Strutt, Jedediah

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Jedediah Strutt was the second of three sons of William, a small farmer and maltster at South Normanton, near Alfreton, Derbyshire, where the only industry was a little framework knitting. At the age of 14 Jedediah was apprenticed to Ralph Massey, a wheelwright near Derby, and lodged with the Woollats, whose daughter Elizabeth he later married in 1755. He moved to Leicester and in 1754 started farming at Blackwell, where an uncle had died and left him the stock on his farm. It was here that he made his knitting invention.

William Lee's knitting machine remained in virtually the same form as he left it until the middle of the eighteenth century. The knitting industry moved away from London into the Midlands and in 1730 a Nottingham workman, using Indian spun yarn, produced the first pair of cotton hose ever made by mechanical means. This industry developed quickly and by 1750 was providing employment for 1,200 frameworkers using both wool and cotton in the Nottingham and Derby areas. It was against this background that Jedediah Strutt obtained patents for his Derby rib machine in 1758 and 1759.

The machine was a highly ingenious mechanism, which when placed in front of an ordinary stocking frame enabled the fashionable ribbed stockings to be made by machine instead of by hand. To develop this invention, he formed a partnership first with his brother-in-law, William Woollat, and two leading Derby hosiers, John Bloodworth and Thomas Stamford. This partnership was dissolved in 1762 and another was formed with Woollat and the Nottingham hosier Samuel Need. Strutt's invention was followed by a succession of innovations which enabled framework knitters to produce almost every kind of mesh on their machines. In 1764 the stocking frame was adapted to the making of eyelet holes, and this later lead to the production of lace. In 1767 velvet was made on these frames, and two years later brocade. In this way Strutt's original invention opened up a new era for knitting. Although all these later improvements were not his, he was able to make a fortune from his invention. In 1762 he was made a freeman of Nottingham, but by then he was living in Derby. His business at Derby was concerned mainly with silk hose and he had a silk mill there.

It was partly his need for cotton yarn and partly his wealth which led him into partnership with Richard Arkwright, John Smalley and David Thornley to exploit Arkwright's patent for spinning cotton by rollers. Together with Samuel Need, they financed the Arkwright partnership in 1770 to develop the horse-powered mill in Nottingham and then the water-powered mill at Cromford. Strutt gave advice to Arkwright about improving the machinery and helped to hold the partnership together when Arkwright fell out with his first partners. Strutt was also involved, in London, where he had a house, with the parliamentary proceedings over the passing of the Calico Act in 1774, which opened up the trade in British-manufactured all-cotton cloth.

In 1776 Strutt financed the construction of his own mill at Helper, about seven miles (11 km) further down the Derwent valley below Cromford. This was followed by another at Milford, a little lower on the river. Strutt was also a partner with Arkwright and others in the mill at Birkacre, near Chorley in Lancashire. The Strutt mills were developed into large complexes for cotton spinning and many experiments were later carried out in them, both in textile machinery and in fireproof construction for the mills themselves. They were also important training schools for engineers.

Elizabeth Strutt died in 1774 and Jedediah never married again. The family seem to have lived frugally in spite of their wealth, probably influenced by their Nonconformist background. He had built a house near the mills at Milford, but it was in his Derby house that Jedediah died in 1797. By the time of his death, his son William had long been involved with the business and became a more important cotton spinner than Jedediah.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Samuel Need was apprenticed as a framework knitter and entered the hosiery trade c. 1742. He was a Dissenter and later became an Independent Congregationalist. He married Elizabeth Gibson of Hacking, Middlesex, who survived him and died in 1781. He had a warehouse in Nottingham, where he was made a burgess in 1739–40. In 1747 he bought a mill there and had a house adjoining it, but in 1777 he bought an estate at Arnold, outside the city. From about 1759 he supported Jedediah Strutt and William Woollat in their development of Strutt's invention of the rib attachment to the knitting machine. Need became a partner with Strutt in 1762 over the patent and then they shared a joint hosiery business. When Arkwright sought financial assistance from Ichabod and John Wright, the Nottingham bankers, to develop his spinning mill in that town, the Wrights turned him over to Samuel Need. Need, having profited so much from the successful patent with Strutt, was ready to exploit another; on 19 January 1770 Need and Strutt, on payment of £500, became co-partners with Arkwright, Smalley and Thornley for the remainder of Arkwright's patent. In Need, Arkwright had secured the patronage of the leading hosier in Nottingham. Need was leader of the Hosiers' Federation in 1779 when the framework knitters petitioned Parliament to better their conditions. He gave evidence against the workers' demands and, when their bill failed, the Nottingham workers attacked first his Nottingham house and then the one at Arnold.

