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Child Workers in the Pillow Lace and Straw Plait Trades of Victorian Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Pamela Horn
Pamela Horn
Affiliation:
Oxford Polytechnic
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Extract

Although for most country girls in Victorian England the choice of work outside the home was limited to domestic service, there were certain areas to which this did not apply. In some cases the reason lay in the existence of competing employment in local factories or workshops - so that in Lancashire (taking rural and urban districts together) about one in four girls aged between ten and fifteen were employed in cotton manufacture at the time of the 1871 Census of Population. But in other places, the cause was the continued survival of a cottage industry in which child labour played a significant role and where ‘a wellordered family [could] obtain as much or more than the husband who [was] at work on [a] neighbouring farm’ This latter circumstance applied to the counties of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, where particularly during the first half of Queen Victoria's reign the pillow lace and straw plait trades were of considerable importance - the latter being organized primarily to meet the needs of the hat industry of Luton and Dunstable. Table 1 shows the size of the work force as recorded in the Census Reports of 1851,1861 and 1871. Nevertheless, these figures are probably an under-estimate of the true position, since many of the women and children working only on a part-time basis did not bother to declare their occupation to the Census enumerator.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1974 , pp. 779 - 796
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Tansley, A. J., ‘On the Straw Plait Trade’, Journal of the Society of Arts, IX, 72, 21 Dec. 1860.Google Scholar

2 The national female straw-plaiting work force in 1861 was 27,739 - of whom 10,271 were under the age of twenty. The male work force comprised 2,128, of whom 1,561 were under twenty. By 1871 the respective total figures were 45,270 female straw plaiters of all ages and 3,593 males. Other important straw-plaiting counties were Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Tansley, A. J., op. cit., p. 71, and the 1861 and 1871 Censuses of Population. See also Victoria County History of Bedfordshire (1908), 11, 121.Google Scholar

3 Post Office Directory for Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, 1864. By 1877 the respective figures were twenty-one lace dealers, sixty-seven straw factors, bleachers and dyers and seventy plait dealers. Post Office Directory for Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, 1877. In addition, the lace trade attracted a local network of producers of the bobbins, pillows, candle-stools, etc., used in the making of pillow lace. Charles Freeman, Pillow Lace in the East Midlands (1958). As regards plait, Tansley, A. J., op. cit., 72, estimated that in the late 1850s there was an average national output of 200m. yards of this each year. It was sold in lengths of twenty yards - a score - at prices ranging between 2d. and 3s. per score, according to the nature and quality of the plait concerned. Another estimate put the yearly returns of the plait and straw hat trades together at about £900,000 in 1851, and suggested that ten years later the figure had ‘probably doubled’. Charles Knight, ‘Localized Handicrafts in South-Midland Agricultural Districts‘ in British Almanac and Companion, 1861, p. 10.Google Scholar

4 Tansley, A. J., op. cit., p. 72Google Scholar and Freeman, Charles, op. cit., pp. 9–11.Google Scholar

5 Tansley, A. J., op. cit., p. 69 and Caird, James, English Agriculture in 1850–51 (1968 ed.), p. 454. A small quantity of the finest grasses and straws was also imported (mainly from Tuscany) for the highest quality plaits, but most English plait was made from locally grown straws.Google Scholar

6 Straw plaiting benefited from the fact that, at a time when straw hats were becoming fashionable, fine quality Leghorns could no longer be brought in from Italy. In addition, the invention around 1800 of a simple device for splitting the coarse English straws into thin even strips made possible the production of a range of fine plaits for use in the hat industry of this country.

7 As late as the 1890s, J. L. Green saw fashion changes as a problem for the plait trade: ‘The cause of the decay is … to some extent, the use of other materials for bonnets, and the small size of straw bonnets when they are worn.’ Green, J. L., The Rural Industries of England (London, 1894), p. 61. For lacemaking see Felkin's History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures (Centenary ed., 1967), ch. xiv.Google Scholar

8 MrsPalliser, B., History of Lace (1902 ed.), p. 392.Google Scholar

9 Dony, John G., A History of the Straw Hat Industry (1942), pp. 86–7.Google Scholar

10 Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission, Parliamentary Papers, 1864, XXII, xxix (hereafter cited as 1864 Report). See also Horn, Pamela L. R., ‘Pillow Lacemaking in Victorian England: The Experience of Oxfordshire’ in Textile History (1972), III, 110Google Scholar

11 Clergy Visitation Returns, Buckingham Archdeaconry, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1857, MS Oxf. Dioc. Pp. d.179.

