Postby fosney » Sun Mar 05, 2017 2:07 pm
Posted by Kathy
Joe, many thanks for the link to Vogans Mill Management. I've fired off an email to them asking who I can contact to get a copy of the photo. Things like this really help to put "flesh on the bones" when researching family history.
My great great grandfather was a "horsehair manufacturer". This wasn't necessarily stuffing furninture with horsehair, but in his case was using horsehair fabric to cover furniture, or making hair sieves (see Mrs Beeton for references to hair sieves), or, and this may sound surprising, making crinolines. You see, the early crinolines were a mixture of horsehair and linen - 'crinoline' means just that (French I think).* These became fashionable around the 1830s when my gt gt grandparents moved down from Holborn, so there must have been textile factories in Bermondsey making crinolines. The fortunes of these early crinolines waned in the 1840s, when new lighter ones were made of sprung steel hoops, which reached very generous proportions (at least among the well-to-do) before prince Edward's wife influenced fashions in the late 19th century. By 1849 my gt gt grandfather was as 'general dealer', whatever that means, and in 1851 he was a costermonger, and they lived in London (Wolseley) Street (Jacobs Island), in very poor and grotty housing. Perhaps the demise of the early crinolines meant that he was laid off. Eleven years later he was back in the horsehair fabric industry, cutting horsehair fabric, so maybe the factory he worked for before recovered, finding other items to use the fabric on.
Do you know of any books on the industries that used to abound in Bermondsey/Southwark/Rotherhithe?
Kathy
*The horsehair and linen crinolines were hot and itchy, and were also heavy, especially once they increased in size.