James THOMAS, Haworth "woolcomber" & "grease refiner" (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 18:12 (4211 days ago) @ shepway

It seems James was perhaps a technically-minded man of my own heart with his jobs in engineering-related industry, which is perhaps why he left the Forest rather than go down the pit ?. Without in any way knocking the herculean efforts of the equally skilled but poorly rewarded colliers, I hope and trust he had a healthier and perhaps more prosperous life because of this. Certainly he'd arrived in Yorkshire when the "dark satanic mills" of Manchester & Bradford were beginning to become safer workplaces and some mill owners were taking great care of their valued employees, the most extreme example being at Saltaire.
http://www.saltaire.yorks.com/
Spare a moment to remember precisely two hundred years ago seventeen "Luddites" were executed for trying to prevent loom mechanisation in the West Yorkshire wool industry before the Industrial Revolution changed the world forever.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/politics/g3/

In case anyone's wondering what a woolcomber was, this "hit" when searching "Haworth & grease" makes interesting reading, a very nicely-presented personal FH website indeed.

"Woolcombing by hand demanded strength and skill and necessitated keeping the room stove burning day and night. It all smelled of putrid hot oils for they worked "in the grease": with the lanolin still in the wool. The smell of lanolin clung to your clothing and made the floors slippery, though they did joke it gives you lovely soft hands!

Combing's purpose is to force the fibre staples parallel to each other, butt-end to tip. The product is called a wool top, ropelike in apearance. With further combing it is called a sliver (rhymes with diver) and is ready for spinning.

In 1823 the Townend Brothers of Cullingworth invented a machine to spin worsted heald but it did not take-on. Hand woolcombing was peaking in 1851 when the first succesful machine was developed by Heilmann and Holden of Oakworth. Even so the 1861 census still lists some hand-combers in Exley Head."

From the excellent
http://www.davidkidd.net/Exley_Head_History_Yorkshire_Village.html

Re James' later job of "grease refiner", c/o the ever helpfull Genuki site is this 1901 Census from Pudsey not too far from Haworth. As can be seen Pudsey's population was then hugely reliant on the worsted wool trade but I can only see one grease refiner, Alfred Hargreaves. Was it a speciallist "niche" job which could demand good reward, or an obsolete one which was on the downturn ?.
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/Misc/Census/1901/Pudsey1901Census_EnumerationDistr...

Haworth is probably most famous for being the home of the Bronte sisters, whose work my wife particularly admires. I wonder if James and his family knew anything of them or more likely their descendants ??.
http://www.haworth-village.org.uk/brontes/bronte_story/bronte_story.asp

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Years ago at work I had to source some very hi-tech grease for a demanding helicopter gearbox-bearing application. I wasn't surprised to find the best available product was of German manuafacture as they had instigated the growth of synthetic oils & greases in the 1930s & 40s due to their own lack of natural resources. However I was surprised to find their UK distributor was in scenic green Yorkshire# rather than a more "obvious" engineering centre, although it did make for a delightful overnite visit much better than the norm. When asked why they were there and not perhaps in nearby Bradford, I found it was to be nearer the local textile mills whose machinery has umpteen greased bearings which must rotate nonstop at high-speed for many thousands of hours without fail (which is invariably due to grease/oil failure). No doubt in Victorian times when there were more mills and less capable greases they would literally have used "tons of the stuff" on a far more intensive replenishing basis, so greasing remained important despite no longer referring to the fabric-combing process itself. Whether the earlier looms were lubricated by greases removed from the wool I'm unsure, I suspect such a clever system was only practical for the slower hand looms before they grew into ever-more complex steam-driven machines from about 1860 onwards.

# Indeed the above company's UK address was and still is just a few miles south of Haworth, a beautiful place to work !

HOUGH MILLS,
Northowram, Halifax,
West Yorkshire
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/630921

Their website illustrates how their business is still very much textiles-based.
http://www.klueber.com/en/applications/industry/textile-industry/#20621