William Hirst – ‘Father of the Yorkshire Woollen Trade’ (Part 1)

[Early years]    [The state of the local woollen trade]   [Establishment in business]    [Innovation and improvements in cloth finishing]    [Father of the Yorkshire Woollen Trade]   

In 1858 on a day late in August as the town of Leeds was preparing with eager anticipation for the royal visit of Queen Victoria , an elderly man died in a state of poverty at his grandson’s house in a street off Burley Road . In the manner of his death there was little to indicate that a generation earlier this man had been a wealthy and innovative entrepreneur who had supplied the finest cloths to the visiting Queen’s uncle, George IV, a man known to his contemporaries within and beyond the county boundaries as the ‘Father of the Yorkshire Woollen Trade.’

Early years

William Hirst was born in the small hamlet of Marsh, just outside Huddersfield in January 1777. In his own words his parents were ‘very poor but honest’ and as a result at a young age he was put out to earn his own bread. From the age of seven and starting by spinning worsted on a hand-wheel, he spent his childhood years in various forms of employment. For a time he worked as a gardener before driving carts for his uncle who was a carrier working between Huddersfield and Oldham and Manchester . He later recalled that his most vivid memories of his early years were of the frequent Pennine crossings ‘in the severest weather without shoes or stockings’.

At the age of 15 Hirst was apprenticed to a cloth finisher from his home village named John Caton but soon found him such a cruel master that he and a friend ran away. Reaching Bawtry near Doncaster on the first night of his escape Hirst went no further and spent the next year farming in the locality. Such was the measure of distinction of his service that when Hirst’s family, on establishing his whereabouts, came to reclaim him, they found his master most unwilling to release the young man!

After a short period as a journeyman cropper[i] in his native Huddersfield , Hirst left for Leeds in 1795. He found ‘work the first day… and afterwards got other engagements, generally improving myself by the change’. This included, at the turn of the century, employment as a cropper at Benjamin Gott’s impressive new factory, Bean Ing Mills (located on the site of what is now the Yorkshire Post offices at the bottom of Wellington Street), where he came into contact with the latest developments in the local woollen trade. These included, large scale factory production, the manufacture of a variety of different cloths and the use of machinery.

A brief review of the contemporary position of the Yorkshire Woollen trade is perhaps helpful in putting into context the impact that William Hirst was soon to have on the local industry.

The state of the local woollen trade

Although the real output of woollen industry is estimated to have more than doubled between 1695 and 1805 much of this growth appears to have occurred by the 1770’s and the next four decades grew much more slowly. It wasn’t until the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars that expansion returned lasting until the 1830’s. The ancient woollen trade was at risk of being overtaken by the growth of the cotton and linen industries. However within this overall picture of stagnation there was potentially significant variability in the fortunes of different regions in the country. Between 1772 and the end of the nineteenth century the West Riding was in the ascendancy and the proportion of the nation’s cloth produced in the West Riding grew from one third to three fifths. However, from 1800 to around 1815 woollen cloth production in Yorkshire experienced a check in its expansion and the level of local output remained constant. Against the backdrop of a stagnant local industry, William Hirst emerges to revitalize the fortunes of the West Riding and particularly the Leeds woollen trade.

Establishment in business

After several years as a journeyman cropper, Hirst with two partners spotted an opportunity to commence business in a small way by taking over the premises and stock of a retiring cloth dresser. With the encouragement of a firm of merchants, (Charles and Marmaduke Gray of St James Street) who were ‘so well satisfied with our work’, Hirst, by this time alone, set up a finishing/dressing shop on an adjoining site in Cankerwell Lane to provide them with greater supplies. This initial success was to allow Hirst in 1809 to start his career as both merchant and manufacturer in moving to St James Street where he opened new cropping and weaving shops. The ability of a poor and uneducated newcomer to enter the ranks of the town’s merchant classes demonstrates the changes that had taken place within the woollen industry, since the time of Hirst’s birth some 30 years earlier, when it would have been thought of as impossible.

