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...

Craven Herald and Pioneer, Friday 2nd March 1900: Khaki Fashionable  The term 'khaki', now in such general use, is a little puzzling to some people. As a matter of fact, it signifies the particular colour, and has no reference to the material, which may be cotton or wool, and yet entitled to the term 'khaki'. It is a very sandy colour, having just a yellow tinge in it, which makes it almost the tint of the ground in the tropical sandy countries. By the way, khaki will probably be a very popular tint for women's wear throughout the coming season. Already it is very much in evidence,  and is by no means an unbecoming colour to most people. Does this help to give a date to the introduction of Sylko shade D202?  Do you know about Messages in Bobbins?

The English Sewing Cotton Company was a very disparate company, with cotton mills in Lancashire, Derbyshire, Leicester and North Yorkshire among other places. In my mind, I've seen each of the mills as separate entities that had little to do with each other. So, it was interesting to glean from reports in the Craven Herald newspaper archive that during the 1920s, there seems to have been a social exchange between Dewhurst's mill in Skipton and the Ermen and Roby mill at Patricroft.  On 1st July 1927 the Herald reported on a recent match between Belle Vue Mills Bowling Club (Skipton) and ESCC Patricroft branch. The match was called off due to the unseasonal weather in Skipton that Saturday. Instead, everyone retreated to the Belle Vue Mills welfare hall - which was located where the car park for B&M Bargains is now. A social and tea was provided for 150 people, followed by dancing to the Craven Symphonic Band. A display of exercises on parallel bars was also given by members...

         A regular trawl through the many Sylko listings on ebay occasionally brings up something new to add to the online Sylko Cotton Colour Name Archive. Lately I've found these high numbered rarities - they must be fairly difficult to find as I've been collecting the names for well over a decade and not seen them until their recent ebay sales.

 I have a new book available to purchase in the following ways:  Amazon Kindle- £2.99  https://amzn.eu/d/dPZ4Xae Amazon Paperback - £5.99   https://amzn.eu/d/5mJjhFp Etsy pdf download -£3.59  https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4375786566/english-sewing-in-the-20th-century-a Here's the blurb: The English Sewing Cotton Company was established in 1897, and brought together a combine of 14 major cotton producing companies. Household names such as Dewhurst's (the makers of the Sylko cotton reel), Arkwright of Cromford, Strutts of Belper and Ermen & Roby were among the members. Over the following 80 years, the fortunes and marketing of the English Sewing Cotton Company reflected the way that women throughout the country sewed. This short history looks at how the English Sewing Cotton Company worked, and at the peak and decline of domestic sewing. From fancy needlework competitions to visiting needlewomen, this book follows the thread of sewing in the 20th centur...

The Executive Committee minutes from the early years of WW2 reflects a sense of minor panic. A war emergency stock of Sylko Machine Twist was set up, with 13,000 gross of finished goods being set aside. The stock was stored in Belper, hopefully off the Luftwaffe's radar. They weren't so sure about the safety of storing it in Manchester - rightly so. In October 1940 a roof spotter was appointed to watch out for incendiaries landing on Arkwright House.  But there were also reports of a slackening off in the quality department.  In August 1940, the Committee declared themselves to be disappointed with the poor lustre of the Sylko samples. Earlier in the year, badly centred tickets were a cause for concern, and the issue of faulty ticketing also reared its head again in October.  But the company recovered from early panic due to the ongoing need for large amounts of thread for the war effort. Belper produced khaki fabric for the army and upholstery thread for Austin Motors wh...

 I made a second visit to the Manchester Archives to view some more of the English Sewing Cotton Company material. It is a huge archive and it's difficult to know what to choose to look at - which documents will hold the most information? There are no previews online - just a list of what the archive contains. This time around, I decided to view some meeting minutes. There are Directors' Minutes and Executive Committee Minutes for practically the whole of the life of the ESCC.  Too much to see all at once. Again - it's difficult to know what to select because there is no indication of the size of each item. In the end I selected one lot of Directors' Minutes and four lots of Executive Minutes. This did turn out to be too much - meetings were held very regularly and the books containing the typed sheets of notes were rather large. I was unable to do it all justice in the 3 hours I had at my disposal. However, I picked out a few snippets of information to bring away with ...

As the English Sewing Cotton Company, latterly English Sewing Limited, developed over the decades of the 20th century, so did the labels on their Sylko reels. It seems impossible to pinpoint when exactly Sylko labels were subject to often tiny changes and how many differences there are in existance. One end of the reels hardly altered - the red, white and blue logo end with the 3 shells branding. Not until the Tootal years did anyone dare mess with this branding.  It the blue and white ends stating the colour shade and number have myriad differences. And even after years and years of collecting  - for me it must be more than a decade now - those little surprises keep on popping up. Here's a new one, discovered in an antiques shop in Hebden Bridge this week: I have never before seen that wording "Fast to B.S. 3418-61". On all other reels that I have, the label simply states "Fast Dye". See the reel here with others for comparison: I would say that the Blue Crest ...

  Crafting magazines in the late 60s were embracing man made textiles, emphasising the ease in which they could be turned into clothes, and the subsequent ease in which these garments could be cared for. Not that you needed to look after them that carefully, everything was so cheap you could just make another at the drop of a nylon zip. It had never been so easy to be in fashion.  

  From a 1952 needlework magazine, when ladies were encouraged to make their home as beautiful as possible using their skills. The aspiration was dainty with a slight French accent.

