French Invention

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 13

French Invention

TN a programme about the A history of the domestic sewing machine, Hilary Haywood referred to one of the first British models which can be seen at the Science Museum in South Kensington. London. “It was invented for glovemaking and leatherwork in 1790 by a cabinet-maker called Thomas Saint,” she said. “But the first all-purpose model was made in France, in 1830, by Barthelemey Thimonier, who subsequently sold about 80 for making French Army uniforms.

“But poor Thimonier was unlucky. In the French revolution of 1848, his works were wrecked and he himself was nearly killed by an angry mob who feared that his machine would put craftsmentailors out of a job. He lived on to exhibit a machine in the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, but he finally died in 1857, obscure and unsuccessful.

“Meantime, two American inventors were working, quite independently of each other, on the same principles and one of them, Elias Howe,

brings the story back to England again. He sold his machine for £250 to a William Thomas, a corset manufacturer of Cheapside, London. And early in the 1850 s, a brilliant and ambitious young engineer-businessman, William Jones, improved on the Elias Howe prototype until his Manchester sewingmachine business rapidly established itself and began to expand. “His original firm is still flourishing and his 100-year-old model is kept in full working order in pride of place in the factory—still near Manchester. The modern models are as streamlined as aircraft, but the elegant original has a period charm of its own, and is decorated with real gold leaf. It must have been quite a bargain for four guineas, its original price in 1860, according to the catalogue of the time, although clever William Jones realised that that was quite a tidy sum then and pioneered what seems to be the first hire-purchase scheme —at 2s 6d a time.”