Bobbin and Carriage

English Laceworkers in France

British Skills and the Rise of the French Machine-Lace Industry

Among the many subjects explored within the pages of Tulle are the English lace-making families who settled in northern France during the nineteenth century. Their names appear regularly in family histories, census studies, biographical sketches and factory records. While their presence in France is well documented, the circumstances that drew them across the Channel are less often discussed.

• Why in the early 1800s were so many English lace-making families in France?

This article examines the economic, political and industrial factors that encouraged English manufacturers, mechanics and laceworkers to establish themselves in France after 1815. In doing so, it provides the wider context behind the many families whose stories have appeared in Tulle over the years.

Why Did English Laceworkers Leave England?

• Industrial and Agricultural Change

In the 18th century, Britain’s Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions enabled it to begin overtaking rivals such as France and Russia, particularly in mechanised manufacturing and textile production. In the lace-making districts of Nottinghamshire and the East Midlands, new machinery promised greater output but also brought economic disruption, labour unrest, and fierce competition.

• Economic Hardship and Social Unrest

In the first decade of the 19th century, as Britain’s economy expanded during the Napoleonic Wars, new industrial machines meant increased production and home-based textile production declined and factory-based manufacturing rapidly gained ground. The workers for these new factories also came from the countryside as innovative farm machines increased production but reduced the need for manual labour while the Enclosure Laws displaced tenant farmers and agricultural labourers. The Enclosure laws allowed landowners to consolidate small plots of land into larger farms, often forcing tenant farmers off their land.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought significant economic disruption to Britain. At the same time as new machines and industrialisation reduced employment opportunities, Britains’ army and navy released many thousands of soldiers and sailors who flooded the towns and villages looking for work. This resulted in severe social unrest in both the countryside and the townships.

• The Luddites in the Lace Districts

In the lace towns, rapid expansion during wartime left the lace manufacturers with significant overcapacity, forcing machine owners to cut wages and lay off skilled craftsmen. In turn between 1811 and 1817, the lacemaking areas became a focus of Luddite activity. Frame-breakers, protesting low wages, poor working conditions and the move from hand to machine automation, targeted industrial workshops. Lacemakers faced the constant threat of having their expensive, complex bobbin-net frames destroyed during nighttime raids.

• France’s Need for English Expertise

In France, the overwhelmingly rural, peasant-based economy was hampered by an outmoded banking system and the impost of war indemnities, resulting in slower factory industrialization compared to Britain. The restored French monarchy under King Louis XVIII introduced aggressive protectionist measures to shield France’s domestic industry from foreign competition. The government placed prohibitive customs duties and flat bans on imported English manufactured goods, including machine-made Leavers and bobbin-net lace.

Britain also introduced protectionist measures to shield its struggling industries and agriculture and passed strict laws to prohibit the export of machinery, drawings and specialised textile tools and the emigration of skilled workers and engineers. Despite severe criminal penalties - including forfeiture of property and imprisonment - Britain’s lace manufacturers soon saw the benefits and huge profits to be made by setting up factories in France. To do so meant smuggling machine parts and workers to northern France.

Ironically, the trade barriers designed to protect national industries created the conditions for the transfer of both machinery and expertise across the Channel.

The First English Lace Manufacturers in France

• Robert Webster and St Pierre-lès-Calais

During the early 1800s, English lace machine owners and workers had moved to northern France and despite harassment by the French authorities, some were allowed to continue to operate their workshops during the Napoleonic War. After the war’s conclusion, in 1815 or 1816 Robert Webster dismantled a machine and smuggled the parts into France. He set it up in the small village south of Calais named St Pierre-lès-Calais.

• Expansion into Northern France

Other English manufacturers such as Clark, Pain, West and Pearson soon followed and using drawings or memory, English frame smiths and mechanics rebuilt the complex machines and established lace workshops in Calais, Lille and Saint-Quentin. In early 1816 ex-workers of John Heathcoat took a machine to Douai. The makers soon enticed English workers to their workshops and by 1821 in Calais there were 11 factories with 38 machines and employing nearly 300 workers… mostly English.

The English Community in France

• Who were they?

The English migrants who settled in Calais, Saint-Pierre and other lace-making centres were more than manufacturers and mechanics. They were single workers and whole families who established communities that would endure for decades whether in France, after a return to England or to new lives in Australia and other parts of the world.

In England, most family members of a lacemaker also worked in the industry. So, when an English lacemaker relocated to France, usually his entire family went with him. This is clearly seen in the French census returns.

• The Laceworkers' Skills

There were many positions of employment associated with the running of a factory. To begin with there was the designer. The big factories had their own departments, but the smaller ones bought from public design firms. The French were master designers. In another part of the factory hanks of spun cotton were wound onto wooden spools and were used for the weft threads. These operators were called les devideuses - a term often found on birth certificates. The warp threads were produced by les wapeurs, (from the English warper) winding the cotton onto long metal rollers that were the width of the machine. The weft is produced in the machine by the backwards and

forwards movements of brass bobbins hung between very thin steel plates. The bobbin is rewound by les wheeleuses. The full bobbins were carefully checked for irregularities that would cause imperfections in the lace and then returned to the machines by les remonteurs.

After the Jacquard system was applied to the lace machines, a person was employed to punch the designs into the cards.

A factory of only ten machines would employ some 75 persons: 20 lacemakers, a foreman, a designer and his assistant, 2 devideuses, 2 wheeleuses, 2 tamboureuses, 10 remonteurs (who observed the machines also), 1 pattern puncher, 1 warpeur, 4 menders, a women’s superviser, 4 finishers, 20 trimmers, 3 clerks and a first aid man. Elsewhere there were other workers who washed, dyed and dried the lace before it was returned for finishing and preparation for sale.

Between 1815 and the late 1830s, over 270 British lace manufacturers established operations in France.

• Breaking the English Monopoly

Once established in France, the English lacemakers were very protective of their lucrative monopoly and initial control over the French industry in their own country. However, gradually French workers learned the skills as they were employed by the English factory owners. In 1822 the French laceworkers were able to break the English domination over the lacemaking industry in France when a Frenchman, Jean-Noel Dubout purchased two machines already built and worked by English workers. French ownership steadily emerged and English and French workers lived and worked together in the French lacemaking industry until the turmoil of 1848 closed the factories and migration was again a family topic.

Legacy

The movement of English lace manufacturers, mechanics and workers to France was one of the most significant transfers of industrial technology in the nineteenth-century textile industry. What began as the clandestine export of machinery, technical knowledge and skilled workers led to the establishment of a French machine-lace industry that would flourish for generations. For family historians, it also explains why so many English lace-making families can be found in the records of Calais, Saint-Pierre, Lille, Saint-Quentin and other centres of northern France during the nineteenth century.

• What about you?

Do you have any comments or family stories relating to this topic?