Yet vast quantities of early pins have been recovered from the Thames near the site of the old Bridge. In 1864, Mr. Burnell exhibited to the British Archæological Association fifteen brass pins, varying in length from one inch and three-eighths to five inches and a half, stated to have been found on the paper on which they now are, in a cellar on the northern bank of the Thames, in excavating for the foundations of the South-Eastern Railway bridge. Most, if not all, of these pins have solid globose heads. At the same meeting, Mr. Syer Cuming exhibited two brass pins recovered from the mud of the Thames some years since. One is little less than two inches and a half in length, the other full seven inches and three-quarters long. The heads of both are formed with spiral wire; the shortest being globose, the other somewhat flattened. Mr. Cuming stated that quantities of such early pins as those then produced have been found in and along the banks of the river, some of them measuring upwards of a foot in length. These great pins may have been employed in securing the wide-spreading head-dresses of the Middle Ages, and fastening the ends of the pillow-case, a use not quite obsolete in the time of Swift, who speaks of "corking pins," for this purpose, in his Directions to Servants.
For some time after their introduction pins must have been costly, for we find that they were acceptable New Year's gifts to ladies, and that presents of money were made for buying pins; whence money set apart for the use of ladies received the name of pin-money.
In France, three centuries ago, there was a tax for providing the queen with pins; from whence the term of pin-money has been, undoubtedly, applied by us to that provision for married women, with which the husband is not to interfere. In Bellon's Voyages, 1553, we read:—"Quand nous donnons l'argent a quelque chambrière, nous disons pour ses épingles."
Pins must soon have been made and sold at a very cheap rate, to justify the common remark, "Not worth a pin," and equivalent expressions in some of our early writers, such as Tusser:
"His fetch is to flatter, to get what he can;
His purpose once gotten, a pin for thee than."
Pins are of various sizes, from the blanket-pin, three inches in length, to the smallest ribbon-pins, of which 300,000 only weigh one pound. Insect-pins, used by entomologists, are of finer wire than ordinary pins, and vary in length from three inches to a size smaller than ribbon-pins. It has been calculated that ten tons of pins are made every week in England alone, requiring from fourteen to fifteen tons of brass-wire.
"What becomes of all the pins?" a question every day asked, received an answer, a few years since, upon the opening of an old sewer for repair, in Rea-street, Birmingham. At the bottom of it was a deposit as hard as the "slag" from a blast furnace, and in this deposit a vast number of pins were embedded: a piece about the size of a man's fist bristled with them, and this was but a specimen of a great mass of such matter. In another way, too, the deposit was a curiosity; for, independently of the pins, it inclosed a heterogeneous collection of old pocket-knives, marbles, buttons, &c.
Anciently, there were local springs, known as Pin Wells, in passing which the country maids dropped into the water a crooked pin to propitiate the fairy of the well. In some places, rich and poor believed this superstition.