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 Another Random Document on
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either to its antiquity or the associations connected with it, content if
only they could keep the roof over their heads; and, as may be
anticipated, during those vicissitudes, it was suffered to fall into a
state of decay, until the inroads of dilapidation became only too
painfully visible both within and without.

STAIRCASE: HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD.

The greater portion of the mansion is and has been for many years
in the occupancy of a farmer, Mr. James Bromiley, but a part of the
old black and white structure has been divided and subdivided into
numerous tenements that are now let to small cottagers. The
occasion of our visit was a pleasant autumn afternoon, and
proceeding, as we had been previously advised, from the Oaks
Station, a pleasant walk of a few minutes over the high ground
brought us to the picturesque and interesting old relic. The request
to view the interior was readily complied with, the good woman of
the house cheerfully accompanying us through the wainscoted
parlours and contracted passages, and thence, by a quaintly-carved
black oak staircase, with massive and highly-decorated balusters and
pendants, that leads to the upper chambers and the vacant lofts
above, giving us every facility we could desire in examining the
antiquated dwelling. The dining-hall, a well-proportioned room, is on
the ground floor, but that which most attracts attention is the
chamber above—the only one which seems to have been treated
with any degree of respect—Crompton’s room, the one in which he
worked, in which he had his rude bench and still ruder tools, where
he matured his plans and constructed his primitive models, where
for years he laboured on with anxious hope and enduring
perseverance, and where at length—just one hundred years ago—he
triumphed, giving to his country the invention which has so largely
contributed to its wealth and prosperity. The room is now occupied
as a sleeping apartment, but in other respects it is little changed
since the great inventor’s day. It has been subjected to many
whitewashings, but the old ornamental plaster cornice still remains;
the old heraldic escutcheon of the Starkies may still be seen; and
there too is the spacious window with its double row of leaded lights
extending the entire width, out of which Crompton must so often
have wistfully gazed. The attic storey possesses but comparatively
little interest, and exhibits only a labyrinth of dark and intricate
passages, with small chambers and secret hiding places leading off
in every direction. It was here that Crompton, in 1779, on the very
eve of the completion of his machine, concealed the various parts
after he had taken it to pieces for safety against the dreaded attack
of the machine-breaking rioters of Blackburn, who had driven poor
Hargreaves, the inventor of the Jenny, from his home, destroyed
nearly every machine within miles of Blackburn, and who, it was
feared, would extend their riotous proceedings to Crompton’s
invention before it had been even put in actual work. The principal
entrance to the hall is on the south side, by an arched doorway, over
which is a square panel with the initials and date already mentioned.
Above this, and separated by a bold moulding, is a porch-chamber,
lighted on three sides by square windows, mullioned and transomed,
over one of which is a lozenge-shaped sun-dial. Evil days have
unhappily fallen upon the building. Where repairs have been
attempted they have been made by slovenly hands, and unseemly
patches mar the effect of its general appearance; but even in its
present condition of neglect and approaching ruin it exhibits much
that is architecturally interesting. Apart, however, from such
considerations, surely the associations that gather round make it a
public duty to protect it from further injury, so that it may be
preserved to future generations as a memorial of one of Lancashire’s
worthiest sons and one of England’s greatest benefactors.

