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Lombe, Sir Thomas (16851739), merchant
and inventor of silk-throwing machinery
by R. B. Prosser and rev. Maxwell Craven, rev.
Susan Christian
Oxford University Press 200414 All rights reserved
Lombe, Sir Thomas (16851739), merchant and inventor of silk-throwing
machinery, eldest son of Henry Lombe, worsted weaver, of Norwich, was born at
Norwich on 5 September 1685. The father died about 1695, leaving his sons
Thomas and Henry under the care of his executors, while the surviving younger
son John [see below] was to be brought up by his mother, Henry Lombe's second
wife, formerly a Miss Wilmot. The family seems to have been long settled in
Norfolk, and the name frequently occurs in local records.
In the early part of the eighteenth century Lombe found his way to London, where
he was apprenticed to Samuel Totton, mercer, and was admitted to the freedom of
the Mercers' Company in 1707. In the same year he became a freeman of the City
of London, and he eventually established himself as a merchant. In 1718 he
obtained a patent (no. 422) for:
a new invention of three sorts of engines never before made or used
in Great Britaine, one to winde the finest raw silk, another to spin,
and the other to twist the finest Italian raw silk into organzine in
great perfection, which was never before done in this country.
A specification was duly enrolled, as required by the letters patent, but was lost,
and reappeared only in 1867, when it was printed for the first time. Lombe says:
I declare that by constant application and endeavours for severall
years past, and employing a great many agents and workmen both
here and in foreigne parts, I have at very great expense and hazards
found out, discovered, and brought into this country the art of
making the three capital engines.
These are mentioned in the title of his patent. The description of the machinery is
deliberately obfuscated and is interspersed with numerous Italian technical terms,
the use of which Lombe justifies by alleging that there were no English terms
applicable. In fact, it is clear that the real purpose of this obfuscation was to
prevent the successful adoption of his process once the patent had expired.
Lombe employed his half-brother John, who, it is said, went to northern Italy,
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then the principal seat of the silk manufacture, and made himself thoroughly
familiar with the various processes, sending back drawings made covertly on the
spot, in bales of raw silk to be exported to England. These plans were realized on
arrival, prototypes being erected in a room in Derby Moot Hall. Although long
doubted, some evidence to support John's exploits has been found in archives at
the University of Pisa. He probably worked for Glovere Urwin, silk exporters of
Leghorn. This journey has been represented as a risky and daring enterprise,
which may well constitute one of the first recorded instances of industrial
espionage. The Piedmontese were said to have jealously guarded the secret of the
manufacture, yet all the while a complete description of the Italian silk-throwing
machinery, published as early as 1607 at Padua by V. Zonca in his Novo teatro di
machine, was available in the collections of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It
contains engravings which show the construction of the machinery in great detail,
and to an expert Zonca's book is to some extent more satisfactory than Lombe's
specification. None the less, it is unlikely that anyone concerned with the
possibility of throwing silk in Britain, least of all Lombe, was aware of its
existence. Moreover, a number of persons had unsuccessfully petitioned in 1692
for leave to be incorporated into a company for the purpose of introducing the
Italian machinery and starting a manufactory in this country. The Lombes,
therefore, can be credited with having introduced into this country a new and
important trade, the main elements of which were the basic machinery and the
factory method of working, long-established in Italy. Significantly, the machines
could be adapted to other types of yarn and were to be of inestimable value to the
silk and ultimately the textile industry as a whole.
In 1719 Thomas, John, and a cousin, William Lombe, in partnership began
production at their mill, constructed from 1715, on an island in the River Derwent
at Derby, adjacent to an unsuccessful silk mill built some fourteen years before by
Thomas Cotchett, a local attorney. Eventually the mill became a prosperous
concern, and Daniel Defoe records a visit to it in its first decade (Defoe, 3.38). The
building, later known as the Old Silk Mill, was rebuilt after a fire in 1826.
Subsequently the doubling shop collapsed in 1890 and the original building was
extensively reconstructed after a fire which occurred on 5 December 1910, two
years after silk throwing ceased. It was subsequently adapted to house the Derby
Industrial Museum.
Lombe's patent was granted for fourteen years, and naturally expired in 1732, but
on 28 January of that year he petitioned parliament for an extension, alleging that
he had been put to great expense in training workmen, and that the Sardinian
authorities had prohibited the importation of raw silk, so that a supply had to be
obtained elsewhere. However, it would appear, from a letter written in 1739 by his
successor as proprietor at Derby, William Wilson, to Samuel Lloyd, once Lombe's
agent in Italy, that silk supplies were curtailed only from 1733 (letter of 2 October
1739, W. Yorks. AS, DB 32/44). This reinforces the claim by William Hutton that
Lombe forgot to inform [parliament] that he had already accumulated more than
80,000 (Hutton, 203). The petition was referred to a committee, and evidence
was produced showing that the machinery had rendered the manufacturers of
England independent of Italy for the supply of organzine, thus reducing the price.
There was considerable opposition to the petition on the part of the cotton and
worsted spinners, who were keen to use a modified form of Lombe's machinery
for making yarn, but who had been prevented by threats of legal action for
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infringement. The facts are set out in The case of the manufacturers of woollen,
linnen, mohair, and cotton yarn with respect to a bill for preserving and
encouraging a new invention in England, by Sir Thomas Lombe (n.d. [1732?]).
The debate on the bill was thoroughly reported (The Parliamentary History of
England, 1732, 924) and is of great interest, being the first instance of an
application to parliament to prolong a patent beyond the limit fixed by the Statute
of Monopolies. The bill was thrown out, but eventually an act was passed (5 Geo.
