THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 16TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Tape 79/AD/10
Well, we’ll go straight on Horace. We’d just started talking about how you came to move from Rycrofts, how you came to finish at Rycrofts. So you go on in your own time.
R- Well it were an Earby man that were driving the engine at Rycrofts at Broughton Road, Bill Lancaster. Do you know him?
I’ve heard of him, I’ve heard Newton talk about him.
R- They called his father Bill Lancaster and he ran Big Mill Engine [Victoria Mill at Earby] And Bill were running Broughton Road engine and his father retired and young Bill got this engine here [Victoria Mill]. And I knew him fairly well because we’d travelled backwards and forwards on the train when I wasn’t cycling and staying to dinner, I used to go up into the engine house to pass me time on. And he’d said to me once or twice, “I can find you a job at Earby on the engine.” I said that were fairly handy, he said “I can find you a job there, maintenance and oiling and such.” I says “Well, I can’t get away.” I were stuck. Well, that regulation were squashed from the first of January 1945. Everybody were free. So I gave me notice in the week before and started on the engine here on the 1st of January. Never forget that day. And Johnson’s had the main of the shed here, there’s only the engine belonged to the Mill
Company, [Johnson’s were in Victoria Mill as room and power tenants at the time. The mill was owned by The Mill Company.] there're one or two small firms and I did about two year on the engine.
What were you doing on the engine?
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R- Everything, oiled it and cleaned it, and certain times in winter time you were stoking the boilers. There were another man besides me and the boiler fireman and in winter time you took it in turns, they were all night steaming trying to keep the place warm. [The Factory Acts stipulate that a certain minimum temperature has to be attained by starting time. In my days it was 55 degrees Fahrenheit and badly insulated buildings like the weaving sheds needed steam heat most of the night to warm them to the minimum standard. In those days there were no automatic controls or firing on the boilers and so the firebeaters had to be there.]And if the boiler man was on all night one of us had to go on the boiler during the day. And I’d been working there about two years, and the manager at Johnson’s came to me, he says “Oh, you worked in a cotton mill and you were about tapes weren’t you?” I said “Aye. I spent a lot of time as a lad in the tape room, you’d go labouring there.” He says “Well, we want someone to learn taping. What do you think about it?” I says “Yes, it’ll be all right.” And he said “You’ll not be starting taping just now but we want you to go to the night school at Burnley and you’ll go on a dry tape here.” And Johnsons were bringing in dry taping, not sizing the warps. It was such light stuff a lot of them would [weave without size] If the yarn were strong enough a lot of them’d weave without size on. And I went on to
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this dry tape, it were only in its infancy. There were same as a beaming frame but high speed and they were all pinned, and they were trying different ways of pinning you see, electrically. Not just the old pin that dropped. [Horace is talking about a warp stop motion. From its inception, this was a mechanical system where fork shaped pins rode on each strand of the warp and if one broke these dropped and mechanically stopped the loom or other machine. Johnsons were trying to innovate and bring in an electronic system for doing the same thing which would be more reliable and simpler to set up.] And there were a taper left, Maurice Lomax, you know Maurice Lomax, he’s a Barlick chap. And I went into t’tape room on to his tape, and that were how I were taping at Johnson’s.
What sort of a tape was it?
R- A double headstock. They’d five tapes there and there were three of them that always ran light stuff you see. They were only sort of running light warps through water, and there were this, what they called the big tape, ran all the heavy stuff. And I went on to that, and a double headstock..
Now what do you mean by a double headstock?
R- Well you’d two headstocks. You know how they were rodded? [Horace is referring to the splitting rods just before the headstock where the individual threads of the warp are separated before they are wound on to the weaver’s beam.] It were split there and one half went on to this beam [In the normal position.] and the other half went over your head, over rollers, over another roller in the air and down here and round another roller and on to your headstock there, you were running two warps at once.
So you were running, say there were 3000 ends, [on a weaver’s beam] you were running two so you were running back beams with 6,000 ends in for your two weaver’s beams.*
R- That’s right.