Crompton, though himself of humble parentage, could claim a long

and respectable lineage, his progenitors, who derived their
patronymic from the hamlet of Crompton in Prestwich parish,
ranking among the better class of yeomen, and the parent line
asserting its gentility by the use of armorial ensigns. His parents
resided at Firwood, a farm in the same township, and distant about
half a mile from Hall-i’-th’-Wood, that had been owned by their
family for several generations, but which Crompton’s grandfather
had mortgaged to the Starkies, and the father, unable to redeem,
had finally alienated to them, continuing the occupancy, however, for
some time as tenant, and combining with the business of farming
that of carding, spinning, and weaving on a small scale whenever
the intervals of farming and daily labour permitted. The couple were
honest, hardworking, and religious, but fortune was unpropitious,
and during the later years of the elder Crompton’s life they appear to
have been going down in the world. It was at the farm at Firwood,
on the 3rd of December, 1753, that Samuel Crompton first saw the
light. Shortly after his birth his parents forsook the old home and
took up their abode at a cottage near Lower Wood, in the immediate
vicinity. Their stay there was but short, for three or four years after,
they removed to the neighbouring mansion of Hall-in-the Wood, a
part of which had been assigned to them by Mr. Starkie, who had
become the possessor of Firwood, for the old mansion had, even at
that date, been divided into separate holdings, and confided by its
owner to the care of somewhat needy occupants.
George Crompton, the father, died shortly after, at the comparatively
early age of thirty-seven, from, as is said, a cold taken while helping
gratuitously in his over hours to build the organ-gallery in All Saints’
Church, Bolton, where he worshipped; and his widow, Betty
Crompton, as she was familiarly called, was left to struggle for a
livelihood for herself and three children—Samuel, who was then a
child of five years, and two girls. She was a woman of superior
attainments, industrious, managing, and, withal, strong-minded;
energetic in her action, but possessing, with a good deal of outward
austerity of manner, much innate goodness of heart. Her good
management and business-like habits gained her the confidence and
respect of her neighbours, who manifested their appreciation of her
abilities by electing her to the office of overseer of the township, an
appointment which, though perfectly legal, was of unusual
occurrence in days when “Women’s Rights” were unthought of; one
of the reasons which induced her to accept the office being the
desire to compel her son to discharge the duties, which he disliked
excessively. Mrs. Crompton abode at the hall after her husband’s
death, and continued his business with energy and thrift, the
produce of her dairy being held in high repute in the neighbourhood,
whilst the bees in her old-fashioned garden supplied her with
another marketable commodity, added to which she had acquired
local fame for her excellent make of elderberry wine, a beverage she
hospitably dispensed among her friends and visitors. As may be
supposed, she ruled her household with a firm hand, and believing
in the wisdom of the proverb that to “spare the rod” is to “spoil the
child,” she manifested her fondness for her boy by a frequent
application of the birch to the unappreciative youngster’s breech—as
he was wont to say in after years, her practice was to chastise him,
not for any particular fault, but because she loved him so well, a
mode of training certainly not the best calculated to enable a lad of
a naturally diffident and sensitive disposition to engage in the rough
battle of life or to make his way successfully in the world. The widow
Crompton, notwithstanding, had many good qualities. She did, as
she believed, her duty to her fatherless child, and gave him the best
education in her power. School boards and board schools were then
only in the womb of time, but Lancashire had many excellent
schoolmasters, and of the number was William Barlow,[49] who kept
a school at the top of Little Bolton, a pedagogue who worthily
upheld the value and dignity of the mathematical sciences, and, on
that account, was reputed among his neighbours to be “a witch in
figures.” Under his tuition young Crompton was placed, and, being of
a meditative and retiring disposition, he took kindly to his studies,
made satisfactory progress, and was accounted well educated for his
station in life.
Of his two sisters little or nothing is known, but residing under the
same roof was a lame old uncle, his father’s brother, Alexander
Crompton; a character in his way, whose peculiarities could hardly
fail to have an influence on the mind of the nephew. Like the rest of
the family, Uncle Alexander was strict in his religious observances,
but being afflicted with lameness was unable to leave his room, in
which, in fact, he lived and worked and slept, to attend the services
of the sanctuary, and so he compensated himself for the deprivation
in a manner that was as original as it was humble and respectful:—

On each succeeding Sunday [says Crompton’s faithful

biographer, Mr. French], when all the rest of the family had gone
to service at All Saints’ Chapel, Uncle Alexander sat in his
solitary room listening for the first sound of the bells of Bolton
Parish Church. Before they ceased ringing, he took off his
ordinary working-day coat and put on that which was reserved
for Sundays. This done, he slowly read to himself the whole of
the Morning Service and a sermon, concluding about the same
time that the dismissal bell commenced ringing, when his
Sunday coat was carefully put aside,—to be resumed again,
however, when the bells took up their burthen for the evening
service, which he read through with the same solitary solemnity.

Such was the household then occupying one of the wings of the
rambling old mansion. Mrs. Crompton found no happiness in repose;
ever doing and ever having much to do was her manner, and that
was assuredly the fate of her son. From his earliest childhood the
hours that should have been spent in harmless pastime were
occupied in rendering such assistance as he could on the farm, or in
the humble manufacturing operations carried on in the house, whilst
his mother was bargaining and fighting with the outer world. He was
put to the loom almost as soon as his legs were “long enough to
touch the treddles,” and when his day’s task was done he was sent
to a night school in Bolton to improve his knowledge of algebra,
mathematics, and trigonometry. The poor weaver-lad had no
playmates or associations with the outer world; he lived a life of
seclusion, and his only companion in his brief moments of leisure
was his fiddle. His father had been enthusiastically fond of music,
and at the time of his death had begun the construction of an organ,
leaving behind him a few oak pipes and the few simple tools with
which he had made them. The amateur organ-builder’s son inherited
the father’s taste, and made himself a fiddle—the first achievement
of his mechanical genius. This was the companion of his solitude,
and in after life his solace in many a bitter disappointment.

With this musical friend [says French] he on winter nights

practised the homely tunes of the time by the dim light of his
mother’s kitchen fire or thrifty lamp; and in many a summer
twilight he wandered contemplatively among the green lanes or
by the margin of the pleasant brook that swept round her
romantic old residence.

