Having succeeded to his utmost desire in solving the problem on which during five eventful years of his life his mind had been absorbed, Crompton had leisure to turn his thoughts in another direction, and the first thing he did was to take to himself a wife. He had made the acquaintance of an amiable and excellent woman, Mary Pimlott, the daughter of a quondam West India merchant, who had come down in the world and, as was said, had died of a broken heart; and on the 16th of February, 1780, the young couple were married in the old church at Bolton. Mary Pimlott is described as being a handsome dark-haired woman of middle age and erect carriage, and possessed of remarkable power in the perception of individual character. She was, moreover, a “spinster” in the true sense of the word. On her father’s death she had gone to reside with friends at Turton, near Bolton, where ample and profitable employment could be obtained in spinning, and it is said that her expertness in the art first attracted young Crompton’s attention.
The newly-married pair began housekeeping in a small cottage attached to the old hall, Crompton at the same time retaining one or more workrooms in the mansion where he and his young wife pursued their humble occupation, producing from the new wheel a yarn which both for fineness and firmness astonished the manufacturing community. It does not seem ever to have entered the mind of the young inventor to patent his machine. Accustomed to a quiet, secluded life, without any expensive habits or enjoyments, his highest ambition appears to have been to keep his invention to himself and to work on in his own simple way in his own home after the fashion of the time, for it was then the idyllic period of cotton manufacturing, organised labour in huge factories being virtually unknown. But the fame of Crompton’s yarn spread; the new wheel was an unmistakable success, and gave promise of realising for its inventor an ample fortune. It was at once seen that the much-admired muslins that had been imported from India, and for which extravagant prices were paid, could now be produced by the English manufacturer, and at a greatly diminished cost. Crompton had his own price, and orders for the wonderful yarn poured in upon him; the demand was urgent and pressing, and his house was literally besieged with manufacturers anxious to obtain supplies of the much-coveted material, and still more anxious to penetrate the secret of its production, for it soon became noised abroad that he had discovered some novel mode of spinning. People from miles round gathered about his house, anxious to solve the mystery; all kinds of stratagems were practised to obtain admission to his workroom; and when denied, some actually obtained ladders, clambered up to the window of his chamber, and peeped in to satisfy their curiosity. To protect himself from this kind of observation Crompton set up a screen, and then an inquisitive individual, more adventurous than the rest, secreted himself in one of the cocklofts of the hall, and remained there for days watching the operations going on through a gimlet hole he had bored in the ceiling.
There is a well-authenticated tradition that at this time Arkwright, who a few years before had erected a cotton mill at Cromford, in Derbyshire, the nursing place, as it has been called, of the factory opulence and power of Great Britain, made his way to the Hall-in-the-Wood, and contrived to gain access to the house with the object of inspecting the machine of which such wonderful tales were told while the inventor was away collecting rates for his mother, who, as we have said, filled the office of overseer for the township. Arkwright was then in the full tide of his success, and it was an unfortunate circumstance for Crompton that they did not meet. If they had it would probably have led to an arrangement whereby the simple, guileless inventor might have reaped the reward of many years of patient toil and personal sacrifice.
Had Crompton possessed a tithe of the energy and resources of the average Lancashire man he would have triumphed, but, unhappily for himself, these were just the qualities he lacked, and his diffidence and childlike simplicity made him an easy victim in the hands of unscrupulous and crafty traders. Had he bestirred himself there is no reason to doubt but that some capitalist would have been ready to advance the means to patent his invention, but his shyness and morbid sense of independence forbade him to ask for help or co-operation. What Arkwright and Peel did he might have accomplished; but, instead of his succeeding to opulence, he allowed others to reap where he had sown. His very success was the cause of his misfortunes. He was unable to carry on his work in undisturbed privacy, and his moody and sensitive nature could not bear the annoyance to which he was perpetually subjected by prying intruders. It was the crisis in his life. Tormented, worried, driven almost to distraction, he, in a weak moment, yielded to the advice of a well-intentioned but unwise counsellor, and surrendered his invention to an ungrateful community. When relating the story to Mr. G. A. Lee, and Mr. John Kennedy, of Manchester, some years afterwards, Mr. Lee having remarked that “it was a pity he had not kept the secret to himself,” he replied “that a man had a very insecure tenure of property which another could carry away with his eyes.” He says in the MS. before referred to:—
During this time I married, and commenced spinning altogether. But a few months reduced me to the cruel necessity either of destroying my machine altogether or giving it up to the public. To destroy it I could not think of; to give up that for which I had laboured so long was cruel. I had no patent nor the means of purchasing one. In preference to destroying it I gave it to the public.
He says he “gave it to the public,” and virtually he did; for, though it was professedly for a consideration, he derived little or no benefit, and only found that he had been made the victim of the greed, and meanness, and sordid treachery of those whom, in his simplicity, he had trusted. Yielding to the deceitful promises of his townsmen and others, he was induced to surrender his much coveted secret on the faith of an agreement that, as it turned out, had no validity in law, and which some of the signatories were base enough to repudiate. The following are the terms in which it was drawn up:—
Bolton, November 20th, 1780.
We whose names are hereunto subscribed have agreed to give and do hereby promise to pay unto Samuel Crompton, at the Hall-in-the-Wood, near Bolton, the several sums opposite to our names as a reward for his improvement in Spinning. Several of the principal Tradesmen in Manchester, Bolton, &c., having seen his Machine approve of it, and are of opinion that it would be of the greatest utility to make it generally known, to which end a contribution is desired from every wellwisher of trade.
The total sum subscribed was £67 6s. 6d., but even of this miserable amount only about £50 was actually paid, “as much by subscription,” says Crompton, “as built me a new machine with only four spindles more than the one I had given up [for he had not only surrendered his secret but the original machine with it]—the old one having forty-eight, the new one fifty-two spindles.” Never, certainly, was so much got for so little, and a touch of infamy was added to the merciless transaction by a fact which Crompton thus records:—
Many subscribers would not pay the sums they had set opposite their names. When I applied for them I got nothing but abusive language to drive me from them, which was easily done; for I never till then could think it possible that any man could pretend one thing and act the direct opposite. I then found it was possible, having had proof positive.