3-070-840 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Matting-weavers, 1881. 'The manufacture of that kind of matting which is commonly used for the covering of passage floors, whether made of hemp or jute or cocoanut fibre, or the dried grass-stalks of tropical vegetation, employs a certain class of operatives at the East End of London, as well as in Dundee, Glasgow, and other Northern towns. This industry is carried on not only in the factories but in the houses of some of the workpeople, by the aid of the old-fashioned spinning-wheel and handloom, as shown in our Illustration. It is not, of course, the finest sort of work - not to be compared with that of the silk-weaver, who still continues to ply his solitary loom in Spitalfields; but it affords the means of subsistence to many humble families, such as that who appear so busy together in our Artist's drawing; the father weighing out a proper quantity of fibre, which the younger child is ready to carry where it is wanted; the other sister, carefully and deftly turning the wheel; and the son at his loom, throwing the shuttle with practised skill, and interlacing the warp and the weft to compose a strong and durable fabric, which shall be trodden by the feet of hundreds of people, without the slightest thought of those by whom it was made'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.