And so passed the years of his adolescence—a virtuous, reserved,

and industrious youth. The help and stay of a widowed mother—
who, if a strict disciplinarian, yet devoted her best energies to the
well-being of her family—shunning society, having no companions,
and working diligently at his solitary loom, Crompton, if he found
little leisure for amusement had at least abundance of time to think,
and a thinker he became to his country’s advantage.
While young Crompton was assiduously assisting his widowed
mother, labouring at his loom by day and amusing himself with his
fiddle by night, some of the artisans of his own county were
exercising their inventive faculties on the rude appliances of their
handicraft, for up to that time there had been little or no
improvement on the art of Penelope in spinning and weaving—the
distaff was still in common use, every thread being spun singly by
the fingers of the spinner, and the machinery in vogue, if by such a
name it could be called, was as primitive as that used by the Hindoo.
Practical observation enabled them to elaborate their mechanical
contrivances step by step, and so a series of progressive inventions
followed each other. The invention of the fly-shuttle by Kay, of Bury,
and the spinning jenny by Hargreaves, of Blackburn, gave a great
impetus to the cotton manufacture, for by the former the productive
power of the loom was greatly increased, whilst by the latter the
supply of weft kept pace with the requirements of the weaver, but
the mule was the real pivot on which its subsequent prosperity
turned.
The spinning jenny of Hargreaves is believed to have been invented
in the year 1764. It was kept a secret for some time, but before the
close of the decade it had got into pretty general use in Lancashire,
and was at that time so far perfected that a child could work with it
eight spindles at one time. In 1769, Crompton, who was then a lad
of sixteen years, spun on one of Hargreaves’s machines the yarn
which he afterwards wove into quilting, but the machine had many
palpable imperfections; the yarn which it turned off had less tenacity
than that produced by the old-fashioned single-thread wheel, and
much time was lost in piecing the ever-breaking thread; but in
Crompton’s case the appointed task had to be got through, whatever
difficulties might arise, for Mrs. Crompton was inexorable, and to
avoid the maternal reproaches much time had to be given to the
loom that might otherwise have been spent in pleasant
companionship with the fiddle. For five long years the poor weaver
lad led this lonesome, uneventful, all work and no play sort of life;
no wonder, then, that he became reserved, shy and
uncompanionable. For five long years he struggled on, following the
dull, unremitting round of labour on his wearisome treadmill, without
one single ray of cheering hope to brighten the gloom of his
monotonous existence, when his ingenuity was driven to make such
improvements in the spinning machine as would ultimately relieve
him of the annoyances he was subjected to.
The time was not propitious for inventors. Hargreaves had been
persecuted and ruined by the populace, and Arkwright had to
remove to Nottingham to escape the popular animosity.
Manufacturers were jealous lest their craft should be endangered,
and workmen, in their ignorant prejudice against the introduction of
new machines, resolved upon their destruction, while, by the
common people, those who effected improvements were accounted
“conjurors,” a name of reproach given to those who were supposed
to possess unnatural skill, and to hold commerce with the powers of
darkness.
It was in 1774, when he was in his twenty-first year, that the first
faint conception of the mule floated through Crompton’s brain. The
yarn spun by Hargreaves’s jenny could only be used for “weft,” by
reason of its lacking the firmness and tenacity required in the long
threads or “warp,” while that produced from Arkwright’s water frame
was too coarse for the manufacture of muslins and other delicate
fabrics in imitation of those imported from India. Crompton
proceeded silently with the task he had set himself, even the
members of the household having little idea of the way in which he
occupied his time in the hours stolen from sleep when his day’s work
was done. Indeed, it was the system of night work that first drew
the attention of his family and neighbours to his proceedings.
“Strange and unaccountable sounds,” says the authority we have
previously quoted, “were heard in the Old Hall at most untimely
hours, lights were seen in unusual places, and a rumour became
current that the place was haunted.” On investigation the young
mechanical genius was found to be the ghost that had caused so
much trouble and alarm to the good people of the locality.
Crompton’s difficulty was increased by the fewness of his tools—
those he possessed being such as his father had used in his rude
attempts at organ building, supplemented by a clasp knife, which is
said to have done excellent service; some others he purchased with
such cash as he could spare from his slender earnings, and the
money he received for his services at the Bolton Theatre, where,
during the season, he was content to fiddle for the scanty pittance of
eighteenpence a night. Five years of silent, secret, unremitting
labour were spent in the realisation of his idea. Wanting in
mechanical knowledge, destitute of proper tools, and having to learn
the use of the imperfect ones he could procure, it is matter for
surprise that in five years he succeeded in making his machine
practically useful. His experiences at this time he thus relates in a
MS. document he circulated about seventy years ago:
 The next five years had this addition added to my labour as a
weaver, occasioned by the imperfect state of cotton spinning,
viz., a continual endeavour to realise a more perfect principle of
spinning; and though often baffled, I as often renewed the
attempt, and at length succeeded to my utmost desire at the
expense of every shilling I had in the world.