How many ends did you go up to in a beam on that machine?
R- Well, 3000 on them. But we put 12 back beams in.
Aye, aye, that creel must have been a big un, mustn’t it.
R- Oh aye it were. Twelve back beams on 26 inch beams. And, you know, 26 inch beams are there and then next ones were up there. You’d some work on you know.
Aye. I’ve never seen a tape running like that Horace.
R- And the other tapes, two of the others were 68 inch tapes and they ran two beams at the front. They were split in the middle and you had two narrow beams in and a bearing in the middle that hooked over. And you’ve never seen a tape with two headstocks?
No.
R- Well you’ve been at Johnsons here?
No I’ve never been in a …
R- Oh I thought you’d gone Fred Inman.
Yes but they’ve got that new tape in now.
R- Yes, but it’s a double headstock.
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Well I’d never noticed.
R- It’s a double headstock.
I never noticed, it wasn’t running Horace.
R- No?
No, never noticed.
R- No bit it’s still there because I were in before last …
Aye. Well, I’d never noticed. Shows how much I know about taping! Now you say you went to night school. So you’d start going to night school about 1947.
R- Yes.
And what did you do at night, which night school did go to?
R- Burnley Tech.
Yes. What did you do there?
R- You didn’t learn taping, they hadn’t a tape. I didn’t need learning taping but all, yarn testing, and testing your sago and testing your flours. There’s various grades of sago flour and potato flour and corn flour needed different treatments. And you’d got to know what they’d stand. And yarn and everything, you got to learn all that there. And temperatures and, oh I did a year there.
What, one night a week?
R- Two nights a week, yes.
Two nights a week. Yes. And was there any qualification at the end of it?
R- No.
You’d expect to get the knowledge.
R- You could have sat exams and you’d have got a piece of paper that weren’t worth the paper it were written on because the fellow that were teaching, he’d never been a taper, he were a chemist. He knew all the fine arts and you learned a lot,
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you did. I’m not saying it were wasted time, it wasn’t because same as seeing farina and sago flour and corn flour through a microscope, different things altogether and yet you can pick them out. And different chemicals that you use, and if they are adulterated, all such as that.
New that’s got you started at Johnsons. Now I want to just back track a little bit now, there’s two thins I want to know about, and then we'll go on to taping at Johnsons proper. Now the first one is that, of course by the time you started at Johnsons, cloth wasn’t sold by weight any more, it was sold by the length. Anyway, they were weaving for themselves like. I mean it’s obvious they weren’t heavy sizing there. But while you were at Rycroft’s you’d see something of heavy sizing.
R- Every sort but mainly at Slingsby’s. 100%, everything at Slingsby’s everything was 100%. They sold be weight at Slingsbys you see for export, and they wanted 100% weight of China clay to cotton. And the warps, they’d some stuff at Slingsby’s and it were tens. [count of the yarn] There were that much size on them that the tapes couldn’t dry them. They [were wet] couldn’t, well, God knows what you’d got, wet into the loom. And when they were weaving they hadn’t dried, it were rubbing off same as balls of sago and at the end of the day they’d to rub all these balls of flour
off the healds.
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Aye.
R- Oh, and I were in the warehouse. You couldn’t lift them out of the machine, you just dropped them down, they'd just drop like lead, 100 yards of that stuff. And they were wet. And then they were sending them away, they were mouldy. So you get on to Shirley [and ask] what do they do. Well, Shirley had a cure for it.
That’s the Shirley Institute of course.
