Britain Unlimited covers 250 Great British people and what made them famous

Who was Richard Arkwrigh? 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: 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.