Neither poverty nor want of mechanical skill was permitted to hinder

him. After much trembling and fretting from impecuniousness on the
one hand, and the inquisitiveness of interlopers on the other; after
matchless patience and unflinching perseverance; after many
failures and disappointments, success at length crowned his efforts;
his dream had become a reality, the mule[50] was an accomplished
fact. In that same year, 1779, just as he was about to test its merits
by putting it into actual work, an outbreak occurred among the
Lancashire spinners and weavers; the riotous proceedings which had
driven Hargreaves from his home were renewed, and while the
storm was raging Crompton, fearing the mob might wreak their
vengeance upon his wheel, prudently took it to pieces and hid the
parts away in the cocklofts of the old hall. The incident is thus
described by a recent writer:—

Crompton was well aware that his infant invention would be still
more obnoxious to the rioters than Hargreaves’s jenny, and
appears to have taken careful measures for its protection or
concealment should they have paid a domiciliary visit to the
Hall-in-the-Wood. The ceiling of the room in which he worked is
cut through, as well as a corresponding part of the clay floor of
the room above, the aperture being covered by replacing the
part cut away. This opening was recently detected by two
visitors, who were investigating the mysteries of the old
mansion; but they could not imagine any use for a secret trap-
door until, on pointing it out to Mr. Bromiley, the present tenant,
he recalled to his memory a conversation he had had with
Samuel Crompton during one of his latest visits to the Hall many
years ago. Mr. Crompton informed Mr. Bromiley that once, when
 he was at work on the mule, he heard the rioters shouting at
the destruction of a building at “Folds” (an adjoining hamlet),
where there was a carding engine. Fearing that they would
come to the Hall-in-the-Wood and destroy his mule, he took it
to pieces and put it into a skip which he hoisted through the
ceiling into the attic by the trap-door, which had, doubtless,
been prepared in anticipation of such a visit, and which now
offers a curious evidence of the insecurity of manufacturing
inventions in their early infancy. The various parts were
concealed in a loft or garret near the clock, and there they
remained hid for many weeks ere he dared to put them
together again. But in the course of the same year the Hall-in-
the-Wood wheel was completed and the yarn spun upon it used
for the manufacture of muslins of an extremely fine and delicate
texture.

Having succeeded to his utmost desire in solving the problem on

which during five eventful years of his life his mind had been
absorbed, Crompton had leisure to turn his thoughts in another
direction, and the first thing he did was to take to himself a wife. He
had made the acquaintance of an amiable and excellent woman,
Mary Pimlott, the daughter of a quondam West India merchant, who
had come down in the world and, as was said, had died of a broken
heart; and on the 16th of February, 1780, the young couple were
married in the old church at Bolton. Mary Pimlott is described as
being a handsome dark-haired woman of middle age and erect
carriage, and possessed of remarkable power in the perception of
individual character. She was, moreover, a “spinster” in the true
sense of the word. On her father’s death she had gone to reside with
friends at Turton, near Bolton, where ample and profitable
employment could be obtained in spinning, and it is said that her
expertness in the art first attracted young Crompton’s attention.
The newly-married pair began housekeeping in a small cottage
attached to the old hall, Crompton at the same time retaining one or
more workrooms in the mansion where he and his young wife
pursued their humble occupation, producing from the new wheel a
yarn which both for fineness and firmness astonished the
manufacturing community. It does not seem ever to have entered
the mind of the young inventor to patent his machine. Accustomed
to a quiet, secluded life, without any expensive habits or
enjoyments, his highest ambition appears to have been to keep his
invention to himself and to work on in his own simple way in his own
home after the fashion of the time, for it was then the idyllic period
of cotton manufacturing, organised labour in huge factories being
virtually unknown. But the fame of Crompton’s yarn spread; the new
wheel was an unmistakable success, and gave promise of realising
for its inventor an ample fortune. It was at once seen that the much-
admired muslins that had been imported from India, and for which
extravagant prices were paid, could now be produced by the English
manufacturer, and at a greatly diminished cost. Crompton had his
own price, and orders for the wonderful yarn poured in upon him;
the demand was urgent and pressing, and his house was literally
besieged with manufacturers anxious to obtain supplies of the much-
coveted material, and still more anxious to penetrate the secret of its
production, for it soon became noised abroad that he had discovered
some novel mode of spinning. People from miles round gathered
about his house, anxious to solve the mystery; all kinds of
stratagems were practised to obtain admission to his workroom; and
when denied, some actually obtained ladders, clambered up to the
window of his chamber, and peeped in to satisfy their curiosity. To
protect himself from this kind of observation Crompton set up a
screen, and then an inquisitive individual, more adventurous than
the rest, secreted himself in one of the cocklofts of the hall, and
remained there for days watching the operations going on through a
gimlet hole he had bored in the ceiling.
There is a well-authenticated tradition that at this time Arkwright,
who a few years before had erected a cotton mill at Cromford, in
Derbyshire, the nursing place, as it has been called, of the factory
opulence and power of Great Britain, made his way to the Hall-in-
the-Wood, and contrived to gain access to the house with the object
of inspecting the machine of which such wonderful tales were told
while the inventor was away collecting rates for his mother, who, as
we have said, filled the office of overseer for the township. Arkwright
was then in the full tide of his success, and it was an unfortunate
circumstance for Crompton that they did not meet. If they had it
would probably have led to an arrangement whereby the simple,
guileless inventor might have reaped the reward of many years of
patient toil and personal sacrifice.
Had Crompton possessed a tithe of the energy and resources of the
average Lancashire man he would have triumphed, but, unhappily
for himself, these were just the qualities he lacked, and his
diffidence and childlike simplicity made him an easy victim in the
hands of unscrupulous and crafty traders. Had he bestirred himself
there is no reason to doubt but that some capitalist would have been
ready to advance the means to patent his invention, but his shyness
and morbid sense of independence forbade him to ask for help or
co-operation. What Arkwright and Peel did he might have
accomplished; but, instead of his succeeding to opulence, he allowed
others to reap where he had sown. His very success was the cause
of his misfortunes. He was unable to carry on his work in
undisturbed privacy, and his moody and sensitive nature could not
bear the annoyance to which he was perpetually subjected by prying
intruders. It was the crisis in his life. Tormented, worried, driven
almost to distraction, he, in a weak moment, yielded to the advice of
a well-intentioned but unwise counsellor, and surrendered his
invention to an ungrateful community. When relating the story to Mr.
G. A. Lee, and Mr. John Kennedy, of Manchester, some years
afterwards, Mr. Lee having remarked that “it was a pity he had not
kept the secret to himself,” he replied “that a man had a very
insecure tenure of property which another could carry away with his
eyes.” He says in the MS. before referred to:—