II, c. 8) granting a reward of 14,000 to the inventor, one of the conditions being
that Lombe should deposit models of his machinery in some public institution.
Models were ultimately placed in the Tower (although this had clearly not
happened as late as the 1750s). They later appear to have succumbed to the
ravages of woodworm and the few surviving fragments later said to be in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, were lost by 1974. Lombe's machinery was
described and illustrated in Rees's Cyclopaedia (art. Silk) and a one-third scale
model of the machinery was deposited in the Silk Museum, Macclesfield,
Cheshire.
Lombe was an alderman of Bassishaw ward in the City of London, and was chosen
sheriff in 1727. He was knighted on 8 July of the same year, when he attended at
court to present a congratulatory address from the city to George II on his
accession. He married Elizabeth Turner (d. 1753), and they had two daughters,
Hannah and Mary Turner. Lombe died on 3 January 1739 at his house in Old
Jewry, London, leaving a fortune estimated at 120,000 (GM, 9.47), which was
bequeathed in equal portions to his widow and daughters. He desired his widow
at the conclusion of the Darby concerns to reward the principal servants there as
she shall think fit to the value of 500l. or 600l. (will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/694,
sig. 14). His wife died on 18 November 1753, his daughters being married; Hannah
in 1740 to Sir Robert Clifton, baronet, MP for East Retford, and Mary on 24 April
1749 to James Maitland, seventh earl of Lauderdale.
John Lombe (c.16931722), Sir Thomas's half-brother, born probably at
Norwich, was probably apprenticed to Thomas, who subsequently encouraged him
to visit Italy and make himself acquainted with the processes of silk throwing. He
was referred to by Alderman Perry in his speech in the House of Commons when
Sir Thomas Lombe's petition was being discussed as one whose head is extremely
well turned for the mechanics. He was further described in 1791 by William
Hutton as a man of spirit, a good draughtsman and an excellent mechanic
(Hutton, 196). Hutton goes on to recount that John returned from Italy about
1717, bringing with him at least two Italians to assist him in starting the new
factory. He adds that the silk throwers of Piedmont were so enraged at Lombe's
success, and at the deception which had been practised upon them by the faithless
Englishman, that they dispatched a woman to Derby to gain Lombe's confidence,
and to administer a slow poison. In this she was successful, and her victim, after
lingering for two or three years in great agony, died at his home, Silk Mill House,
Derby, on 20 November 1722, and was according to Hutton buried with great
pomp at All Saints' Church, Derby, on the 28th, when thousands of people
attended the funeral. Hutton, who worked as a boy in the Old Silk Mill, related
that Lombe's share of the mill passed into the hands of his brother, William
(actually his cousin), who, being of a melancholy turn, shot himself. These
events took place before Hutton was born (though he gleaned much from his
grandfather) and his story must be received with some caution. It is likely that
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Lombe was actually buried in a mausoleum erected in a formal garden he had
created on an island in the Derwent called the Little Bye-Flatt; the structure
appears on Samuel Buck's East Prospect of Derby (1728) but later disappeared,
probably destroyed in a flood. Sir Thomas Lombe makes no allusion to his
brother's death in his petition to parliament for the renewal of his patent. John
Lombe's will was proved in London in July 1724. He was unmarried.
R. B. PROSSER, rev. MAXWELL CRAVEN, and SUSAN CHRISTIAN
Sources An old account of the pedigree etc. of our family, 1782, Norfolk RO, MS MC 257/59/22 T.
Lombe, A short account of the character and pedigree of Mr William Lombe, c.1745, Norfolk RO, MS
MC 257/59/22 GM, 1st ser., 9 (1739), 47 GM, 1st ser., 23 (1753), 541 T. Lombe, patent no. 422, 1718
V. Zonca, Novo teatro di machine ed edificii per varie et sicure operationi con le loro figure (1607) G.
Chicco, Il re e l'organzino: la filatura della seta in Piemonte nel sei-settecento, PhD diss., University of
Pisa, 1988 W. Wilson, letter to Samuel Lloyd, 2 Oct 1739, W. Yorks. AS, MS DB 32/44 W. Lombe,
letter to B. Willis, 4 Jan 1723, Norfolk RO, MS MC 257/59/20 [D. Defoe], A tour thro the whole island
of Great Britain, 3 vols. (17247) J. Hunter, Familiae minorum gentium, ed. J. W. Clay, 4 vols.,
Harleian Society, 3740 (18946), 134 W. Hutton, The history of Derby (1791), 196209 William
Wolley's history of Derbyshire, ed. C. Glover and P. Riden, Derbyshire RS, 6 (1981) A. Calladine,
Lombe's mill: an exercise in reconstruction, Industrial Archaeology Review, 16 (19934), 8299 W.
Cunningham, The growth of English industry and commerce, 2 vols. (189092) will, July 1724,
Norfolk RO, MS MC 257/59/22 [John Lombe] A. Rees, Silk, Cyclopedia, 39 vols. (181920) will of
Thomas Lombe, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/694, sig. 14
Archives Norfolk RO, MSS MC 257/59/22; MC 257/59/20 W. Yorks. AS, Bradford, MS DB 32/44
Wealth at death approx. 120,000: GM, 9 (1739), 47
Oxford University Press 200414 All rights reserved
R. B. Prosser and Susan Christian, Lombe, Sir Thomas (16851739), rev. Maxwell Craven,
Susan Christian, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004;
online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16955, accessed 17 July
2014]
Sir Thomas Lombe (16851739): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16955
John Lombe (c.16931722): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16955
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