Iron, Steam & Money

by Roger Osborne

  His own mills were only part of Arkwright’s cotton empire; he also earned from licensing his spinning frame to other mill-owners. No written agreements outlining the terms have survived, and there is a strong suspicion that Arkwright came to verbal agreements in order to avoid sharing the income with his original partners, who still had a stake in the patent. He also limited the number of licensed spindles at each mill to 1,000 to disable any serious competition to his own mills. In 1780 a spinner asserted that Arkwright charged £7,000 for every 1,000 spindles, while in 1785, Robert Peel, a notable Lancashire textile-maker, claimed that Arkwright was charging £2 per spindle. At a conservative estimate of 50,000 spindles licensed to other mill-owners, this brought Arkwright an enormous annual income.

  By 1782, by his own estimation, Arkwright had sold water-frames and carding machines to hopeful entrepreneurs in eight counties; he reckoned that this had engendered an industry employing 5,000 people and investments of around £200,000. This assessment was part of his evidence in support of a request to have his patent extended; it had been granted for fourteen years and was therefore due to expire in 1783. It was this attempt to extend his patent that so infuriated the spinners of Manchester, which by the 1780s had become the centre of the cotton trade. They believed that Arkwright’s licence fees were too high and many of them doubted the originality of his invention. Part of their case was that Arkwright had made a fortune from his invention already. Edward Bearcroft argued during Arkwright’s patent trial of 1785 (see Chapter 13) that he had earned around £100,000 from the water-frame.

  As well as buying his frames, other mill-owners copied Arkwright’s factory template. More important perhaps, they looked at Arkwright’s wealth and power and saw that all this could come from the cotton industry. Arkwright was a rival and an enemy, but he was also an inspiration.

  Arkwright’s innovations extended to his workforce: he pioneered the use of apprentices in factories. Early factories became notorious for the use of pauper apprentices, taken en masse from parish workhouses and put to work often in appalling conditions. However, Arkwright’s son told the 1833 parliamentary inquiry that, while children had been used, parish or pauper apprentices had never been employed at Cromford. There is evidence from an account by one of his workers, Simeon Cundy, that he had ‘Entered Mr Arkwright’s factory . . . as a worker in the card-room [aged six in 1782]; four years after became an apprentice for seven years, to learn the turning, filing, and fitting up of wood, brass, iron, steel, and every branch of machinery.’17 Cundy later became a manager at William Young’s mill in Bakewell. Rees’s Cyclopædia of 1813 also declared that ‘such works as Messrs Strutts’ at Belper, Mr Arkwright at Cromford in Derbyshire . . . and many others, are schools for mechanics in almost every department of that science; and good ones too, as the cotton manufacturers are convinced, that it is in their interest to attend to every minutia in the construction of their machines, which may render them more durable and their operations more perfect’.18

  Inspections of the works at Cromford when it had passed to Arkwright’s son confirmed the view that the workers were treated well and the mills kept clean. In fact, Arkwright Jnr was one of the few mill-owners who welcomed the 1803 law which outlawed the employment of children under nine, and restricted the working hours of those under eighteen.

  John Byng, who visited Cromford in 1789, wrote: ‘Below Matlock a new creation of Sir Richard Arkwright’s is started up, which has crowded the village of Cromford with cottages, supported by his three magnificent cotton mills. There is so much water, so much rock, so much population and so much wood that it looks like a Chinese town . . . This house, and village appear so clean, and so gay, as to quite revive me, after the dirt and dullness of Bakewell.’

  Byng also witnessed an annual event organised by Arkwright: ‘a grand assortment of prizes, from Sr R. Arkwright, to be given, at the years end, to such bakers, butchers &c, as shall have best furnish’d the market . . . They consist of beds, presses, clocks, chairs &c. and bespeak Sr Rd’s prudence and cunning; for without ready provisions, his colony cou’d not prosper: so the clocks will go very well.’19

  The working day at Cromford was shorter than in other mills, the workers better fed, and the boys given breaks for breakfast and tea; elsewhere they had to eat as they worked.

