The Express.
London, England, 1861-03-14 00:00:00

THE HANDLOOM_WRAVERS IN 'VITAL-

FIELDS.

An inquest was held yesterdayby Mr. Humphreys,
the coroner, in Little York-street, Church-street,
Bethnal-gre n, on the body of Daniel Christmas, a
handloom weaver, who put an end to his own life
by hanging himself on Saturday night. The air-.
cuinstuices of his case are worth mentioning, as
they may serve to show the real causes, and to
suggest the remedy of that long-continued distress
which some thousands of the same class of people
in this district are now enduring. The man
was forty years of age, single, and without
incumbrance, living in two rooms, with his father
and sister ; they were silk weavers all three of
them, and not disabled by ill-health. He had
been bred up to the loom, and had always been
most attentive to his work, seldom going out
of the house, by day or night. From the
evidence of his father and sister, it appeared
that ever since Christmas this poor fellow
had been in a very desponding and melancholy
condition, because, as they said, he was "so
plagued with having got different work from
what he was used to ; be was not at all ac-
quainted with it, and it was very litigiqus work."
To explain this statement, which might seem quite
insufficient to account for the semi-starvation and
suicide of a skilled and sober workman in the prime
of life, we should refer to some well-ascertained facts
relative to the habits of those handloom weavers,
and their peculiar difficulties in earning a livelihood
at the present time. The old man, on being ques-
tioned by the coroner more particularly about this,
replied, ' It's the difficulty of the silk. We have to
contend with various sorts of silk, sometimes good
and sometime' very bad. Masters and employers
buy the indifferent aorta, on account of
its being cheaper, and I have beard my son
say that his life would have to pay for it" What
be meant by calling the inferior silk which has
lately come into use " litigious " material is just
this—that as the threads are continually breaking
the weaver is h opelessly delayed in his piecework,
since every read that snaps must be instantly re-
placed. The work upon which Daniel Christmas
had been employed, till he broke his heart over it
and died, was the weaving of a piece of velvet am-
pulped of 2,700 threads, there being 1,800 threads
in the under row as placed in the loom,
and 900 threads in the top. In cold and damp
weather, such as we have bad this winter, the silk
is more than ever liable to break or to crack. This
velvet-waving, in which there are such • number
' of threads to be watched and frequently repaired,
is of course much more tedious work than to weave
such stuff as the glac#, In which the man's sister
was engaged ; her employment was precarious,
and, to use her own phrase, she was
" obliged to play a great deal," but she
might have woven three yards of that
fabric daily, at sixpence a yard. Now the velvet
which has preyed so fatal to her brother was paid
for at the rate of two shillings a yard, but he could
only make about two yards of it in a week. The
piece given out to him was thirty yards in length,
and if he has been eighteen week,' about it, and it
is not Bnished yet, the delay may be accounted for
by those particular hindrances to which we have
alluded. The man was certainly not an
idler, and be had practised the art all his
life. Perhaps he did not possess the phy-
sical or mental energy that was needful to
carry him through a difficult task ; but be had
been living on bread and water for months past—
he might well be a poor creature to cope with such
disheartening toil. He had got bebindhaud with
his rent • a few days ago his landlord came, and
threatewed to turn him out, upon which, the sister
mays, "be turned as white as a sheet, and seemed
very ill." He had borrowed 21.75. of his fattier,
who could ill afford it ; and that also upon
his mind. He became so listless and EVd that
he would not keep his pergola clean ; still he went
on at the loom, which stood in the same apartment
with his cheerless bed. He would never apply for
parish relief, and it is said by those who know the
feelings of this class of people, that from pride or
some such motive, they are extremely reluctant to
do so. Moat of them belong to old resident
families is the district, which have seen more pros-
reeve days. Only twelve months ago this velvet,
for which a weaver now gets two shillings a yard,
would have been paid for at four shillings, the same
texture and the same width. As might be expected,
there are various opinions among those engaged in
the trade as to the causes of its decline in the
metropolis. Some accuse the French treaty and
foreign competition, while others, including a few
el the owners of power looms or large factories is
London, complain that they cannot contend against
the manufacturers of Macclesfield and Manchester,
who get their steam coal at half the price: It ii
al4ted that the handloom for pattern work canoot
well be superseded by any power looms yet cue-