[The Shirley Institute was established in 1919 as the British Cotton Industry Research Association (BCIRA) and the following year the current Didsbury site near Manchester was acquired. A significant part of the purchase price was contributed by a cotton spinner, Mr W. Greenwood, who asked that the place be named after his daughter Shirley. The first purpose built laboratories were opened in 1922 by the Duke of York. Other Royal openings on the site took place in 1953 by the Duchess of Kent, 1963 by Princess Margaret and 1990 by the Princess Royal]
R- Shirley Institute, aye. You put Shirlon on, it were some stuff they sent, Shirlon they called it, and you put it into the beck [The beck is the tank used for mixing up and boiling the size before it is pumped to the sow box on the end of the sizing machine in which the yarn was immersed before going on to the drying rollers.] when you were mixing, and it would stop your mildewing. But it didn’t stop them rusting, because it didn’t dry them but it stopped mildew. You can imagine those [pieces] being folded up and going all the way to Manchester and standing in [storage] for a month or two happen, and going on board the ship. Oh, they were just moulded in lumps, green. And they moulded, they’d mildew standing in the warehouse at Slingsbys. But Shirlon stopped the mildewing but then they used to rust in the looms from Saturday to Monday, on the bearers, and everywhere they touched iron, in the temples, they all rusted. And you used to mix salts of lemon [Archaic name for Oxalic Acid] in boiling water and turn the piece over, lap by lap, and rub the mildew, the iron moulded place, with salts of lemon to get it out, and that’s what used
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to be [done] every Monday morning. Where they’d been stopped there were those rust marks.
Now, that wouldn’t be too bad really, for those in the shed, because you wouldn’t get a lot of dust flying off those warps.
R- No there weren’t dust off them but there were off the others.
Now that’s what I’d like to get round to. Let’s make it clear for a kick off. Now you tell me if I’m wrong, that the only reason for putting China clay in size on a taping machine is to bulk up the cloth and give you more weight isn't it? It doesn’t do anything else to it.
R- Yes, selling China clay for weight you see instead of cotton, that were all it were for. And you’d got to get the weight, they were sending it back from Manchester because they weren’t heavy enough. They were selling it by weight were the merchants at Manchester. And another thing we did, we’d get buckets of size, any that were underweight, you can get buckets of sizing, warm sizing from the tapes and you’d turn laps and you had a whitewash brush and you, you patted it on all over it. And then turn another two or three laps over, paste some more on as if you were pasting wallpaper. It’s unbelievable isn’t it.
Aye.
R- Till you got your weight. You couldn’t credit it but I’ve spent scores and scores of hours doing that, stand at a table, turn the laps over and paint it on with a brush.
Just to get the weight up.
R - Paste it, paint it ... just to get the weight. It were China clay, just China clay that you were putting on.
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Aye. Now tell me about 100% sizing or getting on for it. Where the warp was dry . Now what effect did that have when they were weaving it?
R- Well, if things got too dry at Slingsby’s they put wet steam in.
Ah now, yes.
R- You know what wet steam is, humidifiers, blowing the day through. But that did for the ordinary [sorts]. But there were D1’s I remember the quality, D1, [the sort number used to identify the warps in the shed.] it were one particular sort. It were heavy sized and in dry weather if the east wind were blowing they were flying out in bunches, and so they had the humidifiers going all the time. But these that were already damp, it made them worse than ever.
Now, just let me ask you a question there now. This is something that I’ve come across time and time again, the fact that .. you know, one of the things that they say about .. they say that one of the reasons why Lancashire was always such a good place for weaving cotton was because the atmosphere was naturally damp. Now it follows on from this that, if you talk to people, the place that was always favoured for a weaving shed was somewhere where they could sink it back into the hillside so that the walls and floors were always damp, you always got a damp atmosphere. Now people have told me, I have them on tape telling me, that in some cases they even went to the extent, for instance at Barnsey Shed in Barlick in summer …
R - Throwing buckets of water?
They used to pump water out of the canal on to the floor of the shed.
R- Yes, they used to throw it in bucket fulls. Yes you send t’warehouse lads round with a brush sprinkling it on between the looms.
