MY ANCESTOR WAS A... FRAMEWORK KNITTER
Machine knitting gave employment to whole families for centuries. Sue Wilkes discovers the lives of your ancestors in the loop…
Sue Wilkes explores the world of framework knitting – once a thriving cottage industry in Britain
Our ancestors wore knitted stockings and originally all were hand-knitted. Then, in 1589, William Lee of Calverton in Nottinghamshire invented the revolutionary stocking frame. This machine (also called a ‘stocking loom’) made a continuous thread loop around itself to form a kind of netting or lattice-work. A stocking frame could create 1,000 to 1,500 silk loops per minute. The finished fabric could stretch over a limb while still fitting snugly.
William failed to earn his fortune, however, as Elizabeth I was worried that his invention would make it harder for hand-knitters to earn their living. He moved to France and set up a factory, but died soon afterwards. His brother, James, took the invention back to England and the framework knitting industry became established in Spitalfields, London.
Oliver Cromwell gave framework knitters their first charter in 1657; it was confirmed by Charles II in 1663. After this, the London Framework Knitters’ Company
A stocking frame could create 1,000 to 1,500 silk loops per minute
regulated the trade, limited the number of apprentices taken on (who served a seven-year apprenticeship), and controlled fabric quality.
Some master hosiers moved to the Midlands to escape the company’s tight control. A parliamentary enquiry in 1753 found that the company was “hurtful to the trade” and it lost control. The burgeoning hosiery industry became centred in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, but there were also framework knitters in places like Glasgow and Hawick.
Knitters at this time were known as ‘stockingers’ and they produced a variety of wares. The most closely knitted stockings (and most expensive) were made from silk; ‘dumps’ were silk stockings with no decoration, made in various sizes (gauges). Woollen or worsted stockings were coarser, but cheaper to buy. The first cotton stockings appeared in the 1730s.
During the 18th century, the framework knitting machine underwent several technical innovations; the most important was Jedediah Strutt’s patented ‘Derby rib’, which enabled ribbed stockings to be knitted on the frame. The new ribbed stockings proved immensely popular.
The industry continued to grow and at the turn of the 19th century gloves, pantaloons and waistcoats were all knitted by machine – by 1832 there were 33,000 frames in Britain. Yet another adaptation enabled lace to be knitted by machine (‘ bobbin-net’).
Typically, frames were sited in workshops or cottages, although some framework knitters worked in their own homes, assisted by their wives and children. The frames were expensive, so they were often rented. ‘Frame-smiths’ built and repaired frames and some rented out their machines too.
Yarn was distributed to the knitters by ‘petty’ or ‘ bag’ hosiers, who employed 10-50 hands of various ages. The bag hosiers sent the finished items to merchants’ warehouses in the big towns. Some bag hosiers owned frames as well.
Poor as a stockinger
Wages varied hugely according to the type of goods made, the season, and changes in fashion. Knitters often struggled to make ends meet as they had to pay for frame-rent, candles, coals, needles, and other ‘shop costs’ out of their own wages. These frame-rents were a constant grievance because they had to be paid even if no work was available. Sometimes the knitters were paid in goods instead of money (the ‘truck system’). William Felkin, investigating in the 1840s, found that the average weekly wages in the Midlands ranged from 4s to 8s weekly after costs and rent.
Many families endured great poverty and ‘as poor as a stockinger’ became a common proverb. This financial distress often led to civil unrest. As early as 1779, angry framework knitters smashed 300 stockingframes and torched a house in Nottingham when Parliament refused to set a fair wage.
Trouble flared again during 1811–12 when cheap and nasty stockings (‘cut-ups’) flooded the market. ‘Cut-ups’ were made on ‘wide frames’, which had been previously used for making pantaloons before they fell out of fashion. Fabric made on these frames was cut into pieces, then
In the 1840s, a narrow frame could make 480 women’s cotton hose each year
sewn together to make stockings. Wages fell as a result of the influx of cut-ups and as a result there were several Luddite attacks on stocking- and lace-frames in the Nottingham area. Arrests were made, several Luddites transported and frame-breaking made a capital offence.
The stocking-frames were often worked by
children. The Second Report of the Commissioners: Trades and
Manufactures, an investigation into children’s employment in the early 1840s, found that at Nottingham: “When the boys come to ten or 12 they begin to work in the frame; some begin at nine.” At Leicester, framework knitter John Grant said that girls began knitting worsted stockings at “nine or ten” years old. Children worked the same hours as adults, which was often a 14-hour day excluding mealtimes.
It took children three to six months to master one of the most difficult skills on the machine: ‘meeting the presser’. The knitter’s hand and foot had to work together so that the frame moved up while at the same time bringing down the ‘presser’ and throwing the work over the needle heads.
Very young children helped with the work at home too in the mid-19th century. Cornelius Smith, a silk glovemaker, said: “It is a general custom in the hosiery trade for the mechanics to set their children, of both sexes, to seam and wind at the age of seven or eight; many begin at an earlier age.”
There were many different roles in the industry performed by both adults and children. Seamers stitched the seams of the hosiery; winders wound thread onto bobbins; and the intricate work of embroidering and ‘chevening’ (adding decorative raised stitching) was usually done by girls.
The children who worked at seaming, chevening and winding earned from 1s (5p) to 4s 6d (22½p) per week, depending on their age and skill. By this date, very few children were apprenticed to framework knitters, except those bound by the parish authorities under the Poor Laws. In Leicester alone, nearly 13,000 under 18s worked in the industry.
In addition to the long hours, the workshops’ dense, close atmosphere affected the workers’ health and child cheveners often fainted while stitching. Framework knitters of all ages suffered from eye complaints because the stitches were so tiny; many became extremely short-sighted. To aid their delicate work, the knitters would suspend a large globe filled with water in front of a lamp to act as a lens to condense the light into a concentrated beam.
Human-powered framework knitting eventually became obsolete. William Cotton’s steam-powered ‘rotary frame’ (1860s) made ten stockings at once. By the 1890s, a selfacting circular machine, tended by one person, created 120,000 stitches per minute. Mr Cotton’s new machines spread worldwide and were used until after the Second World War. Only a few knitters now used the old frames to make specialist items.