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Innovations in Textile Bleaching in Britain in the Eighteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

L. Gittins
L. Gittins
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Economic History, Portsmouth Polytechnic, England
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Abstract

Prompted by a 1974 article by Professor Klaus H. Wolff in the Business History Review, Dr. Gittins considers the economic factors that influenced the introduction of technical changes in textile bleaching.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 53 , Issue 2: Featured: Early Commercial Aviaton , Summer 1979 , pp. 194 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1979

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References

1 Wolff, Klaus H., “Textile Bleaching and the Birth of the Chemical Industry,” Business History Review, XLVIII, No. 2 (Summer, 1974), 143–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Wolff, “Textile Bleaching,” 144.

3 Wolff, “Textile Bleaching” 144, 145. Table 1 indicates the increase in production of cotton and linen, particularly after 1780.

4 Home, F., Experiments on Bleaching (Edinburgh, 1756), 23–31.Google Scholar Field bleaching could only be done in the summer season. Stocks of unbleached goods accumulated in the winter, and goods not completed by late October were held over to the next year.

5 “An Act for the better Regulation of the Linen and Hempen Manufacturers in Scotland” 13 George I, c.26, s.14 (1726). Slaked lime reacted with alkali to make it caustic. Both slaked lime and caustic alkali accelerated the bleaching by dissolving grease and by reacting with the surface coloration of the textile fibers. The use of lime was made illegal because it weakened the cloth unless it was used with great care.

6 Dickinson, H. W., “The History of Vitriol Making in England,” Transactions Newcomen Society, XVIII (1937–1938), 47–49.Google Scholar Modern chemical nomenclature will be used in this article.

7 Gauldie, Enid, “The Scottish Bleachfields, 1718–1862” (B. Phil. Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 1967), 349Google Scholar, quoting the Trustees' Minutes.

8 Home, Experiments on Bleaching, 83, 84. Sour milk yielded lactic acid, and sour bran yielded acetic acid. They were used in very weak solutions to neutralise and dissolve the lime and other alkaline substances in the fabric.

9 Wolff, “Textile Bleaching,” 157.

10 Baines, E., History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, (London, 1835: 2nd edn. 1966), 247.Google Scholar

11 Musson, A. E. and Robinson, E., Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969).Google Scholar Professor Musson contributes a detailed chapter on “The Introduction of Chlorine Bleaching,” 251–337.

12 Patent No. 2312, 1799. The powder was made by absorbing chlorine in damp lime. The product, chloride of lime, was easy to transport, and it liberated chlorine when mixed with water and exposed to the atmosphere.

13 Wolff, “Textile Bleaching,” 145.

14 Wolff, “Textile Bleaching,” 146, quoting Landes, D. S., The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge, 1969), 108.Google Scholar Arkwright's water frame was patented in 1769, and Crompton's mule was made public in 1780.

15 In 1782 Dr. Eason began a lecture with the words, “The use of acids, in bleaching of linen, has been long known. Formerly milk was chiefly employed; but it had several inconveniences.” He then spoke about the superiority of hydrochloric acid for the purpose. (“Observations on the Use of Acids in Bleaching of Linen,” Memoirs of Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Vol. 1 [1785], 240).

16 Between 1790 and 1803 the annual rent of agricultural land in England (average of 25 counties) was said to have increased by 38 per cent from £0.88 to £1.21 per acre: Communications to the Board of Agriculture, V (1806), 21, quoted by Thompson, R. J. in Michinton, W. E., ed., Essays in Agrarian History (Newton Abbot, 1968), 60.Google Scholar Between 1750 and 1800 the population of England and Wales is estimated to have increased from about 6 million to 9 million: Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, P., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, England, 1962), 5.Google Scholar The Napoleonic Wars lasted from 1793 to 1815.

17 In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the great bleaching center of Europe was Haarlem in Holland, and large consignments of linen were sent to be bleached from Germany, Belgium, and Silesia, and “whole shiploads” were sent from Scotland and Ireland. Horner, J., The Linen Trade of Europe during the Spinning Wheel Period (Belfast, 1920), 368.Google Scholar As late as 1752, one author states, Scotland was still sending most of its linen to Holland to be bleached. The grey goods were dispatched in March; returned bleached in October; and then sold as “Scotch Hollands.” Higgins, S. H., A History of Bleaching (London, 1924), 17.Google Scholar

18 At the end of the eighteenth century, the rent for bleachfields was said to be lower at Manchester than at London. Aiken, J., A description of the country from thirty to forty miles around Manchester (London 1795Google Scholar; 2nd edn., Newton Abbott, 1968) 166. It has been suggested, also, that there was no serious scarcity of bleaching land in Scotland. Durie, A. J., “Textile Bleaching: A Note on the Scottish Experience,” Business History Review, XLIV, No. 3 (Autumn, 1975), 339.Google Scholar

19 E. Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, 25.

20 Imported potash contained about 65 per cent alkali. See, Lewis, W., Experiments and Observations on American Potashes made at the request of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (London, 1767), 5Google Scholar: and Johnstone, S. J., Potash, an Imperial Institute Monograph (London, 1915Google Scholar: 2nd edn. 1922), 101. For the prices, calculated as unweighted averages, of Pearl Ash (best quality potash), West India Cotton Wool, and St. Petersburg Flax, see Tooke, and Newmarch, , A History of Prices and of the state of the circulation from 1792–1856 (2 vols. London, 1838Google Scholar; revised edn. 6 vols. London, 1928) Vol. 2, 397, 401, 403.

21 Note also that the value of imported cotton was more than doubled at the spinning stage. See, Chapman, S. D., The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1972), 44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Wolff, “Textile Bleaching,” 147.

