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8
DRESS, FASHION, AND
SOCIAL CHANGES
FOLLOWING THE
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
(19th century)
The Industrial Revolution began in Britain; its duration less than 200 years. Marked
by an astounding burst of inventive energy in many different areas, it began in the
eighteenth century and closed toward the end of the nineteenth. Previous
chapters chronicled the ways the textile industry stimulated the industrialization
that characterized the period. This chapter explores the differences this revolution
made in the lives of the population of Britain where the Industrial Revolution
had its start. Through them we may be able to answer these two questions.
What changes in Western society can be identified as having been somehow
related to the Industrial Revolution? And what did this have to do with dress and
fashion?
Life in Britain before and after
the Industrial Revolution
The bulk of the population of Britain (there were around six million in the late
1700s) was rural. Most people worked on the land. Only about one-fifth of them
lived in towns. Most of the work they did was an outgrowth of agriculture (Hicks,
2010: 4). What industries there were, were small-scale. Even textile-related work
was done using agricultural products: linen from the flax plant and wool from
sheep. Linen was not generally produced in England, Scotland, or Wales. It was
brought from Ireland, where there were more favorable growing and processing
conditions (Ashton, 1968: 22–3).
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DRESS, FASHION, AND TECHNOLOGY
In all parts of the world, textile production had been one of the earliest
industries associated with those living on the land. In Britain, the government
provided a variety of regulations of wool production in order to safeguard this
product. These ranged from prohibiting the emigration of wool workers to
forbidding the importing of competing fabrics, and even insisting that the dead
be buried in wool garments. All members of the household had tasks relating to
wool production. Women sorted, cleaned, and spun the fiber. Assignment of this
latter task to women, including those unmarried, is reflected in English in the
word “spinster,” as well as in “distaff,” the staff on which bundles of fiber were
held prior to spinning, a word that has become a synonym for female. Men did
the weaving. By the eighteenth century, the finishing steps in making the fabric
were more likely to be done in local mills where wool was fulled (compacted),
fibers were brushed up on the surface in a process called napping, and the cloth
was dyed. The power source for these latter activities was provided by horses or
by water.
Imported textile fibers that were not yet made into fabrics such as silk, linen,
mohair, and cotton did not follow the pattern of the family-produced woolens.
With these fibers, an employer who funded the operation gathered a group of
perhaps half a dozen looms in central buildings, described as garrets or sheds
(Ashton, 1968: 24). In a few more specialized areas, a merchant distributed
(described as “putting out”) fibers and/or yarns from which a local weaver (male)
wove the cloth. Often additional finishing was done in establishments owned by
merchants. From these descriptions, it is easy to see how a kind of factory
system in infancy was developing.
Production of completed items of dress is described as “relatively small and
unimportant,” as garments were most often made by the family or by a seamstress
or a tailor hired for this purpose. Specialized items such as hats usually had an
identifiable regional center where they were made. For example, hats made from
beaver fur imported from the American colonies generally came from London,
while stockings were knitted by hand in Scotland and Wales or on a mechanized
knitting frame in London.
One of the first of the mechanical inventions that set the textile industry on its
way to the Industrial Revolution had been the flying shuttle, invented in 1733 by
John Kay of Lancashire. This device allowed one man instead of two to insert the
shuttle across the full width of the cloth. Hammers activated by pulling a cord
provided sufficient momentum to pass the shuttle through the full width of the
shed. Workers fearful of losing their jobs to this mechanical device opposed its
use, and it was not fully accepted for about thirty years, gaining its place in the
textile industry only after 1760.
The mechanization of the production of formerly hand-made products
described in Chapter 7 was not accepted without opposition. The movement
toward mechanizing machines such as the stocking frame and the opening of
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SOCIAL CHANGES FOLLOWING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
115
factories of various kinds, along with a depressed economy in England, led
disadvantaged workers to engage in machine breaking – a weapon used by
workers to gain some leverage when negotiating with owners. Probably the most
famous of the campaigns waged against the new technologies is that of the
Luddites, a name derived from Ludd, the pseudonym adopted by the leaders of
a revolt against the use of wide knitting machines that made three or four stockings
at once. This excess quantity of stockings lowered the prices and exacerbated
the economic decline of these textile-working families. Groups of workers revolted
against their situation, broke into premises housing the hated machines, and
broke them up. This rebellion continued sporadically from about 1811 to 1817
and was centered largely in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire. The
British government eventually stamped it out with arrests, executions, and penal
deportation. The memory of the movement lingers on in Luddite, a term that has
come to mean a person who objects to modern technology.
While mill and factory production increased, it did not completely eradicate
the home production of textiles and apparel. Thompson (1988) reports some
50,000 hand loom cotton weavers in the 1850s and notes that the combing of
fibers remained a hand process. But by the latter decades of the nineteenth
century, the move to factory production of textiles was largely complete. However,
textiles as they came from the loom were not ready to wear as clothing or use in
the home. Shoes and stockings were produced by local craft persons and often
sold to a local clientele. When sewing machines became available in the
nineteenth century, work on making clothes could be either put out to workers at
home or produced in a factory setting. The first ready-to-wear was predominantly
menswear, but by the 1880s and 1890s, blouses and dresses for women were
also being made (Thompson, 1988: 36–7).
In the late 1800s, Britain looked entirely different than it had a hundred years
before. The population had grown to twenty million, and more than half of those
lived in cities. In the earlier period, power had been supplied by horses, wind,
and water. Working from a background of earlier patents that were not fully
successful in trying to harness steam as power to run an engine, James Watt
patented his steam engine in 1769. Watt’s use of coal to produce the steam was
a boon to the coal industry. As the population grew, manufacturing tended to be
located in towns and cities where there were more workers. In the factories,
work was divided into specific tasks and each worker was assigned an operation,
the origin of the assembly line in which work flowed from one logical task to the
next. This factory-based manufacturing and the wealth of new machines to
speed up the production line was beneficial to the entrepreneur, but workers had
no control over working conditions and schedules. Fifteen- and sixteen-hour
days were the norm. Safety and health issues were plentiful. Women and young
children did much of the work and there was no regulation of child labor. Most of
the factories were located in overcrowded cities and towns where poor housing,
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