The Spinning Mule
It was not just his own family that wanted to know what Samuel Crompton was doing by night in his quaint Bolton workshop.
1779
King George III 1760-1820
It was not just his own family that wanted to know what Samuel Crompton was doing by night in his quaint Bolton workshop.
1779
King George III 1760-1820
In 1779 Samuel Crompton, who came from a family of Bolton weavers, developed the ‘spinning mule’ — so called because it was a hybrid of two existing machines for spinning cotton thread, the spinning jenny and the waterframe. He kept his invention secret, but the quantities of superfine yarn he released onto the local market excited the envy, curiosity and resourcefulness of his rivals.
abridged
FIVE years — from his twenty-first year, in 1774, to his twenty-sixth in 1779 — were spent in the construction of the mule. He was, of course, only able to work at the mule in the leisure left after each day’s task of spinning, and often in hours stolen from sleep. The purchase of tools and materials absorbed all his spare cash; and when the Bolton theatre was open, he was glad to earn eighteen-pence a night by playing the violin in the orchestra. The first mule was made, for the most part, of wood, and to a small roadside smithy he used to resort ‘to file his bits o’ things’.
Crompton proceeded very silently with his invention. Even the family at Hall-in-the-Wood* knew little of what he was about, until his lights and noise, while at work in the night-time, excited their curiosity. Meanwhile, he created much surprise in the market by the production of yarn, which, alike in fineness and firmness, surpassed any that had ever been seen. It immediately became the universal question in the trade, ‘How does Crompton make that yarn?’
* Hall i’ th’ Wood (pronounced /ˌɔːlɪθˈwʊd/, ‘all-ith wood’) is a manor house dating back to the sixteenth century, which now houses a museum of weaving. In Compton’s time, it was a multiple-occupancy building of some four or five dwellings used by industrial entrepreneurs; Samuel and his family, who were weavers, were among the residents.