The Fabric Of Life: Linen And Life Cycle In England, 1678-1810 Alice Dolan

List of TablesTable0.1Origins of linen used in England 1700-1770220.2Annual averages of English imports and re-exports of flaxen items,231663-17740.3Origins of English linen imports, 1663-1774240.4English imports of flax and yarn, 1700-1790280.5Linen prices per yard, 1560-1705320.6Price series for the average cost of a spindle of linen yarn from Perth,321741-17760.7Linen goods listed in the inventory of Robert Burridge, Worcester,5816910.8Yardage prices for linen and hempen textiles purchased by St60Thomas’ Hospital, 1797-18050.9Holland thread counts610.10The appropriate weight for a hank of yarn to weave cloth on a 100065reed 37 inches long0.11The appropriate weight for a spindle of yarn to weave cloth on a 50065reed 37 inches long1.1Percentage of Foundling Hospital children with different garments76listed by age admitted, 1759-17601.2Garments provided to Foundlings at nurse, 1760981.3Garments produced by twenty-five girls in the London Foundling99Hospital, 24 June 1750 to 20 June 17511.4Garments made by the girls in the London Hospital, 23 January to 6100February 17792.1All children alive and under Foundling Hospital care when the annual108‘General Abstract’ was taken, 1760-17722.2Foundling Hospital expenditure on clothing, 17871132.3Clothing provided for Ackworth apprentices, 17681152.4Annual expenditure on flocks, 1757-17761162.5Employment of children at Ackworth, 175912313

2.6The number of children employed in the Ackworth Manufactory, 17671252.7Shoemakers and cobblers who supplied Ackworth Hospital, 1758-12917732.8Tailors who supplied Ackworth Hospital, 1758-17731292.9Numbers of shirts and shifts made for the Ackworth Foundlings, 1761-13317702.10Stocking Procurement at Ackworth, 1758-17721342.11‘An Account of the CHILDREN in the FOUNDLING HOSPITAL at137ACKWORTH’, December 1769 to December 17702.12Number of pieces of ell-wide linen sent from Ackworth to the London141Hospital, 1763-17663.1Average price of 1lb. of flax fibre, 1724-17691583.2Total weight of fibre purchased annually by the Latham family, 1724-15817693.3Expenditure on flax by the Lathams, 1735-17451634.1Numbers of shirts and shifts in the Northern and Midlands crime191record samples and George Fettes’ pledge book, 1678-18104.2Numbers of shirts and shifts in Northern sample indictments, 1730-19117794.3Numbers of shirts and shifts in Midlands sample indictments, 1678-19118104.4David Davies’ estimate of annual clothing costs for labourers,194Barkham, Berkshire, 17874.5Division of shirts and shifts by status from Northern indictments,1951690-17894.6Table showing mentions of flaxen and hempen domestic textiles for199six counties, 1678-17474.7Ownership of hemp sheets by status for four counties, 1678-17472034.8Mean price of single sheet by occupation for Worcestershire, 1678-20417314.9Sheet prices in Lincolnshire, 1678-17472056.1Types of goods pawned with George Fettes, York, 1777-177825014

6.2Frequency of appearance of selected items of adults’ clothing in251Fettes’ pledge book, 1777-17786.3Average prices of garments for adults from Fettes’ pledge book,2521777-17786.4Time taken to redeem items from Fettes, 1777-17782536.5Items pawned by Mrs Riley of North Street, York, 1777-17782546.6Plain linens pawned by Mrs Riley, 1777-177825415

