Samuel Holmes: Stockinger and Scoundrel

On April 8, 1784, my great-great-great-great grandparents, John Holmes and Sarah Steward, carried their infant son the half-mile from Higham, Derbyshire to Shirland, to have the child baptized in St. Leonard's Church. Samuel Holmes was John's and Sarah's seventh child and fourth son. Since mortality in the first year of life was very high, most infants were baptized within a few weeks or a couple of months of birth; Samuel was probably born in February or March 1784.

A framework knitter had to use both hands
and both feet continuously to operate the loom

I referred to Samuel in an earlier blog ("To Make Them Come Alive"). He was the great-great-great grandparent who was a framework knitter in Nottingham. As I mentioned in that blog, there's an amazing amount of information about framework knitting to be found online, and in Ruddington, Nottinghamshire there's a living history museum dedicated to the work and life of  framework knitters https://www.frameworkknittersmuseum.org.uk/. The videos at this site enable me to "see" Samuel working his loom, and also something of the home he shared with his wife and children.

Framework knitters lived a very hand-to-mouth existence. Whether the framework knitter worked on a loom in his home, or on one in a tiny factory, he had to pay rent on the loom; they were too expensive to buy. The framework knitting loom had been invented in 1589 for the mass production of an essential commodity--stockings, and framework knitters were known as "stockingers".  Not only did framework knitters have to rent the means of their production, they often paid for the production materials. Although the entire family would be enlisted in producing stockings, it was nearly impossible to ever get ahead. Because they lived life at the edge of economic ruin, the phrase "as poor as a stockinger" became a Victorian insult.

The framework knitting loom gave rise to the Nottingham textile industry, and Nottingham lace became a product known and desired world-wide. Yet the textile boom that began in the early 1800's in Nottingham, was only a boom for the factory owners, who steadily added to their wealth while framework knitters wages declined by 30 percent between the early 1800's-1830.

In 1833, a Royal Commission gathered evidence about the condition of children in factories. Evidence included an unappealing physical and moral characterization of framework knitters, the depiction tied to poverty: "I can tell a stockinger well by his appearance; there is a paleness and a certain degree of emaciation and thinness about them. The workmen are physically deteriorated; they are mentally depressed, and too often, morally debased. They are ill fed, ill lodged, and ill clothed."

Nottingham Lace Market historic district

Was that a description of Samuel and his family? No wonder Samuel's and Elizabeth's daughter Emily, my great-great grandmother married a young master lacemaker, a man with good prospects compared to her father, although, in the end, Henry Burdett turned out to be a bad choice. (See "What's In a Word...or Lack Thereof?) Does the characterization explain Samuel's brushes with the law and brief periods of incarceration, once for desertion and twice for fathering children out of wedlock? Was Samuel's behavior the result of poverty-induced moral failings, or was Samuel just a natural -born rotter? 

The answer will never be known, but regardless of which it might be, I just love my reprobate great-great-great grandfather. He the kind of person who makes family history interesting, and if he hadn't been "bad", he'd never have generated those court records that make pale, thin, possibly depressed Samuel come to life for me.

A section of Nottingham General Cemetery

Samuel died at the age of 66 at his home on Woolpack Lane, Nottingham on June 7, 1850. His long-suffering wife, great-great-great grandmother Elizabeth, died just eleven days later. Possibly there was an illness that took them both, but maybe she died of grief over a difficult but possibly loveable "rogue and vagabond" (as one court document described him). Samuel and Elizabeth are buried in grave number 14125 in Nottingham Central Cemetery along with three of their grandchildren. There is no stone.