The demands made on spinning by this ever expanding trade were supplied from three sources: (1) the wives of farmers and other well to do people, (b) the wives of husbandmen and (c) women who depended wholly on spinning for their living, and who are therefore called here spinsters. The first care of the farmers’ wives was to provide woollen stuffs for the use of their families, but a certain proportion of their yarn found its way to the market. The clothiers at Salisbury who made the better grades of cloth were said to “buy their yarn of the finer kinds that come to the market at from 17d the lb. to 2s. 4d, made all of the finer sortes of our owne Welshire wool, and is spun by farmers’ wives and other of the better sorte of people within their owne houses, of whose names wee keep due Register and do write down with what cardes they promise us their several bundles of yarne are carded, and do find such people just in what they tell us, or can otherwise controule them when wee see the proofe of our cloth in the mill, ... and also some very few farmers’ wives who maie peradventure spinne sometimes a little of those sortes in their own houses and sell the same in the markett and is verie current without mixture of false wooll grease, etc.”[[215]]
Probably a larger supply of yarn came from the families of husbandmen where wife and children devoted themselves to spinning through the long winter evenings. Children became proficient in the art at an early age, and could often spin a good thread when seven or eight years old. This subsidiary employment was not sufficient to supply the demand for yarn, and in the clothing counties numbers of women were withdrawn from agricultural occupations to depend wholly upon their earnings as spinsters.
The demand made by the woollen trade on the labour of children is shown by a report from the Justices of the Peace of the Boulton Division of the Hundred of Salford, ... “for apprentices there hath beene few found since our last certificate by reason of the greate tradeing of fustians and woollen cloth within the said division, by reason whereof the inhabitants have continuall employment for their children in spinning and other necessary labour about the same.”[[216]]
Those who gave out the wool and collected the yarn were called market spinners, but the qualifying term “market” is sometimes omitted, and when men are referred to as spinners it may be assumed that they are organising the work of the spinsters, and not engaged themselves in the process of spinning.[[217]] Though the demand for yarn generally exceeded the supply, wages for spinning remained low throughout the seventeenth century. A writer in the first half of the eighteenth century who urges the establishment of a nursery of spinners on the estate of an Irish landlord admits that their labour is “of all labour on wools the most sparingly paid for.”[[218]]
Wages for spinning are mentioned in only three of the extant Quarter Sessions’ Assessments, and it is not specified whether the material is wool or flax:
1654. Devon. 6d. per week with meat and drink, or 1s. 4d. without them.
1688. Bucks. Spinners shall not have by the day more than 4d. without meat and drink.
1714. Devon. 1s. per week with meat and drink, 2s. 6d. without them.
These rates are confirmed by entries in account books,[[219]] but it was more usual to pay by the piece. Though it is always more difficult to discover the possible earnings per day of women who are working by a piece rate in their own homes, it so happens that several of the writers who discuss labour questions in the woollen trade specially state that their estimates of the wages of spinners are based on full time. John Haynes quoted figures in 1715 which work out at nearly 1s. 6d. per week for the spinners of wool into stuffs for the Spanish Trade, and about 2s. 11d. for stockings,[[220]] another pamphlet gives 24s. as the wages of 9 spinsters for a week,[[221]] while in 1763 the author of the “Golden Fleece” quotes 2s. 3d. a week for Spanish wools.[[222]] Another pamphlet says that the wages in the fine woollen trade “being chiefly women and children, may amount, one with another to £6 per annum.”[[223]] A petition from the weavers, undated, but evidently presented during a season of bad trade, declares that “there are not less than a Million of poor unhappy objects, women and children only, who ... are employed in Spinning Yarn for the Woollen Manufacturers; Thousands of these have now no work at all, and all of them have suffered an Abatement of Wages; so that now a Poor Woman, perhaps a Mother of many Children, must work very hard to gain Three Pence or Three Pence Farthing per Day.”[[224]]
Though these wages provided no margin for the support of children, or other dependants, it was possible for a woman who could spin the better quality yarns to maintain herself in independence.