Now then, tell me something. I started off believing
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what I’d always been told. That the reason for this, the reason why they liked
the damp atmosphere was that it made the cotton weave better and stopped the
individual threads in the warp breaking. Now then, I began to realise, as I started to learn more about the way the textile industry had been run, that what it was really about was that the manufacturer could get away with using cheaper weft and cheaper twist, because with being damp it didn't break as quickly, it was more elastic. But it seems to me now that what you’ve just told me there is another reason for it as well. The damper it was in the shed, the less size came off while it was being woven and the more weight they got in the warp. Now is that right?
R- Well, not altogether, that wouldn’t make much difference in the ordinary heavy sized cloth, the loss wouldn’t make much difference there. But it made cheaper cotton, it made poor cotton that had been sized weave when it were damp. If it was sized, if it was China clay, then when it were dry it were brittle so it had to be damped with the steam to make it pliable.
Aye.
R- And if you put more tallow in to counteract it, your warp is too soft, then it rubbed off. You see it were too soft. But in cold weather it were too hard, dry east wind drying everything up, they were flying out in bunches. But it were to make cheap cotton weave because Rycrofts had no humidifiers, theirs didn’t need anything to make them weave. They’d weave full warps without an end down. They couldn’t have ends coming down when every end had to be sewn in.
[To make the point clear, Rycroft’s yarn was the highest quality long staple yarn and was the easiest to weave. For many years, Surat, a type of Indian staple, was regarded as unweavable. It was the need to drive down material costs that led to the innovations in humidifying sheds that made this possible.]
Aye. So would it be true to say Horace that heavy sizing was confined to what you and I would call rag shops?
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R- It was. Heavy sizing were confined to rag shops, cheap cotton, to make poor cotton weave. They put the sizing on and if they didn't have the humidifiers in they wouldn’t weave. But they had to put the sizing on. They weren’t content with just having pure size, they'd put China clay in to sell China clay.
To fetch the weight up.
R- Yes. To fetch the weight up.
[To reinforce this, Horace is giving very valuable evidence here about the strategies used by the manufacturers to maximise profits. The addition of china clay to double the weight of the cloth and the consequences of this in the shed. It should be added here that the merchants demanded this heavy sizing because the ultimate judge, the customer, bought on cloth weight. The point about humidity and the weaving of short staple yarn is well made and reinforced. The reference to Rycroft’s not needing artificial humidification is crucial, they used top class yarn. As a matter of interest, Bancroft Shed never had humidifiers. It was built into the hillside and on top of a peat bog.]
Yes. Now then, we’re talking about size now. Now I’ll tell you what I know about it and you tell me some of the things that I don't know about it. The only size that we ever used at Bancroft, because we were on very plain sorts of cloth up there, the only size we ever used up there were tallow and farina which is potato starch.
R – Potato starch. It’s rubbish is farina.
Well we used tallow and farina and every now and again I think they would put a bit of soft soap in, if it started sticking to the drums because they were in a ropey condition them drums up there.
R – Yes.
And that was all we used, but I know that .. I know enough about the job to realise that that is only the beginning of sizing, isn’t it. Now you tell me something about sizes.
R- Well they only, for all the stuff they used here…
That’s at Johnsons.
R- At Johnsons. For the cotton all they used were pure sago flour and the best tallow, for the cloth here, nothing else, for their ordinary plain stuff. But for the very light stuff, the gauzes, they used Gum Tragon, that comes from Cyprus, locust bean flour. Do you know what locust beans are?
[The standard work on sizing is ‘The Chemistry and Practice of Sizing’ by Percy Bean. Bean differs from Horace in that he says that Gum Tragacanth (or Gum Dragon) is the ‘ gummy exudation from astralagus gummifer and is obtained by making incisions in the stem of the plant and collecting the sap’. He describes a ‘comparatively new material for sizing which is manufactured by the Gum Tragasol Supply Company Limited of Hooton….. the gum is prepared from the kernel or seed of the locust bean, or St John’s bread, the fruit of the carob tree, ceratonia siliqua’. This was sold as Gum Tragasol or, in dry powdered form, Gum Tragon and this is what Horace was describing Any mention of ‘tragan’ in the original transcript is a mis-transcription .]