AcknowledgementsMy wholehearted thanks must go to John Styles, without whom this thesis would notexist. My work with John on ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel 1400-1800’encouraged me to stray beyond consumption and research textile production, whichto my surprise I found enjoyable. Beyond pushing my intellectual horizons John hasproved the ideal supervisor: inspiring, engaged, encouraging and generous to a fault,he has shared databases, supplied me with tea, filled gaps in my knowledge andchallenged me. I cannot imagine having a better supervisor and am privileged tohave been able to work with him.Anne Murphy has proved the perfect second supervisor, able to withstand largequantities of technical textile information and emerge unscathed. Anne’s focus on thewider context of my research, clarity of argument and her encouragement to engagewith economic issues have, I hope, made their mark on the thesis. Her genuineinterest in and engagement with my research have been constantly appreciated.I am indebted to Hilary Davison, Linda Eaton, Barbara Lasic and Lesley Miller whoprovided me with opportunities to work with collections over extended periods of timewhile sharing their extensive expertise with me. These experiences set me up with astrong foundation for studying objects and I continue to be thankful for this groundingwhenever I set foot in museum stores. Practical training which I attempted withsometimes limited skill was provided by Karen Clancy, Zephram and JohannesZinzendorf and Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood. Angela McShane and Amanda Vickeryare also key influences, providing me with the rigorous historical education fromwhich this thesis sprouted.Staff at archives and museums have provided invaluable research support. Aparticular commendation should go to the staff at Lancashire Record Office for thememorable day when staff cheerily retrieved eighty items for me.This thesis has also benefitted from the generosity of others who have shared hardwon sources and knowledge which has enriched my research. Those not alreadymentioned are Barbara Burman, Brenda Collins, Bridget Long, Amy Erickson,Karolina Hutková and Mark Overton. Alison Blunt, Owen Davies, Jennifer Evans,Tim Hitchcock, Eleanor Johns and Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin all provided invaluable16

feedback on drafts. I have had constructive discussions about my work with AntoniaBrodie and Sally Holloway.I am also grateful to the institutions that have funded this research: the EuropeanResearch Council funded three years of research, a Pasold Research Fund Ph.D.bursary supported me during my fourth year and a Research Fellowship atWinterthur Museum, Delaware provided me with the opportunity to (mentally)grapple with sacks in person.My friends, old and new, have supported and enhanced the past three and threequarter years through laughs and cake. I’m not going to name and shame but youknow who you are and it is very much appreciated. I’d like to thank my brother forconfirming that my calculations are correct and for the look of complete horror thatpassed over his face when he found out that pants were rare in the eighteenthcentury. It still makes me laugh. My grandparents have constantly inspired me, asexemplars of what can be achieved through access to secondary education and hardwork. Grandad is partially responsible for my historical bent – extensive knowledgeof medieval ruins is a canny way for a historian to interest his grandchildren inhistory. Finally, my Mum planted the seeds that turned into this thesis, getting me tolook closely at objects in museums and teaching me to sew and embroider, so myfinal thanks go to her.17

Introduction[image removed for copyright reasons]Figure 0.1, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), A/FH/A/09/001/159, Foundling14444, linen embroidered with cross-stitch. CoramOn 12 November 1759, John Barney Sheppard was presented to the FoundlingHospital in Bloomsbury, London, because his parents could not support him due topoverty or illegitimacy. The person who presented John, or the clerk who acceptedhim into the Hospital decided that the two linen textile swatches shown in figure 0.1were the best identifiers should his parents ever be able to return to collect him.Plain linen was ubiquitous, it was the triangle embroidered in black cross-stitch thatmade the swatches identifiable. The scraps mark the separation of mother and child.Alongside, they also represent another set of lives and processes. The swatcheshave a life cycle of their own, from ploughing the soil ready to sow the flax seed toproducing and selling the cloth, from conversion into baby clothes to their finalresting place in the London Metropolitan Archives these swatches have beencreated, altered and stored by generations. This interconnection between humanand object life cycles is central to this thesis, which examines why people producedand used linen and the meanings which were constructed around it.For thousands of years flax was a staple fibre, used for textile production in manyparts of the globe. Cotton only overtook linen as the most popular textile in Englandat home and on the body in the course of the nineteenth century. This thesis18

