Kissing the shuttle

The stages in making a hand-threaded shuttle

Shuttles were constructed from a dense heavy hardwood with metal tips. The wood was traditionally sourced from a box tree. Imported timbers such as persimmon and cornel were also commonly used. The shuttle was shaped and hollowed using conventional wood working techniques, and the metal tips are pressed onto the block. Strips of fox fur or similar were stuck to the inside of a shuttle to stop the thread ballooning as it left the pirn. There are many designs of shuttle. The Pemberton Loom needed a shuttle with a hinged shuttle-peg to hold the pirn; the later Draper loom shuttles clasped metal rings on the head of the pirn using a spring steel clip. The Draper Company claimed it had developed over 5000 different types of shuttle to meet "the needs of the mills and the whims of the weavers".[5][6]

The eye of the shuttle was often made of porcelain. The thread from the pirn had to be led through the eye before it could be used. The fastest way to do this was to suck it through.[7]

The eye of this shuttle was not a closed ring. Patented methods were used to enable the weft to be threaded into the eye, the challenges were production cost, maintaining production speed both in the speed it would run and the time needed to thread it and doff it.[8]

Metcalfs self threading shuttle was gripped the metal ringed pirn using a spring clip that engaged with the rings. The depleted pirn was then automatically rewound while a new pirn was pressed into the clips and the trailing thread clipped into the complex eye.[9]

Robert Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus in 1882 and this led to a period of 40 years in which the medical professions debated the means of transmission and tried to assimilate this new knowledge into existing practice. Koch's hypothesis was that the bacillus was transmitted by dried sputum on dust particles, while a Dr Charles Chapin, the medical officer for Rhode Island, proposed that close physical contact between people was necessary and spitting and kissing were the primary cause of infection.[15] It was in 1899 that Hermann Biggs, the chief medical officer for New York City determined that transmission was caused by dust or close physical contact.

In Massachusetts, in 1906, it was declared that shuttle kissing was an unwholesome practice because it drew dust cotton lint into the lungs which caused them to spit. This problem was being treated as an occupational health issue as well as one of infectious disease control and this prompted the legislature to act.[15]

In Lancashire, bacteriology was less advanced and in 1900 it was still believed that 'consumption' (tuberculosis) was not an infectious disease and the contagion was due to sanitation or moral laxity.[16]

The 1912 Home Office Report by Messrs Bollhouse Fletcher and Shackleton examined the problem, taking evidence from 58 medical officers in Lancashire. A list of diseases said to arise from shuttle kissing was compiled but close study could only find and document five actual cases. These were a cancer at Oswaldtwistle, tonsillitis at Rawtenstall, three deaths from tuberculosis at Bacup, phthisis at Tyldesley and scarlet fever at Burnley. The three deaths were examined in detail but no link to shuttle kissing was established and other forms of close contact were equally probable. Thus medical officers in Lancashire did not see this problem as within their remit, and were divided on causality.[17]

In 1918, Mr Middleton Hewat, Preston's Tuberculosis Officer and Assistant Medical Officer of Health, saw that weavers had the highest tuberculosis rate of any cotton operatives, and recommended that hand-threaded shuttles should be introduced, while not mentioning the system used in the Northrop automatic loom which were already operated by Horrocks, Crewdson and Sons in Preston. The issue was then discussed by the Parliamentary Shuttle Kissing Committee[lower-alpha 5] in 1919 who recommended that shuttle kissing should stop but delegated the decision to the individual towns.[19]

The Amalgamated Weavers' Association, ever conciliatory, welcomed the recommendation but suggested that the employers should be given five years to use the old shuttles. The Lancashire Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association rejected the recommendation as it was the employers' right to conduct their business the way they saw fit, but agreed to recommend the use of hand threaders where there was no economic disadvantage.[20]

The weavers failed to persuade the Secretary of State to use the 1901 Factory Act to end the practice, in stark contrast to the alliance of medical and labour activists that promoted the Anthrax Prevention Act 1919 or the action against scrotal cancer.[21]

The 1920s slump and next world war intervened so no action was taken until 1952 when they were banned on the grounds they were no longer economic.[20]

A further danger was the practice of steaming. To weave cotton, the air had to be moist and weaving sheds were built into the hillside so the structure would remain damp, and additional moisture was added by keeping the floors wet. To keep the air moist in a controlled way, steam pipes at roof height constantly sprayed the air. Lancashire Members of Parliament sought to have steaming stopped through the means of private members' bills with no success. Steaming was discussed and deemed safe by Home Office reports in 1928 and 1929.[22]