Life of james hargreaves

On June 12,he received a patent for his invention, which allowed him to sue the Lancashire manufacturers who had also adopted the new machine. Unfortunately, Hargreaves did not win the lawsuit. Together with Thomas James, Hargreaves managed a small mill in Hockley, where he also lived. He continued to run his business until his death in InSamuel Crompton, the creator of a more modern version of the spinning machine, acknowledged that he had learned to spin on Hargreaves' spinning jenny.

According to Edward Baines, a writer and biographer, the rights of Hargreaves and Arkwright to their inventions were often challenged, particularly the patents held by Arkwright. However, as the Industrial Revolution had not yet taken a firm hold, it was common practice for most spinners to be relegated to their homes to complete the day's work.

Cards, spinning wheels, and looms were all operated by hand. Hargreaves began experimenting with a new machine that could spin two threads at once. His original design called for horizontally oriented spindles, which allowed threads to become tangled. It is said that Hargreaves's daughter, Jenny, accidentally knocked over her father's experiment and, as its wheel continued to spin freely with the spindles in a vertical position, Hargreaves had his vision.

Thanks to his daughter, he also had a name for the new machine: the spinning jenny. Hargreaves began building a spinning machine that would accommodate an ambitious eight threads. InHargreaves had built the Spinning Jenny. Poverty, superstition, insecurity and an ignorance of the outside world combined to produce a dour and forbidding people.

Bull-baiting, cock-fighting, wrestling and kicking matches between naked men wearing iron-tipped clogs were recreations for which the county was notorious. A few glimpses of life in Oswaldtwistle at the time Hargreaves was living there are afforded by entries in the account books of the village constable. Another 2s.

Life of james hargreaves

Farming as a full-time occupation had been largely superseded by the cotton trade which, after nearly two centuries of growth in Lancashire, had become highly organised on capitalist lines. This was particularly true of the district around Blackburn, in which in two brothers named Livesay employed 2, spinners and weavers. Blackburn at that time had a population of about 4, InParliament, which had strongly protected the ancient woollen trade against its younger rival, legalised the printing for home use of this kind of fabric and the demand for the plain greys led to a decline in the making of checks, the yarns of which were dyed before being woven.

The greys were sent to London to be printed. The Lancashire textile workers, though they toiled long hours to earn the necessities of life, at least enjoyed a degree of independence and control over their time and by improving their methods and their simple machinery, the more intelligent among them sought to extend their freedom further.

Ironically, their life of jameses hargreaves unwittingly hastened the factory system under which much of their liberty disappeared. John Kennedy, the first historian of the cotton trade, says that even before the coming of the great inventions, the multiplication of hand implements was forcing work outside the cottages and that a division of labour among families was emerging.

Hargreaves contributed to this small-scale revolution by introducing one and possibly two improved methods of carding cotton by hand. Carding is the process of disentangling the fibres in the mass of raw cotton and laying them side by side in a filmy roll. At first this was achieved by placing the cotton on a wire brush, known as a hand card, and combing it with another.

The following description of the operation was written in the s by Henry Ashwortha prominent Lancashire cotton manufacturer. The carding was performed by a man having before him a stock of wood or a sort of bench covered with wire cards upon which he laid the cotton. He then sat down and took into his hand what was called a hand card, which he applied to the cotton on the stork card and thus by the backwards and forwards action of the two cards the cotton became combed into a smooth state, fit to be roved and spun.

Another method of hand carding for which Hargreaves might have been responsible is described by Ashworth in a passage following the one above. An old man I met with in Edgworth in told me there was also another form of common carding by hand. In Nottingham Hargreaves made jennies for a man named Shipley, and on 12 Junehe was granted a patent, which provided the basis for legal action later withdrawn against the Lancashire manufacturers who had begun using it.

With a partner, Thomas James, Hargreaves ran a small mill in Hockley and lived in an adjacent house.