Need was to remain a partner with Arkwright until his death in 1781. He was involved in die mill at Cromford and also with some later ones, such as the Birkacre mill near Chorley, Lancashire, in 1777. He made a fortune and died at his home in London.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Arkwright was the youngest of thirteen children and was apprenticed to a barber; when he was about 18, he followed this trade in Bol ton. In 1755 he married Patients Holt, who bore him a son before she died, and he remarried in 1761, to Margaret Biggins. He prospered until he took a public house as well as his barber shop and began to lose money. After this failure, he travelled around buying women's hair for wigs.

In the late 1760s he began spinning experiments at Preston. It is not clear how much Arkwright copied earlier inventions or was helped by Thomas Highs and John Kay but in 1768 he left Preston for Nottingham, where, with John Smalley and David Thornley as partners, he took out his first patent. They set up a mill worked by a horse where machine-spun yarn was produced successfully. The essential part of this process lay in drawing out the cotton by rollers before it was twisted by a flyer and wound onto the bobbin. The partners' resources were not sufficient for developing their patent so Arkwright found new partners in Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt, hosiers of Nottingham and Derby. Much experiment was necessary before they produced satisfactory yarn, and in 1771 a water-driven mill was built at Cromford, where the spinning process was perfected (hence the name "waterframe" was given to his spinning machine); some of this first yarn was used in the hosiery trade. Sales of all-cotton cloth were initially limited because of the high tax on calicoes, but the tax was lowered in 1774 by Act of Parliament, marking the beginning of the phenomenal growth of the cotton industry. In the evidence for this Act, Arkwright claimed that he had spent £12,000 on his machine. Once Arkwright had solved the problem of mechanical spinning, a bottleneck in the preliminary stages would have formed but for another patent taken out in 1775. This covered all preparatory processing, including some ideas not invented by Arkwright, with the result that it was disputed in 1783 and finally annulled in 1785. It contained the "crank and comb" for removing the cotton web off carding engines which was developed at Cromford and solved the difficulty in carding. By this patent, Arkwright had mechanized all the preparatory and spinning processes, and he began to establish water-powered cotton mills even as far away as Scotland. His success encouraged many others to copy him, so he had great difficulty in enforcing his patent Need died in 1781 and the partnership with Strutt ended soon after. Arkwright became very rich and financed other spinning ventures beyond his immediate control, such as that with Samuel Oldknow. It was estimated that 30,000 people were employed in 1785 in establishments using Arkwright's patents. In 1786 he received a knighthood for delivering an address of thanks when an attempt to assassinate George III failed, and the following year he became High Sheriff of Derbyshire. He purchased the manor of Cromford, where he died in 1792.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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John Smalley of Preston was the second son of John, a chapman of Blackburn. He was a distant relative of Richard Arkwright through marrying, in 1751, Elizabeth Baxter, whose mother Ellen was the widow of Arkwright's uncle, Richard. In the Preston Guild Rolls of 1762 he was described as a grocer and painter, and he was also Landlord of the Bull Inn. The following year he became a bailiff of Preston and in 1765 he became a Corporation steward. On 14 May 1768 Arkwright, Smalley and David Thornley became partners in a cotton-spinning venture in Nottingham. They agreed to apply for a patent for Arkwright's invention of spinning by rollers, and Smalley signed as a witness. It is said that Smalley provided much of the capital for this new venture as he sold his business at Preston for about £1,600, but this was soon found to be insufficient and the partnership had to be enlarged to include Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt.

