Spinning Wheels
In old pictures and woodblock engravings some curious illustrations are met with showing Englishwomen using the distaff. St. Distaff’s Day was formerly the 7th of January, for it was then that the women resumed work after the Christmas festivities were over. The distaff and the spindle belonged to an age little understood now, and the occupations of the women of that date are almost forgotten. The spinning wheel was the outcome of the simpler distaff and spindle, and although the spinning wheels we find among the most interesting of household relics look primitive indeed compared with the complex machinery seen in the spinning mills to-day, those dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries must have been considered ingenious contrivances when compared with the older models, just as the latest types of sewing machines show a wonderful advance from the early machines invented in the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Very clever indeed were many women in manipulating the spinning wheel, and there seems to have been some competitive contests for notoriety among country women, who found a pleasing though perhaps at times tedious occupation in spinning the wool for the local weaver who wove the home-made cloth. It is recorded that in 1745 a woman at East Dereham spun a single pound of wool into a thread of 84,000 yards. She was far outdistanced, however, a few years later, when a young lady at Norwich out of a pound of combed wool produced a thread computed to measure 168,000 yards.
To secure a fine spinning wheel is the ambition of collectors, and many ladies point with pride to the old relic placed in a position of honour on an oak chest of drawers, or, perhaps, standing on a coffer in the hall. An exceptionally fine wheel is shown in Fig. 72; it is one of many secured by Mr. Phillips, of the Manor House, Hitchin. Another illustration is taken from a sketch of a spinning wheel in the Hull Museum (see Fig. 73). It appears that early in the nineteenth century Hull encouraged the training of domestic spinners, and at that time supported a spinning school. Apropos of that institution reference may appropriately be made to Hadley’s “History of Hull,” in which the historian, in reference to Sunday Schools, which had then quite recently been founded, says: “From the Sunday School reports for this year [1788] it seems they did not take. To whatever cause this may be attributed, it by no means warrants the aspersions thrown upon the town on that account, which has with equal ardour and wisdom espoused that useful establishment of Spinning Schools, in preference to a preposterous institution replete with folly, intolerance, fanaticism, and mischief.” In explanation it has been remarked that, “Evidently wheels were plentiful in Hull and Sunday Schools a novelty.” To-day we can reverse the statement, for schools are plentiful but spinning wheels are rare!
Collectors eagerly secure anything in the way of a genuine antique wheel, although the fastidious have the choice of two distinct types—those worked by hand and those operated by a treadle. Sometimes a spinning wheel made for the foot could be worked independently by the hand, just in the same way as modern sewing machines are made for hand or treadle, and sometimes a combination of both methods. The very general use of the spinning wheel is accounted for by the fact that this useful machine was met with in every cottage in the days when homespun yarns and wools were prepared by hand, and they were also found in the mansion and the palace, where they served to amuse the ladies of the household.
There are many varieties of spinning wheels, among them the old oak spinning wheels used in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the more decorative used until quite late in the eighteenth century, from their ornament and lightness, apparently used more for preparing the material for fancy work rather than for really utilitarian purposes. Some highly decorative spinning wheels inlaid with mother-o’-pearl and ivory have been brought over to this country from Holland and other continental countries, perhaps the most decorative being those made by French workmen in the Chinese style, the wood being lacquered blue and ornamented with gilt.
Mr. John Suddaby, who presented the spinning wheel we have illustrated to the Hull Wilberforce Museum, named after William Wilberforce, paid a high tribute to the famous philanthropist, who he declared to be associated with the spinning schools of the town. The old wheels of early date were gradually improved until they were rendered obsolete by the greater inventions of machines which could be worked by steam engines, thus originating the factory system of textile production.
Among the sundry curios associated with the spinning wheel are handsomely carved wood distaffs of boxwood, curiously turned spindles; and now and then a pewter vessel of circular form, puzzling in its identity, turns out to be the rim cup from the distaff of an old spinning wheel.