Donkey work – OED – n. the hard or unattractive part of an undertaking
In the first post on this blog I paid tribute to the donkey and its reputation as a hard-working beast of burden. The next two posts continue the hard-working theme and looks at a series of items to which the donkey has lent its name. Each has an association with the industrial revolution – a period of time when thousands of men and women moved to towns and cities (especially in the north of England), lived cheek by jowl, and worked liked donkeys. This post is a nod to my hard-working ancestors who were small cogs in that revolution of society, economy, and culture.
Spinning Jenny
Spinning Mule
Although an improvement on an earlier spinning machine, the spinning Jenny produced weak thread that could only be used for the weft part of cloth. Just a few years after the introduction of Hargreaves’ spinning Jenny (1769), Richard Arkwright, an early industrialist, patented the water frame which used rollers to produce threads suitable for the warp part of the cloth. Its name came from the fact that it used water to power the machine, not in the actual manufacturing process.
Then, in 1779, Samuel Compton combined the two processes into a machine he called the spinning mule. A hybrid of Hargreaves’ and Arkwright’s inventions, the spinning mule produced stronger cotton threads (then woven to make cloth). What made the ‘mule’ unique was that it could simultaneously stretch and twist the thread.
This video clip shows an authentic spinning mule in action. The moveable carriage holds over 100 spindles and moves continuously to and from the body of the machine. As it moves away, the thread is pulled through the rollers and stretched and twisted, before being wound up as the carriage returns to the body of the machine. The operator walks with and along the carriage connecting threads that break or end. Two young boys would work with the operator cleaning under the carriage. One 19th-century operator was estimated to have walked 20 miles during one working day. Hard work for anyone and epitomises the image of working like a donkey.
Hi Kathryn,
Donkey work indeed! Thank you for including the video clip – I hadn’t taken onboard how very noisy these spinning machines were. The machines may have associations with donkey and mule names but rather than the machines being animals would you agree that what was happening was the animalisation of the human operators – including the children on all fours beneath the machines?
Hi Diane,
Thanks for the comments
re: noise. That’s just one loom, imagine the noise on a factory floor with multiple looms. My grandma worked in a cotton mill before she married and learnt to lipread as it was impossible to have a conversation with anyone; everyone simply mouthed the words. She could still lipread in her 60s.
re: animalisation. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but it’s an interesting way to look at the industrial system and the relationship between operator and machine. Just as medieval animals drove industry (pulling ploughs, turning mill stones etc), people took their place in the factories.