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TEXTILE TRADITIONS

– Between the North Sea and North York Moors

By The IK Foundation

October 21^st, 2022

Until the coming of the railway, Whitby was relatively isolated by land though accessible both locally and internationally by sea, and its geographical situation had substantial implications for transport both at home and abroad. Its population were much involved with fishing, alum and sea-going, and later with the manufacture of jet and tourism. All this ensured a constant local need for textiles, in earlier years with the manufacture of sailcloth and sails as well as trade in expensive fabrics with other British ports and overseas destinations both far and near. Dressmakers, seamstresses, washerwomen, tailors, drapers, clothiers, outfitters and a substantial group of their apprentices and assistants formed the main group of textile occupations in this coastal town during the period. This richly illustrated visual story will focus on local everyday lives, tourism, trade, shops, manufacture and transport in the period 1780s to 1914.

TOWN AND COUNTRYSIDE

Opportunities to travel to and from Whitby increased considerably in the late 18th century. A stage-coach service had begun in 1788 with a diligence which left for York twice a week. This was increased to a mail-coach three times a week in 1795, and a daily service in 1823. Other places that also came to benefit from regular connections with Whitby were Scarborough, Sunderland, Guisborough, Stockton and Hull and it became possible to travel at least once a week to the smaller towns and major villages in the vicinity as well. One could also travel in trading ships once a week to Newcastle, Shields and Sunderland, and to London and Hull once a fortnight.

In addition to the fact that the inhabitants of Whitby benefited from these considerably increased travel opportunities during 1780-1840 there were also new prospects for living a more varied life in Whitby itself than earlier, since the town now contained an uncommonly large number of charitable institutions and churches, a religious and literary institute and other amusements and recreations. In addition, horse-drawn trains ran between Pickering and Whitby from 1836, anticipating the town’s next new period as a tourist and holiday centre.

The period 1840 to 1900 was to be pervaded by comprehensive changes to many aspects of society, with innovations that either worked for or against local industry and craftwork and its manufacture. At the same time as new methods of transport developed with trains and later also cycles and cars together with universal schooling and an increase in tourist travel transformed daily life at a faster pace than previously. Shipping was one area of activity that now underwent great change in Whitby. In particular, the once prosperous sail-making business was greatly reduced during the 1840s and came to a virtual halt during the next decade. Whilst the hand-sewing of sails continued for several more decades if with a reduced number of practitioners, to cease almost entirely by about 1900. Faster and more reliable steamships that depended on neither wind nor current drove out the sailing ships in an age when timetables became ever more important.

As a shipbuilding town Whitby continued much the same as in the 1830s, even if its palmiest days were clearly past. The eight yards that existed before 1830 were now reduced to four and the principal shipbuilder came to be Thomas Turnbull, who was active from 1840 to 1901. In addition he was alone in the town from 1871 as a builder of steamers made of iron, at a time when the building of large wooden ships ceased in the other yards.

DRAPERY, SHOPPING & TOURISM

In the 19th century, many hundreds of textile workers were needed for tailoring, dressmaking, drapery and other closely related activities, including laundry. These developments reflected the increasing need nationwide of the growing middle classes to own more clothes, while Whitby’s steadily development as a holiday resort during the Victorian era strongly influenced the local drapery trade. So Whitby came to have special social and historical textile needs of its own as well as obvious similarities to many other towns of similar size. Based on in-depth research of a wide selection of contemporary documents including local photographs, censuses, extant garments, guidebooks and maps – during a time when extensive change took place in society.

Examples of establishments selling clothes and furnishing textiles in Whitby, gives further insight into shopping in a Yorkshire coastal town. In July 1855 the little shop ‘Berlin Room Top of Flowergate’ owned by Miss E. Clark, sold every kind of embroidery material, yarns, baby clothes and accessories that the women of the town could want. That this business had a somewhat hidden nature can be gathered from a sign with a pointing hand reading ‘Entrance up the Passage’.

The two garments above, with a woven silk label showing that they were made in Whitby by Wellburn Brothers during about 1885-1895, a firm which at least had existed since 1857. These clothes are evidence that the firm enjoyed a well-to-do customer circle of men, women and children, who were able to choose silk, velvet, pearls and other accessories typical of the period as part of their orders from tailor or dressmaker. The first garment is a jacket and skirt in ivory silk organdie and black net overlay, marked ‘Wellburn Brothers Costumiers Whitby’. This features many complicated details added in several layers of stitching, and is an exclusive item of clothing in worn and fragile ivory silk that is now to some extent falling apart. The second garment – marked ‘Wellburn Bros. Whitby’ – is a tailor-made half-length velvet jacket in very dark blue with added black pearl embroidery shaped in garlands which also form a decoration along the front. The jacket, which fastens with hooks and eyes, has a coloured linen lining that blends on the sleeves into a material with narrow stripes. An extraordinarily well-made garment that has been preserved in perfect condition without the slightest sign of use.

