ABSTRACT
The early experience of organisation among cotton weavers in the eighteenth century seems to have been associated with the production of mixed fabrics in which cotton warps were introduced into the manufacture of fustians and smallware principally made of linen or worsted. A Manchester Worsted Small Ware Weavers Society drew up its first article in 1747 which speaks of sporadic organisation over half a century; a Linen and Cotton Broad-Ware Weavers Association can be dated from 1758. Details of their operation can be obtained from 'Apologies' presently lodged in the Manchester, Bolton and Wigan Public Libraries. The point at which fabrics were produced wholly of cotton as a textile fabric is difficult to determine, in part because of the practice of using the word 'cotton' to describe, for example, wool products which had been 'cottoned' or 'frized', i.e. given a cotton wool finish by raising the nap for that purpose. All-cotton material seems progressively have been introduced from the 1740s, but societies of cotton weavers seem to have maintained the tradition of not restricting their activities to their own trade alone. As with cotton spinners, a network of local sick clubs and friendly societies can be identified from documents still in existence relating both to England and Scotland from the early 1790s. These numbered upwards of two dozen. Few seem to have been confined to their own trade and, as one magistrate noted in 1808,' commonly included a wider group usually identified as 'Weavers, Artificers and others'.
