Two treadle sewing machines with a Touch of Old World Charm

This post covers two nineteenth-century sewing machines displayed in “A Touch of Old World Charm” exhibition in the folk museum in Pye Cottage, Gunning, New South Wales. They are the Singer Sphinx and the Beale. Two hand-operated machines donated to Gunning and District Historical Society were described in an earlier blog, and a treadle machine made in 1910 will feature in a later post.

A foreign country?

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” is the opening sentence of L P Hartley's The Go-Between (1953). But those words were first spoken by the writer’s friend in a 1949 lecture. (1.) Obtaining clothes was undoubtedly different in rural New South Wales in the late nineteenth to today’s easy shopping. Of course, then there was a local store or two and mail-order from the big city, for a price, for ready-made clothes. When the train line was extended from Goulburn to Gunning in 1875, even an imported outfit was not terribly out of date by the time it reached a local fashionista. On the smaller, barely self-sustaining properties, clothes making was part of a woman’s work.

Powered by women – hands-free operation

When new, this Singer treadle machine had a handsome case, a broad tabletop with a handy drop-side extension, and a sturdy iron frame. Now, it has mismatched drawers and a worn, stretched drive belt.

Singer treadle sewing machine pictured in Pye Cottage Museum, LA Bush

Hand-operated sewing machines, as described in the previous blog, seemed to be labour saving if compared with hand sewing. We can imagine the effort required to use the hand-operated machine smoothly. It meant only the left hand was free to guide the material. Probably the stitching was more even and stronger than hand sewing.

A treadle machine was operated by rocking the treadle with (usually) the right foot, with the cogs transferring the power through the drive belt to drive the needle. A steady rate of treadle resulted in smooth and even stitching. Speed was the aim. One or both hands guided the material under the "foot." It was quite hard to maintain good posture and very wearing on sight and concentration if light, either natural or artificial, was low.

The first Singer

Development of the domestic sewing machine meshed with that of factory machines. Pictured is a demonstrator sitting at Isaac Singer’s first patent model (1851). He adapted a commercial machine by making significant improvements and very sensibly marketed to women (even if a man was going to pay for the machine). Advertising copy from the Singer company said:

"... We must not forget to call attention to the fact that this instrument is peculiarly calculated for female operatives. They should never allow its use to be monopolized by men."

“SINGER’S PERPENDICULAR ACTION sewing machine.”

Engraving from Illustrated News, June 25, 1853 (Smithsonian photo 48091-D.) figure 29, (2.)

The Sewing Machine case - rather, many legal cases

Each of the three treadle machines on display has its own handsome “case” or “cabinet.” However, patent records and law cases dominate the historical sources. Though Thomas Saint, an Englishman, patented a design in 1790 for a hand-crank machine for leather and canvas, a successful working model was not built until 1874. In 1830, Frenchman Thimonnier successfully used a hooked needle and one thread, creating a chain stitch. He planned the first machine-based clothing manufacturing business, making French army uniforms.

Did you know the answer on Hard Quiz (ABC TV November 25, 2020)?

Question: Who attacked Thimonnier’s invention?

Answer: The French tailors who feared he would put them out of business, burned down his factory.

THIMONNIER AND HIS SEWING MACHINE OF 1830

from Sewing Machine News, 1880. (Smithsonian photo 10569-C, figure 8) (2.)

The history of sewing machine development leaps from inventor to inventor, country to country. Just like Hartley using the words of his mate, the professor, credit might be given to one maker who had relied on another's earlier patent. A manufacturer could rebadge his own machine for market advantage, e.g. The Ladies Home Journal brand was made by National! Of course, "rip-offs" happened as well. Sometimes a factory in one country would ignore the patent lodged in another country and make its machine under a different local name, using the detailed drawings of the patentee. Sounds familiar in our global economy where a national legal system has limited jurisdiction in another country.

From rags to riches

Isaac Merritt Singer pioneered mass-production, and by 1860, the company had become the largest producer of sewing machines in the world. The life of this American is a “rags to riches” story, from a run-away twelve-year-old to a 28-year-old who patented his first invention (a rock drilling machine). He turned to sewing machine design, eventually setting up factories across the United States and Britain (3.) In his private life, Singer appears to have been less than faithful to one woman at a time. On his death in 1875, his US$14 million fortune was divided among 20 children by wives and mistresses.

Our Singer treadle machine: the Sphinx (sometimes called the Memphis)

The Singer Company, under Singer's successors, continued to pay careful attention to market opportunities. Our example shows them choosing the Sphinx motif to tap into the "second wave of the Egyptian Revival" after 1870 in America, and hence the rest of the World. (4.)

The "Singer" dominates our memories of the machines in our childhood houses (and E-bay offerings today). So it is a surprise to find its name was not emblazoned on every machine purchased by women (or by men, for women) in colonial New South Wales. Singer advertisements in newspapers only begin to boom from the 1890s as they faced competitive makers and their retailers.

This example retains most of its gorgeous Ancient Egyptian influenced decals. However, the cabinet has seen hard times over the years, possibly in the shed as rings and drips from paint tins now mar the cabinet surface. No donor is recorded.

Note the small plate with the unique Singer manufacture number, Photo RA Spiller

Each Singer machine has a unique identifying number on a metal plate on the right-hand side, attached at the end stage of manufacture. The site: https://www.contrado.co.uk/blog/how-old-is-my-singer-sewing-machine/ has an extensive list, which seems to put our Singer 14943343 (or 14948343) at 1898. Finding a model number (possibly 27 or 28) may confirm this dating. The details of the patent on the bobbin access plate date it after February 21, 1898. Our Sphinx does not appear in Alex Askaroff’s table of only British made Singer numbering. Perhaps it is an American import?