Yes.
R- They put them in troughs to feed the sheep on it used to be.
Yes, that’s it. Used to bind in water. Aye.
R- Yes. Well there’s a little brown bean inside.
There is, right little hard bean.
R- Yes. Well that’s what they use for Gum Tragon. It’s Gum Tragon is that.
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Is that Gum Tragacanth, is that what it is?
R- Gum Tragacanth, yes. Aye, locust bean.
Ground up, aye.
R- Yes. And they’ve got to get rid of that husk. Chemicals won’t touch it, nothing’ll touch that husk. So they're put into big drums, with, whether it’s rough inside or there’s something to mix and they go round and round and round.
Aye, rumbled.
[Horace is talking about a ball mill or a variant thereof. The beans would be mixed with abrasive matter in lumps and rumbled round in what was almost like a butter churn. The collision of the abrasive material and the beans removed the husk.]
R- Rumble until that husk comes off. Now sometimes it doesn’t come off so they have a lot of machines, they have a magic eye on them. They put them on top, they come down a chute and anything that has the least bit of brown on, the magic eye throws them out. That is before they go on to the next process to be ground up for Gum Tragon. And there’s a place on the Wirral that does that. It’s marvellous to go to that place and see them rows of these magic eyes…
Have you been there?
R- I’ve been many a time.
Aye, what's the name of the place?
[Hooton]
R - I can’t think. I can't just think what it is.
It'll be reight ...
R- I could get to know down at the mill because the name’s on the bags that it comes in. And you can use it for wallpaper.
Pasting wallpaper?
R- Yes, and I’ll tell you what it is, it’s used in ice cream. It’s used hair oil, anything that wants keeping in suspension, Gum Tragon is used. There were about quarter of an ounce to a gallon in ice cream, they told us all so, foreman at this place went on. But It had to he the very purest for ice cream, but not quite as pure for taping. But you see when you used to
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get bottles of sauce, the vinegar were at the top and the sauce were at the bottom, but you don’t see it now because it's Gum Tragon keeps it in suspension.
Aye.
R- Brylcreem, they are a big supplier to Brylcreem [hair cream] and Wall’s, Lyons, [Ice cream manufacturers] they are the firm that supplies the Gum Tragon. And
They’d difficulty at getting it during the war you know, they’d a lot in stock but it got to be scarce. A man probably had a orchard of them trees, locust bean trees, and there’s some law that a man can’t leave it to the eldest son, it’s all to be divided out. [partiple inheritance] Well if a man had ten sons and he’d a hundred trees, well ten sons would get ten trees each. And then the next generation come on there’ll happen ten sons’ll get down to one tree. So they’d be negotiating with each of them separate persons for the crop. The locust beans, it was such a mixed up affair in Cyprus. And he [the firm’s representative] said you didn't know who you [were dealing with] We used to go there and you’d, you went into a room and he’d tell you all the history of the locust beans and all about it. Oh it were all right, coach load, coach loads of us used to go. The Union [arranged it]. And [it were] a right nosh-up and as much beer as you wanted to drink, and a feed and everything. Of course, we were their best customers. If a taper said “Don’t get no more.” Or if you’d had a good do, well you put a extra bit in you see? That’s what it was all for but it were really interesting. We had some right good trips out. And another firm we used to go top regular was Scapa at Blackburn. [The Scapa group in Blackburn was an amalgamation of Scapa Industries with Porritts and Spencer Ltd who were an old and well established firm specialising in weaving very wide and heavy flannels for the textile and paper-making industries. In 1999 following the acquisition of the majority of the shares by
Voith Bespannungstechnik GmbH, Germany, PSA came under the Voith Group.]
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Aye. Scapa Porritt? Aye.
R- Scapa. Weaving cloth 45 feet wide. Now then, woollen cloth 45 feet wide. You can’t tell me what they were for.
Well .. I don't know, it must have been for, I was thinking for like tape flannel and such an that.
R - No. Paper making machinery.