During this time I married, and commenced spinning altogether.

But a few months reduced me to the cruel necessity either of
destroying my machine altogether or giving it up to the public.
 To destroy it I could not think of; to give up that for which I had
laboured so long was cruel. I had no patent nor the means of
purchasing one. In preference to destroying it I gave it to the
public.

He says he “gave it to the public,” and virtually he did; for, though it

was professedly for a consideration, he derived little or no benefit,
and only found that he had been made the victim of the greed, and
meanness, and sordid treachery of those whom, in his simplicity, he
had trusted. Yielding to the deceitful promises of his townsmen and
others, he was induced to surrender his much coveted secret on the
faith of an agreement that, as it turned out, had no validity in law,
and which some of the signatories were base enough to repudiate.
The following are the terms in which it was drawn up:—

Bolton, November 20th, 1780.

We whose names are hereunto subscribed have agreed to give
and do hereby promise to pay unto Samuel Crompton, at the
Hall-in-the-Wood, near Bolton, the several sums opposite to our
names as a reward for his improvement in Spinning. Several of
the principal Tradesmen in Manchester, Bolton, &c., having seen
his Machine approve of it, and are of opinion that it would be of
the greatest utility to make it generally known, to which end a
contribution is desired from every wellwisher of trade.

The total sum subscribed was £67 6s. 6d., but even of this miserable
amount only about £50 was actually paid, “as much by subscription,”
says Crompton, “as built me a new machine with only four spindles
more than the one I had given up [for he had not only surrendered
his secret but the original machine with it]—the old one having forty-
eight, the new one fifty-two spindles.” Never, certainly, was so much
got for so little, and a touch of infamy was added to the merciless
transaction by a fact which Crompton thus records:—

Many subscribers would not pay the sums they had set opposite
their names. When I applied for them I got nothing but abusive
 language to drive me from them, which was easily done; for I
never till then could think it possible that any man could pretend
one thing and act the direct opposite. I then found it was
possible, having had proof positive.

These men, as has been truly said, saved their miserable guineas at
the expense of their honesty and honour. The treatment to which he
was subjected made a lasting impression on his mind. His very
integrity increased his mortification at the dishonesty of those he
had so generously trusted; his disposition—never a buoyant or
cheerful one—was soured, and during the remainder of his life he
was moody and mistrustful. While hundreds of manufacturers were
accumulating colossal fortunes out of the results of Crompton’s skill
and ingenuity, the man himself, while so abundantly enriching them,
was not able to gather even the smallest grains of the golden
harvest, and, but for his energy and frugality, might have lapsed into
absolute poverty, a martyr of mechanical invention and another
illustration of the scriptural paradox, “Poor, yet making many rich.”
 OLDHAMS.

It was a bitter disappointment to Crompton to find that the promises

so pleasant to the ear were broken to the hope, that he had, in fact,
been tricked into giving up the invention that had cost him so many
years of anxious thought and toil to a host of selfish manufacturers
who were making fortunes out of his simple trust. He became
moody, suspicious, and distrustful of everything and everybody; but
if he doubted the world he never lost heart in himself. Deprived of
his just reward, he removed from the Hall-in-the-Wood to Oldhams,
a small cottage across the valley near Astley Bridge, in Sharples, and
distant about a mile and a half from Bolton. Here he farmed a few
acres, kept three or four cows, and, still adhering to the common
Lancashire custom, combined the business of a farmer with that of a
manufacturer, and in one of the upper chambers of his house
erected his newly-constructed machine. Familiar with the principles
of his mule, he was naturally more skilful in the working of it than
others; his wife, too, was an expert in spinning, and the yarn they
spun was the best and finest in the market, and brought the highest
prices; it was supposed, therefore, that he must have made some
improvements in his machine, and, as a consequence, he was again
pestered with inquisitive visitors anxious to discover the secret of his
success, when, to protect himself from the unwelcome intrusion, he
is said to have contrived a secret fastening to the door in the upper
storey where he worked at the mule.
About this time Crompton invented a new carding-engine, and,
anxious to extend his operations, he set up as an employer of labour,
but the result was not satisfactory, for the people he engaged to spin
under him were continually being bribed to enter the service of other
masters, who hoped in this way to gain a knowledge of his secrets,
so that eventually he was obliged to fall back upon the labours of his
own household, and broke up the carding-engine, remarking that
“the devils should not have that.” He says:—

I pushed on, intending to have a good share in the spinning

line, yet I found there was an evil which I had not foreseen and
of much greater magnitude than giving up the machine, viz.,
that I must be always teaching green hands, employ none, or
quit the country; it being believed that if I taught them they
knew the business well, so that for years I had no choice but to
give up spinning or quit my native land. I cut up my spinning
machines for other purposes.

