The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #24012   Message #3861505
Posted By: Rumncoke
17-Jun-17 - 09:29 PM
Thread Name: Origins: The Weaver and the Factory Maid
Subject: RE: Origins: The Weaver and the Factory Maid
I have always had a liking for weaving songs, and I have my own small looms.
In recent years I looked up my father's family - the Gillotts and found that they were weavers. Examining the census records I found that far back they were hand weavers of linen, in Barnsley, now in South Yorkshire, but they were thrown out of work as they were involved in the demands for a living wage and rather than pay up the trade was shut down.
There was a move to cotton weaving, done by women rather than the men, who could not get employment - presumably they were blacklisted, and one census shows the father of the family as an unemployed hand linen weaver, with an older daughter as a hand cotton weaver and a younger one as a factory cotton weaver.
It was not all wool weaving in Yorkshire.