Aye, that’s it
R- They’re as long as a railway train is a paper making machine. And it’s mixed up into a pulp, same an we do sizing, and it’s run onto these cloths, it’s made into an endless belt.
Aye. Onto a blanket. Aye.
R- Aye. And it’s running over hot pipes and the slurry is going out on to the top. And then it’s rolled off at the other end as paper 45 feet wide. And it goes on to various sets of these, some of it’s asbestos, the first, the first what it came on top of, the hottest pipes, [the blanket] were asbestos mixture, asbestos and cotton, then it went on to the woollen blanket. And he said if you looked at the paper you can see the pattern of the blanket on the back.
Aye, the pattern of the weave on it. Yes.
R- Aye. But, oh they were weaving stuff half an inch thick, this asbestos. It weren't all 45 foot wide, but one man had just a loom and he were up, one loom and he were up on the platform. And you stood at the end of the loom and there was a big guard up and the shuttles had wheels on, rollers on and it was just same as a rabbit coming down. You’d see it start at the far end, you could see it, just like a rabbit coming down. And one weaver said to me, “Just watch this”, and as it were coming along he just had his hand there and he let it run up his hand and up his arm. a big shuttle about so long. [24 inches] And he had the other in his hand and just threw it in, the loom never stopped. And shuttle ran out up here, he just threw the other in.
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He changed the shuttle with the loom running?
R- Loom running. He says “You won’t have seen that before!” But I was stood at the end and I was just on a level with the slay and the warp. I don’t know how many warps would be put into that, but they were hollow barrels and they were all done with a crane. They lifted this steel barrel out and they put these beam, warps, on at the back, and filled the roller up, 45 foot wide, bolted them all on and then craned it back in and then a chap sat in the loom, looming them in.
I see, they loomed it in place.
R- Yes.
In the loom.
R- And on other looms they didn’t even have warps. They’d creels and they never stopped. They put a fresh bobbin in and the weaver went round tying the ends in same as a beamer did on an old-fashioned creel. He went round the back tying bobbins on, they never broke, it was such strong stuff.
Aye, like they were continuous ends. They never [went down]
R- Ye, never [stopped] And they’d menders, when this cloth came off these big looms it went down under the floor and up this side and on to a big roller. The taking-up motion was there. It wound on to a big roller, they wove one hundred yards in a length and then craned it out. And women were mending it on an endless belt, same as splicing it, same as a burler and mender does. They were sewing every end in for paper making. They were going all over the world, they were packed up. Talk about an eye-opener! We went many a time to that, usually a trip a year you know.
Oh I shall have to go and see that. Because they’ll still have them looms running.
R- Oh they will. All paper making. It’s somewhere near to…. There’s a park there.
Aye, it’s just below Pleasington.
R- Aye, but there’s a park there. Where do they play football? I heard it only the other day on Radio Blackburn. That’s practically, it’s near Scapa.
I know where Scapa is.
R- Well, you want to go if you can get in.
Oh yes. I shall have to have a look at that. Aye.
R- Oh it’s a real eye opener. And they’d a foundry, they made all their own looms and castings because they’d to be so strong.
Aye, a loom 45 feet wide. Anyway, that brings us on to something else. They’ll make ordinary, well what to us is ordinary taper’s flannel wouldn’t they?
R- That’s why we got to go, we were using their flannel you see. That’s why tapers were invited.
Now tell me a bit about taper’s flannel. What’s taper’s flannel used for on the tape?
R- Well it’s on the squeeze roller. When it goes into the sow box, size box, and comes up it’s soaked with mixing, it’d he running of it but it has to go. There’s an iron roller at the bottom and then there’s your squeeze roller on top to squeeze the surplus size out. If you forget to put your roller down and start off you have size running out at the front of the tape.
Aye. I’ve seen that happen some number of times at Bancroft I’ll tell you. Running through the floor boards into the warehouse.
R- Aye, they’ve forgotten to put the roller down.