Whilst residing at Oldhams, Crompton received a visit from Sir (then

Mr.) Robert Peel, the first baronet, his object being to offer the
inventor a lucrative appointment in his own manufactory, with the
prospect of a future partnership, but Crompton’s natural infirmity of
temper and his quickness to take offence opposed a barrier to his
own advancement. He had a prejudice against Peel on account of
some imaginary affront,[51] and so the offer that might have led to
his lasting comfort and prosperity was declined.
By this time the mule had become the machine chiefly employed for
fine spinning, not only round Bolton but in the manufacturing
districts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and its general
appropriation soon changed the neighbourhood of which Manchester
was the centre from a country of small farmers to one of small
manufacturers. Houses on the banks of streams whose currents
would drive a wheel and shaft were eagerly seized upon; sheds were
run up in similar situations; the clank of wheels and the buzz of
spindles were heard in once solitary places in the valleys running off
from the Irwell and upon the small streams that flowed down from
the barren hills. Crompton’s mules, worked by hand, “were erected
in garrets or lofts, and many a dilapidated barn or cowshed was
patched up in the walls, repaired in the roof, and provided with
windows to serve as lodging room for the new muslin wheels,” as
they were called.
So great was the impetus given to manufacture by the invention of
the mule that, within less than six years of its introduction, the
number of inhabitants in Bolton had doubled; whilst in the
neighbouring town of Bury, which had “its cotton manufacture
originally brought from Bolton,” the increase was even more rapid.
In order to provide for his increasing family, and, as is said, to
escape the annoyance of his being re-elected overseer, Crompton, in
1791, removed from his pleasant little farm at Oldhams to a house in
King Street, Bolton, where he enlarged his spinning operations,
filling the attics over his own dwelling and those of the two adjoining
houses with additional mules and machinery for manufacturing
purposes—his elder boys being now able to assist him in his
handicraft.
Five years later he had the misfortune to lose the loving and faithful
partner of his joys and sorrows. She had been long ailing, and on
the 29th of May, 1796, he followed her remains to their last resting
place in the old churchyard at Bolton. It is stated that when he
returned from the funeral he sat down broken-hearted and in utter
despair; it must have been a sorrowful day for him, for she left him
with a family of eight young children. Two of them were lying sick at
the time in their cradles, and one died a short time after. The death
of his wife made a deep impression on his mind and character. From
his childhood he had been imbued with strong religious sentiments,
and being of a naturally thoughtful and dreamy disposition, his
religion was of a somewhat mystical kind; hence it is not surprising
that he should have been led to withdraw from the communion of
the Church of England and embrace the tenets of that amiable and
philosophic teacher, Emanuel Swedenborg, who at that time had
many followers in the town of Bolton. Crompton became a zealous
member of the New Jerusalem Church, “taking entire charge of the
psalmody,” and occupying his leisure hours in composing hymn-
tunes for the choir, which was wont to assemble on Sunday evenings
at his house to practise.
He struggled manfully to maintain his young family in comfort and
respectability, but he was comparatively helpless in the conduct of
business, and altogether unfitted to deal with the practical affairs of
life. He wrote on one occasion:—

“I found to my sorrow I was not calculated to contend with men

of the world; neither did I know there was such a thing as
protection for me on earth! I found I was as unfit for the task
that was before me as a child of two years old to contend with a
disciplined army.”

When he did attempt to transact business, to such an extent was

this weakness of character manifested that, as is said by his
biographer—

“When he attended the Manchester Exchange to sell his yarns

and muslins, and any rough-and-ready manufacturer ventured
to offer him a less price than he had asked, he would invariably
wrap up his samples, put them into his pocket, and quietly walk
away.”

