Behind The Headlines
The major events of 1760–1769
The family of James Hargreaves span single threads on the age-old spinning wheel that had been in use in Europe since the Middle Ages. He had the idea for the spinning jenny when a spinning wheel was toppled but continued to revolve. He realised that a number of spindles could be placed upright side by side, all powered by a horizontal wheel, increasing the number of threads that could be spun. A commentator said he made his machine “almost wholly with a pocket knife. It contained eight spindles, and the clasp by which the thread was drawn out was the stalk of a briar split in two.” He called it a ‘spinning jenny’ using the term for an engine, and began making them for sale.
At first the jenny was welcomed by hand-spinners, but when they saw how much yarn could be produced, and the fall in prices for spun yarn, they feared for their jobs. His daughter Mary later reported how a local mob “came to our house and burnt the frame work of 20 new machines which were in the barn, and all the working implements”.
Hargreaves moved to Nottingham with his family where he worked on jennies for the woollen industry, becoming a partner in a new mill in Hockley. He attempted to fight infringements of his patent on the
jenny, but the pace of change was too great. His mill was moderately prosperous, and when he died in 1778 his widow received £400 for his share in it from his partners.
Mechanisation was proceeding fast. Hargreaves’ invention in 1765 produced yarn in bulk, but not of great strength. In 1767 Richard Arkwright patented the water frame – a spinning frame that was powered by water and could make much stronger thread. These two innovations were later combined by Samuel Crompton in a machine he called a ‘mule’. Such technical developments were part of a process that was to make the UK textile industry the most productive in the world.