The Express. — 1861-03-14 (London, England)

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 acquainted 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 questioned 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 replaced. 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 ampulped 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 physical 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 prosreeve 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