Imported to Gunning from the USA? Photo RA Spiller

The woman at the heart of the family or the independent woman?

Singer exploited two contradictory social ideals, the woman at the heart of the family and the independent woman. His company promotions included the idea of a “family sewing machine.” Another part of the market was the woman working from home instead of in a factory. In company literature, the Singer sewing machine was said to be, “the woman’s faithful friend the world over.” (5.)

Tough Times in New South Wales

“Sewing Machine cases” were often reported in NSW newspapers in the 1890s, a period of severe unemployment and economic recession. Hundreds of cases involve the local “agents or canvassers” of sewing machine companies. Some tried bullying tactics to get back machines from women who fell behind with their time-payments. Sometimes the agent broke into a locked house. Sometimes an agent failed to remit to head office, the purchase money which had been paid by a woman with her order. Sometimes the agent with the thankless task of “hawking” the goods up the country, drank what little he managed to get from sales. The boss was not pleased!

The Macleay Argus (March 16, 1901) reported that the "late local agent of the Singer Co." was sentenced to six months hard labour in Darlinghurst on each of 3 charges, to be served concurrently. He had worked for Singer for just three months. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/233719619

A Woman's Tools of Trade – a Mangle, a Sewing Machine, a Typewriter

“SWEATING” IN THE CLOTHING TRADE.

TWENTY HOURS A DAY AT THE MACHINE

ran the headlines in The Daily Telegraph. “A member of the staff” had investigated the evils of the colonial tweed trousers trade. He went to Redfern and other inner Sydney suburbs to interview women who worked from home as "tailoresses".

Today we call them "out workers" when often immigrant woman sew at home. Then, the women were locally-born. Without any social security "safety net.", they were forced by widowhood and the needs of their children to become Singer's "Independent Women."

They collected the cut-out material, sewed the garment and returned it to the factory (so, they had to live nearby). The reporter concluded that “they invariably live in a state bordering upon absolute destitution.” https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/238542197

The Daily Telegraph must have been pleased to report (September 1 1898, page 7) on the second reading of the Distress for Rent Restriction Bill. This legislation would prevent a landlord from seizing a working woman’s mangle, sewing machine or typewriter when she fell behind with the rent. Times had changed, said a politician in favour of the new law, so clearly if a tradesman’s tools were “protected” from seizure by a landlord, so should a woman’s “tools of trade” be protected. Another politician said, “The necessity for an enactment of this kind was brought to his attention by ladies who had been associated with the administration of the Queen’s Fund.”

The Queen’s Fund was founded by Lady Loch, the Victorian Governor’s wife, to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Year of 1881. Its first beneficiaries were 50 widows and 150 children - indirect victims of a gas explosion in Bulli coal mine on March 23, 1887, which killed 81 men and boys. (There was only one survivor.)

Women formed local committees to raise funds for this and later causes. The Goulburn Evening Penny Post reported the fund-raising success of the first Goulburn committee (Tuesday, November 8 1887):

Lady Carrington, the NSW Governor’s wife, co-ordinated the NSW Fund committees, which aimed to help distressed women, without regard to creed, class, or nationality. In Hay, donations were to be acknowledged weekly in the Riverine Grazier. However, the Australian Star of May 12, 1888, was not impressed. Its editor thought the Fund was an “ill-starred monument of Imperial grovel”!

AN AUSTRALIAN SEWING MACHINE - They’re not all Singers

It seems everyone knows about the Beale piano but not so much the Beale Sewing Machine. Indeed GDHS does not know who donated our machine. Its design and its almost unmarked cabinet and case are impressive. (Your piano is only a Beale if made between 1900 and 1970; anything later is a piano made in a Chinese factory, with the Beale name used as a marketing tool to Australians.) (6.)

Photo RASpiller

Charles Beale deserves his entry as a business leader and innovator, in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, (7.) He was the first to produce veneer in Australia, by the sawing method (later replaced by slicing) using Queensland walnut for the pianos. His craftsmanship is reflected in the beautiful cabinets and cases made in his Sydney factory. The elaborate work on this model suggests it was made after 1907 when he had perfected the woodworking method.

Photo LA Bush

These beautiful products were taken to agricultural shows in the eastern Colonies (and States, after 1901). Perhaps the Pye Cottage sewing machine was first seen at the Gunning Show? Beale used some of Singer’s proven methods. For example, Singer was the first to employ women as demonstrators at retail outlets. Following the Singleton Show in 1897, the Show Report in the Maitland Weekly Mercury stated, “The display made by Beale and Co. was really excellent, comprising samples of the wonderful work performed by the aid of their sewing machines, which were worked by Miss Wilson, of Sydney.” (September 4 1897, page 2, Trove, nla)

Beale sold both Singer machines, for which he made the cabinets and cases in Sydney, and he branded and “patented” Beale machines, with a 25-year guarantee. This example lacks significant Singer attributions, although it bears a needle size plate which is very similar to the Singer models. Advertising copy made much of the locally-made angle. The elaborate and patriotic “Advance Australia” Beale label still shines today.

Note the Beale version of the Australian flag, photo RA Spiller

Touch of Old World Charm display continues at Pye Cottage Museum

To see the sewing machines, as well as "fashion, fripperies and fancies to paintings, portraits and photographs" in the Touch of Old World Charm display, visit Pye Cottage Museum. Contact us on gunninghistory@gmail.com or call into 121 Yass Street, Gunning on Gunning Lions Market Days, (usually held on the last Sunday of each month).

The display was developed by Gunning & District Historical Society for the Gunning Arts Festival, April 2020. It opened to visitors on November 28, having earlier been available during COVID-19 restrictions to very small groups and “on-line” at https://www.gunningartsfestival.com/festival/

Gunning & District Historical Society

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