As a merchant and manufacturer Hirst now began to travel more widely and often sold his goods in Edinburgh .  He was ‘mortified’ to find that finished cloths from Yorkshire were ‘losing the best markets’ being at a severe disadvantage in terms of quality to those produced in the West of England; Yorkshire cloth therefore commanded much lower prices.

He observed…‘I could not bring [my goods] to bear comparison with those manufactured in  the West of England…[They] had applied machinery [in the form of gigs to the finishing process] and their trade kept increasing; and they could always command higher prices  for their goods. Yorkshire [found it]  impossible to compete [with] the West of England first rate cloths…even when they had been manufactured from the same quality of wool…for it was impossible to  produce so good a finish by manual labour.’

William Hirst had not even seen a gig at this time (an example of which is shown in exhibit 1 below), though his opportunity soon came.

Exhibit 1 – Gig Mill c1815

Source: WB Crump & Thoresby Society

The rise of William Hirst….!

Innovation and improvements in cloth finishing

In 1813 Hirst was taken by a friend Thomas Lee to Oatland’s Mill in Leeds to see finishing gigs in operation. It was to be a revelation for the creative minded Hirst who later remarked ‘I had not been in the place more than five minutes, before I saw what was wanted to make them answer for Yorkshire fine goods’. He promptly told his eight croppers that he ‘believed it was all over with hand cropping’ and when they refused to operate the gigs despite Hirst’s offer of a ‘written guarantee that they should have thirty shillings a week wages as long as I lived’ he dispensed with their services. Hirst resolved ‘to introduce gigs even at the risk of my life’ and it is hard to overstate the practical risks that he took in acting on his vision.

Mechanisation of the finishing trade had not developed significantly in Leeds , unlike the West County due to the greater resistance and more powerful organization of the croppers locally. The year before in 1812, fearing the impact of machinery on their profession, croppers had attacked a number of factories in Yorkshire and other northern counties in what became known as the ‘Luddite’ riots. On 28 March the Leeds Mercury reported that ‘the finishing shops of Messrs Dickinson, Carr and Shann in this town were entered and eighteen pieces of fine cloth, dressed by machinery torn and cut into shreds’. This report was not an isolated occurrence, and the situation soon escalated with the Mercury’s announcement the following month of the ‘barbarous murder’ of William Horsfall, a woollen manufacturer in Huddersfield .

Hirst, the ex-cropper required no small measure of personal bravery, as the bitterness generated by his actions was such that he was forced to keep ten armed guards protecting his property each evening. Looking back in later years, he reflected that in those times, as a result of his innovations, ‘I never ventured out at night and even when I went out at day time, I always had a brace of loaded pistols in my pocket.’

Although a pioneer in the use of finishing gigs his own right, William Hirst by his own admission was not the first to introduce them into the local cloth finishing trade. His reputation was really to be made by becoming the first to make cloth suitable for gig-razing and thereby utilize the full benefit of the new machinery. Hitherto, ‘the ordinary fabric [when made locally]…was worse for being finished by machinery than if it had been done by hand’. Hirst by improving the fulling process[ii], managed to develop a softer yet thicker and more united cloth which was suitable for finishing by gig.

He quickly set about making cloth suitable for gig finishing and ‘agreed with Mr Oates of Oatlands Mill to finish them for me; myself or some other person whom I should appoint, to superintend the finishing. Having thus the whole management of my goods under my own care, I was enabled in a month or two, to produce cloth of a perfectly different style to any which had been previously made in Yorkshire’.

When Oates subsequently refused his offer to take over Oatlands Mill, Hirst erected his first mill in School Close (in the area covered today by Neville Street and Sovereign Street ) in 1815 and razed his first cloth in April 1816. This was to herald the start of a period of particular enterprise within the local woollen trade, which was to be led largely by the creative Hirst. In the following decade until 1825, he was responsible for virtually all the developments and improvements within the industry. These included:

Hirst’s reward for his inventive and entrepreneurial spirit was to be a small fortune. As he later wistfully reflected ‘I went on very prosperously sometime making as much as £20,000 clear profit annually’.

