Echoes of Old Lancashire

by William E. A. Axon

How the First Spinning Machinery was taken to Belgium.

The introduction of spinning machinery to the Continent is a curious episode in the history of commerce, and has some interest for Manchester people, as it was from that place the men and the machinery were obtained. The industrial activity of England and the riches which the inventions of Kay, Highs, and Arkwright brought her, naturally attracted the attention of her foreign rivals, but in those days there were stringent regulations against the export of machines, and the “seduction of artizans” to engage in the service of a foreign master was a criminal offence. The temptation was, however, too great for the attempt not to be made. As Englishmen had gone abroad in order to obtain the secrets of the silk and other manufactures, so foreigners came here to spy out the industrial riches of the land. The man who succeeded in taking abroad the spinning-jenny was Liévin Bauwens.[^[8]] He belonged to a Belgian family that claimed patrician rank, but had always been associated with the industries of Holland, in Antwerp, Malines, and other places. Although the names and coat-of-arms of the Bauwens are to be found in the books of the Low Country heralds, they are also inscribed for generations in the records of the Tanners’ Guild of Ghent.

Liévin Jean Bauwens was born at Ghent on the 14th of June, 1769, and was the son of Georges Bauwens and his second wife, Thérèse van Peteghem. His father had a tannery in the Waaistraat, and his numerous children were taught to take a part in the family industry, so at an early age Liévin was made the overseer of a branch establishment at Huydersvetters-Hoeck. He can only have been a boy when he had this responsible position, for at the age of sixteen he came to London, and in the great tannery of Undershell and Fox learned what there was to be known of the English methods of that industry. Three years later he returned to Ghent, and took charge of a large establishment which his father had started shortly before his death. The Nieuwland Tannery in the old Dominican convent employed 200 men, and kept 550 vats going. Bauwens made leather for the London market, and is said to have paid 500,000 francs of customs duty yearly. He had frequent occasion to visit England, and the expansion of the cotton industry naturally attracted his attention—all the more so that he had always had a strong taste for mechanics, and only adopted the family trade in compliance with the wishes of his father. A clock which he had made at the age of twelve was one of the favourite exhibits of his parents, who, whilst proud of the ingenuity of their son, did not wish him to abandon the vocation which had ensured competence to the family. As tanners, they naturally felt that there was “nothing like leather.”

At this time Belgium was annexed to France, and Bauwens proposed to the Directoire that he should endeavour to obtain the secret of the machines by which the British manufacturer bade defiance to his continental rivals. The French Government promised him their support, and he came to Manchester for the purpose of getting the necessary information. This was in 1798, and he was aided by François de Pauw, one of his relations. At Manchester he made the acquaintance of an overseer, Mr. James Kenyon, and his daughter Mary. Whilst talking business with the father he appears to have talked of other matters to the girl, who eventually became his wife. The various parts of the machine, which in Belgium came to be called the “mull jenny,” were secreted in casks of sugar and in bags of coffee, and shipped to Hamburg. The statement that he intended to add dealings in colonial produce to his tanning operations was a sufficient explanation of this novel step on his part. Some of the packages were to be sent from Gravesend, and from this port Bauwens intended himself to depart, along with a number of workmen whom he had engaged. An overseer named Harding had a wife who strongly objected to the departure of her husband, and she made a scene, in which the destination and intentions of the party were made known. The police thus came to a knowledge of the conspiracy, and the men were arrested. Bauwens managed to escape in the crowd, and hastening quickly to London, he took passage to Hamburg, where part of the precious packages and the workmen who had been sent on before awaited him. Here he had a narrow escape, for Sir James Crawford, the British Envoy, endeavoured to have him imprisoned. The export of machinery and workmen was then a criminal offence, and the conspirators who had fallen into the hands of the authorities were brought before the Court of King’s Bench and convicted. The contemporary accounts of the affair in the English periodicals are very meagre, and the French accounts have an air of exaggeration. Thus we are told that Bauwens was, in his absence, condemned to death, and faute de mieux hung in effigy. Whatever his sentence may have been, it was powerless to hinder his success. He established spinning factories at Ghent, and still larger establishments at Paris, where he converted a convent of Bonshommes, at Passy, into a cotton spinning mill. He had a tannery at St. Cloud; he bought from the French Government the ingots made from the silver taken in the dissolved monasteries, and sold them at considerable profit to the Bank of Amsterdam.

Napoleon, when he came to power, had a good opinion of Bauwens; he visited the great works both at Paris and at Ghent, and after his inspection of the last-named place, he sent 4,000 francs to be distributed in presents to the workpeople. Bauwens started a new spinning mill at Tronchiennes, and was the first in Belgium to employ steam power. The flying shuttle was also used by him, and he made essays in cotton printing, in carding, and, indeed, appears to have been always on the alert for every possible improvement of the industrial processes in which he was engaged. He took an active part in local affairs, and was Maire of Ghent and member of the Council of the Department. In 1805, the town of Ghent presented him with a gold medal at a banquet, where the services of Bauwens in the creation of fresh industries was gratefully acknowledged. The French Institute, in a report on the progress of industry, gave to Bauwens the credit of having naturalised the English machines in France. Napoleon, who was in Ghent in 1810, offered him the title of Comte. This he declined, but accepted the Cross of the Legion of Honour. His great works, and that at Ghent, are said to have given employment to 3,000 people, were open to visitors, and he freely gave advice to those who were engaging in the cotton trade. His own profits were very large, and he showed great liberality in the treatment of his workpeople, and in the uses he made of his riches. But this princely opulence was not without check. The coalition of the great powers against Napoleon, in 1814, resulted in disaster to French industry, and Bauwens was one of the victims. A forced sale of the factories turned out very unfavourably, and Bauwens was ruined.

When the kingdom of the Netherlands was formed, Bauwens sought the patronage of William I., but in vain. A proposal to establish cotton spinning on the banks of the Guadalquivir, which he made to the Infanta of Spain, was equally unsuccessful. In these circumstances he attempted the creation of a new industry, and began at Paris a process for the treatment of waste silk. This was in 1819, and his partner, the Baron Idelot de la Ferté, allowed him an annual salary of 5,000 francs and a share of the profits. The patent taken out in November, 1821, for the preparation and treatment of silk floss, might possibly have restored the fallen fortunes of Liévin Bauwens, but he died of the rupture of an aneurysm on the 17th of March, 1822. His widow, the former Mary Kenyon, of Manchester, after burying him in Père-la-Chaise, returned to Belgium, and died at St. Bernard in 1834. Five years later the two sons of the manufacturer received the royal licence to use their father’s Christian and surname as a patronymic. Liévin was himself the eldest of a family of twelve. By his marriage with Mary Kenyon he had two sons and a daughter—Napoléon, born at Tronchiennes in 1805, who died at Paris in 1869; Félix, born at Tronchiennes in 1806, who died in London; and Elvina Marie Bernardine, born at Tronchiennes in 1809, who married M. Louis Rysheuvels, of Antwerp.

Ghent has not forgotten the memory of the man who laid the foundations of a vast industry, and who united to commercial enterprise public spirit and private generosity. One of her open squares is named in honour of Liévin Bauwens, and there his statute stands to witness that peace has her victories no less than war. Such is one of the many romantic episodes connected with the history of the industrial development of Manchester.

Footnotes:

[8]. The story of the life of Bauwens is told in “Un Précurseur de Richard Lenior,” par A. Boghaert-Vaché (Mulhouse, 1886).