ABSTRACT
Beamers, twisters and drawers were involved in the process of fixing and arranging warps for use in the weaver's loom. There appears to be no general history of the predominant federal for this trade, the Twisters Amalgamation (or to give the organisation its full title after 1916, the Amalgamated Association of Beamers, Twisters and Drawers (Hand and Machine)); nor have we found histories of its constituent associations, though the earliest seems to have been in Blackburn in 1866, the year from which the Amalgamation dates itself. Its success in representing all the local societies in Lancashire, then numbering 15, seems to have been complete when it was formed, or reconstituted, at the end of 1889. From that date, and especially during the 1890s, the societies themselves, as H. A. Turner has observed, multiplied by fission, particular towns hiving off to form their own organisations. Using this procedure, 22 new societies had appeared by 1900 under the Amalgamation's umbrella, societies with a total membership of 1,797,46 per cent of its total membership of 3,863. At its peak the Amalgamation claimed 39 branches.
