POINTS ABOUT PINS

Evening Star, Issue 19327, 13 August 1926, Page 2

POINTS ABOUT PINS

A LITTLE AKCIEHT HISTORY About 100 years ago a machine was invented capable of producing a perfect pin during tho revolution of. a single wheel. The introduction of this machine into one factory increased tho daily output of pins from 121 b to half a ton a day, writes L. F. Ramsay, in the London ‘Daily Telegraph.’ The result was that from being a commodity of some value a pin came to be accepted as typical of an article the cost of which was almost negligible. When Shakespeare made Hamlet say that ho did not set his life at a pin s fee ho was not estimating it quite so cheaply ns if the words had been written today. Addison, writing a century later, speaks of the number of pins a married woman appears to need, and aska; “ What would a foreigner think of a lover giving up his mistress because ho was unwilling to keep her in pins? What would he think if ho wereinformed that she asked £SOO or £6OO a year for this use? What a prodigal consumption of pins ho would suppose takes place in this island!” For some unaccountable reason the ill-fatod Catherine Howard has been credited with introducing pins into England from France during her short reign as Henry VlH.’s fifth queen. It is not till the reign of Henry VII. thao w are able to find the price of pins actually mentioned. Among the expenses of Queen Elizabeth of there .are mentioned 300 pins at 4d the 100. This was a considerable sum at a date when a sheep could _be bought for 20d or less. The invention of puis is claimed by French and Dutch alike. It was tho competition of the blemish manufacturers that the English pinners found most troublesome in too early days of the manufacture of brass pins, and in James I.’s reign an Act of Protection was passed to lorind tho importation of foreign pins except bj tho pinners themselves. Charles 1. renewed the privilege and received Low a year for it, which he gave to 1 marietta Maria as part of her income or pin money. Charles 11. confirmed the charter after the Restoration, and undertook to provide the pinners with £24,000 worth of wire for their manufacture on condition that they delivered £7O 000 worth of ordnance half-yearly to th 0 M <st,or oi tho Ordnance. Thus did the ladies of England, by their of pins, coninbnie to ino dcioiicc of their country. Pins play their part in superstition. See a pin and pick it up. Ail the day you’ll have good luck; Sec a pin and let it lie. And before the night you’ll cry. That superstition must have originated at tho time when a pin was worth picking up. Nowadays those who ieai I germs and microbes will think that good kick probably lies in leaving the pm j where it is. On St. Agnes’s Eve a | maiden took a row of pins and polk'd them out one by one while repealing a paternoster. Then, .sticking one ol them in her sleeve, she retired to heel to dream of her lover. This is_ one of the ceremonies referred to by Keats in his well-known poem. Most of us have at .some time or other dropped a pin in a wishing wadi for luck. But the most curious use qf pins in superstitious practices is that of “putting a pin in ” for people when you wish them harm* A woman who died in a Somersetshire workhouse about thirty years age was found to ho. wearing a heartshaped pad stuck over with pins. She was fully believed to have the power of working evil on her neighbors, for whom she _ was always threatening to put in a pin. Apparently as she stuck the pin into the wad she muttered some imprecation.