The English Sewing Cotton Company Scrapbook

Times were hard in the immediate post war period, and when temptations presented themselves…. Craven Herald and Pioneer - Friday 1st November 1946 . JEL, Labourer, East Preston, Littlehampton, was fined £2 and ordered to pay 6s costs for the theft of 47 reels of Sylko, one cop of Sylko machine twist and 10lbs of warp yarn from the Skipton mill of the English Sewing Cotton Company. Defendant pleaded “Guilty.” Inspector Knapton said JEL had obtained employment at Belle View Mills, Skipton, as a labourer on February 6, but he had left the firm on his own account on October 5. The previous day, detective officer Adams and police constable Rowling had visited the defendant's house where they found an unbleached type of glace. When asked where he had got it, JEL replied, “I found it in a case: it was going to be burned.” He then showed them a packing case containing among other items, 2 reels of warp yarn and 46 reels of Sylko, which he said had been stolen from the mill. Told he would ...

On Friday 5th December 1902, the Craven Herald and Pioneer newspaper reported on a bit of a to-do at the English Sewing Cotton Company: “Considerable sensation has been caused in connection with the English Sewing Cotton Company by the sudden and mysterious disappearance of one of their officials, holding the position of cashier, at the famous Strutt Mills Belper. The gentleman in question (Mr WB Hole) was last seen on Monday, the 24th in Leicester, whither he had journeyed to attend to some secretarial duties.  He left the house of a married daughter residing at Leicester at about 7 o'clock, ostensibly to attend a business meeting, and all attempts to trace his whereabouts since have been fruitless. According to arrangements, he was expected back at the company's offices in Belper on Tuesday morning last week.  His non appearance there gave rise to concern and a telegraphic message was at once dispatched to Leicester.  This elicited the reply that he had left there on Mo...

On a recent visit to Skipton I decided to make a few days of it. I stayed on Swadford Street, a little down the road and over the canal from Belle Vue Mill. Past reports in the Craven Herald archive mark Swadford Street out as a centre of drunken behaviour and I have to say that little has changed in that respect over the past 150 years!  But while I was in the area I went to see the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth for the first time since I was an impressionable pre-teen, when I developed a Charlotte Bronte complex that has never quite gone away. We had the same hair colour. It struck me that there would have been some cross over with Dewhurst's developing cotton thread business and Charlotte's life. Charlotte was an accomplished needlewoman - here's a photo of a dress that she hand sewed herself. It's astonishing. Her stitches are just breathtaking. I couldn't stop staring. And did she ever use Dewhurst's Three Shells thread? A little story developed on the bus ba...