Who was Richard Arkwright?
Inventor of the first practical method of mechanical
spinning of fibres by using rollers.
Date and Place of Birth:
23rd December 1732, Preston, Lancashire, England.
Family Background:
The youngest of seven children born to the tailor
Thomas Arkwright and his wife Ellen, who were working, but not poor,
parents.
Education:
Taught to read and write by his Cousin Ellen.
Apprenticed to a barber.
Chronology/Biography
of Richard Arkwright:
1748: Lewis Paul
invented a machine for carding cotton which was to influence Arkwright.
1750: Moved to Churchgate
in Bolton, Lancashire and worked as a barber in his own business.
He was one of the first people to make a profitable business dyeing
hair.
1762: Started his
own wig-making business, which involved him traveling the country
to collect people's discarded hair. Opened his first tavern as a
money spinner in Bolton. On his travels Arkwright met John Kay in
Warrington who was a clockmaker and inventor. He had been working
on a spinning-machine with Thomas Highs of Leigh but due to shortage
of funds they could not continue their project. Arkwright took them
on as he was impressed by their ideas for improving James Hargreave's
"Spinning Jenny". In short the three rollers made threads
far stronger than anything that had come before.
1767: Moved to Preston
with John Kay, and joined forces with John Smalley and David Thornley
where he took out his patent on what has become known as the spinning
frame. This was the first industrial scale spinner to give cotton
thread weave strong enough to form the warp for commercial cloths.
Arkwright realised that horse power was not enough to power his
machinery and investigated water power.
1768: (April) Moved
to Nottingham to avoid the machine-breakers in Lancashire. There
he set up a small mill in Woolpack Lane near Hargreaves's jenny
mill.
1769: Arkwright
approached Ichabod Wright, a banker from Nottingham, in search of
funds to expand his business. He in turn introduced him to Jedediah
Strutt of Derby and Samuel Need.
1771: He formed
a partnership with Strutt and Need and set up a factory powered
by water at Cromford in Derbyshire next to the River Derwent and
the machinery became known as the water frame. He employed local
families and while the women and children worked in the factories
the men worked at home making the yarn into cloth.
1775: Took out another
Patent described modifications to his carding engine machinery.
Arkwright and his partners finally persuaded the Government to remove
the crippling import tariff on raw cotton, which had been imposed
earlier in order to protect the woolen industry.
1779: His mill in
Chorley, Lancashire was destroyed by a mob of labourers who burnt
it down as a protest against his machinery which reduced the need
for manual labour.
1781: Several rival
manufacturers were setting up using his ideas and he prosecuted
nine companies for breach of his patents. (April) Samuel Need died
and Jedediah Strutt decided to break up the partnership as he was
worried that Arkwright was expanding his factories too fast. He
went on to build factories in Manchester, other parts of Lancashire,
Staffordshire and Scotland.
1783: Built Masson
Mills at Matlock Bath, Derbyshire.
1785: His Patents
were cancelled as it was proved in the Court of King's Bench that
the intellectual property for many of the inventions lay not with
him but with a selection of his partners, friends and rivals. His
talent, however, if not as an inventor was to turn these machines
into practical reality. His main invention was to start the factory
system.
1786: Knighted by
King George the Third.
1787: Became High
Sheriff of Derbyshire.
1790: Always looking
towards new technology he introduced the steam engine, originally
developed by James Watt and Matthew Boulton,
into his plant in Nottingham. Arkwright's employees worked mainly
from six in the morning to seven in the evening and unlike many
other factory owners who used children of five he said that they
should be over six years old. At this time nearly three quarters
of his factory employees were children. At his death he was a very
rich man and the "Gentleman's Magazine claimed that his fortune
was well over £500,000 pounds at his death which would be
several hundred millions today.
Marriage:
1. 1755 to Patience Holt.
2. 1761 to Margaret Biggens.
Places of Interest:
DERBYSHIRE:
Cromford
Masson Mills, Matlock Bath, (Still in existence but no longer a
working mill).
LANCASHIRE:
Lewis Textile Museum, Exchange Street, Blackburn
holds replica machine.
Preston Museum
Bolton Museum
Date and Place of Death:
3rd August
1792, Cromford, Derbyshire, England.
Age at Death:
59.
Site of Grave:
St. Mary’s Church, Cromford, Derbyshire,
England.