examines the preceding century to reveal why linen remained a daily essential inEngland between 1678 and 1810, a period which encompassed a series ofsignificant changes in the production, trade and use of linen in England. The sourceof supply changed. In 1678 the vast majority of linen was imported, while by 1810large English, Scottish and Irish linen industries had developed. Linen went frombeing an essential domestic good in 1678, representing a significant proportion of afamily’s material wealth, to losing this status as cotton became an increasingly viableoption. But it was only in the 1820s that all ranks of society changed consumptionhabits and cotton became more widely used than linen.1 Alongside these changesthere were continuities. Linen continued to be used for clothing, domestic andcommercial textiles throughout the period, despite the rise of a cotton industry thatproduced large volumes of textiles that could be substituted for linen.The social, cultural and economic causes for the retention of linen during its lastcentury and a half of domestic dominance are investigated. Society was permeatedby linen in the home, on the body and at work. Linen was worn as underwear by richand poor during the early-modern period: touching linen was a universal experiencein daily life. The thesis therefore explores intimate daily relationships with flaxencloth. Linen’s spectrum of uses included clothing as shirts and shifts (underwear),gowns, petticoats, waistcoats, breeches, aprons, drawers, caps, night caps, nightshirts, ruffles, lace, swaddling, clouts and other items of infant clothing; for textileconstruction as thread, garment linings, stiffenings, inkle and tape; for householdtextiles as sheets, pillow covers, table cloths, napkins, towels, mattress covers,sacking bottoms which held mattresses up, window and bed curtains and forcommercial purposes as sacks, wrappers, money bags, cart covers, ropes, twineand sailcloth. Linen, unlike wool and silk could be washed, therefore before theadvent of cotton it was the preferred option for garments and textiles that would beregularly soiled by bodies: underwear, bed and table linen. Long flax fibres madestrong yarn and durable cloth, therefore they were used to transport and protectother goods.1John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England (London:Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 128-32, 347; John Styles, ‘What were Cottons for in the EarlyIndustrial Revolution?’, in The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850, ed. byGiorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (Oxford: Pasold Research Fund and Oxford UniversityPress, 2009), 307-326 (pp. 318-321).19

The ubiquity of linen means that it speaks to many aspects of life during the longeighteenth century, from rites of passage to respectability and trade. A study of linenduring the period is not just the study of a material, but a way of drawing the threadsof everyday life together. Linen was the fabric of life, thus it provides a unique insightinto the early-modern world; a means of understanding the multifaceted experiencesof daily life, of integrating understandings of the body, domestic, social, cultural andcommercial activities. This is social history through the lens of linen, reading asociety through its interactions with a textile.There has been no major study of linen in England during the long eighteenthcentury, a significant omission. Linen, the only fibre with comparable properties tocotton, provides a counterpart to the well-studied global and industrial story of therise of cotton.2 The limited research undertaken on linen has primarily focused onnational linen industries, trade and cleanliness.3 Susan North’s 2012 Ph.D. thesis isthe only work to cover the production and consumption of linen clothing during theeighteenth century, focusing on underwear – what was worn, changes inconstruction, medical attitudes to hygiene, production, particularly the making-up ofbespoke and readymade garments and washing. This thesis complements her work.Notable points of difference include a focus on household and commercial linens andresearch on children’s clothing and domestic and institutional linen manufacture.This thesis builds on historiographies of manufacture, trade and cleanliness to askwhat the social, cultural and economic factors were that led to the continued use oflinen as a daily necessity during the long eighteenth century.Linen met a socially constructed need, the need for a fabric to ensure and expresscleanliness and respectability, deemed so vital that it influenced international tradeand provided a living for vast swathes of Europe. This demand was particularlyFor example, Beverly Lemire, Cotton (Oxford: Berg, 2011); Lemire, Fashion’s Favorite: The CottonTrade and the Consumer in Britain 1660-1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Giorgio Riello,Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013);Riello and Parthasarathi (ed.) The Spinning World; Styles, Dress of the People, pp. 109-32.3 For example, The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective, ed. by Brenda Collins andPhilip Ollerenshaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); L.M. Cullen, Anglo-Irish Trade 1660-1800(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968); Alastair J. Durie, The Scottish Linen Industry in theEighteenth Century (Edinburgh: Donald, 1979); Negley Harte, ‘The Rise of Protection and the EnglishLinen Trade, 1690-1790’, in Textile History and Economic History, ed. by N.B. Harte and K.B. Ponting(Manchester, 1973), pp. 74-112; Conrad Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1925); Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);Georges Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).220

