ÿþ<HTML> <meta name="DC.TITLE" content="Calico Printing in Kilmarnock"> <meta name="DC.CREATOR" content="Ian O. Morrison"> <meta name="KEYWORDS" content="calico printing shawl manufacture Kilmarnock Ayrshire local history"> <meta name="DESCRIPTION" content="Article on the industry of calico printing in Kilmarnock with extensive bibliography"> <meta name="DC.PUBLISHER" content="Kilmarnock and District History Group"> <meta name="DC.COVERAGE" content="Kilmarnock Ayrshire Scotland"> <HEAD> <TITLE>CALICO PRINTING AND SHAWL MAKING IN KILMARNOCK</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <FONT FACE="Arial"><P><B>CALICO PRINTING AND SHAWL MAKING IN KILMARNOCK</B></P> <P><I>by Ian 0 Morrison</I></P> <P>The almost forgotten industry of calico-printing, and the closely related shawl manufacture, was at one time a major industry in Kilmarnock, though, due to changes in fashion, it had all but died out by the beginning of this century. This brief history of the trade, mentioning some interesting people directly or indirectly involved in it, will avoid any technical discussion since an article could be written on this aspect alone. Occasionally I stray into subjects which are far removed from calico-printing in the hope of introducing some human interest.</P> <P>About 1769 or 1770 (according to source), calico-printing was introduced to the town by a Mr John Macfee (McFee or McFie) (1) and the first printworks was opened at Greenhill (i.e. Greenholm) near the Riccarton bridge. The long range of buildings which housed the printworks later became the Glencairn Flour Mill (2).</P> <P>John MacFee must have been a most important man in his town. He married the sister of one of Kilmarnock's most famous sons - Sir James Shaw. Their son, John, dropped his patronymic in 1813 and became Sir John Shaw on inheriting his uncle's title. John followed in his uncle's footsteps in his generosity to Kilmarnock too and he died in 1868 (3).</P> <P>John Macfee's daughter, Helen, married William Muir (of "Willie Mair's Brae" fame) (4) who later became a magistrate in Glasgow. When he died in 1821, Helen brought her large family (four sons and six daughters!) back to Kilmarnock where they were educated. Two of these sons achieved fame - Dr John Muir who founded the Chair of Sanskrit at Edinburgh University, and Sir William Muir (1819 - 1905) who was Principal of the same University from 1885 to 1902 (5).</P> <P>To return to calico-printing, by 1792 the average annual value of "Printed Calicoes" produced in Kilmarnock was £650 (6) and the industry was one of the most successful in the town. At some time around the beginning of the 19th century, William Hall took over the Greenholm Printworks and in 1824 he began the printing of worsted shawls there (7). According to McKay "this fabric had not been previously printed upon in Scotland, at least to any extent worthy of notice."(8) The introduction of this new trade, in direct competition with the longer established and more complex methods of weaving the Paisley patterned shawls in Paisley itself, gave employment to "a considerable number of handloom weavers" (9). At one time in the early 1830s over 3000 looms "were employed in the weaving of (worsted material) in Kilmarnock and the neighbouring villages (10). The dominant motifs were the usual palm types, similar in every respect to the Paisley designs.</P> <P>Over 1000 people, plus about 800 boys and girls, were at one tine employed in the printfields and the average total weekly wage was about £850 in the 1830s (11). One of these workers was John Smith, a pattern designer and native of Old Rome who, after a spell working in Paisley, came back to the town and set his son Alexander to work as a 'putter-on' in the printwork of Geddes and Mathieson in Welbeck Street. Alexander was born in 1830 (not 1829 as stated in McKay's "History") in Douglas Street and he also worked as a pattern-drawer in Robertson & Sons of Queen Street (sewed muslin manufacturers). Later, however, he achieved fame as a poet and essayist and went on to become Secretary to Edinburgh University. He died of typhoid in 1867 (12).