Stamp Collector

85 MAY 2020 www.allaboutstamps.co.uk Britain’s Industrial Revolution , Barrie Trinder, Lancaster 2013 British Printed Papers by Post 1836 to 1876 , Gavin Fryer, 2018 FURTHER READING workers and machines in the factories of the industrial age as well as the sale of the product. But we can go further and see the product itself. Textiles were ideally suited to be posted as samples around the globe, but especially to continental Europe. Since such samples have spent their entire lives inside letters, protected from light, the colours are as fresh as the day they were made. In theory each sample could have counted as a separate entity for postal purposes exporting cotton, after New Orleans and Charleston. Once it had arrived the cotton needed to be processed and, in the days before photography, invoices offer us a rare glimpse of the new- fangled machinery that revolutionized the industry. The powered loom for weaving came much later than that for spinning with handloom weavers peaking at about 240,000 workers in 1820 and power looms growing from 2,400 in 1813 to 14,150 by 1820 and 115,552 by 1835. Mechanisation transformed a cottage industry into one dominated by huge factories and fortunately many industrialists took such pride in their enterprises that they too feature on many commercial invoices which lurk hidden in mundane looking entires franked with 1d reds. The manufacture of the machines themselves necessitated the building of substantial factories and created their own export industry to the United States. By the 1850s many of the mills were opening warehouses to sell their fabrics which were even more impressive than the mills themselves. So, as postal historians, we can demonstrate the import of raw cotton, its manufacture by the 2. Cartwright’s Power Loom on an invoice from Oak-View Mills in Saddleworth posted to Edinburgh in 1825. The ‘Postage to Edinburgh Not Paid’ mark indicated that the full postage was to be paid by the recipient after forwarding 3. A view of the Phoenix Works in Manchester from an invoice for the supply of spinning frames to a manufacturer in Rhode Island in 1846 for an equivalent value today of some £30,000 4. Samples of calico manufactured in Manchester in 1815 sent under cover to an agent in Calais who applied his cachet ‘Sous couvert de Choisnard de Calais’ before forwarding it to Boxen in the Tyrol which is why there was a special rate in many countries for patterns and samples. So any letter with such a designation written on the outside should be opened, just in case! 3 4