Don Smith

In the 1940s when I was an apprentice painter we were painting the inside of Mabgate Mills at that time Henry Gould had a clothing factory in this building, Glaslock were also there at that time and a lorry with a full load of glass from Pilkington of Warrington, he had gone throug this arch to a loading dock the wearhouse man told the driver to go round the to the other side of the building to another dock, the driver got mad and told the wearhouse man 'he would not as he was in a hurry' the wearhouse man said 'please your self' after the load of glass was off the driver set off back through the arch the way he had come in, he got the lorry stuck because the lorry was a lot higher with all the weight off he had to let all the tyers down to get out then send for a break down lorry to blow them up again, the driver was mad with the wearhouse man and asked 'why he didn't tell him?', the wearhouse man said 'that's why I told you to go round to the other dock' More haste less speed.

20-Jan-2009

anne-donsmith@shaw.ca

Robert McMillan

Just before 1900 McLaughlin Brothers teazle growers,dealers and merchants of Skaneateles NY USA, with sales and growing falling in the USA, opened a branch in Leeds, the foremost international commercial centre of the teazle business, the West Riding being the leading consuming centre in the world. The first location of this was Mabgate Mills. They later moved in the early 1900s to Macaulay Street Mills on the nexst street along, where they remained until just about aftere World War I. of the family Charles Hennry McLaughlin came over to Leeds to run the outpost. As well as their own American teazles they sold all the other kinds common in the trade, French,Normandy,English Austrian, prepared and sorted for any purpose, probably using local workers of their own employed here to do some of the work in Leeds. It was pretty certainly McLaughlin Brothers in Leeds who before World War I imported supplies of the Oregon teazle, grown in the state of that name, said to have been the strongest teazle in existence. It was too hard to be of use in most cloth raising, and was probably, like other American teazles grown at Skaneateles, expensive, particularly for most Yorkshire mills, often making cheaper cloths and often buying cheaper, lower quality teazles such as Austrian and some of the inferior classes from the south of France.

23-Apr-2011

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