12 Godber, Joyce, History of Bedfordshire (1969), p. 506. In some schools lacemaking was included in the ordinary curriculum - as at Emberton Charity School, Buckinghamshire, in the 1820s, where it was noted in 1822 at the appointment of a new school mistress that it was ‘indispensable to engage some one who understands the manufacture of Lace…’.Google Scholar

13 1864 Report, p. xxix.

14 First Report of the Children's Employment Commission, Parliamentary Papers, 1863, XVII, 262–3 (hereafter cited as 1863 Report).

15 First Report of the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons and Women in Agriculture, Parliamentary Papers, 1867–8, XVII, 516 (hereafter cited as 1867–68 Report).Google Scholar

16 Victoria County History of Oxfordshire, 11 (1907)Google Scholar, quoting from the 1865 edition of Mrs Palliser's, B.History of Lace, pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

17 1863 Report, p. 256 (evidence of Mrs Allen of High Wycombe, a lace dealer).

18 Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission, Parliamentary Papers, 1843, XIII, III.Google Scholar

19 1863 Report, p. 259.

20 Wright, Thomas, The Romance of the Lace Pillow (1919), p. 107.Google Scholar

21 Wright, Thomas, op. cit., pp. 185–192. But see also Charles Knight, British Almanac, 1861, p. 23.Google Scholar

22 Wright, Thomas, op. cit., ch. xiv.Google Scholar

23 1867–68 Report (Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire), 134.

24 1863 Report, 256 and 262 (evidence of Mrs Allen of High Wycombe and Mrs Smith of WilshampsCead, Bedfordshire).

25 Ivy Pinchbeck, , Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750–1850 (1969 ed.), p. 206.Google Scholar

26 1863 Report, p. 256.

27 Second Report of Children's Employment Commission, Parliamentary Papers, 1843, XIII, 97.

28 1863 Report, p. 262. The patterns were normally produced by local men, and examples survive of patterns designed by Ayres of Riseley, Lester of Bedford, Millward of Olney, and so on. Charles Freeman, op. cit., p. 24. In a few cases only was the ‘putting out’ system formally adopted. For example, John Biss, a lace dealer and grocer from Buckingham, supplied the materials and patterns to lacemakers, ‘fixing beforehand the amount that he will give for their labour; the lace then belongs to him …’ 1863 Report.

29 1863 Report, p. 257.

30 Workshop Regulation Act, 1867, sections 14–17.

31 Report of the Royal Commission on the Factory and Workshops Acts, Parliamentary Papers, 1876, vol. xxx (evidence of the Rev. Hugh Smyth, vicar of Houghton Regis, Q. 315).Google Scholar

32 Report of Inspector of Factories for Six Months ending 31 Oct. 1872, Parliamentary Papers, 1872, xix, 64.Google Scholar

33 Odell School Log Book is preserved at Bedford County Record Office.

34 In the early twentieth century the Beds and Bucks Lace Association organized special classes for children; the scheme was mainly financed by private sponsors who were anxious to preserve lacemaking as a rural craft. Its impsct was very limited. Freeman, Charles, op. cit., p. 21.Google Scholar

35 Newport Pagnell Union Minute Book, 1836–38, G/4/1 at Buckinghamshire County Record office. Entries for 8 Oct. 1836 and n Mar. 1837. On 12 May 1838 another entry reads: ‘The Master was directed to place a Board in the front of the Workhouse Stating that a quantity of Lace is to be disposed of and that there are several young persons ready to be placed out to Service.’ On 21 July, a note appeared that the sum of £10 17s. IId. had been realized from the sale of ‘potatoes, Lace, Straw Plait, ’ By the middle of the century straw plaiting is reported at none of the Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire workhouses, although at Hitchin and Hemel Hempstead workhouses in Hertfordshire a little was carried out - in the former case into the 1870s. At that date the income from plaiting at Hitchin was said to be ‘trifling’.

36 Paupers (Industrial Employment) Report, 1872 (Cd. 235). Also Employment in Workhouses Report, 1852 (Cd. 513), p. 3.

37 1864 Report, p. 197.

38 1864 Report, p. xl.

39 1864 Report, p. 203.

