Nostalgia with Margaret Watson: The Day family were involved in textiles as far back as 1729

Pictured some years ago is a young Charles Day when he worked in the family business founded by his ancestor Henry Day, whose picture hangs on the wall.

We all know that history doesn’t write itself but is written mainly by ordinary people who give of their timeto research aspects of local history which interests them most.

Margaret Watson writes: They often spend years carrying out painstaking research to make sure they’ve got their facts right before finally putting pen to paper.

Over the years I have been indebted to so many of them because their research has enabled me, through these columns, to keep Dewsbury’s history alive.

Today, thanks to the Internet, what I write can be read by a wider public thus enabling them to learn more of our town’s history.

This is why I have decided to repeat some of my earlier articles, especially of our industrial past, which we must never forget.

I am starting this week with Charles Day, a director of Henry Day and Sons Ltd, Savile Bridge Mills, Savile Town, a shoddy mill which was started in 1844 and closed in 2000.

Charles completed his research on his family business some years ago, and it is something only a man like Charles, with his in-depth knowledge of the shoddy and mungo industry and the processing of rags, could have written.

What he has written covers every aspect of the shoddy and mungo industry, chronicling its rise and fall over the last 200 years, and all his papers on it are now in the possession of Huddersfield Archives.

Shoddy was brought into the world in 1815 by a Batley man, Benjamin Law, who invented a machine which could spin yarn from old woollen rags. In short he was able to recycle old woollen clothing and make it useable again.

Prior to that, clothing was made from virgin wool which was far too expensive to clothe the masses, but Law’s invention changed all that.

His machinery could produce vast quantities of much cheaper fibre called shoddy which led to the foundation of a huge textile industry here in Dewsbury and Batley, employing thousands of local people.

Shoddy, as Charles informs us, brought great prosperity to the Heavy Woollen District, and his great, great grandfather, Henry Day, of Hanging Heaton, was soon at the forefront of the shoddy revolution which ensued.

The Day family were involved in textiles long before Benjamin Law invented his machine, but only in a small way compared with how the business was later to develop.

The first recorded person connected to textiles with the name Day, was Joseph Day who, in 1729, was working from his home in Hanging Heaton as both a farmer and a clothier.

In 1820 Joseph’s son George, had a licence to sell wool, issued by the Bailiff, Joseph Howgate, which had to be carried round with him at all times.

George’s son, Henry, worked with him, and in 1844 Henry started his own company, expanding into an area of Hanging Heaton, now called Day’s Yard, where he and his wife sorted and sold rags.

He built Quarry Cottage and then Quarry House in Day’s Yard, built from stone costing £10 from an old Methodist School and bricks from James Bray of Shaw cross.

He then started to dye and dry rags, bought a rag machine and introduced hand-weaving there.

Today doors can be seen on the top floors of cottages in Day’s Yard where the yarn was taken through for the hand-loom weavers.

Some of the names in Henry’s sales day book are those of men who became leading mill owners in the Dewsbury area, like Mark Oldroyd, Mark Day, Joseph Newsome, to name but a few.

The company continued to grow and Henry kept moving to bigger premises to keep up its rapid expansion, and the business prospered.

When he died in 1889, he left money in his will for a number of stained-glass windows to be erected in St Mark’s Church, Dewsbury.

The first Crimean War n 1853/6, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/1, were both very profitable for the local textile industry.

The Russian-Japan War in 1904 brought orders to the Heavy Woollen District for 1,400,000 blankets and millions of yards of Army cloth.

There was so much demand for rags that trainloads of rags were bought in Europe and then shipped into the United Kingdom.

Rags which had been delivered to Hull were brought to Dewsbury by canal in barges which could carry up to 80 tons. It would take one man and a horse to deliver the barge to Dewsbury.

Old uniforms were sold by tender by large companies or government departments – the companies included bus companies, hospitals, fire brigades and the police, which included the RUC.

Most of the above garments had shoddy or mungo in them and so, as Charles Day points out, the Heavy Woollen District has been “green” for nearly 200 years.

Rag and waste sorting gave a lot of employment in the area, and the sorting was carried out mainly by women who were of Irish stock.

Sorting was thorough, in some cases it had to be precise, and the more experienced sorters were given the difficult jobs, for which their pay was higher.

In 1915, Henry Day’s firm became sophisticated and had a telephone installed with the number Dewsbury 95. In 1915 they bought their first wagon, a Vulcan costing £600.

One of the biggest influences in the demise of the woollen textile industry was the invention of synthetic fibres, and the fact that fewer people were buying wool cloth due to central heating and car heaters.

Charles Day, born in 1945, is the sixth and last generation of the family to work in textiles, and although manufacturing at Savile Bridge Mills ceased in 2000, the mill still survives and the company is still in business, letting out the property for rental income.

What I have written is a much edited version of what Charles has written about the shoddy industry, but if you log on to http://www.henryday.co.uk, you can read more.