their homes to the lace factories - the sometimes terse relationships between employers and employees, lock ins and lock outs, strikes which risked livelihoods in days of no state handouts, the rise of the unions and the power they had over employers, and probably the biggest threat to employment (which affected both hand and machine industries) - changes in fashion.
I may be wrong, but I have a feeling I read somewhere that most of the luddites weren't the actual workers - they were troublemakers who came from other areas - though of course some would have been. Those who were caught ended up being prosecuted, jailed and in some cases on the gallows. I went to the exhibition in Loughborough Museum which was connected with the book that Maureen mentions - it told the tale as to how Heathcote's machines moved first from Loughborough to Nottingham, then with opposition there, to Tiverton in Devon, and then were broken down and smuggled to Calais. At a time when they were trying to increase the non-convict population of Australia, the workers were offered a one way ticket with an incentive payment, hence the reason many families moved on. I can't remember any mention of the Revolution, though, Maureen - wasn't that in 1789 and thus well before Heathcote's machines, which I think came into production round about 1808 - or did France have a second revolution (I have vague memories from history at school of something being 'bloodless')? As hand-lacemakers we at times are up in arms against the machines that took the work away, but a good number of handworkers transferred to the factories because of better pay and in some cases, conditions, and they were all people fighting for their livelihood in days when a change of fashion, or a poor cotton harvest, could put them all in the workhouse. In Liz Bartlett's book about the Lace Villages, she points out the difficulty she had in finding out about the life and work of the Bucks lacemakers because the job was so connected to poverty no-one wanted to ever think or talk about it again. Jane Partridge (Whose Nottingham-born husband has both Bedfordshire (hand) and Nottingham (machine) lace makers in his ancestry) ________________________________________ From: owner-l...@arachne.com <owner-l...@arachne.com> on behalf of Maureen <maur...@roger.karoo.co.uk> Following on the discussion about the above topic, there is a book called Well Suited To The Colony, written by Gillian Kelly from Australia, which tells the story of the manufacturers of machine lace from when they left England due to hard times to go to Calais France and then when they left France during the French Revolution, their journey to Australia and what happened to them after that. It is well worth reading. Not only was hand lacemaking a hard lifestyle, see the stories of the children at lace schools but it was for the machine Lacemakers as well. Maureen Yorkshire UK - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