  By 1780 Richard Arkwright had become wealthy enough to present his daughter Susanna with a £15,000 dowry on her marriage to the son of an iron-making family. By then he owned a large swathe of land around Cromford, and was granted further ownership when Matlock Common was subject to an Enclosure award. The social kudos to accompany his wealth and fame came when, on 22 December 1786, he was knighted. The honour was provoked by Arkwright’s presentation of a Loyal Address to celebrate George III’s escape from assassination at the hands of Margaret Nicholson that August, but it did not prevent the British aristocracy from ridiculing his attempts at aggrandisement. On his way to receive his knighthood Arkwright visited Sir Joseph Banks; and a noble acquaintance of Banks gave the following account of the day’s events:

  . . . the Great Mr Arkwright who came to Sir Josephs in a black wig, brown frock, woosted stockings & Boots to ask him to go with him . . . Sir Jos. too good-natured to refuse agreed but asked him about his dress. Mr Ark— proposed going as he was, for he was not afraid they were but Men and so was He – however it was agreed he should take off his boots & return with good shoes at the proper hour[.] Our friends . . . were not a little surprised to see little fatty appear a beau with a smart powdered bag wig so tight that coming over his ears it made him deaf; a handsome striped satin waist coat & proper coat with a sword, which he held in his hand . . . What a pity you happened not to be there [at the ceremony] as the scene was excellent, the little great Man had no idea of kneeling but crimpt himself up in a very odd posture which I suppose His Majesty took for an easy one so never took the trouble to bid him rise.20

  Those with a distaste for snobbery will find the next account more agreeable: ‘During his stay in London, he was in company with some noblemen, one of whom, possessing more pride than parts, asked him whether he had not once been a barber. “Sir,” replied Arkwright, with a spirit truly noble, “I was once a barber, and am apt to conclude, had your lordship been a barber, you must have continued a barber still.”’21

  Arkwright continued his social ascent when he was made high sheriff of Derbyshire in 1787. Arriving at Derby for his official duties he was accompanied by at least thirty gentlemen decked out in the most gorgeous dark blue and gold livery, his coach painted and swathed in sumptuous fabrics and, for the duration of the assizes, he ‘provided a plentiful Table, with the choicest Wines &c. for such Gentlemen as pleased to partake of the noble Banquet’.22

  In 1782 he bought the manor of Willersley and four years later began building his mansion Willersley Castle, a Gothic-revival pile of seven bays complete with battlements on the slopes of Wild Cat Tor. His later years show him still wheeling and dealing, in particular trying to set up cotton plantations in West Africa to supplement the supply from the West Indies. In 1789 Arkwright had his portrait painted by Joseph Wright of Derby, who had already painted his daughter Susanna and son-in-law; Arkwright’s portrait was also painted by Mather Brown.

  Arkwright fell ill in July 1792 and died the following month. His funeral at Matlock was attended by over 2,000 mourners and he was buried in the chapel he had built at Cromford. A report in the Gentleman’s Magazine described the cortège passing Wild Cat Tor: ‘The road was now nearly impassable from the crowds of people and carriages; for, Sir Richard Arkwright’s funeral passed the Torr for Matlock church . . . The ceremony was conducted with much pomp and, as nearly as I can remember, was thus: a coach and four with the clergy; another with the pall-bearers; the hearse . . . followed . . . and about fifteen or twenty carriages, closed the procession, which was perhaps half a mile in length.’23

  The magazine also stated that Sir Richard ‘died immensely rich, and has left manufactories th
e income of which is greater than that of most German principalities [derived from circumstances] that promote the prosperity of a country. His real and personal property is estimated at little short of half a million.’24

  *

  Victorian aesthetes liked to say that the portraits of Arkwright showed a vulgar and ruthless man, and it seems that Britain has never quite known what to make of its first industrialist. Arkwright was a new kind of man; the first industrial magnate with nationwide ambitions, and the first commoner to have become ennobled through industrial entrepreneurship. He invented and perfected machinery that he then turned into an economic tool; he devised the factory system and made it work; he built an unprecedented commercial empire through a combination of skill, confidence, grand vision and meticulous attention to detail; and he turned the cotton industry of northern England and Scotland from a minnow into an international economic powerhouse. But in a society dominated by those born into money and social standing, the transformation of a tailor’s son from Preston into a national symbol of industrial and commercial power had been hard to take.

