The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune by R. S. Fitton

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE 522 Book Reviews able appendixes might have included an explanation of the means by which the database was manipulated—we get no more than a passing thank you to the expert who helped in the complexities of computer processing. And while the map on page 217 is useful enough for rough delineation of the rating districts, much more could have been done with visual mustering of the evidence, which might thus have encour­ aged some suggestive geographical speculation. The book deserves a wide readership, not only among historians ofbusiness and technology but among historians and economists generally. R. K. Webb Dr. Webb, professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is the author of Harriet Martineau, a Radical Victorian and Modem England. Currently he is working on a study of English Unitarianism. The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune. By R. S. Fitton. Manchester: Manchester University Press/New York: St. Martin’s Press (distrib­ utor), 1989. Pp. xiv + 322; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.£40.00; $70.00. As Peter Mathias observes in the foreword to this volume, it is remarkable that Sir Richard Arkwright did not attract a major biography long ago. On reflection, though, perhaps it is not so surprising. The father of the modern cotton-spinning industry has posed considerable problems to would-be biographers. Primary sources are scarce and widely scattered; family papers are in disarray; materials on Arkwright’s children and grandchildren are more volu­ minous than on their sire and grandsire. Equally daunting, truth and legend about Arkwright have imperceptibly merged. Was he, as one of Samuel Smiles’s archetypal self-made men, a “man of great force of character”? Or was he the “thief” the counsel of the plaintiff declared him to be in the patent trial ofJune 1785? Was he a typical example of the nouveaux riches, in Carlyle’s appraisal (derived from the fine portrait by Joseph Wright of Derby) “a plain almost gross, bag­ cheeked, potbellied Lancashire man”? Or was he more cultured and discriminating? Undeterred by the size of his task, the late R. S. Fitton garnered and sifted the evidence with great thoroughness and tenacity. It is unlikely that his work will be superseded, rooted and grounded as it is in primary evidence and empirical methodology. Seven of the nine chapters examine the enigmatic Sir Richard Arkwright: his antecedents, both genealogical and technical; the circumstances surrounding his two patents (for the water frame and the carding machine); the business empire he built, chiefly in Derby­ shire but also with links in Scotland; the patent battles he fought against infringing rivals; conditions of work in Arkwright-system factories; and the domestic and civic presence he established at TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 523 Cromford. From the perspective of the history of technology, how much is new? On the origin of Arkwright’s patents, Fitton was unable to get to the truth behind the claims and counterclaims made during the patent trials of 1781, 1783, and 1785. At the last of these, Arkwright’s claims to be the inventor of the water frame were challenged by the plaintiffs. Then and later the invention of drafting rollers (the crucial device in the water frame) was claimed for Thomas Highs, a reedmaker of Leigh, aided by John Kay, a former War­ rington clockmaker. Fitton concludes that Arkwright’s association with Highs “remains an unsolved mystery” (p. 14) but that he had employed Kay as a modelmaker. Two features (Fitton agreed with Richard Hills) were original to Arkwright: the distance between the rollers and the weighting of the top rollers. Had Arkwright been more of an inventor—and he certainly spent much of his long working day (5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.) thinking of “schemes and calculations” (p. 210)—he might have devised other technical innova­ tions. There is no evidence that he did. The truth, long known, is that Arkwright was primarily a businessman, secondarily a technical man. The strengths of this book lie in its rounded portrait of Arkwright as an individual—the awkward-mannered “little fatty,” as he was seen by the Court ladies when he went up to London in 1786 to be...