23 Kelp and barilla were superseded in England by synthetic soda made from salt within a few years of 1823 when the duties on salt were reduced (3 George IV, c.82 [1822]), and 1825 when they were abolished (5 George IV, c.65 [1824]). Potash remained important after 1823 because it could not be replaced by soda in the manufacture of soft soap, gun-powder, or potash glass.

24 Kelp was used chiefly in Liverpool while barilla was used chiefly in London. The use of kelp did not initiate the migration of the English soap industry from London to Liverpool, as Professor Wolff asserts (“Textile Bleaching,” 148 n 17). In 1851, nearly a quarter of a century after the use of kelp ceased in Liverpool, London produced 20,300 tons of soap, and Liverpool produced 21,030 tons, out of a total of 81,570 tons produced in England. (British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. L [1852], 565).

25 It was observed by bleachers that kelp left “a great yellowness [iron staining] in the Linen.” (Home, Experiments on Bleaching, 151).

26 “An Act for encouraging the making of Pott Ashes and Pearl Ashes in the British Plantations in America,” 24 George II, c.51 (1751).

27 Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. XXVII (1754–57), 234.

28 Mitchell, J., “An Account of the Preparation and Uses of the Various Kinds of Pot Ash,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. XLV (1748), 556.Google Scholar

29 The rise of American Potash is considered by: Browne, C. A., “Historical Notes upon the Domestic Potash Industry in Early Colonial and Later Times,” Journal of Chemical Education, Vol. 3, No. 7 (July, 1926), 749–756CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gittins, L., “Premiums for Vegetable Alkali — The Society and the Supply of Potash, Barilla and Kelp, 1758–1827,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 63 (1963), 577–581Google Scholar: Roberts, W. I. III, “American Potash Manufacture Before the American Revolution,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 116, No. 5 (October, 1972), 383–395.Google Scholar

30 The prices of pearl ash, barilla and kelp tended to move up and down together because potash could be substituted for barilla and kelp in hard-soap manufacture and in some types of glass. The high prices of barilla and kelp in 1809–10 were later remarked on several times by witnesses to the “Select Committee on the Salt Duties” (British Parliamentary Papers, Vol. V [1818], Minutes of Evidence 64, 128, 130, 158, 167, 181, 183, 198) but there were no complaints about an adulteration of quality, which Professor Wolff suggests (Textile Bleaching” 147) may have been a means of concealing a disastrous rise in real prices. It was unlikely that adulteration occurred before 1800 because soapmakers used their fat and alkali in known proportions, and would have detected any systematic reduction in quality, and commented on it. This does not appear to have happened.

31 The chart compares an index of pearl ash prices derived from Tooke and Newmarch, A History of Prices, 397, with an index of imported commodities prices derived from Gayer, A. D., Rostow, W. W., and Schwartz, A. J., The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy 1790–1850 (2 vols. Oxford, 1953)Google Scholar, Vol. 1, 468–470, (quoted by Mitchell and Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, 470). The peaks of pearl ash prices in 1797, 1806–1809, and 1815 relate well with the turning points of British trade cycles. See Rostow, W. W., British Economy of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1948), 33.Google Scholar

Professor Wolff's view about the rise in the prices of alkalis before 1800 appears to have been influenced by the article by Barker, T. C., Dickinson, R., and Hardie, D. W. F., “The Origins of the Synthetic Alkali Industry in Britain,” Economica, Vol. XXII (May, 1956), 158–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which he describes as “the decisive discussion of this issue” (“Textile Bleaching,” 154). They state that the manufacture of synthetic alkali did not emerge in Britain until there was a “chronic soda shortage,” because “the limited harvests of natural alkalis could no longer meet the requirements of the expanding soap and textile industries” (171). Synthetic soda manufacture emerged in Britain after the duty on salt was reduced in 1923, and the supposed chronic soda shortage at that time could have had no bearing on the supply or price of alkali before 1800. Incidentally, Table 3 suggests that between 1815 and 1825 alkali prices fell by at least 40 per cent to the pre-war levels, which does not support the view that there was a chronic soda shortage before 1823. If there was no soda shortage then the premise, on which the whole of the Barker, Dickinson and Hardie argument rests, is unfounded.

32 Musson and Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution, 266–267.

33 Ibid., 281, 295.

34 In 1786 James Holland was hanged at Bolton for stealing thirty yards of cloth from a bleachfield. The local employers assembled their workers to witness the spectacle. Sykes, A. J., Concerning the Bleaching Industry (Manchester, 1925), 17.Google Scholar

35 Journals of the House of Commons, XLIII (1787–88), 202. Boneuil claimed that he had invented and perfected a liquor which thoroughly whitened cloth in a very short space of time without any risk, and asked that he be granted a patent for an extended period of time, and an allowance in respect of duties paid on the raw materials used. The petition was strongly opposed by other bleachers, and it did not succeed.

36 Repertory of Arts and Manufacture, 13 (1800) 3–4, re Patent Specification. 2312, 1799.

37 One of the contributory reasons for the Dutch supremacy in field bleaching was the low cost of capital. In the seventeenth century the rate of interest was lower in Holland than anywhere else in Europe. See, Wilson, C., Anglo-Dutch Commerce and Finance in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, England, 1941Google Scholar; reprinted 1966), 25.

38 Wadsworth, A. P. and Mann, J. De L., The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire 1600–1780 (Manchester, 1931Google Scholar; reprinted 1965), 47.

39 Gill, C., The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford, 1925), 51, 249.Google Scholar

40 The increasing demand for capital was reflected in the falling price of Government Stock bearing a nominal rate of interest of 3 per cent in the period 1760–1800: