Handloom Weavers in Ulster's Linen Industry, 1815-1914

Abstract

Despite its title, this book is not about the handloom weaver in Ulster in the tradition of, say, Bythell's classic study of the handloom weaver in England: it is a case-study of aspects of the handloom weaving sector in the mid-Antrim shirting trade. The focus is primarily on issues of work and gender: the gender composition of the labour force and division of labour, formulations of skill and status between the sexes and ‘cultural politics’. There are four chapters. The first provides a brief outline of the Irish linen industry in the pre-Famine era. The second covers the period between the 1830s and the 1860s when the wet-flax process progressively eliminated hand spinning, and emigration and resulting labour scarcity initially improved the lot of the handloom weaver after the Famine, before finally, after 1860, the steam loom progressively eliminated the hand loom. Chapters Three and Four deal with the mid-Antrim workforce between the mid-century and 1901. They loosely identify changes in the social composition of the handloom-weaving work-force as it became centred on a labouring rather than farming class, changes in the gender composition of the work-force with an increase in the number of female handloom weavers in the less skilled areas of the trade, and a diminishing contribution of handloom-weaving earnings to the family economy. What the author calls the ‘feminisation’ of the handloom-weaving workforce went hand in hand with what he calls its ‘casualisation’ as the power loom spread. The remaining male handloom weavers claimed a monopoly of expertise in the more skilled areas of the trade.