Ulster Linen Workers

For the Forgotten Women Friday to be held on 17 October 2025, the focus is on women who were working in the linen industry in Ulster at the time of the 1901 Census.  Specifically, we are going to research women between twenty-six and thirty-six years of age working in the spinning mills, weaving factories, linen manufacturers and hemstitching factories of the linen trade in Counties Armagh and Down, in what has been Northern Ireland, since 1921. We have also included some hemstitchers who lived in rural areas and worked at home, getting piece work through a local Hemstitching Agent. A sample story can be found below.

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Linen has been produced on the island of Ireland at least since Tudor times.  The Industrial Revolution, as well as transforming the linen industry in Ulster, also changed how and where people lived and worked. Mills and weaving factories sprung up over Belfast and surrounding towns and villages, and many people poured into these areas from the countryside looking for work. These people who moved from rural areas to urban areas soon discovered that working in the weaving factories and spinning mills was very different to producing linen at home, which had been the way in the past. In Ulster, the linen industry grew to the point where in 1900 there were 35,000 power looms operating,  while in Great Britain and Europe there were just 22,000 in total.

Whole families often worked in a mill. The Factories Act of 1874 increased the starting age for children from 8 years to 10 years old. Children were employed as ‘half-timers’ who went to school half the week and worked in the mill the other half. Up to three quarters of the workers who were employed by the factories and mills were women and children. This was mainly because they were cheaper to employ. However, poverty was rife and so sometimes the age of the children was lied about so they could enter the mill at an earlier age and begin contributing to the household income.

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In the late 1800s, the typical working day began at 6am and ended at 6pm. If you were late in the morning, you could be locked outside, fined and have your name entered into a complaints ledger. The hot, dusty, noisy and moist environment of the wet and dry spinning rooms made life very unpleasant. Three quarters of an hour was allowed for breakfast at 8.15am, and the same time allowed for lunch. The weekly wage for spinners, predominantly a female profession, was around 7 shillings and sixpence. Roughers and Sorters, mainly male jobs, received around 17 shillings and sixpence and 22 shillings and sixpence respectively. Tuberculosis often spread quickly through the mills and factories, killing both young and older workers; as a result, life expectancy for people in the linen industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was quite low.

The 1908 Belfast Health Commission report described an improvement in working conditions with the installation of fans to draw away flax dust, as well as improvements to ventilation. However, working conditions in the linen mills were of serious concern and detrimental to health into the late 20th century.

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In 1910, the Weekly Irish Times described infant mortality rates as being very high and attributed this to the number of ‘premature births amongst women working in the mills and factories’ who often had to work up to the beginning of their confinement. A women often returned to work quickly after giving birth, ultimately because the wages were necessary for her family to survive.

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The dataset of women for this research has been compiled from the 1901 Ireland Census, which is freely available online at www.census.nationalarchives.ie.  The information given to researchers for each woman will include her name, townland or street address, the county (Armagh or Down), the DED (District Electoral Division) and her age, birthplace, occupation and religion.  This should enable easy identification of each woman on the 1901 census and in other online documentation.  Volunteers will also receive a document called “A Guide to Online Northern Ireland Family History Research”, which will tell you which websites to use, and give some guidance on what they offer and how to use them.

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The women who worked as weavers may have just been described as linen weavers, but in some cases they were described as damask weavers, cambric weavers or diaper weavers. Damask linen is the highest quality of linen cloth. Cambric is a very fine linen, of the type used for handkerchiefs.  The word “diaper” actually refers to a weaving technique used since medieval times in which the threads are woven in a way that produces a pattern within plain white cloth - often a diamond pattern. For centuries, household items such as table cloths and napkins would often be made from plain “diapered” linen.

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The jobs carried out by the women are explained below:

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Preparer

Working in the preparing room of the mill where flax was prepared was described by one mill manager in 1875 as being ‘sure death’. The process of preparing the flax and also hackling, which is the process of splitting the flax fibres, created a huge amount of flax dust or ‘pouce’. These rooms in the mill were badly ventilated and so the workers were almost constantly inhaling this dust. It dried out the throat, caused a cough and led to chest illnesses such as byssinosis. Those suffering from byssinosis would often have a cough, fever, shivers, fatigue, and their lungs would usually be permanently affected.

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Spinner

Spun the flax into linen yarn. The spinning rooms where the flax was spun to create yarn were wet and hot. This was to stop the flax from breaking, but these working conditions deeply impacted the spinners. They worked in their bare feet in attempts to stay cool, but the floor was always wet and so we see spinners suffering from what they describe as toe or foot rot. ‘Onychia’, where the nail bed becomes infected and ultimately the nail is lost, and also ‘deformity of the foot’ was prevalent amongst the people working in the spinning departments. The spinners also worked with hot water which caused a skin condition on the face and arms, or any skin uncovered that was touched by flax water. In the hot and humid conditions, it might be unsurprising that spinners often fainted and this was sometimes attributed to anaemia. The young girls and women employed in the mill became skilled lip readers in order to communicate over the noise.

 

Warp Winder

Wound the warp threads into place on the loom before the weaving process can begin.  Then the shuttle wove the weft threads in between, creating the cloth.  The warp thread runs continuously down the length of the cloth, while the weft thread runs across the width of the cloth.

 

Winder or Bobbin Winder

Wound the yarn from cones of linen yarn onto either weaving ‘pirns’ or bobbins for insertion in the shuttle, which goes back and forth across the loom to create the linen cloth, when weaved in with the warp threads.​