  13. Arkwright on Trial

  THE MOST SENSATIONAL patent trial in history took place in June 1785, at the King’s Bench in London. The buccaneering figure of Richard Arkwright, the king of cotton, was under attack. His attempts to extend his patents had roused his competitors to fury; now the very foundations of those patents, on which Arkwright had built his fortune, were being called into question. By 1785 Arkwright had already undergone three patent trials to defend his inventions and to prosecute illegal users; the result so far was 2–1 to Arkwright. But at each trial the stakes had been raised higher, and now the whole of Arkwright’s intellectual property was in the balance. The world watched and waited.1

  In 1769 Arkwright had been awarded a fourteen-year patent for the invention of a spinning frame; in 1775 he was awarded a further patent for a carding engine – it also included other processes such as preparing rovings – which stood until 1799. By the early 1780s Arkwright’s devices were being used under licence in cotton mills across Derbyshire, Lancashire and Scotland. While most mill-owners paid up, some used the machines without permission hoping either to keep their use secret or to be able to face down any threats from the patent-holder. As we have seen, enforcing patents was the task of the inventor, not the patent office, and no one going to court to protect or overturn a patent could be sure of the outcome.

  In February 1781 Richard Arkwright threatened legal action against spinners for infringing his 1775 patent. Three mill-owners immediately came to an agreement with the inventor but the Manchester mill-owners decided to resist; in March they met ‘to consider the most effectual Means of obtaining the Free and general Use of Engines and Inventions for the Manufacturing of Cotton, and of opposing any Attempts that may be made by any Person or Persons at obtaining a Monopoly of the Use thereof’.2 In response Arkwright took legal action against nine Manchester firms. The battle lines were drawn.

  Submissions made by lawyers reveal the industrial secrecy that infected the cotton trade. Arkwright claimed he had been barred from gathering evidence due to ‘the Extraordinary Caution observed at Most of the Works to conceal their machines – at many they made every Person who entered the buildings take an Oath not to disclose what they saw & at almost all Strangers & every body but approved Friends were excluded . . . it was with the utmost difficulty and Personal Danger that the Plts servants could get to make the observations they did.’3

  On 17 July 1781 the case came before Lord Mansfield in Westminster Hall. The first defendant was Colonel Mordaunt. His counsel, Edward Bearcroft MP, had spotted a weakness in the plaintiff’s case. As he later recorded: ‘it was this; that if this was a new invention, Mr Arkwright had not fairly communicated it by his specification, but had absolutely contrived to hide it’.4 This sudden introduction of the specification as a crucial element came as a shock to Arkwright. Patent specifications reflected the reluctance of inventors to show their hand and were kept deliberately vague – once the judge ruled that the specification must be clear, Arkwright was stymied. The jury found the patent invalid and Arkwright withdrew his prosecution of the other cases.

  The Manchester spinners were naturally delighted but a much bigger threat loomed as Arkwright sought an Act of Parliament to extend his 1769 spinning patent. He argued that a huge amount of work had gone into perfecting his machine after the patent was obtained; but what weighed against him was the amount of money he had earned from the invention. (This was in contrast to the James Watt patent; when that was extended by twenty-five years in 1775, not a single engine had yet been sold.) Arkwright’s competitors lobbied hard against him and, in late 1782, one even threatened his life. Arkwright’s publication of the anonymous letter in the Manchester Mercury was intended to expose the villainy of his opponents, but to no avail – Parliament refused to act on his petition.

