INDUSTRIES 



makers, who were incorporated as a company. 

 During the last thirty years of the ijth cen- 

 tury, a commercial war on a small scale had 

 raged between the Flemish and British pin- 

 merchants, interesting in view of the present 

 complaints of the Stroud pin manufacturers 

 against Dutch competition. In 1571 (at which 

 date, it may be mentioned, the English price of 

 pins is rated at \d. per 1,000), pins are included 

 in a list of the principal products of the Low 

 Countries ; the latter were said to be raising 

 their prices, and government retaliation was asked 

 for. 1 Twenty years later, after some litigation, 

 a suit against Flemish merchants for importing 

 pins was dismissed ; for a recent treaty made at 

 Bristol had sanctioned their import, as the per- 

 sistent stoppage of these products had been fol- 

 lowed by the restraint of English cloth abroad. 1 



Despite the admission of foreign pins, which 

 produced frequent complaints in the early years 

 of the 1 7th century, it is at that period that the 

 manufacture began in Gloucester. A general 

 tradition ascribes its introduction in 1626 to one 

 John Tilsley from Bristol. An unpretentious 

 local ballad describes how ' Gentle Johnnie 

 Tilsley came, And invented pins in Gloucester." 

 We need hardly, perhaps, believe the current 

 statement that previously local wearers of pins 

 had subsisted on ' prickles of thorns, curiously 

 scraped and dried ' by poor women in Wales.* 

 There is an account of his original bargain 

 with the mayor, which shows a desire, worthy 

 of a modern municipality, to encourage the 

 establishment of a fresh industry. He was to 

 be. provided with a house, to be lent 200, 

 and to be supplied with thirty boys at least, who 

 should learn the trade at wages of I2d. to is. 6d. 

 per week for three years. 4 Tilsley's industry 

 took root, fostered no doubt by the developing 

 local brass and iron production in the i8th 

 century. In 1712 the pin manufacture produced 

 j8o a week, in 1744, 300,* while in 1781 it 

 was said to return ,20,000 per annum from 

 London alone, besides an extensive country trade.' 

 There were in 1802 nine factories employing 

 at least 1,500 persons, and supplying a large 

 market in Spain and America. In 1837 pin- 

 making was still the most important industry of 

 the city, though only three factories survived. 

 *The wire was drawn out and pointed in the 



S.P. Dom. Eliz. Add. xix, No. 63. 



S.P. Dom. Eliz. ccxxxix, No. 18. 



Fosbrookc, op. cit. 24. 



J. J. Powell, Glotutttriana. 



The GkucesUr Journal of 1735 mentions a great 

 trouble among the pin-makers, which is the chief 

 manufacture of the city, and we hear that they have 

 advanced the wages of their work-folks twopence in a 

 shilling, from whence we infer that pins will soon be 

 a sharp commodity, but it will be well if the masters 

 do notprict their fingers by it." 

 ' Rudder, op. cit. 63. 



factory, the driving of which was by horse 

 power. The heading, or "nobbing," was done 

 in the homes of the workers.' Each pin is said 

 to have passed through twenty-five hands, which 

 process supplied Adam Smith with the illustration 

 to his well-known chapter on the benefits of 

 division of labour. 'Within living memory 

 (1860) the sound of pin machines could be heard 

 from nearly every door in the Island and in 

 Leather Bottle Lane.' 7 The introduction of 

 solid heads (invented almost accidentally in 

 1824) which required more elaborate machinery 

 and necessitated the work being done entirely 

 in the factory, probably caused the decline of 

 the trade.* 



Like many other early Victorian traders, the old 

 pin manufacturers were unable to adjust them- 

 selves to changed conditions ; heavy rating per- 

 haps burdened them in the struggle, and although 

 at Tewkesbury an enterprising pair of local 

 tradesmen introduced a manufacture of ' superla- 

 tive solid heads and improved points,' which en- 

 joyed a boom for a short time, the firm of Kirby, 

 Beard & Co., to whom the business was sold in 

 1 849, were soon reduced to abandon it, while in 

 1855 the last Gloucester pin factory moved to 

 Birmingham. 



The manufacture of solid-headed pins is now 

 only carried on in the county by Messrs. Critch- 

 ley Bros., Wimberley Mills, Brimscombe, whose 

 total output capacity in hairpins and solid-headed 

 pins is 15 tons per week. Their firm, founded 

 60 years ago in the neighbourhood of Wood- 

 chester, employed in 1906 about 300 hands, 

 and manufactured every kind of bone and solid- 

 headed pin, from Kaffir pins 4^ in. long to 

 minnikin pins -fg in. in length. The kindred 

 production of wooden knitting-needles, crochet- 

 hooks, &c., is carried on by them at Darkmills. 

 Hairpins and safety-pins now seem to be 

 taking the place once held by solid-headed pins 

 as a local product. At Gloucester itself, the 

 Gloucester Pin Co. (founded 1892) with seventy 

 operatives, make hairpins (i ton weekly) and 

 hooks and eyes, while in the small town of 

 Painswick three manufacturers' produce hair- 

 pins, hooks and eyes, and safety-pins in large 

 quantities. At Woodchester and Wotton 

 under Edge there are also pin factories ; and 

 there are at least two at Bristol. On the whole, 

 the pin trade in its present form is, despite 

 very strong foreign competition and protective 

 duties, flourishing and expanding. 



* J. J. Powell, Glouceitriana. 



J. Platt, ' Progress of Manufactures in Glo'ster, 

 1837-97 ' ; Report of GIouc. Cham, of Cm. 1897. 



' Watkins, Okey & Co, founded more than fifty 

 years ago, specialize on hairpins ; Cole & Co. make 

 hairpins, hooks and eyes, and safety-pins ; Savory 

 & Sons produce hairpins, &c., and, unlike most 

 makers, draw their own wire. 



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