Smalley may have helped to establish the spinning mill at Nottingham, but by 28 February 1771 he was back in Preston, for on that day he was chosen a "Councilman in the room of Mr. Thomas Jackson deceased" (Fitton 1989:38). He attended meetings for over a year, but either in 1772 or the following year he sold the Bull Inn, and certainly by August 1774 the Smalleys were living in Cromford, where he became Manager of the mill. He soon found himself at logger-heads with Arkwright; however, Strutt was able to smooth the dispute over for a while. Things came to a head in January 1777 when Arkwright was determined to get rid of Smalley, and the three remaining partners agreed to buy out Smalley's share for the sum of £10,751.

Although he had agreed not to set up any textile machinery, Smalley moved to Holywell in North Wales, where in the spring of 1777 he built a cotton-spinning mill in the Greenfield valley. He prospered there and his son was later to build two more mills in the same valley. Smalley used to go to Wrexham to sell his yarn, and there met John Peers, a leather merchant, who was able to provide a better quality leather for covering the drawing rollers which came to be used in Lancashire. Smalley died in 1782, shortly before Arkwright could sue him for infringement of his patents.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Samuel's father, William, was a respected independent farmer who died when his son was aged 14; the young Slater was apprenticed to his father's friend, Jedediah Strutt for six and a half years at the beginning of 1783. He showed mathematical ability and quickly acquainted himself thoroughly with cotton-spinning machinery made by Arkwright, Hargreaves and Crompton. After completing his apprenticeship, he remained for a time with the Strutts to act as Supervisor for a new mill.

At that time it was forbidden to export any textile machinery or even drawings or data from England. The emigration of textile workers was forbidden too, but in September 1789 Slater left for the United States in disguise, having committed the details of the construction of the cotton-spinning machinery to memory. He reached New York and was employed by the New York Manufacturing Company.

In January 1790 he met Moses Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, and on 5 April 1790 he signed a contract to construct Arkwright's spinning machinery for Almy \& Brown. It took Slater more than a year to get the machinery operational because of the lack of skilled mechanics and tools, but by 1793 the mill was running under the name of Almy, Brown \& Slater. In October 1791 Slater had married Hannah Wilkinson, and in 1798 he set up his own mill in partnership with his father-in-law, Orziel Wilkinson. This mill was built in Pawtucket, near the first mill, but other mills soon followed in Smithville, Rhode Island, and elsewhere. Slater was the Incorporator, and for the first fifteen years was also President of the Manufacturer's Bank in Pawtucket. It was in his business role and as New England's first industrial capitalist that Slater made his most important contributions to the emergence of the American textile industry.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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On 4 November 1766 David Thornley married Mary, daughter of Joseph Brown, roper, at St Peter's, Liverpool. In Gore's Dictionary for 1767 Thornley is described as "merchant" and his wife as "milliner" of Castle Street, Liverpool. David Thornley was distantly related to Richard Arkwright and certainly by 1768 Thornley had begun his active association with Arkwright when he joined him in Preston, an event recorded in the inquiry into the qualifications of those who had voted in the Burgoyne election. Thornley may have helped Arkwright with the technical development of his spinning machine.

On 14 May 1768, Arkwright, Smalley and Thornley became partners in the cotton-spinning venture at Nottingham for a term of fourteen years, or longer if a patent could be obtained. Each partner was to have three one-ninth shares and was to advance such money as might be necessary to apply for a patent as well as to develop the spinning machine. Profits were to be divided equally as often as convenient and the partners were to devote their whole time to the business after a period of two years. How-ever, it seems that in 1769 the partners had difficulty in raising the necessary money to finance the patent, and Thornley had to reduce his stake in the partnership to a one-ninth share. By this time Thornley must have moved to Nottingham, where Arkwright established his first mill. On 19 January 1770, additional finance was provided by two new partners, Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt, and alterations were made to the mill buildings that the partners had leased to work the spinning machines by horse power. Arkwright and Thornley were to be responsible for the day-to-day management of the mill, receiving £25 per annum for these duties. Thornley appears to have remained at Nottingham to supervise the mill, while the other partners moved to Cromford to establish the much larger enterprise there. It was at Nottingham that David Thornley died in January 1772, and his share in the partnership was bought from his wife, Mary, by Arkwright. Mary returned to her millinery business in Liverpool.

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