From Sheep to Suit

The American Record

The record for the time taken for expert shearers to shear six sheep, the mill to produce the cloth and the tailors to make a man's suit had stood since 1898. It was held by Thomas Kitson, mill owner, of Pennsylvania who had emigrated from Bradford in 1859. It took six hours and four minutes from shearing to wearable suit. There is of course some dispute about the actual number of minutes. It did, however, beat the previous record set in Galashiels by some two hours.

Sir Malcom Campbell

In June 1931 George Stone was in the news again (see post in November 2023). This time he was going to help break a record. At a Bradford Rotary meeting in April 1931 Sir Malcom Campbell (recently returned from breaking the land speed record in Daytona) made a rousing speech and issued a challenge to the shearers, spinners, weavers and tailors to wrest the record from America. Besides being reported in the Yorkshire Evening Post his speech was reported in newspapers throughout the kingdom.

The Woollen Industry of Yorkshire Rise to the Challenge

The suit was to be made to the measurements of James Henry Thomas, MP for Derby. He was the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs He planned to wear the record-breaking suit at the Imperial Wool Industry Fair in Bradford in July, when replicas of the record-breaking suit would be worn by male mannequins. He also promised to wear the suit that broke the record on his forthcoming visit to Canada.

The attacks on the record were planned for Tuesday June 22nd at Batley and 23rd June at Huddersfield with Lady Campbell acting as scrutineer. The Batley plan was for Messrs. Taylors to have the cloth ready for the tailors in five hours and the tailors reckoned they could make the suit in under 45 minutes. On the Tuesday ten sheep were sheared, the cloth made and dyed and taken to the tailors in Leeds. The whole process taking 3 hours and 8 minutes.

Our Local Shearers Make for Huddersfield

And on to Wednesday. Mr Ben Hind, managing director of Burgin and Ball, took six shearers to Huddersfield, including George Stone, where they were to use the hand shears manufactured by Burgin and Ball. Each shearer, who were not experts, had to shear two sheep in under eight minutes. (Australian shearers could shear a sheep in two minutes.)

It seems much effort was made to gain this record of two hours, nine minutes and 46 seconds. The dozen sheep came from Kent and Messrs Crowther used a new type of tentering machine, which caused some controversy, and used their fastest workers. So it is a wonder they were happy to use the inexperienced shearers from the moors around Dore. George, after all, was a gamekeeper and Tom Rowarth an inn-keeper. More detail of the process can be found on page 7 of the Leeds Mercury for Thursday 25 June 1931