His countenance was not sufficiently bronzed to enable him to

contend successfully with the chafferers on ’Change. Like Watt, who
declared he would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an
account or make a bargain, he hated that jostling with the world
inseparable from the conduct of extensive industrial or commercial
operations; but, unlike Watt, he was not fortunate enough in the
great crisis of his life to have met with a Boulton who had the
quickness of perception to determine when to act and the energy of
purpose to carry out the measures which his judgment approved.
It was not until 1800, twenty years after the invention of the mule,
that any real attempt was made to recompense him for the sacrifices
he had made, and for the inestimable benefits he had conferred
upon the community in general and the district in which he laboured
in particular. To Manchester belongs the credit of originating the
movement. Two manufacturers there, Mr. John Kennedy, one of the
founders of the great cotton-spinning firm of M’Connel and Kennedy,
and Mr. George Lee, of the firm of Philips and Lee, appreciating the
talents of the struggling inventor, started a subscription for the
purpose of providing a comfortable competence for him in his
declining years. The time was not opportune, and their efforts were
in consequence only partially successful. It was the year in which
Napoleon’s overtures for peace were haughtily and offensively
rejected by Lord Grenville; the war with France had imposed
additional burdens upon the people, who were already suffering
from a prolonged depression of trade; the scarcity caused by a
deficiency in the harvest was commonly regarded as a consequence
of the war; the country was on the brink of famine; mobs paraded
the streets, and the Habeas Corpus Act had to be suspended to
avoid the social danger to which a continuance of the rioting must of
necessity lead. Comparatively few subscriptions were received; the
kindly effort stuck fast, and eventually it had to be abandoned.[52]
Between four and five hundred pounds was all that could be
realised, and that was handed to Crompton, who sunk it in his little
manufacturing establishment for spinning and weaving. His
biographer says—
 As a consequence of this additional capital, he soon after rented
the top storey of a neighbouring factory, one of the oldest in
Bolton, in which he had two mules—one of 360 spindles, the
other of 220—with the necessary preparatory machinery. The
power to turn the machinery was rented with the premises.
Here also he was assisted by the elder branches of his family,
and it is our duty, though a melancholy one, to record that the
system of seducing his servants from his employment was still
persisted in, and that one at least of his own sons was not able
to withstand the specious and flattering inducements held out
by wealthy opponents to leave his father’s service and accept
extravagant payment for a few weeks, during which he was
expected to divulge his father’s supposed secrets and his system
of manipulating upon the machine.

Aided by the mule the cotton manufacture prodigiously developed

itself. The tiny rill which issued from the Hall-i’-th’-Wood had become
swollen into a mighty river, carrying wealth and prosperity along its
course; and he who had started the stream looked not unreasonably
to obtain some small share of the riches that were borne upon its
bosom. With this hope, he was induced in 1807 to address a letter
to Sir Joseph Banks, the then president of the Royal Society, in
which he modestly set forth his grievances, and, describing himself
as “a retired man in the country, and unacquainted with public
matters,” requested the society’s advice “to enable him to procure
from Government or elsewhere a proper recompense for his
invention.” There had been some mistake in the address of the letter.
It, however, eventually found its way to the Society of Arts, where
the application was discussed; but, to Crompton’s great
disappointment, nothing more came of it.
Four years later he made a survey of all the cotton districts in
England, Scotland, and Ireland, and obtained an estimate of the
number of spindles then at work on his principle. On his return he
laid the results of his inquiries before his friends, Mr. Kennedy and
Mr. Lee, with the suggestion that Parliament might “grant him
something.” It was proved that 4,600,000 spindles were at work
upon his mules, using upwards of 40,000,000 pounds of cotton
annually; that 70,000 persons were engaged in the spinning, and
150,000 more in weaving the yarn so spun, and that a population of
full half a million derived their daily bread from the machinery his
skill had devised. This statement, as was afterwards found, fell far
short of the actual facts, for it did not include any of the numerous
mules used in the manufacture of woollen yarn. The claim was
indisputable. With the data before him Mr. Lee entered fully into the
case. A Manchester solicitor, Mr. George Duckworth, of Duckworth
and Chippindall, Princess Street, offered his gratuitous help, and
drew up a memorial to Parliament on his behalf which was signed by
most of the principal manufacturers in the kingdom who were
acquainted with his merits. In February, 1812, Crompton proceeded
to London with this memorial, and obtained an interview with one of
the Lancashire members; and, through the influence of powerful
friends who appreciated his merits and sympathised with his
misfortunes, he was enabled to place his memorial before Mr.
Spencer Perceval, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who appears to
have taken a favourable view of his claim. The matter was referred
to a select committee, of which Lord Stanley, the great-grandfather
of the present Earl of Derby, was chairman. Evidence was given in
favour of the inventor, and, among other information given, it was
stated by Mr. Lee that at that time the duty paid upon cotton
imported to be spun by the mule amounted to not less than
£350,000 a year. The committee reported favourably, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer was ready to propose a vote of
£20,000, when Crompton’s usual ill-luck intervened in a very
shocking manner. It was the afternoon of the 11th May, 1812, and
Crompton was standing in the lobby of the House of Commons,
conversing with Sir Robert Peel and Mr. John Blackburne, one of the
members for Lancashire, when one of them observed, “Here comes
Mr. Perceval.” The group was instantly joined by the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, who addressed them with the remark, “You will be
glad to know I mean to propose £20,000 for Crompton. Do you think
it will be satisfactory?” Hearing this, Crompton moved off from
motives of delicacy, and did not hear the reply. He was scarcely out
of sight when there was a great rush of people—Perceval had been
shot dead by the madman Bellingham. The frightful catastrophe had
in an instant deprived the country of a valuable minister, and lost to
Crompton a patron and £15,000. When the new Government had
been formed the matter was again brought before the House, and
on the 26th of June, on the motion of Lord Stanley, it awarded him
£5,000, a sum altogether inadequate for the services he had
rendered, as well as out of all proportion to the rewards which
Parliament had previously given to other inventors. In an article
which appeared some years afterwards in the Edinburgh Review[53],
the paltriness of the award was severely commented upon. The
reviewer said:—

