The textile industry in Yorkshire didn’t only produce wool and worsted, although that’s what the region is best known for. Flax was also spun and woven in Leeds, but Barnsley became a centre for weaving flax into linen, and became renowned for the high quality of its cloth. In the early to mid 19th century most of the linen weavers were hand loom weavers, working from damp cellars in overcrowded workshops and cottages. In 1851 there were 4,000 handlooms in 800 loomshops and 3,729 people were working in the linen industry.
Jane Fearn (or Fearns), born around 1828, had a father who was a linen weaver. Jane was the first child of Robert and Eliza, who went on to have at least 11 children. They discovered that Jane was deaf when she was very young, and she was sent off to the Yorkshire Institution for the Deaf and Dumb (YIDD) in Doncaster at the age of six, and stayed there five years, till 1841.
Ten years later Jane was 23 and living at home with her parents and ten siblings, the youngest still a baby. Six of these children, some teenagers or young adults, worked as linen weavers, along with their father. The other three were at school. There was also a lodger living with them, another linen weaver. While Jane didn’t have an occupation listed in the census of 1851, she was a linen winder for journeymen weavers, “a business easily acquired”, or a weaver herself according to YIDD’s surveys. In that family, it would be unusual not to be!
In 1861 the census again doesn’t give an occupation for Jane, but this might have been due to misunderstanding or lack of communication. She was now 33, living with her parents and a mere seven siblings. One of these was young Eliza, nine years old, appearing in the census for the first time. Like Jane, Eliza was deaf. The rest of the family were hearing.
Jane was finally recorded as a linen weaver in 1871, many years after the YIDD survey. She was still unmarried and living with her family. Robert was now a widower and there were just four children at home, including Jane’s sister Eliza.
Throughout this time, the Fearns lived in Union Row or Union Street, in an area south of Barnsley town centre that was full of weavers’ cottages, and one of the poorest areas of the town. Clearly the Fearns’ household would have been overcrowded and the family must have struggled. Presumably they had support from their local parish to cover Jane’s school fees.
In 1881 Jane was 53 and no longer with her family – probably her father had died by this time. Jane was now an inmate in Barnsley Union Workhouse, recorded as a linen winder. There were two other deaf people in Barnsley workhouse at the same time as Jane and one of them, Samuel Parkin, 47, was a hand loom weaver (linen). He remained in the workhouse for at least the next ten years.
There were other disabled people in Barnsley workhouse who had been in the linen industry. Benjamin Ashton, 74, James Ashton, 56, and George Ogley, 63, were listed as a linen handloom weavers. Eliza Hopton, 50, Mary Myers, 36, and Sarah White, 63, were linen winders, like Jane. In the outdated language of the late 19th century, now considered offensive, these people were categorised as “imbeciles”, which often referred to people who had become ill. So this group might have become unable to work due to illness.
Jane remained in the workhouse for at least the next 20 years, and probably until she died, aged 79, on 7 Jan 1906. She was buried in Barnsley Cemetery, but there’s no headstone to mark her grave.
Meanwhile, what happened to Eliza, Jane’s deaf younger sister? In 1881 she was 29, an unmarried linen weaver lodging with another female weaver and her family. And Eliza had a family of her own: even though she was not married, she had a nine year old daughter, Harriet Fearn, which might have been shocking at that time, but not uncommon. A few years later, on 3 Oct 1886, Eliza married Charles Heston. Her father Robert was one of the witnesses.
Incidentally, Eliza’s daughter Harriet kept the surname Fearn and moved to Morley as a young woman. Morley was crowded with mills, and Harriet found work as a weaver.
The Fearn sisters were not the only deaf linen weavers in Barnsley. Another pupil of the Yorkshire Institution, Francis Whittaker, left the school in 1855 after 5 years, and became a linen weaver. According to the censuses from 1861 – 1881 he operated a power loom or a steam loom.
He worked for John Piggot at Shaw Mill for at least part of his life. His employers thought well of him, according to foreman John Hanson in the 1859 YIDD report:
Yes, he learned easily, and can do his work very well without assistance.
Yes, his conduct is very good, we seldom have to find fault with him.
He seems to understand what we say to him, and is always willing to do what we tell him.
Shaw Mill stood on the corner of Shaw Lane and Race Common Road, where Francis lived with his mother Sarah for many years. Incidentally, George Ogley, one of the workhouse inmates, also lived on Race Common Road. Perhaps both Francis and George worked at the same nearby mill.
Linen weaving was such a common business in Barnsley in the 19th century that there would doubtless have been other disabled people working in the trade, either weaving or carrying out tasks to support the people operating looms. And as the industry was largely carried out in the same premises as people’s living quarters, or nearby, this would have suited many disabled people.
For an overview of the linen industry in Barnsley see the Stairfoot Station history website.
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