Rag grinding machine
Willy 'Ole Lad
This is another of Keith Marsden’s Morley Opus, this one about a father giving his daughter advice about marrying a 'Willey Hole Lad', a young lad who tended a willeying machine, and one of the lowest paid jobs in the shoddy and textile industry. The ‘Willeyer’ was the machine operator who loaded the rags and woolens, after they had been sorted and scoured, into the rag grinding machine.
The machine separates and breaks up the matted fibre, shakes out the dirt and other impurities, when they've been cleaned and ground, the rags and woolens have to be spread on the floor and sprinkled with oil, before the second willeying process called ‘teasing’ take place.
The cleaned and ground rags are then fed into a ‘teaser machine’, which tears them up by passing them a series of teeth covered rollers.
Before the fibres can be either spun or woven they have to go through two further processes called scribbling and carding.
