A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



Sir Robert Peel, the first baronet, in the Dic- 

 tionary of Actional Biography, says : — 



His father, Robert Peel, had founded the fortunes of 

 the family in 1764, when, having mortgaged his 

 family estates, he established at Blackburn in con- 

 junction with his brother-in-law, Mr. Haworth, and 

 a neighbour named Yates, a calico printing firm, 

 which miy be considered the parent of the industry 

 of Lancashire. 



Baines says the firm of Haworth, Peel & Yates 

 followed the Claytons.' Espinasse thinks they 

 probably started as manufacturers of Blackburn 

 greys, and that they added cloth printing to 

 their business afterwards.^" Graham informs us 

 that printing at Blackburn was first begun by 

 the Peel family about the year 1770, previous 

 to their separating and going to Church Bank 

 and Bury,^' which happened in 1772.'- 



The next point to be considered is the de- 

 velopment of processes in the calico-printing 

 industry. In the early days, prior to those of 

 which we have been speaking, the printing was 

 performed exclusively by hand, with wooden 

 blocks, upon which the designs were produced 

 in relief by some portion of the wood being cut 

 away. In the finer parts of the patterns, slips 

 of sheet copper were beaten into the wood. 

 Somewhere about 1750 a new method was 

 introduced of pencilling into the goods that had 

 been dyed other colours. This pencilling was 

 usually done by women ; probably it was first 

 introduced at Aberdeen and then gradually 

 >prcad over the kingdom.^' 



A great development in the calico-printing 

 industry was occasioned by the invention of the 

 flat printing press about the year 1760. It 

 contained copper plates on which the pattern 

 was cut out with the graver. The colour was 

 put on the plate with a large brush and the 

 superfluous colour removed by a thin steel 

 scraper. The plate was then passed with the 

 cloth through a press similar in principle to that 

 of the common printer. This method was first 

 successfully worked at Old Ford near London : 

 Mr. John Stirling possesses a specimen printed 

 at these works in 176 1. It is 80 in. in length 

 and 38 in. in width without a repeat. This 

 method was largely adopted in Scotland for the 

 production of pocket handkerchiefs," and was also 

 made use of by most Lancashire calico printers." 



The great improvement in the art was the 

 invention of cylinder or roller printing. This 

 invention is generally associated with the name 



^ Hist, of the Cotton Industry, 262. 



'° Espinasse, Lane. Iforthies (ser. 2), 66. 



" Graham, op. cit. 357. "Ibid. 360, 365. 



"John Stirling, 'Hist, of Colour Printing in the 

 United Kingdom,' Joum. of the Soc. of Dyers and 

 Cokurists, Feb. 1903. 



" See Stirling's paper. 



"Graham, op. cit. 34.5, quoted below. 



396 



of Thomas Bell, a Scotsm.in in the employ of 

 Livesey, Hargrcaves & Co., of Mosncy Works, 

 near Preston. His share in this invention, how- 

 ever, is not quite certain. Baines writes : — 

 'This . . . invention is said to have been made 

 ... by Bell.' A somewhat different aspect of 

 the case is given by Espinasse : — '' 



As early as 1704 we light upon traces of cylinder 

 printing. In that year Thomas Fryer, Thomas 

 Greenhow, and John Newbery patented ' a machine 

 for printing, staining, and colouring of silks, stuffs, 

 linen, cotton, leather, and paper by means of copper 

 cylinders, which are put in motion by other plain 

 cylinders ... It was not till 1783 and 1784 that 

 Thomas Bell took out two patents which made 

 cylinder printing practicable ... It was first suc- 

 cessfully applied in Lancashire about 1785 at Mosney, 

 near Preston, by Livesey, Hargreaves, HaU & Co. 



An entirely different account of the develop- 

 ment of processes in the calico-printing industry 

 is given by Graham : — '* 



Printing was at that time [1760] very slow in all its 

 processes, chemistry not being understood as at present 

 [1848]. Bleaching out of grey cloth required a great 

 breadth of land. Cloth for printing was linen, linen 

 and cotton, and strong velvet for the Russian market. 

 After some few years the idea of printing from copper 

 plates was taken from the copper-plate press printers, 

 and the press was made use of by most of the calico 

 printers in plates of different lengths from 5 inches to 

 36, and allowed to work by the block printers of 

 those days, without much molestation, in patterns of 

 one colour. In after times the masters began to think 

 of other improvements. Mr. Robert Peel saw the 

 style of work called Stormont pins, which he thought 

 would have a good run. He ordered a large broom 

 or besom of very fine twigs, with which he spurted 

 the cloth after being printed with block. By this 

 contrivance the spots were very irregular in size and 

 quantity ; his man Christopher Roberts, a mechanic, 

 contrived a circular brush of the same length as 

 the piece was broad ; it was made of bristles, the 

 ends were allowed only to touch the colour, and then 

 by a rule laid across the brush being turned by hand, 

 the cloth at the same time being drawn across a 

 common table, the rule spurted the colour from the 

 ends of bristles on the cloth, forming the ground of 

 what was then called a Stormont pin. 



Later, at Christopher Roberts' suggestion, a 

 wooden surface roller filled with pins was sub- 

 stituted for the brush and successfully applied : — 



They next saw it was quite possible to put regularly 

 designed patterns on the surface roller, and cut them 

 in the same way as the regular block, which was put 

 into execution to great advantage ; machines were 

 improved ; the idea of cylinder printing suggested 

 itself. The block printers took alarm, and in 1 790 

 made a general strike against all machinery. It 

 lasted 1 3 weeks, and ended in the defeat of the block 

 printers. 



^^Hist. of the Cotton Industry, 265. 

 "Law. Worthies (scr. 2), 70-72. 

 "Op. cit. 345-6. 



