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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: aggiebagwash on Wednesday 19 September 18 13:41 BST (UK)
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I came across this last night and couldn't stop laughing.
When asked his occupation the guy replied Nail and woolly teeth maker. He was either a very sarcastic man or he had the oddest job going.
That's a first for me. ??? ??? ???
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I see on the previous census he was a Nail & Teazear Teeth Maker.
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Probably not human teeth but machinery/tools of some kind 8)
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Just googled what a teazear was and it was a rope for informal corporal punishment.
As he also made nails I wonder if it was a cat-o'-nine-tails or something similar?
Gruesome. :o
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I think teazer as in teasing out wool prior to spinning into yarn. Teeth for a teazer would be made in the same manner as nails I would have thought.
Sorry to be such a killjoy, instruments of torture sounded so much more interesting 😉
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Spoilsport!!! But I do agree it sounds more like something that was used by weavers.
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Wool Comb maker.
http://www.rootschat.com/links/01mqt/
Malky
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Teasels,the spiky buds of a thistle type plant were fixed (thousands of them) on a frame and were used to raise the nap on wool cloth such as facecloth velour for the lovely red material used for tunics in the Guards regiments.
After the nap was raised the cloth was sometimes shaved giving a dense
fabric.
Previously the cloth to be napped was fulled using stale urine and subjected to the fulling hammers at the fulling mill where it was pounded to a very dense texture,
Then stretched on the teasing frame.This was tenting,so people who were tense and wound up were said to be “on tenterhooks”(not tenderhooks).
All part of our textile industry.
Viktoria
People were paid for the stale urine they collected ,honestly!
Viktoria.
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People were paid for the stale urine they collected ,honestly!
Viktoria.
I believe you, Tony Robinson (Time Machine) did a series of programs on strangest jobs, and one was where he had to stamp on the unpleasant urine into the cloth to make it softer.
Cheers
KHP
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Yes, in the Hebrides where tweed was made the women did that, rather like treading grapes ,it was called waulking,I think that is the spelling.It was put in big tubs with the urine.
It fulled the cloth making it pretty dense and so somewhat waterproof and did not get snagged easily by thorns etc.
There were specific songs sung to the rhythm of the stamping.
The tweed was also handled on a big table and it was turned over and over by the women,not sure what that did except I can imagine it softened it somewhat.
Harris tweed had a very distinctive odour,well it would would’nt it!
Not much made nowadays.
Films exist of the tweed processes and the women waulking and handling the cloth ,all the while singing.
A lost way of life.
Viktoria.
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I believe the surnames Fuller and Fullarton have their origins with the fullers who worked with urine to soften and treat wool and cloth.
Looby :)
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Another ingredient was Fuller’s earth which absorbed the excess lanolin from the fleeces,I don’t know what chemical Fuller’s earth is but why it is called that is as you say used in the preparation of raw wool by fullers.
We are all remembering things from long ago.
My Mum, when she hand washed precious wool jumpers or cardigans always put a little ammonia in the last rinse and they were soft and fluffy.
We had soft water but in a hard water area the soap scum would not rinse out properly and that could spoil garments .
All there was to wash woolies was Lux soap flakes.
It was all you used for babies clothes too including nappies .
Oh the smell of boiling nappies in the Baby Burco top of stove boiler,failing that an enamel bucket.
Les Dawson described it so well.Including the rainbow in the lobby from all the damp washing ;D ;D ;D
Times were ‘ard.
And women had to be harder as my Mum would say.
Viktoria.
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Fuller's Earth is a type of clay.
I loved using Lux. I don't know how Victorian woman managed but to have a Baby Burco must have been a luxury at the time.
I wonder what today's youngsters will remember in another 50 years?
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Well aggiebagwash I am dead old, well old but not dead yet,I don,t think.
There was an electric Baby Burco, but failing that a stovetop one or as I had an enamel bucket with lid on the gas stove.
Victorian women would have the old built in copper boiler heated by a little fire underneath,either in the kitchen or washouse.
(When I lived abroad the nappies were not boiled but come rain ,shine or snow and especially frost nappies were spread out on the grass if there was a lawn,and the fresh air and sunshine or frost did the disinfecting part.
They were rinsed again and hung out to dry whenever possible.
Frost made them really soft and fluffy.)
