James Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny: A Blackburn Mob and a Voided Patent

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James Hargreaves was born around 1720 in Oswaldtwistle near Blackburn, Lancashire, then a town of about 5,000 linked to the world by pack horse trails. Wool dominated the English economy, and when imported Indian calicoes became popular, Parliament passed the Calico Acts banning them and even fining people for wearing them. The 1736 Manchester Act allowed a hybrid cloth with a linen warp and cotton weft, the Blackburn Greys, which were woven in Lancashire and carried to London for printing. In cottage production it took three carders to supply one spinner and up to three spinners to supply one weaver, and John Kay's flying shuttle of 1733 doubled the weaver's speed and left weavers begging neighbors for yarn.

In 1764 Hargreaves built a frame with eight vertical spindles that one worker could run with two hands, later scaled up to 120 spindles. He kept the jenny for his own family's use, but the flood of cheap yarn crashed local prices. In 1768 a mob of spinners broke into his home and smashed his machines, and he fled to Nottingham, set up on Mill Street with joiner Thomas James and received patent number 962 on July 12, 1770. When he sued Lancashire manufacturers who had copied the jenny, they offered 3,000 pounds. He demanded 7,000, then 4,000, until it emerged he had sold jennies before patenting, which voided his claim. He died in 1778.

• The story of a daughter named Jenny tripping over a spinning wheel is false: parish records show no daughter called Jenny, and his wife was Elizabeth.
• Jenny was common 18th century slang for engine.
• A faller wire guided all eight threads to wind neatly onto the spindles.
• Thomas Highs of Leigh claimed a similar device, and a legend says Thomas Earnshaw destroyed his own out of guilt for the poor.
• Jenny yarn suited the weft but not the warp, and by about 1810 the spinning mule had largely replaced it.