significant in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,transforming patterns of trade and industry. Linen supply was a major issue inEngland until the mid-eighteenth century. Despite its necessity status, relativelysmall quantities of linen were produced in Britain and Ireland in the late seventeenthcentury. England was reliant on European imports, a concern for the governmentwho promoted import substitution from 1670. A 1678 ban on French goods includedlinen and in 1697 additional high duties were added to French linens. Despitepenalising the French, imports from other European countries continued and in 1700linen was the single largest manufactured import, constituting 15 per cent of allEnglish imports.4A national industry was to be developed to meet growing demand and to enableimport substitution. Existing linen industries were developed in England, Scotlandand Ireland promoted by the British government. The promotion of linen industries inScotland and Ireland allowed the development of large-scale highly profitable textileindustries that would offer no competition to the English national industry – themanufacture of woollen cloth. Alongside the linen industry, cotton manufacturingdeveloped in Britain and Ireland in the later eighteenth century. Although ultimatelycotton would dominate, throughout the eighteenth century linen successfullycompeted with cotton both in terms of the scale of the industry and consumption.This thesis explains the need for these economic changes, why linen was anecessity and why demand for linen grew during the eighteenth century. Thus itcovers the period 1678 to 1810. The start date of 1678 represents the first majorchange in government policy towards linen supply when French linens, whichcomprised a third of England’s supply, were prohibited. The end date of 1810represents a moment when cotton, though expanding rapidly had not yet overtakenlinen outside the realm of decorative textiles, while the production of linen itself wasbeginning to be transformed by mechanisation. The following section provides anoverview of how England supplied itself with linen between 1678 and 1810.Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw, ‘The European Linen Industry since the Middle Ages’, in TheEuropean Linen Industry, 1-41, (p. 15); Harte, ‘The Rise of Protection’, pp. 78-79; David Ormrod, TheRise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650-1770(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 141-43.421

Table 0.1, Origins of linen used in England 1700-1770 (million ndScottishproductionTotalofEuropean,Irish tionContemporaryEnglishproductionestimates1700 22.10.312.91710 15.11.5(1.5)18.19.91720 16.72.612.41730 23.13.83.830.714.4(21.0)17406.44.616.4} 32.01741 21.1175010.97.627.1} 39.11752- 20.7(25.8)17551760 17.913.111.752.826.81770 18.619.713.059.842.8Source: Ormrod, Rise of Commercial Empires, p. 169. Numbers in italics are fromcustoms figures, those in brackets are contemporary estimates.Research has primarily focused on the Scottish, Irish and European linen industries.The full scale of English manufacture is unknown. Table 0.1 shows David Ormrod’scompilation of contemporary sources, production and trade statistics located by otherhistorians which reveals that although British and Irish manufacturing output grew,the English were never self-sufficient for linen in the eighteenth century. Importsremained important throughout. They are listed as ‘retained’ in the table becauselarge quantities of linens were re-exported.5 Table 0.1 does however suggest thatEnglish linen production was higher than Ireland and Scotland combined and alsoexceeded quantities of retained Continental imports from the 1750s. 6 Regionally, theNorth-East, North-West and South-West manufactured the most linen. Englishcounties that have been identified as having linen industries are Cumbria,Lancashire, Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire,Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Berkshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire, Wiltshire,Norfolk, Suffolk and

Magazine (1747) 110 2.4 Samples of frieze and broad cloth produced at Ackworth manufactory, 1762 or 1763 112 2.5 The number of shirts, shifts and stockings produced p.a. at Ackworth Manufactory, 1761-1770 136 2.6 The number of shirts and shifts and pairs of stockings produced per child under the care of Ackworth, 1761-1770 136