In the same boiler in which the weekly wash was done,if my Mum was to be believed —-the Christmas puddings and Raggy puddings were also boiled.(Not with the Monday wash ;D)
Seemingly all the women made their Christmas puddings on “stir up Sunday” and they went into one boiler (for economy) each with an identifying knot of ribbon or wool.Your boiler this year mine next and so on.
That ‘s what was meant by neighbouring.
Christmas Day they are not boiled so long and would be done in a pan.
All the ironing of complicated long baby clothes doesn’t bear thinking about.
Again to quote my Mum, we don’t know we are born!
Viktoria.
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I think teazer as in teasing out wool prior to spinning into yarn. Teeth for a teazer would be made in the same manner as nails I would have thought.
Sorry to be such a killjoy, instruments of torture sounded so much more interesting 😉
There was actually a form of torture of being combed to death :-\
This was what happened to St Blaise, the martyr and patron saint of wool combers.
an Armenian Bishop who died a Christian martyr in the 4th century. He was ordered to be killed for refusing to renounce his faith to the Roman Govenor of Armenia, by having his flesh torn by hot wool combs, used to prepare fleece to be spun into cloth. he became known as the Patron Saint of woolcombing and his feast day was celebrated in Bradford until the Industrial Revolution.
The St Blaise festival in Bradford, a city that had a very large percentage of wool combers and militant trade unions and strikes, was supposedly 'bigger than Christmas'
(https://bradwan.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/gw14.jpg?w=300&h=202)
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I imagine then that wool would be treated as was cotton in the domestic textile industry.
A wooden block with handle had lots and lots of little slightly hooked wires,
two were used one for each hand.
A clump of cotton was placed between them and they were pulled apart
away from each other, one upwards and the other downwards
This formed a sausage shaped roll of cotton,known as a rollag or roving.
This was what was used in hand spinning,the rollag when spun out could be joined to the next one by simply twisting the ends together
I thought raw wool was just pulled out from the fleece.But it seems from the description that it may have been combed to take out twigs, clumps of knotted wool and generally tidied up by the carder for the spinner.
What an education RootsChatters is.
Viktoria.
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And fullers earth is still available today as cat litter. It's a sort of clay that clumps together when it absorbs liquid.
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Good evening,
Fullers earth is one of the finest powders when ground. Hence it's use in talcum powder at one time if not still used.
Also used by the armed forces in special pads to use as a first line defence against chemical agent droplets on the skin and clothing. BLOT, BANG, RUB over the affected area to gather up the droplets.
John915
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And fullers earth is still available today as cat litter. It's a sort of clay that clumps together when it absorbs liquid.
It was recommended as beginner litter for very young kittens as they wouldn't choke if they ate any. My kittens gave themselves grey faces by washing them with paws covered in fuller's earth.
I didn't know the origin of the name fuller's earth.
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I imagine then that wool would be treated as was cotton in the domestic textile industry.
A wooden block with handle had lots and lots of little slightly hooked wires,
two were used one for each hand.
A clump of cotton was placed between them and they were pulled apart
away from each other, one upwards and the other downwards
This formed a sausage shaped roll of cotton,known as a rollag or roving.
This was what was used in hand spinning,the rollag when spun out could be joined to the next one by simply twisting the ends together
My GGM was a cotton rover. At least one of her daughters worked in the carding room.
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Harris tweed had a very distinctive odour,well it would would’nt it!
Not much made nowadays.
Viktoria.
This reminded me of a shock one islander had when he received an order out of the blue from Nike Sports people in America wanting 9,500 metres of Harris tweed to be delivered yesterday. His usual weekly output was 100 metres of tweed a week.
I thought this was only a couple or so years ago but I've just checked and it was 2004.
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Yes, the tweed was for shoes,believe it or not,well a sort of posh trainer was one style.
I remember the programme which launched the idea.
I have to admit there was a certain “something” about them.
Mind you the perfume Tweed by Lentheric did not smell like true Harris Tweed,or no one would have worn it!
Why do all our artisan products go ,and when re discovered are beyond viable regeneration.?
Greed ,I expect.Not on the part of the artisans themselves though I don’t think.
It makes me laugh when you get packed food which has been “hand packed”
“hand sliced or picked” it makes not a jot of difference to the taste so why are we daft enough to pay more?
Often no alternative.
I’m getting into rant mode so will sign off.Cheerio.
Viktoria.