3-077-759 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Work at an old handloom stocking-frame, Leicester, 1890. '...in the [17th] century there arose many master-hosiers, in Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, and Hinckley, and subsequently in London, availing themselves of the hand stocking-frame, which employed thousands of people till about fifty years ago. It has now been superseded by the powerful and complicated machinery of the great factories, and these give work and wages to a much larger population. A very few old men who were trained to the use of the old stocking-frame are still living at Leicester; and we lately gave some Illustrations of the supper at which they were kindly entertained upon the occasion of the historical commemoration of the origin of the local trade. Our present subject is the actual work, which has become an antiquarian curiosity. The famous Luddite riots, so notorious in their day, were provoked, we believe, not by the introduction of the new machines, but chiefly by the exorbitant rents which were exacted for the hire of the hand-frames owned by a small class of speculators who made a large profit of their construction, so that the factory system has proved most beneficial to the working classes'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.