3-102-256 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sixty at a blow: cutting flannel shirts, 1909. 'The Song of a Shirt: A Song of Comfort. As many as sixty layers of the flannel are cut at once. The knife is guided by means of metal slots in the cutting-table. The evolution of a shirt begins in the cutting-room, where the bales of flannel or cotton shirting are unrolled and arranged in long layers by suspending the edge on a line of hooks. The resultant flat pile of cloth, made up of as many as seventy-two - sometimes ninety-six - layers, is placed on the cutting-table, where each segment or part of the shirt is chalked upon it from card patterns. Then with long, lancet-sharp knives the cloth is cut along the marked lines, and the component parts of six or eight dozen shirts are ready to be made into as many finished garments. [The picture] shews the manufacture of shirts carried on under model conditions [at] the factory of Messrs. Smethurst and Holden, in Manchester...there is the large building with big, airy rooms, well lit and ventilated...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1909.