During the last decades of the 19th century ever more people were able to decorate their homes with new kinds of textiles, since the improved manufacturing machinery now available also ensured lower prices. This 1880 advertisement in the local newspaper Whitby Gazette, is another evidence of Wellburn Brothers long-lasting drapery establishment. It is also a particularly good example of the popularity of various inexpensive varieties of curtain at this time.

Whilst an advertisement for D. Ibeston, Tailor and Woollen Draper shows that this particular person carried on his business ‘... at his residence, Elm House, Elm Yard, Baxtergate’. It was still very common for business to be conducted at the same address as the owner’s home, even if this was not usually stated in these advertisements. Even in this case the shop was not right on the main street. But advertisers in a small town like Whitby usually needed to give no more exact description of position and size, etc., since customers already knew the streets well and it was usually enough to give the address. Thus a tradesman might simply state ‘New Address’ without any more detailed information. In general, shops were small at this time and usually specialised within a relatively narrow field, but a trend began during the last twenty years of the century for larger shops with more than one department.

A shop owner in Whitby, was the Misses Scott’s establishment, which was immortalised in this interestingly detailed photograph by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe at Bridge End circa 1895: ‘Hosiers The Misses Scott & Glovers’ & ‘ The Misses Scott Ladies and Children’s Outfitter’.

The sort of large multi-story department stores that sold everything under one roof from exclusive material, lace, parasols, gloves, hosiery and furs to tapestries, and also provided cleaning and drying services, a furniture store and tearooms, etc., which had begun to develop in larger towns and cities from the middle of the century, were not to be found in a town like Whitby. But this trend did develop on a smaller scale, with advertisements telling eagerly of the many goods to be found in the various departments of the store. In other words, the idea was to give the customer the impression that everything he or she might need was available at that particular shop, and that the firm was eager to satisfy the potential customer’s every possible wish.

Various forms of jet and other stones had its heyday as extreme decorations for women’s clothes during the late Victorian era. This detail picture shows the corner of a very heavy and highly decorated cape from the 1870s-1880s made from a ribbed silk and lined with a thinner dark silk. The Whitby Museum Costume collection contains a rich selection of garments of this kind, but this particular example is not only exceptionally well preserved but has larger jet ornaments than most.

One often repeated example was ‘Middlesbrough’s Great Shopping Centre. Excelsior!’ which during the spring of 1909 took a full-page advertisement in the Whitby Gazette to describe in text and pictures everything that the fashion-conscious lady and her family could need and could buy at the best prices. Yet despite all these tempting department stores within a day’s journey by train, in 1914 there was still a good selection of shops of various sizes in Whitby able to satisfy the needs of local residents as well as the requirements of the many visiting tourists for clothes, hats, material and furnishing textiles. Everything from daily work-clothes to fashionable up-to-date luxury accessories for holiday-making summer visitors.

KNITTING, LAUNDRY & FISHING

In the years after about 1830 many places in North Yorkshire experienced a stagnation or decline in population. In the case of the neighbouring parishes Whitby and Ruswarp a period of stagnation also began about this time, but being so near the coast, the area never suffered such an extensive decline of population as in many other places and even increased for a period during the 1880s and 1890s according to the censuses. However, minor industries like sail-weaving – that had once employed a considerable number of people – suffered. Other opportunities for employment remained in shipping and herring-fishing and increasingly in tourism, and above all in the jet industry, which had a long period of prominence, though never more than in about 1870 when it employed more than 800 people in the town.

“Fish Jane”, a middle-aged woman from the Whitby fishing community. She was one of many fishermen’s wives who probably knitted ganseys for their husbands and sons in free moments, but never themselves wore these knitted garments. Photograph by Sutcliffe’s Whitby contemporary, the portrait-photographer W. Stonehouse.

The railways also had considerable influence in that the conveyance of all kinds of goods, as well as an increase in passenger traffic, were able to function on a more rational basis than before. The horse-drawn wagons of Whitby’s first railway link to Pickering in 1836 were replaced by locomotives in 1847. During the 1860s the line was extended to Middlesbrough and in 1885 a coastal line was opened which made it possible to travel to both Scarborough and Saltburn. These railway lines branched out further into a network which came to link up most parts of the country, which from the point of view of textiles meant that people handling all types of clothes and material in Whitby had good communications with Leeds and its neighbouring towns where the production of textiles had one of its centres during the whole of the Victorian era. Even if the development of the railways was decisive for this rapid development, it was still possible to travel by coach to villages unconnected with the railway network while coastal traffic with steamers was extensively used to transport both passengers and goods.

Frank Meadow Sutcliffe (1853-1941) became the most important photographer in Whitby. He documented in masterly manner daily life in the town and surrounding district during the period 1875-1910, but had begun his career as a studio photographer, and this remained his greatest source of income. Local inhabitants were photographed in his studio and many visitors wanted to have their pictures taken during their holidays by the sea. His most highly praised sections of Sutcliffe’s collection are photographs taken in the open air that show daily life in Whitby and its surrounding villages. Fisherfolk and their families – whereof several pictures illustrate this visual story – whose work he followed for thirty years, lay particularly close to his heart, though buildings, the harbour, the landscape, general working life and high days and holidays also feature. A unique capacity for capturing his subjects had already gained him an international reputation during the late Victorian era through the many exhibitions in which he won awards for his work.

