“What I have left from that weaving time: a piece of silk, a couple of birthday cards hand made by my sister Daisy with twisted silk ribbons”

From left to right, Alice Pike (13) and her sisters Sarah (16) and Daisy (23)[1917] (Image courtesy of Richard Pike)

As an adult, Alice Pike had the wisdom to write down reminiscences of her life as a child and as a young adult in Bethnal Green, her home until she left for Devon at 36 with her husband to be near her evacuated children. Her notes, slips of paper, together with photographs and other memorabilia are a fascinating autobiography by a working-class London girl in Edwardian and interwar period from which history can be made. Alice’s memoirs describe, among other events, everyday life in a Bethnal Green family of silk weavers at the time when the silk trade, the once named national industry, came to an end in that area.

Bethnal Green became the epicentre of the silk-weaving trade in London in the mid-19th century replacing Spitalfields, which was the area where silk weavers, mercers and merchants from England and Europe had established themselves since the 17th century. This prestigious and well- established industry was already seriously undermined by 1860, after the collapse of the plain silk market. By the end of the century the profile of the industry had changed for the worst, but there were still pockets of home-based weavers in Bethnal Green. Silk-weavers were mostly women, employed by commercial firms such as Warner, who produced silk items, cravats, ties and handkerchiefs, for the wealthier classes in London. The community to which the Hardings belonged was one of skilled home-based artisans who gradually disappeared. The silk-weaving industry in the East End was practically extinct after the 1900s, with only a handful of isolated weavers still operating by the 1920s.

Alice Harding, was born on 1 August 1904 in 55 Mape Street, off Bethnal Green Road. The last of eight children born to James and Elizabeth Harding (née Coleman), five boys and three girls, of whom two boys died in infancy and two more later on as a result of injuries inflicted during WW1. James and Elizabeth came from the same neighbourhood in Stepney. According to Alice: “My parents must have been near neighbours living in Stepney, somewhere between the back of the London Hospital, Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road” and like many of their neighbours they lived all their lives in a radius of two kilometres.

There is no evidence of previous connections to the weaving industry in the family until Alice’s mother, Elizabeth, the oldest of William and Elizabeth Coleman’s four daughters, decided to complete the required seven years’ apprenticeship to become a silk weaver and trained in Suffolk and Gloucestershire. She broke with the conventional pattern for many working-class girls, that of domestic employment, followed by her sisters, “The other girls were sent into service at an early age” (Alice). We do not know the reasons behind her decision to enter this profession, but first as a single woman and then as a married one she worked in the silk trade until she was 49 years old. Weavers enjoyed reasonably better working conditions than those in the sweating professions, factories or domestic service. As a silk-weaver, Elizabeth had a position as an independent working young woman which would enable her to sustain herself and, later on, her large family. The work also gave her a certain flexibility to raise children at home in safety and to bring a very much needed financial income to the family household, which for many years, represented their only stable earnings. However, the number of women in the profession declined in parallel with the disappearance of the industry.

After her apprenticeship Elizabeth returned to London and worked as a home-based silk weaver for Buckinghams near Moorgate, a firm trading in silk items. She also married James Harding after he returned from the campaigns in India, Afghanistan and Burma, where he received a medal for bravery. They married in the neighbouring church of St. Philips in Mile End (now Whitechapel Library). James was a tram conductor for several years but lost his job and with no social benefits at the time, “Life was very difficult for them and Mum lost the baby she was then carrying” (Alice). Elizabeth not only became the breadwinner, but also taught her husband to weave and by doing so ensured her family’s livelihood as James eventually came to be employed by Buckinghams.

The Hardings, a family of weavers

“My parents were both Silk Weavers working at home. After having had a couple of rooms Mum was able to get part of the Weavers’ House in Mape Street. The upstairs was all one room with their two looms and three large windows that went right across the front of the house to let in the light (Weavers’ Windows). The room was also used as a living room and, of course, there was also a spindle with treadle for winding the spools for the shuttle of the loom. Mother’s loom was beside Dad’s, but of course, she could only work in between having her babies! And her shuttle worked on a leather throng and she seemed to go twice as fast as Dad’s loom”.

Weavers’ houses (or garrets) were characterised by their large top windows which allowed for maximum light. Children often slept in the workshop and followed their parents’ working routine, getting up early and becoming accustomed to the noise of the loom, “I had a bed in the corner of the workshop and I remember so well walking up to the thump thump of the treadle of Dad in his room” (Alice). Weavers’ houses frequently suffered from infestation and had to be sealed and fumigated. The Hardings had to leave Mape Street and move to another weavers’ accommodation in 4, Sidney Street. Many of these houses were converted into apartments after the weaving ended. Families like the Hardings continued living in these houses, now renting rooms which had been partitioned. There are no weaver’s houses today in Mape St., which is next to Weavers’ Fields, a memory of that past.

Elizabeth and James collected the silk rolls from Buckinghams and returned the finished cloth to the firm. The entire process of collecting and preparing the silk for weaving at the loom took at least two days, for which they were not paid. Warping was carried out by an experienced warper who went round weavers’ houses “twisting each thread of new silk to a thread of that already on the loom. It was then rolled back onto the original roll and the end brought forward to the front of the loom on to another roll” (Alice). Their work on Jacquards’ looms is meticulously described by Alice:

“[…] Between the two wooden rollers it passed under battens and above the battens was a roll of cards with holes through which passed the contrasting colour. Each of these cards had perforations which formed the pattern, something like a pianola roll of music, and each time the batten was pushed back by hand it brought the intervening thread open so that it was every other thread pulled up each time, a shuttle was thrown from right to left and the next time from left to right. The shuttle was about 8 or 9” long and a quill of contrasting colour put in the centre. This was controlled by a long foot pedal that Dad worked with one foot on the ground. He did this most methodically and I should think once every second.”

