Cottoning on (ii)

Yesterday I mentioned the unusual names of jobs in the nineteenth century cotton spinning industry, and set a little quiz about what the jobs actually were… here are the answers…

1. beamer/beam twister/beam warper – hundred of cones of cotton thread need to be loaded onto the beam, ready for weaving -the beam is a giant bobbin.
2. crofter – I was nearly right with the idea of a croft, but it’s not for cows, it’s to spread the cloth after bleaching or dying
3. doffer – someone who loads and unloads bobbins (puts empty bobbins into the machine to receive the thread)
4. fly -maker – an engineer who makes the fly which is part of the spinning machine mechanism
5. masher-up – someone who works in the bleach room
6. mule-spinner – someone who operates a spinning ‘mule’, the equipment on which the cotton is spun into thread
7. scutcher – someone who separates  the cotton fibres from the seeds of the raw cotton

Did you get them all right? Here are some more, with my facetious suggestions:

1. setter on                      – obviously someone who sets something on (maybe to do with the tea making, see masher above!)
2. sizer                               – the person who checks what size something is
3. slasher                           – security
4. stripper and grinder    – I’m not even going to hazard a guess
5. tackler                           – someone who’s given all the difficult jibs to do
6. tenter                            – in a cotton mill they might have a side-line in making tents
7. throstle spinner            – a throstle is a thrush… so someone who looks after the throstles?
8. twister                           – a Lancashire tornado
9. warper                            – someone with one leg shorter than the other

… and here is a link:

http://www.andrewalston.co.uk/cottonindustryjobs.html