‘Father of the Yorkshire Woollen Trade’

The quality of Hirst’s goods was demonstrated to a wider audience when samples of his cloth were spotted by accident in London by two manufacturers from the West of England, hitherto the premier base for woollen manufacture. Surprised to find that these cloths originated from Yorkshire the manufacturers challenged Hirst to an independent examination to determine which were of the finer quality. As Hirst later recounted, ‘Above one hundred ends of cloth were sent to compare with mine; but when they came to lay them together , the West of England manufacturers said they had no occasion to put it to the judges, as they were perfectly satisfied mine were superior.’

Hirst’s reputation was sealed when, largely as a result of winning this competition, specimens of his cloth ‘sufficient for a coat’ were submitted in May 1818 on his behalf to the Prince Regent (later to become George IV). The future king was, in the words of his private secretary, delighted with the ‘texture and beauty of the cloth…which appears to be in every respect of beauty, fabric and utility, altogether unexampled’ and Hirst was appointed ‘manufacturer of superfine cloth to his Royal Highness’.

So voracious did the demand for his goods now become that Hirst sometimes found ‘in an evening I have not had one end of cloth in my warehouse …and I could have sold ten times the quantity of cloth I manufactured’, As well as the domestic market there was a buoyant and receptive foreign market for his fine quality cloths as his reputation spread. As well as exporting to the Irish and Scots, he had significant demand from America [iii] where he used a network of agents, although not altogether successfully.

A particular attribute of William Hirst during this time was his generosity of spirit in sharing his innovations and processes with fellow merchants and his exhortations for their wider implementation. It was to be this spirit of openness as much as his capacity for creativity which was to earn his reputation as the ‘Father of the Yorkshire Woollen Trade’. Hirst freely opened his mills and stocks of finished cloths to the public inspection of fellow manufacturers. In the period to 1823 he had a multitude of grateful visitors and potential competitors from as far a field as France , many of whom, as a result, were also able to ‘reap golden harvests’.

In hindsight, from a business perspective Hirst was perhaps a little naïve in freely surrendering his technical and commercial secrets, though in a booming market this probably seemed of little consequence. At this time, he did not secure exclusive patents for his inventions which he later had cause to regret, ‘unfortunately for my own interests, I was always too careless about my discoveries, and I consequently did not trouble myself about getting patents’. In later years when fortunes were not so favourable he would seek to draw heavily on those who had benefited from his expertise in the boom years.

Hirst retired from active business in 1824 a very wealthy man with an annual income of £5,000. However he left his capital in the business (Hirst and Heycock) which was now taken over by his son Thomas and partner Henry Heycock. Arguably, in an age of highly personalised capital this left Hirst exposed and would shortly prove to be a dreadful misjudgement on his part.

However, the local economy was booming and as Hirst observed ‘mills sprang up in Leeds like mushrooms’. He took the opportunity to speculate in land and property in and around Leeds, purchasing Armley Hall Estate, 36 acres in total, from James Bateson of Wortley for £20,000, and amongst other purchases , land situate over Wellington Bridge (£13,000), land opposite the Infirmary and the ‘Paper Mill’ estate on Kirkstall Road. Although he reckoned to have had ‘neither much loss nor gain’ in total, it is clear that the impending financial crash was to affect the value of his property badly, to the extent of some £30,000 by his estimation. As an illustration of the effect of the crash he recounted that ‘I had sold some of the Armley Hall Estate for 4s 6d per yard and that afterwards the remainder of the same land, in an equally good situation, would not realize more than 10d or at the best 1s per yard.’

In June 1825, Hirst was publicly commemorated for his contributions to the woollen trade, ‘the theme of admiration from the monarch to the humblest manufacturer’ at a celebratory dinner in his honour in Saddleworth attended by upwards of 80 of his peers including such notables of the day, as Edward Baines. Following an ‘excellent dinner’ he was presented with a ‘richly chased silver cup of the value of fifty guineas’ as a ‘testimony of the high sense of the high sense they entertain of his abilities and perseverance … and of their esteem for his frankness and liberality in communicating his improvements to the public.’  

END OF PART 1 

PART 2 OF THIS ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND HERE