40 As the length of each split was only nine or ten inches, new ones had to be introduced at regular intervals into the plait, leaving small portions of the heads and tails of the straws projecting from the plait. Freeman, Charles, Luton and the Hat Industry (1964), p. 19.Google Scholar For a fuller description of the organization of the plait trade, see the contemporary account by Austin, T. G., The Straw Trade (1871).Google Scholar

41 1864 Report, p. 201.

42 1864 Report, p. 199.

43 Pamela Horn, L. R., ‘The Buckinghamshire Straw Plait Trade in Victorian England’ in Records of Bucks, XIX, pt. 1, 1971, 45, for examples of whole families thus occupied.Google Scholar

44 1867–68 Report, p. 136.

45 Clergy Visitation Returns, Buckingham Archdeaconry, in Library, Bodleian, 1854, MS Oxf. Dioc. Pp. d.701 and 1866, MS Oxf. Dioc. Pp. c.331.Google Scholar

46 1867–68 Report, p. 135.

47 1867–68 Report, p. 522 and Edlesborough and Oving Baptismal Registers preserved at Buckinghamshire County Record Office.

48 1864 Report, p. 202. Tansley, A. J., op. cit., suggested that in i860 children of about six years of age could obtain from 6d. to IS. 6d. per week ‘after their plait is disposed of by their parents’. Those ‘above eight or nine years … earn 2s. to 3s. per week. On leaving school, they earn 4s. to 5s. if expert plaiters, and after they become skilful they may obtain as much as 7s.’ p. 71.Google Scholar

49 1864 Report, p. xli.

50 Clergy Visitation Returns, Buckingham Archdeaconry, in Library, Bodleian, 1854, MS Oxf. Dioc. Pp. d.701 and 1872, MS Oxf. Dice. Pp. c.337.Google Scholar

51 Clergy Visitation Returns, Buckingham Archdeaconry, in Library, Bodleian, 1857, MS Oxf. Dioc. Pp. d.179. This attitude is an interesting contrast with that which applied earlier in the century at Leckhampstead, another Buckinghamshire village (see Vestry Minute Books at Bucks Record Office). Here, during the 1820s and early 1830s (prior to the passage of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act) the vestry organized a plaiting school for poor children in the local ‘poor house’. The idea was that the children should be ‘bred up in early habits of industry and thereby acquire the means of earning their daily bread…’And on 29 Sept. 1831 it was resolved: ‘That those Poor Persons who have Children (especially Boys) old enough to attend the Schools of Industry, and are not in the Poor House be ordered immediately to send them to the House to work … and it is agreed by this meeting not to employ … the Parents of any Children who do not attend regularly.’Google Scholar

52 Pamela Horn, L. R., ‘The Buckinghamshire Straw Plait Trade in Victorian England’, loc. cit., p. 48Google Scholar and Dony, John G., op. cit., pp. 81–3.Google Scholar

53 Dony, John G., op. cit., p. 84.Google Scholar

54 Report of the Inspectors of Factories for the Six Months Ending 30th Apr. 1874, Parliamentary Papers, 1874, XIII, 11. At Leckhampstead, Buckinghamshire, the Vestry Minute Book entry for 8 Apr. 1830 states that the mistress of the Poor House plaiting school was to ‘have her Meals at the Poor House - and be paid 3/- per week instead of 6/- as before’ (Bucks County Record Office).Google Scholar

55 Vestry Minute Book of Shefford preserved at Bedford County Office, P. 70/8/1. Entry: 2 Apr. 1872).

56 Report of the Inspectors of Factories for tie Six Months Ending 30 Apr. 1874, Parliamentary Papers, 1874, XIII, 10 for details of the Bedfordshire villages.Google Scholar

57 Ivinghoe School Log Book is preserved at Buckinghamshire County Record Office, E/LB/116/1.

58 Shillington School Log Book is preserved at Bedfordshire County Record Office.

59 Godber, Joyce, op. cit., p. 541.Google Scholar

60 Report of the Royal Commission on the Factory and Workships Acts, Parliamentary Papers, 1876, xxx, Q. 3131.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., Q. 3181. Significantly, Sub-Inspector Striedinger, one of the factory inspectors, also told the Commission: ‘There is a great force in the arguments so often made use of by the advocates of light labour of young children, that certain manipulations requiring nimbleness of fingers, if not learnt and mastered at a tender age, cannot be learnt at all. If the Workshops Act of 1867 could and would be enforced according to the letter, it would probably have the effect of exterminating the plait and pillow-lace trades altogether.’ (Ibid., 1876, XXIX, 86.)