And it's the slippiest staff there is.
R- And sticks you to the floor!
Aye. And after it’s been there, that’s another thing that always struck me about size is that after a time, I don’t think I know anything that smells worse than old size.
R- Sour.
Than sour size.
R- Aye. But sago [didn’t do that] it’s tallow. We never had sago much, we used cornflour. But it’s very harsh is that, it wears the healds out does cornflour, it’s sharp. [Cornflour is maize flour] You can boil it and boil it and boil it but it doesn’t lose that sharpness. But for sago, to be done right, and not many taper’s will how to do it, it’s to boil 160 or 180 minutes. It has to boil sago flour to get it smooth. And if it isn’t smooth it’s wearing healds out. You can tell whether the taper’s mixing his size right or he isn’t if there’s a lot of healds wearing out.
Yes, well that were one thing at Bancroft, we did use some farina but I’ve been thinking as you’ve been talking, we did use a lot of sago flour and all. And I know Joe used to boil… they used to boil it and boil it and boil it, and of course I used to play hell because we had to make the steam for it.
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R- Yes, for 160 minutes. But farina, if you boil it more than 10 minutes it’s gone to water so if you’re boiling farina, potato flour, and you forget it, you’ve a beck full of water if it’s done for more than 10 minutes.
Aye. Well, at the latter end we were on sage flour.
R- Yes. Well you’d have to be for Johnsons, you were doing [weaving] for Johnsons.
Yes, we were on sago flour and tallow. And I know that, give them their due at Bancroft, that was one thing at latter end which they did, they got the best sago flour they could afford, and they got the best tallow. That tallow we used to get were beautiful stuff, you could have put it in a chip pan.
R- Were it in big wood barrels from Australia?
No it was in small cardboard boxes. It came in cardboard boxes like dripping does to a chip shop. And I know that it took Jim Pollard, Jim went on to ‘em for ages because instead of buying [good tallow] they used to use that substitute stuff in 45 gallon: drums and it was terrible.
R- Oh what the hell did they call it. They tried it with us. Aye. It was supposed to be better, it were damned useless, aye it were useless.
Aye. It were horrible and it stunk terrible .
R- You forget these names when you’ve been out a bit.
Yes, but tallow, I know they hardly used any of this tallow, they hardly had to use any with the sago.
R- Well no.
Whereas the other stuff, they were shovelling it in and shovelling it in.
R- It were a pound to ten, one pound of tallow to one pound of sago and you mixed… We’d nothing else here except when you got on to spun silk. Soft soap. But the best thing for spun silk is Gum Tragon as well as sago. You see there is no dusting off when you use Tragon. I remarked to you what a dirty place Bancroft was, well if they’d been using a bit of Gum in it there’d have been no dusting off.
Aye.
R- But I were doing that at Johnsons and it wouldn’t finish right. It weren’t pure enough for bandages, they couldn’t get it out, Gum Tragon, as easy as they could sago. They were always complaining about it, they couldn't finish it.
Aye. ‘Cause of course bandages, after they were made, they’d to be washed out, it’d all to be cleaned out wouldn’t it.
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R- Yes. Oh it had to be [clean]. And they’d the chemists you see, to see whether they were pure or not.
Aye. In a lot of ways, that was always a laugh down there. I know one of the things that I’ve heard Jim say about Johnsons. How it’s run at the moment. He said “Their trouble is they spend too much time worrying about tensile strength of cotton and the tensile strength means nothing. You can have cotton that’s twice the tensile strength of another cotton, but the cotton that’s weakest will weave best, and that’s what they couldn’t understand.”
R- No. But why Johnsons are always on about the strength of cotton is because they’re weaving such a lot without any mixing on at all. That’s why it’s tensile strength they want.
Yes, but they, I know that Jim said they were having terrible trouble and in fact they sent for him at one time after Harry had finished, Harry Crabtree that is. And he said that was all the trouble. He said their trouble was that it was somebody down in Wrexham that was buying the twist.