Most of these portraits or group photographs may look like snapshots but this was seldom the case; at a close-up study we can see that a good deal of work has gone into arranging the subjects to ensure each person appears to the greatest advantage. Visible on his photographs are everything from sails, washing hanging up to dry, knitted ganseys, and street scenes with shop-signs on business premises that giving information about textiles for sale, the darning of stockings and other details of clothing.

IDEA & TEXT BY

VIVEKA HANSEN

CONTRIBUTORS

I am grateful to the help given by the following individuals and organisations – in my research and fieldwork. A warm thank you to everybody who generously shared their deep knowledge in wide-ranging fields of subjects.

The patrons to this project:

The IK Foundation Research Fund, London

The Thora Ohlsson Cultural Fund, London

…..

Staff and volunteers – during the years 2007 to 2012 – at the Whitby Museum and the Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society.

Adam Proctor, Scotland.

SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Pictures by The IK Foundation, London (unless stated otherwise, shown within brackets).

TOWN AND COUNTRYSIDE

Whitby fishermen, c. 1885. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (National Gallery of Art, Washington). & ‘Animated picture’: Adam Proctor, Scotland.

Whitby, Yorkshire, England, 1890-1900 (United States, Library of Congress).

A woodblock engraved map of Yorkshire. Yorkshire map, published in London 1832.

Esk Valley, close to Whitby, 2008.

‘Old Market Place 1818’. | Whitby Museum, Library & Archive, Dr. English Prints.

John Wood’s plan of Whitby and Environs, 1828. (Whitby Museum, Map Collection).

Francis Pickernell’s plan of the Town and Harbour of Whitby 1841. (Whitby Museum, Map Collection). Whitby Harbour, c. 1885, Photo: F. M. Sutcliffe. (Private ownership).

Whitby and surrounding areas, in three pictures, 2008.

Bellevue Terrace, Whitby, 1907. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

Whitby Harbour, c. 1880, Photo: F. M. Sutcliffe. (Cleveland Museum of Art).

DRAPERY, SHOPPING AND TOURISM

Whitby, 1890s. Unknown photographer. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

J.N. Clarkson & Son, Bridge Street c.1900. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection). & ‘Animated picture’: Adam Proctor, Scotland.

Closeup of 1890s dress. | Whitby Museum, Costume Collection.

Robt. Gray & Co., receipt from 1887. | Whitby Museum, Library & Archive.

Wellburn Brothers, two garment labels.| Whitby Museum, Costume Collection.

Whitby Gazette 1880, April-May. | Whitby Museum, Library & Archive.

Hat, Mrs Thornton, 1880s.| Whitby Museum, Costume Collection.

Whitby Gazette 1885, April-June.| Whitby Museum, Library & Archive.

Pier Road, Whitby, early 20th century, Lace stall. Unknown photographer. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

The Misses Scott’s, 1895. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

“Conformateur”, 1890s-1900s. | Whitby Museum, Costume Collection.

Spanton’s advertisement, Newtons Guide Book 1903.

Black cape, 1870s-1880s.|Whitby Museum, Costume Collection.

KNITTING, LAUNDRY AND FISHING

Boulby Bank, Whitby. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

Knitting ganseys, Whitby. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

‘Fish Jane’ in Whitby, late 19th century. Photo: W. Stonehouse. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

‘Sunshine and Shadow’ 1890s. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (National Gallery of Art, Washington).

Whitby fishermen, 1890. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). & ‘Animated picture’: Adam Proctor, Scotland.

Whitby fishermen, c. 1885. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (National Gallery of Art, Washington). & ‘Animated picture’: Adam Proctor, Scotland.

Outdoor portrait. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

Laundry staff, Mulgrave Castle. Unknown photographer. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection).

Sandgate Whitby 1890s. Photo: F.M. Sutcliffe. (Whitby Museum, Photographic Collection.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This iExposure visual story has been based on Viveka Hansen’s book covering the theme:

The Textile History of Whitby 1700-1914 – A lively coastal town between the North Sea and North York Moors, London & Whitby 2015.

Buy in Books & Art

Other sources:

Horne’s, Guide to Whitby, 1897.

Newtons & Son, Guide to Whitby, 1903.

Shrimpton, Jayne, British Working Dress: occupational clothing 1750-1950, Shire 2012.

The National Archive (Census 1911, Whitby. Digital source).

Whitby Gazette 1881-1911.

Whitby, North Yorkshire County Library (Census 1881-1901 micro film).

Whitby Museum, Library and Archive (Whitby Lit. & Phil.): Photographic Collections, Map Collection, Costume & Textile Collections (In-depth research by Viveka Hansen, during the years 2007-2011).