Spreadsheet for Spinning Books
For those using the spreadsheet, please note the following practices.
- Silently corrected where the daily skeins have been added up wrong by the clerk
- In the “notes column of the spreadsheet, there are two types of comment. Comments in square brackets are remarks by the historian transcribing the records; for example:“[exceeded]” indicates that the historian noticed the spinner has exceeded their “stint” (required work amount) for the week. Notes not in square brackets are from the original text. Chief among these are:
- Dropping – we have not been able to determine the meaning of this term
- Keeping – often followed by the name of a local farmer – appears to indicate when boys were used out of the workhouse to tend to the herds of local agriculturists, as in “keeping cows for x” or “keeping on the farm”
- H or Hemp, or Hemping – appears to indicate when children were pulled out of the [worsted] spinning rooms and put to the processing of hemp; sometimes this is indicated by “tow”
- Mill – indicates when children were shifted out of the workhouse spinning rooms and into work for the local mill
- 999 is always used where there is an unspecified age or stint
- Clear typos have been silently corrected, e.g. on the few occasions where a very standard pence value for skeins is established, but a number value for pence is off such as in 1798 where 22 skeins is always worth 8d, but on a few occasions, the pence column indicates the standard value of another typical skein production
- This includes some special cases where, for example, two spinners will be bracketed, each having spun the same number of skeins, but assigned different pence values in Gressenhall. For example 9/17/1797, Sarah Howard and Sarah Dinah both spin 20 skeins but instead of pence value 5 for each, Howard has a 6 and Dinah has a 4 and there is a “} tying their two pence totals together.