R- That’s it.
He said all he was doing is buying it on tensile strength and how much it costs. And he expected them to weave it. Well, Jim said you can’t run a Lancashire weaving shed off that.
R- Well, when Lowe and Chris Taylor and Allan Smith were here, now it were run were this place, and it were run properly. Everybody had a job, you weren’t pushed and if you did your job there were nobody said a word. But after Taylor and Low left it wore just like a ship without helm, they got a chap .. I don’t know where he were from. He come from Manchester, a chap called Abbot, he has a pet shop in Barlick now. Jack Abbot, you know him? He lived down Gill Lane somewhere, at a dog kennels. Well he came, he hadn't a clue. However he got in I don’t know, he must have been able to talk, but he hadn’t really a clue.
Did he go as a manager?
R- Aye he come after Lowe finished, he come as manager here. He might have been all right from the office side but he’d no practical experience at all, just none at all.
I think part of the trouble with him, what was his name, Ironside is it.
R- Ironside were another straight out of the army. Well, they got shut of Abbot here and sent him to Gargrave. Well, he’d that place wrong side up at Gargrave, he got stopped. And then they got another chap, no idea, lived
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up at Thornton, then they got Ironside, and he’s gone as an export manager now down at Slough or Portsmouth. But they must have influence, it isn’t their ability that gets them in. And they’ve a fellow now that’s come from TAC at Colne. He were at Smith & Nephew’s and then he were at, there's a place called TAC at Colne isn’t there. I don’t know what the initials stand for. Johnsons taped a lot for them at one time.
Who. TAC?
R- Yes. Johnsons taped a lot for them at one time. It were gauze stuff and now he’s come here. Eh, it’s Mac something, McGuiness that’s manager now. And Ironside moved on and they got somebody called Clancy. And they brought him round see to see how much he knew. They took him into the twisting room, and there were a twister there and he were saying, the chap that was in, “These are healds and this is the reed and this is the warp and what he had to do is pull these ends through.” And that’s Clancy, he’s over Johnsons here, over the lot of them now.
I’ll have to put in for a job there.
R- Yes. And when Abbott were there, they moved from down there into another part of Brook Shed.
Yes.
R- And he had them setting looms out did Abbott. Telling ‘em to put so many in, and they had to be in eights. And he had them putting all the handles into the alley. Out at the end, farthest point away instead…
Aye, that’s it.
R- Aye, he had his fours in the middle and then t’other two like the others, he’d send the handles out into the alley. And they were letting him do it were the tacklers, and a silly bloody tackler went and told him what he were doing, That’s the sort of carry on.
And he didn't realise that the whole idea was to get all the handles as near to the weaver as you can and then it made less walking about?
R- Aye. Yes, but they were all, all pounds out of ten, bloody hell. Oh, there’s been some right misdoes here. But Johnsons, they’re all right Johnsons themselves. I’ve nothing to say about them, they’re a good firm. Always been good to work for. But as I say when Chris Taylor, Lowe and Alan Smith, they did the buying, now the place were run [right]. Nobody wore pushed, always work going on and plenty of perks. And superannuation for ordinary common or garden workers as it were, something unknown.
Aye, especially in the weaving industry.
R- That’s what I mean, in weaving. And weft men and warehouse men and everybody, didn’t know who they were. It didn’t matter who they were* and it’s just made t’difference between, for me like I’d have been in the workhouse or been able to manage comfortably.
Well, we’re getting near the end of this tape now Horace so I think what we’ll do we’ll leave this now. Now next tape we do, we’ll get round to running through the pictures. And I think that’s the way we’ll get all we want out of taping. That way, because as we are going through them all sorts of other thing’s will crop up. We’ve to go through them reight slow and I’ll get you to describe everything that Jim Nutter’s doing on those pictures and any comments you’ve got to make about them while we are going on. That’ll start to give us a fairly complete picture of taping. So we’ll leave this now until we go on to the photographs.
SCG/15 March 2003
7,010 words.