Weaving was a family affair. James worked from 7.30 am to 10 pm at the loom, “except of course the days when he had to take his finished work to Buckinghams in the Barbican” (AH), and the boys helped, winding the quills “[…] on a spinning wheel from a large quill and put them on a board of nails ready for dad the next morning” (Alice). But they only worked after school and the family never worked on Sundays. Alice and her sister Sarah did not help out because, as she explains, there was not enough work anymore for the family, “[…] weaving had finished before we were old enough to do it”.

The beginning of WW1 represents not only the end of the Harding’s life as silk weavers, but the downturn of the industry, because, as explained by Alice: “when war broke out a lot of silk was in Germany and France being dyed so mother finished working as my parents’ work as silk-weavers was coming to a standstill as the firm in Barbican (the silk market) could not get the silk through from France” (A).

Elizabeth Harding: an independent and determined woman

Elizabeth (front left) with her daughters, Alice (front middle), Sarah (top right) and Daisy (top centre) [1914] (Image courtesy of Richard Pike)

The picture of Elizabeth that emerges from Alice’s writings is that of a determined and independently minded woman with a strong sense of justice, who did not hesitate to stand up to unfairness and who defended her worker’s rights:

“When we were in Mape Street, mother was a member of St. Andrews Church. The Parson came and asked mother to make 4 altar cloths for the church. Of course they were commissioned through Buckinghams, but the Parson came up to the workshop and asked mother to do the work for nothing. Jim said there was an awful row. Mother pointed out she had 6 children to keep and bring up and he told her she would have the Devil on her head! However, she was paid for her work, but never went to St. Andrew’s again”.

Bethnal Green and the East End was an area of intense social upheaval at the time of Elizabeth’s working years, defined by unionism and radical social ideas. Strikes and revolts took place regularly and many people campaigned for equal pay and rights. As a local working woman, Elizabeth would have heard about the Women’s Social and Political Union, the Women’s Labour League, the East London Federation of the Suffragettes and the work of Sylvia Pankhurst. She might have also known of Mary McArthur who set up holiday homes for working women, and even subscribed to or read her publication The Woman Worker, as she was not illiterate. We know that she joined a similar organisation, The London Home Workers’ Aid Association, and benefited from their resting home in Essex for sweated women workers in 1910:

“In June, mother had just gone for her first holiday since being married and had gone to a Home Workers’ Association at Singholm, Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex”.

The horrors of the Great War marked the Hardings’ life. Elizabeth and James lost two sons as a result of the conflict. As a young girl, Alice learned the injustice and unfairness of war, “If anyone had a name that sounded German or was Jewish they suffered a lot […] Our own bakers were German and were interned, but they were lovely people” (Alice). As an independent young working woman, she reflected on the consequences of war and the inequalities and poverty on working people, “poverty, unemployment, slums and ignorance led many good people into breaking the law” (Alice).

Elizabeth’s story in her daughter’s words is an example of an ordinary working-class woman’s life in late Victorian and Edwardian times in Bethnal Green. Through her determination and hard work she learned a profession which secured her independent means, enabled her to raise her children and to sustain her family. She died in 1922 at 57 and is buried in Manor Park Cemetery.

The role of women in the garment, textile or fashion industry remains crucial even today, with the shift to sweat workers in Asian countries and appalling working conditions in many cases. “The making of thread and textiles, after all, has for centuries been seen as women’s work. […] Even if they could not expect equal remuneration, women could stave off poverty if they possessed skill with a spindle, loom or needle”.

In 1931, Alice married Frank Pike, another EastEnder, and together they ran a grocery shop. In 1940, they moved to Devon to escape the Blitz, their young children already having been evacuated there.

Author:

Alice’s story found its way to me through her grandson, Richard, who knew I would be interested in the account of a weaver’s daughter in Bethnal Green because I also weave and, because like Alice, my life in England began in the East End of London, where I lived and worked for five years, after leaving my home country, Spain, many years ago. My memories of that time do not compare to Alice’s, but like her I felt at home among the people, the diversity and the reality of the area.

Matilde Gallardo is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London

Sources:

Working Class Movement Library, ‘Silk Workers’ https://www.wcml.org.uk/wcml/en/our-collections/working-lives/silk-workers/ (Last accessed 26/08/2020)
British History Online, ‘Bethnal Green: Economic History’ http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol11/pp168-190 (Last accessed 26/08/2020)
Women, Occupations and Work in the Victorian Censuses Revisited by Edward Higgs and Amanda Wilkinson. History Workshop Journal, Issue 81 (2016) https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article-abstract/81/1/17/2385582
Striking Women, ‘Women and work: 19th and early 20th century’ https://www.striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/19th-and-early-20th-century (Last accessed 26/08/2020)
Great War British Home Hospitals, ‘Walton-on-the-Naze: Singholm Park Red Cross V.A.D Hospital’ https://greatwarhomehospitals.wordpress.com/home/walton-on-the-naze-singholm-park-red-cross-v-a-d-hospital/ (Last accessed 26/08/20)
Kassia St Clair, The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History (2018)