</P> <P>McKay states that "about the year 1832 (the worsted material) began to give way to cheniels, and to a kind made of silk and cotton, called in the trade 'quakers'." Later materials used included delaines, silk stripes and checks, wool and wool and cotton. In 1838 the printing of mouselaine-de-laine dresses was introduced (13). By 1848 most of the industry concentrated on this work though also producing "balzareens, bareges, organdies etc." The cloth, however, was woven mostly in other places (14).</P> <P>McKay also gives some technical details concerning the early methods of printing where a printer's table was "only six feet long and about twenty seven inches broad" with the result that a shawl had to be</P> <P>lifted from it every time a colour was put on. By 1848, however, the tables were "now of such a size as take on the largest shawls, which are fixed down and finished in printing before they are removed." Dresses were printed on tables twenty seven feet long and between twenty seven and forty inches broad and were "fixed when receiving the colour". More modern apparatus included what sounds like a predecessor of the spin dryer - "a large copper vessel thickly perforated with small holes, called an extractor, into which the goods</P> <P>streaming with water are laid. When the machinery is set in motion, such is its rapidity that in five minutes every particle of water is thrown out" (15).</P> <P>Between May 1830 and June 1831, 1,128,814 shawls were produced in Kilmarnock, the value of these being about £200,000 (16). In 1833 there were at least seven firms specialising in calico printing and shawl manufacture, mostly situated in East and West Shaw Streets (17). By the 1840s, however, a decline had begun, the trade "being of a fancy nature" and subject to "sudden alterations of pattern, style and colour" (18). As an indication of this decline, it was a disused printworks at the foot of Welbeck Street (probably that of John Dick) which was used as a temporary hospital "for the poorer patients" during the outbreak of cholera in the spring of 1849 (19).</P> <P>Four printworks appear to have closed between the publication of the 1846 "Kilmarnock Directory" and that of 1851 though some new ones did open in the 1850s and 1860s. By the end of the 1860s the main focus was around the Welbeck Street area, and of the four printworks surviving in 1875, three were in Welbeck Street and one in East Shaw Street (20).</P> <P>In 1867 the calico printers' trade union unsuccessfully tried to get the Town Council's assistance for an emigration scheme. The Council refused assistance on the grounds that the workers had brought their troubles largely on themselves through striking, refusing to print curtain fabrics and limiting the numbers of apprentices taken on (21). A similar decline was in evidence in Paisley at that time, though there it was the vagaries of fashion that were blamed (22),</P> <P>An interesting correspondence developed in the "Kilmarnock Standard" in 1867 between the printers and their employers. This was basically an argument over the wages received by the men - the top men did not earn more than seventeen shillings per week (after they had paid a fearer who was a boy assistant and the average wage was less than ten shillings per week (23). Compare that with the £850 divided between about 1000 workers in the early 1830s.