Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change;
Their neelds to lances."
King John, Act v. sc. 3.
"Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble."
"And that I'll prove upon thee, though thy
little finger be armed in a thimble,"
Taming of the Shrew, Act iv., sc. 3.
The earliest note we really have of thimbles being manufactured in Birmingham dates as 1695. A very large trade is now done in steel, brass, gold, and silver.
Thread.—Strange are the mutations of trade. The first thread of cotton spun by rollers, long before Arkwright's time, was made near this town in the year 1700, and a little factory was at work in the Upper Priory (the motive power being two donkeys), in 1740, under the ingenious John Wyatt, with whom were other two well-remembered local worthies—Lewis Paul and Thomas Warren. Many improvements were made in the simple machinery, but fate did not intend Birmingham to rival Bradford, and the thread making came to an end in 1792.
Tinderboxes, with the accompanying "fire steels," are still made here for certain foreign markets, where lucifers are not procurable.