Page:The Victoria History of the County of Lincoln Volume 2.pdf/426

Rh two ends of the silk together, after which it was converted into 'tram' or 'organzine,' according to the fineness of the silk or the purpose for which it was required by the manufacturer. The machinery at Mr. Gouger's mill was worked by a steam-engine of low pressure, of about eight-horse power. The local name for the factory was the 'Silk-school.'

At Louth in 1849 there was a carpet and blanket manufactory, employing eighty persons.

Young writes of a Mr. Chaplin who established at Raithby, near Louth, a 'Big Ben' for wool-combing.

Round Normanby and Burton flax was spun and woven into linen in the same writer's time. The earnings of the women were 3d. a day.

The crushing of linseed was formerly carried on on a large scale at Gainsborough, notably at Borwell's Mill; 60,000 quarters (one-eighth of whole imported into the kingdom) was yearly wrought up into cakes and oil, employing four mills and twenty presses. The cakes were used for feeding stock. Each quarter yielded 2½ cwt. of cake and 90 lb. of oil. In 1842 the cakes were selling at £11 per ton, the oil at £32 per ton, the seed being bought at 30s. to 33s. per quarter.

Bishop Hall's Satires, printed in 1597, contain the following allusion to what must now be evidently reckoned amongst the lost industries of Lincolnshire. The writer is satirizing the niggardly clergy of the day, who, whilst regaling themselves with royal fare, insist upon the strictest economy below stairs:

"What though he quaffe pure in his bowle Of March brew'd wheat; yet slakes my thirsty soul With palish oat frothing in Boston Clay."

William Billingsley, the celebrated flower-painter, was at Torksey from 1803 to 1808, but the small pottery there, in which he was associated with his son-in-law Walker, was closed in the latter year, owing to lack of funds to carry on the manufacture. Specimens of the 'Torksey Ware' were to be found for many years after in the collections of various persons scattered up and down the country.

Feather factories are a distinctive Lincolnshire industry at the present time. The feathers are received at the factories in enormous sacks from the farmers and poultry dealers. By means of cyclone machinery the fine feathers are separated from the coarse, the former being then purified by condensed steam in special ovens. The waste material, which is yielded in very considerable quantities, is sold to the fruit-growers as manure for their land. The workers spend about ten minutes at a time, the heat being intense, in the rooms over the ovens, emptying the feathers into the purifiers at intervals of twenty minutes.

A growing industry of the county is that of pea-picking, which gives employment to a large number of girls and women, not only in factories and workshops, chiefly situated in Boston, but also in their own homes, the peas being in this instance delivered in sacks at the cottage doors. The development of the industry is due to the growing demand for green peas for the table as sold by grocers, and owes its success in Lincolnshire to the enterprise of a firm which has taken for its model the lines upon which it is carried out in Canada. In two years it has become the foremost industry of the town, the busiest time being the winter months. The work, which attracts the rougher class of girls and women, consists in separating the good from the bad, discoloured, or shrivelled peas, all of which are fieldgrown, and in order to suit the buyers must be fairly uniform in size and colour. In some factories the best are packed in small boxes and packets for sale. The packers sit in rooms at long tables, separated into compartments, one picker at each. The peas are piled before her, and with both hands she rapidly sorts the heap, letting them run, when sorted, through a hole in the table into a sack beneath, each of these sacks containing 18 stone.  

It is at Boston, although destined to decline in later times to the second place in the great fishing industry of the county, that the history of that industry may be said to begin, as indeed befits the city of St. Botolph, 'the Saint of seafaring men.' Frequent mention is made in Calendars of the Patent and Close Rolls from the fourteenth century of the great fish market at Boston.

In 1555 a Scottish ship riding in the roads laden with herrings was compelled to come into the borough to sell the same; though in 1590, through want of shipping, Boston was actually