Howard & Bullough
Encyclopedia
Howard & Bullough was a firm of textile machine manufacturers in Accrington
Accrington
Accrington is a town in Lancashire, within the borough of Hyndburn. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, north of Manchester city centre and is situated on the mostly culverted River Hyndburn...

, Lancashire. They were the world's major manufacturer of power looms in the 1860s.

History

The firm of Howard and Bleakley was founded in 1851 with four workers; in 1856 Bleakley retired and the partnership was changed to Howard & Bullough. John Bullough had perfected a self-acting temple on his handloom, and with William Kenworthy at Brookhouse Mills had been responsible for the Lancashire Loom
Lancashire Loom
The Lancashire Loom was a semi-automatic power loom invented by James Bullough and William Kenworthy in 1842. Although it is self-acting, it has to be stopped to recharge empty shuttles. It was the mainstay of the Lancashire cotton industry for a century....

. By 1856 they employed 150 workers; John's son James joined in 1862. They initially concentrated on looms, but eventually expanded to manufacture the complete range of machinery used in a cotton mill
Cotton mill
A cotton mill is a factory that houses spinning and weaving machinery. Typically built between 1775 and 1930, mills spun cotton which was an important product during the Industrial Revolution....

.

John Bullough, (b. 1837) died in 1891. By then Bulloughs were the world's largest manufactures of ring spinning frames, and John was the owner of the Isle of Rùm
Rùm
Rùm , a Scottish Gaelic name often anglicised to Rum) is one of the Small Isles of the Inner Hebrides, in the district of Lochaber, Scotland...

, and the first cotton machine manufacturing millionaire. Three of the company's executives, Edmund and Samuel Tweedale and Joseph Smalley left to set up business on their own in Castleton, Rochdale. The firm was Tweedales and Smalley. Their first spindles equipped the Newhey Spinning Mill in February 1893.

Bulloughs were one of the country's largest manufacturers. At its peak the Globe Works dominated the town, employing almost 6000 workers and covering 52 acres (210,436.7 m²). Seventy-five percent of the company's production was exported.

1914 lockout

Following the refusal of Howard & Bullough's management to meet the demands of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
Amalgamated Society of Engineers
Amalgamated Society of Engineers may refer to one of the following trade unions:* Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union in the United Kingdom, known as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers from 1851 until 1920...

 (A.S.E.) for trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

 recognition and a minimum wage, up to 600 engineers at the works went on strike on 2 July. Six days later, the management locked-out the whole workforce of nearly 5000 men and boys. Although members of the A.S.E. received £1/week lock-out pay while on strike and 1100 members of the Gasworkers and General Labourers Union received 10s (50p)/week, some 2000 non-union workers were left without any income. At this time, the defensive Battle of Mons
Battle of Mons
The Battle of Mons was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War. It was a subsidiary action of the Battle of the Frontiers, in which the Allies clashed with Germany on the French borders. At Mons, the British army attempted to hold the line of the...

 was being fought and the War Office was actively seeking to recruit men. A Pals battalion
Pals battalion
The Pals battalions of World War I were specially constituted units of the British Army comprising men who had enlisted together in local recruiting drives, with the promise that they would be able to serve alongside their friends, neighbours and work colleagues , rather than being arbitrarily...

 had been raised in Manchester, and the Mayor of Accrington undertook to raise a battalion of Accrington Men
Accrington Pals
The Accrington Pals was a British First World War Pals battalion of Kitchener's Army raised in and around the town of Accrington in Lancashire. When the battalion was taken over by the British Army it was officially named the 11th Battalion, The East Lancashire Regiment.Recruiting was initiated by...

.

During the Second World War they turned to manufacture of armaments such as bayonets, shells, gun carriages, mine sinkers and aircraft components.

In the recession of the 1930s, Platt Brothers
Platt Brothers
Platt Brothers & Co Ltd, was a British company based at Oldham, in North West England. They were textile machinery manufacturers, iron founders and colliery proprietors, and by the end of the 19th century, had become the largest textile machinery company in the world, employing over 12,000 workers...

, Howard and Bullough, Brooks and Doxey
Brooks & Doxey
Brook & Doxey was a textile machinery manufacturer from West Gorton, Manchester in England. It was founded in 1859. It was incorporated in 1920. The company used the Union Iron Works, West Gorton. The company also had a factory in Stockport....

, Asa Lees
Asa Lees
Asa Lees was a firm of textile machine manufacturers in Oldham, Lancashire. Their headquarters was the Soho Iron Works, Greenacres. It was second only in size to Platt Brothers.-Early history:...

, Dobson and Barlow
Dobson & Barlow
Dobson and Barlow were textile machinery manufacturers from Bolton. The partnership was founded in 1851 between Benjamin Dobson and Edward Barlow, building on a production facilities extending back to 1790.-Later history:...

, Joseph Hibbert, John Hetherington
John Hetherington & Sons
John Hetherington & Sons was a textile machinery manufacturer from Ancoats, Manchester in England. It was founded in 1830. Thecompany gradually expanded and acquired a number of factory buildings in Ancoats. It established the Vulcan Works on Pollard Street in around 1856 and left these buildings...

 and Tweedales and Smalley merged to become Textile Machinery Makers Ltd
Textile Machinery Makers Ltd
In the recession of the 1930s, Platt Brothers, Howard and Bullough, Brooks and Doxey, Asa Lees, Dobson and Barlow, Joseph Hibbert, John Hetherington and Tweedales and Smalley merged to become Textile Machinery Makers Ltd., but the individual units continued to trade under their own names until...

., but the individual units continued to trade under their own names until the 1970s, when they were rationalised into one company called Platt UK Ltd. In 1991 the company changed its name to Platt Saco Lowell. The Globe Works closed in 1993.

Bullough's inventions

James Bullough improved his loom by inventing various components, including the "self-acting temple", which kept the woven cloth at its correct width, the weft fork (patented 1841 but disputed by Osbaldeston) and a loose reed that allowed the lathe to back away on encountering a shuttle trapped in the warp. Bullough also invented a simple but effective warning device which rang a bell every time the warp thread broke on his loom. He worked with William Kenworthy at Brookhouse Mills, with whom he applied his inventions to develop an improved power loom that became known as the Lancashire Loom.

John Bullough, with James Whittaker and John Walmsley, developed a machine, patented in 1852, that sized two warps and wound them on two beams simultaneously.

Philanthropy

In accordance with the traditions of the times, Bulloughs attempted to improve the lives of its workers with acts of philanthropy. It gave James Bullough Park to the town of Accrington in 1913, and the Globe Tennis club grounds in 1926.
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