To make a lengthened commentary on such a proceeding would

be superfluous. Had the House of Commons refused to
recognise Mr. Crompton’s claim for remuneration they would,
whatever might have been thought of their proceedings, have at
least acted consistently. But to admit the principle of the claim,
to enter into an elaborate investigation with respect to the merit
and extensive application of the invention, and then to vote so
contemptible a pittance to the inventor, are proceedings which
evince the most extraordinary niggardliness on the part of those
who have never been particularly celebrated for their
parsimonious disposition towards individuals whose genius and
inventions have alone enabled Parliament to meet the immense
expenses the country has had to sustain.

With the £5,000, or rather with such portion of it as he received—for

there were considerable deductions for fees and other charges—
Crompton entered into various commercial speculations; but the
fickle goddess did not smile on any of them. Anxious to place his
sons in some business, he fixed on that of bleaching, and rented a
works at Over Darwen; his eldest and youngest sons, George and
James, being admitted as partners. But the unfavourable state of the
times, the inexperience and mismanagement of his eldest son, a bad
situation, and a tedious and expensive lawsuit with the landlord
conspired in a very short time to put an end to this establishment.
He was also engaged in cotton spinning and manufacturing, in
connection with his sons Samuel and John; but they disagreed,
Samuel withdrawing from the concern and going to Ireland, leaving
his father to carry it on with such help as John could give him. The
only business in which he may be said to have been at all successful
was that of a cotton merchant, which he carried on in conjunction
with his favourite son, William, and a Mr. Wylde. The firm eventually
extended its operations to cotton spinning; but young Crompton
disliking this branch of the business, the partnership was dissolved,
the father and son retiring. The latter afterwards began business on
his own account in Oldham, but the fate of the family followed him.
He was unsuccessful; a fire consumed his stock, a lawsuit grew out
of the fire; and finally, in 1832, he was carried off by an attack of
cholera.
Left almost alone in the world, with old age creeping upon him, his
sons dead or dispersed, and his only daughter—then a widow—for
his housekeeper, Crompton carried on his small original business
without assistance, “spending much of his time in devising the
mechanism proper for weaving new patterns in fancy muslins.” But
his lack of business capacity and inability to cope with the common-
place incidents of ordinary life destroyed his chances of success, and
that unhappy fatality which had accompanied him through life still
dogged his steps. To use his own words, he was “hunted and
watched with as much never-ceasing care as if he was the most
notorious villain that ever disgraced the human form; and if he were
to go to a smithy to get a common nail made, if opportunity offered
to the bystanders, they would examine it most minutely to see if it
was anything but a nail.” His patterns were pirated by his
neighbours, who reproduced them in fabrics of inferior quality, and
thus they were enabled to undersell and beat him out of the market.
As he advanced in years his means became more and more
straitened, and he was beginning gradually to drift into a state of
poverty when, in 1824, Messrs. Hicks & Rothwell, of Bolton, his old
friend, Mr. Kennedy, of Manchester, and some other sympathisers,
unasked and unknown to Crompton, who had then reached his 72nd
year, made a second subscription to purchase a life annuity, and the
sum raised yielded a payment of £63 a year. He did not, however,
live long to enjoy it. Wearied and worn out with cares and
disappointments, but to the last retaining the esteem of his friends
and the respect of all who knew him, he died by the gradual decay
of nature at his house in King-street, Great Bolton, on the 26th June,
1827, at the age of seventy-three, and a few days later his body,
followed by many voluntary mourners, was committed to the dust in
the churchyard of Bolton, where a modest flagstone thus
perpetuates his name:—

Beneath this stone are interred the mortal remains of Samuel

Crompton, of Bolton, late of Hall-i’-th’-Wood, in the township of
Tonge, inventor of the spinning machine called the Mule; who
departed this life the 26th day of June, 1827, aged 72 years.[54]

Such is the sad and simple story of the inventor of the spinning
mule. Though his life was passed in comparative obscurity and
neglect, and he was allowed to end his days in poverty, the name of
Samuel Crompton will be held in honoured remembrance so long as
the cotton trade endures, for it is to Crompton’s mule more than to
any other invention we owe that vast Lancashire industrialism which
has been the source of untold benefits to his native shire, and has so
greatly increased the power and wealth of the nation at large.
Looking at the splendid results which his genius accomplished, it
must ever be a cause of regret that Lancashire men did so little for
him who did so much for them. In the various relations of life
Crompton was in all things upright and honourable; he had his
failings like other men, but they were those which arose from his
simple and unsuspecting nature, and such as should excite
commiseration rather than condemnation. The weak point in his
character, and that from which nearly all his troubles and
misfortunes arose, was the absence of those faculties which enable
a man to hold equal intercourse with his fellows. His morbid sense of
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