</P> <P>The Education Acts of the early 1870s also dealt a savage blow to the trade. Before 1872 children could be employed "half-time" in the printworks - that meant a minimum of thirty days or 150 hours schooling in every six months. In October 1870 there were 59 children working such "half-time" in the local printworks and the local press was urging that they should be put on alternate days schooling and work(24)</P> <P>The changes in fashion, and in the laws relating to child employment, ensured the further rapid decline of the industry. By 1882 there were only two firms still operating printworks in the town - Peter Brown & Son of Welbeck Street (established before 1846) and William Campbell whose Welbeck Printwofcks in the same street had been established between 1856 and 1868. The Welbeck Printworks ceased working between 1892 and 1895, and Peter Brown & Son closed between 1898 and 1900. The related trade of block-cutting, introduced to the town in the 1850s or 60s, survived for a few more years in the firm of Wilson, Harvey & McGregor (25).</P> <P><B>LIST OF KNOWN CALICO PRINTERS AND SHAWL MANUFACTURERS IN KILMARNOCK</B></P> <P>Aicheson, George, 22 West Shaw Street, c.l833</P> <P>Anderson, McGregor & Co., Menford Lane, c.1833-47</P> <P>Andrew, James, Jun., 20 Wellington Street, c.l833</P> <P>Bicket & Young, 104 King Street, c.l833</P> <P>Bicket, Hugh, 104 King Street, c.1846-56</P> <P>Brown, Peter, Welbeck Street, c. 1846-55; Riverbank c. 1855-82; Welbeck Street c.1882-1900 (& Son from </P> <P> 1855)</P> <P>Brown, Merry & McGregor, Bishopfield Printworks, High Street,c.1851-6</P> <P>Campbell, William, & Co., Welbeck Printworks, Welbeck Street, c. 1868-93</P> <P>Dick, John, Welbeck Street, c. 1846-7</P> <P>Geddes & Mathieson, Welbeck Street, c.l833</P> <P>Hall, William, Greenholn (or Greenhill) Printworks, c.1800-33</P> <P>Humphrey, Mclntyre & Co., Welbeck Street, c.1855</P> <P>Mathieson, Bailie - see Geddes & Mathieson</P> <P>Merry, John & Co, Irvinebank Printworks, Low Glencairn Street, c.l868</P> <P>Merry - see also Brown, Merry & McGregor</P> <P>Muir, R. & Co., Portland Printworks, Welbeck Street, c.1872-5</P> <P>McAdam & Co., Greenholm, c.1846</P> <P>Macfee, John, Greenholm, c.1769-1800</P> <P>McGregor - see Brown, Merry & McGregor</P> <P>Mclntyre - see Humphrey, Mclntyre & Co</P> <P>McMurray, Weir & Co., Irvinebank, c.1855</P> <P>Neil, Thomas, 18 East Shaw Street, c.1833-46</P> <P>Pollard, Benjamin, Shawfield Printworks, East Shaw Street, c.1872-5</P> <P>Reid, John, Portland Printworks, Welbeck Street, c.l868</P> <P>Reid, Thomson & Co., Newton (i.e. Robertson Place), c.1855</P> <P>Templeton, John, & Co, Burnside, c.1855</P> <P>Templeton, Robert, Burnside, West Shaw Street, c.1833-51</P> <P>Thomson - see Reid, Thomson & Co,</P> <P>Wallace, John, East Shaw Street, c.1851-6</P> <P>Weir - see McMurray, Weir &" Co.</P> <P>Young & Sons & Co., East Shaw Street, c.1846-51</P> <P>Young - see Bicket & Young</P> <P>(compiled from Kilmarnock Post-Office Directories for 1833 - 1903 and references (1) and (7) below.)</P> <P>REFERENCES :</P> <P>(1) McKay, Archibald "History of Kilmarnock", 3rd edition, 1864 p.209-210</P> <P>(2) Anonymous "Early Trade of Kilmarnock", Kilmarnock Standard, 7th March 1885, p.3</P> <P>(3) McKay, 5th edition, 1909, p.278</P> <P>(4) Kilmarnock Standard, 4th December 1886, p.3 & 15th July 1905, p.5</P> <P>(5) ibid</P> <P>(6) Sir John Sinclair, ed. Statistical Account of Scotland, 1792, p.88</P> <P>(7) McKay, 1st ed., 1848, p.216</P> <P>(8) ibid</P> <P>(9) ibid</P> <P>(10)ibid</P> <P>(11)ibid, p.217</P> <P>(12)Kilmarnock Standard, 12th January 1867, p.2-3 & McKay, 5th ed.,p.303</P> <P>(13)McKay, 1st ed., p.216</P> <P>(14)ibid</P> <P>(15)ibid p.216-7</P> <P>(16)New Statistical Account of Scotland, Ayrshire, 1842, p.551</P> <P>(17)Kilmarnock Directory, 1st ed., 1833</P> <P>(18)McKay, 1st ed., p.217</P> <P>(19)McKay, 5th ed., p.257</P> <P>(20)Kilmarnock Guidebook, 1875, p.37</P> <P>(21)Kilmarnock Standard, June 8th 1867, p.2</P> <P>(22)"The Paisley Shawl" by Matthew Blair, Gardner, Paisley, 1904 pp.76-78</P> <P>(23) Kilmarnock Standard, April 20th - June 8th 1867 (Letters)</P> <P>(24) Kilmarnock Standard, June 17th 1871, p.3</P> <P>(25)Kilmarnock Post-Office Directories for 1846, 1856, 1868, 1882, 1892, 1895, 1898, 1900, 1907.</P> <P>(This article was first published in the Newsletter of Kilmarnock and District History Group, No.15, June 1975)</P> <P><A HREF=index.html>Back</A></P> </FONT> </BODY> </HTML>