 If you take a trip down the A6 south from Matlock, you can’t fail to miss Masson Mills. Built by Sir Richard Arkwright ‘s company in 1783, the cotton mill was deliberately constructed to stand out. Back then, the majority of Derbyshire buildings were constructed of local stone. Arkwright chose red brick for his new mill – a big sore thumb next to the Derwent. It showed off just how rich he had become on the proceeds of his cotton spinning. There is a ring attached to one of the internal walls which is reputedly where Arkwright tied his horse when he came to inspect the works. They say that if you touch it, you will become as rich as he was! Today, the mill buildings are a museum and heritage centre, and guided tours currently take place on Thursdays and Fridays. I decided to join one of these, as I thought it could be a source of ESCC information. Masson Mills became part of the ESCC combine when the grouping took place in 1897, and remained operational until 1991. I was very plea...

  In 12 years sewing magazine articles went from antimaccassars to beach holidays abroad. Publishers caught up with what women really wanted from life - especially the young. We didn't want to be pretty and becoming so much as having fun with our hair loose. The similarities are that dressmaking projects needed to be quick and easy. By 1968 there were now easy care fabrics available too.

In January 1916, conscription was introduced in order to obtain more front line troops for the trenches. As the war went on, such was the government's desperation to obtain more cannon fodder, the upper age limit was pushed up to 50!  Some occupations were protected and companies (as well as the individuals concerned) could appeal conscription for their workers if they could prove that their work was vital. In November 1917, The Derbyshire Advertiser published an item titled "Belper Tribunal". This was a report into the military tribunals that had taken place to decide whether local workers should be sent for military service. This being Belper, a town dominated by the mills established by the Strutt family, a lot of the men in question were English Sewing Cotton Company employees.  In fact, the military tribunal was chaired by Alderman G H Strutt - the mill owner himself! Perhaps this went in favour of some of the men, if he had a thorough understanding of what their wor...

 3 found poems cut from a 1932 issue of Good Needlework Magazine. The sewing themes of the time emerge - skill with a needle and a beautiful home that you never want to stray from is the only route to happiness for today's woman. Meanwhile I need to find better glue.

 Extracts from Peter Hennessy's 'Never Again - Britain 1945-51' (Penguin, 1992) Two of the staple industries which had given Britain much of its Victorian economic supremacy - cotton and shipbuilding - were saved then revived by the demands of renewed war after 1939. In the 1930s, the Bank of England had led a rescue of the Lancashire textile industry,  reeling from recession and the rise of competitors in India and Japan. The introduction of tariffs after 1932, when the national government engineered a strategic change of economic direction with a general shift from free trade to protection, had saved the home market for Lancashire but not the world market in which it had held sway overwhelmingly until 1914. By 1939, Lancashire had only half the spinning and weaving capacity in use in 1920 and the national workforce in cotton goods had shrivelled from 600,000 to 350,000 over the same period. (This seems at odds with the display of confidence shown by the ESCC in the early ...

 The magazine 'Fancy Needlework Illustrated' was introduced in around 1906 (the 3rd edition was published in March 1907). It was the official magazine of the Northern School of Art Needlework, Manchester.  It appears that there were very close ties between the School and the English Sewing Cotton Company. I have an issue of the magazine from 1910 and almost every advertisement is for a member company of the ESCC (see below). Also, for some time the School held an annual competition which received wide publicity in contemporary newspapers. Both the launch of the competition and the winners received coverage, with regional publications being especially proud of local prizewinners. The annual contest consisted of several categories, and the sewing cotton to be used in each category was strictly prescribed  - each prescribed cotton being an ESCC product. Here's  a photo of the 1911 competition entry form: Ardern's and Dewhurst's are perhaps the most famous names listed ...

  Woman's Weekly magazine was well known for home-making patterns. Knitting patterns were its forte, but there was always an item of clothing to be sewn too. This 1965 issue leads with a dress to make yourself - using one of their own Fleetway patterns. That they had their own pattern department shows that home dressmaking was not yet out of fashion.  Here's the 1 1/2 page spread inside. Note that they had a partnership with Bentalls to supply the fabric as modelled. It makes it easy and therefore possibly lucrative for both parties.  But then look back to near the beginning of the magazine: Here we have an advert for a bargain buy dress from Etam. According to their website they had just begun selling ready to wear clothes in 1963. It looks to be a simple design, one that a competent dressmaker could probably have a good go at herself. But here they are, taking the bother out of it for not much more cost. Here we have the early evidence of the reason for the ESCC's strug...

 I have been combing the British Newspaper Archive, looking for the earliest mention of Dewhurst's Sylko cotton thread.  Evidently,  Ardern's Star Sylko nametag preceeded Dewhurst's thread as there are mentions of this earlier on. The Manchester Courier, 9th July 1908, directly refers to "Dewhurst's "Sylko" machine twist" in a report on the Franco-British Exhibition (British Textiles Section). On 13th August 1908, The Tailor and Cutter are also reporting on this exhibition at White City, where Messrs Dewhurst's Sylko machine twist is noticed as being something useful to the Tailor. The wording of both of these articles made me believe that 1908 must have seen the launch of Sylko, as they refer to it as something hitherto unknown. However, I have now found a new reference.  Kentish Express and Ashford News, 26 May 1906 - an advert for Stickells of New Street, Ashford refers to over 90 shades of a silk substitute called "Sylko" "whic...