6 replies to this topic

[grandpacarr]

Hello,  could anyone please help me to discover the identity of this unusual badge.  In the centre is a dagger with a serpent around the dagger. the outside reads FINE COTTON SPINNERS AND DOUBLERS : VITAL WAR WORK.

   The back has the number 5617 stamped on the horseshoe fitting, also stamped on the back is FATTORINI & SONS LTD. BRADFORD WORKS/BIRMINGHAM. I would appreciate any help you can give me with the identification of this badge.

  Regards  Grandpacarr.

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[ss002d6252]

Many companies issued badges to their staff in an attempt to identify them as viral workers rather than people who where 'not doing their bit' - SWB were issued on a similar basis.

Quote

F. Fattorini & Son Ltd
Kirkgate & Westgate, Bradford

They were something to do with the silver trade but they apparently made a lot of badges,
http://www.google.co...iw=1173&bih=781

[Tom Morgan]

According to Wikipedia, Fine Spinners and Doublers was the name of an important Manchester cotton-spinning company. I think the dagger and snake you mention are in fact a spindle and a skein of cotton.  Click Herefor the Wikipedia article.

Tom

[centurion]

ss002d6252, on 03 December 2011 - 05:06 PM, said:

Many companies issued badges to their staff in an attempt to identify them as viral workers rather than people who where 'not doing their bit' - SWB were issued on a similar basis.

Not really - a Silver War Badge indicated that you had already done 'your bit' in the forces and been invalided out through a wound, injury or sickness. I didn't know that bacteriological warfare was recognised in WW1 and there were viral workers   However as you say many firms issued such badges and the government tried to suppress this by issuing rules as to who was entitled to a badge saying they were on vital war work. Most munitions workers qualified, many industries did not and eventually such private venture badges were suppressed. Weavers producing cloth for the Army might be included as eligible but possibly not Spinners and Doublers.

Spinning and doubling are both processes and trades in making cotton yarn and many firms would have had fine spinners and doublers in their company title. Fattorni were well known badge makers (especially school badges - my prefect's badge was made by them) and still make badges now from premises in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter.

[John Hartley]

Tom Morgan, on 03 December 2011 - 05:38 PM, said:

According to Wikipedia, Fine Spinners and Doublers was the name of an important Manchester cotton-spinning company.

Wiki would be sort of wrong then.  

To give it it's full name, the Fine Cotton Spinners and Doublers Association Ltd was a trade body representing a goodly number of cotton mill companies in the north. That said, I think (but am not sure) that the Association did directly own some companies.

You want a industry cartel? Look no further than the Association.

It is difficult to over-emphasise the importance and power of the Association in Manchester at the time of the war. Without it, I doubt whether you'd have had Manchester Regiment Pals battalions.

FWIW, Fattorini is still in business making badges.

[daggers]

By the 1960s Fine Spinners & Doublers was part of English Sewing Ltd and one of the major consumers of raw cotton in UK.

D

[centurion]

John Hartley, on 03 December 2011 - 07:16 PM, said:

FWIW, Fattorini is still in business making badges.

In the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham as my post said.

The British textile industry was once a home to many cartels, duopolies, trade restrictive bodies (and the unions mirrored these practices). On the outbreak of war one Bradford entrepreneur with just a good suit to his name and a borrowed rail fare went down to London and through sheer effrontery and brass neck talked his way into the War Office and secured major contracts (which he had no means of fulfilling) for woollen Khaki cloth. He then went back to Yorkshire summoned a meeting of mill owners and effectively said "right I've got the contracts and you've got the mills  lets deal" and so another cartel was born. EU Competition Commissioner and The Office of Fair Trading were unimagined as were competitive bidding processes. The long term effect was when textile industries in the Sub Continent and the Far East emerged the British Textile industry (both companies and unions) was hopelessly uncompetitive and ossified and unable to meet the challenge.