  * * *

  Death Threat

  Richard Arkwright’s attempt to extend his 1769 patent provoked fury from the Manchester mill-owners. When he received a death threat via his Manchester solicitor’s office on 28 November 1782, he published it in the Manchester Mercury to expose his competitors’ unscrupulous methods:

  ‘Sir

  ‘I am very sorry to hear that you will do all you can to distress the trade of Manchester: after you had lost the Cause in London this town thought you would then have been easy [seeing] the remainder of your time in the patent out. But you still keep doing all you can, and not only that but you have been heard to say that you was determin’d to ruin every person that enter’d into that Business. The purpose of this is to advise you that if you do not withdraw all your prosecutions before December is out I am determin’d to lay in wait for you either in this town, Nottingham or wherever I most likely find you. I will as sure shoot you as your name is that which it is, dam you. Do you think the town must be ruled by such a barber as you. Take notice if you are in town on Saturday next I will make an end of you [should I] meet you wherever I can.

  ‘I am not yours, but a friend to the town of Manchester.’5

  * * *

  In response Arkwright threw himself into pursuing those spinners who had infringed his 1769 patent, which now had just months to run. Singling out Thomas James of Nottingham as a test case, and paying minute attention to the specifications, in December 1783 Arkwright persuaded the Court of Common Pleas to find in his favour. Arkwright and Strutt were awarded only nominal damages and did not pursue the defendant for compensation, but the victory made Arkwright determined to overturn the loss of his 1775 carding patent. Once again he focussed on a single miscreant, his neighbour Peter Nightingale, and this time he ensured that his legal team was prepared for every eventuality, including objections to the all-important specification.

  Legal preparations went on through 1784 before the case was heard at the Court of Common Pleas by Lord Loughborough in February 1785. Arkwright’s counsel argued that the specification only made sense when viewed in conjunction with earlier machines, of which this was an improvement. Three models were presented to the court, showing different stages of development of the carding machine, including the improved patented model. The Arkwright side had also gathered celebrity witnesses. Erasmus Darwin encouraged James Watt to come to the aid of Arkwright: ‘I think you should defend each other from the ingratitude of mankind.’6 Watt, Darwin and other witnesses stated that they would have no trouble building a machine from the carding-engine specification, if they also had the previous machine in front of them. But Edward Bearcroft for the other side argued that the patent application did not make any mention of a previous machine and was therefore invalid. The judge disagreed.

  The most persuasive evidence came not from distinguished experts, but from five men who had actually built the machine from the specification. Thomas Wood testified that he built carding machines in 1782 although he had never visited Cromford and therefore received no other instruction; the same story came from Samuel
Wise, John Stead and two others. The defence counsel pressed Stead to describe the machine, but Lord Loughborough asserted that his inability to do so was not material; if he could build the machine he did not need to be able to describe its workings. The five witnesses impressed the judge, who cited their evidence in his summing-up. Having started at 11 a.m., the case finished at 9 p.m. with the jury declaring for Arkwright. Having spent £1,000 on the case, he was awarded the one shilling in damages he had requested.

  Arkwright and his solicitors returned immediately to Derbyshire, visiting mills at Matlock, Burton and Ashbourne to give their owners notice to cease operations. They also went on to Peter Nightingale’s mill at Cromford, where Arkwright graciously offered his defeated rival the chance to continue his business by paying the rate of five shillings per spindle per annum for day work, and a further five shillings for night work.

  While the Mordaunt verdict in 1781 had been a blow to Arkwright, the reinstatement of his carding patent in February 1785 was potentially a dagger at the heart of the industry. The patent was drawn so widely that, if upheld, every cotton spinner in England would have to pay a royalty to Arkwright. Since the 1781 trial, cotton spinners had invested huge sums of money in new mills and machinery on the understanding that it was free to use; the expansion of the industry was now at risk. The Manchester mill-owners therefore immediately applied for a writ of scire facias which would require Arkwright to defend the basis of his patent before a judge and jury. The writ was granted by the Crown and the case of Rex vs Arkwright was set for June 1785.