Wage cup
Caption
Quarry Bank near Manchester is one of the best-preserved textile mills of the Industrial Revolution. Founded by the Greg family in 1784, by the 1860s it was the headquarters of one of the largest cotton-manufacturing businesses in the world. Records show there were more than 400 millworkers at Quarry Bank, and simple wooden or tin cups like these would have been used on a Friday to collect their weekly wages. A working day at Quarry Bank could last 14½ hours, with perhaps 90 minutes of breaks. While many roles in the cotton industry had fixed hourly wages, weavers were paid different amounts each week – known as ‘piece rate’ – according to the amount and quality of cloth they had produced. Pay also depended on experience and the number of machines a person could run. A proportion of wages was deducted for cottage rents and purchases in the mill-owned shop. Poor working conditions – with noisy machinery and air filled with cotton dust – could also be detrimental to workers’ health, so a percentage of wages went into a ‘sick club’, formed in 1817.
Summary
A collection of two wooden wage cup trays and 99 wage cups/tins (50 shown here)