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…
- 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.
- 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
- doffer – someone who loads and unloads bobbins (puts empty bobbins into the machine to receive the thread)
- fly -maker – an engineer who makes the fly which is part of the spinning machine mechanism
- masher-up – someone who works in the bleach room
- mule-spinner – someone who operates a spinning ‘mule’, the equipment on which the cotton is spun into thread
- 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:
- setter on – obviously someone who sets something on (maybe to do with the tea making, see masher above!)
- sizer – the person who checks what size something is
- slasher – security
- stripper and grinder – I’m not even going to hazard a guess
- tackler – someone who’s given all the difficult jibs to do
- tenter – in a cotton mill they might have a side-line in making tents
- throstle spinner – a throstle is a thrush… so someone who looks after the throstles?
- twister – a Lancashire tornado
- warper – someone with one leg shorter than the other
… and here is a link:
Words are fascinating, aren’t they?
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Endlessly so… and one leads to another!
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Wow, who knew? (not me haha)
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Nor me until I came across it all! And I lived in Oldham for years!
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