Metal pins are said to have been introduced into this country from France
in the fifteenth century: as an article of commerce they are not
mentioned in our statutes until the year 1483. Before this date, we are
told that ladies were accustomed to fasten their dresses by means of
skewers of boxwood, ivory, or bone; this statement has been doubted, but
we are assured that, to this day, the Welsh use as a pin the thorn from
the hedge.
Stow assigns the first manufacture of metal pins in England to the year
1543; and they seem to have been then so badly made that in the
thirty-fourth year of King Henry VIII. (1542-3), Parliament enacted that
none should be sold unless they be "double-headed, and have the headdes
soudered faste to the shanke of the pynne." In short, the head of the
pin was to be well smoothed, the shank well shapen, and the point well
rounded, filed, canted, and sharpened. The Act of Parliament, however,
appears to have produced no good effect, for in the thirty-seventh year
of the same reign it was repealed.
The manufacture of pins was introduced into several towns of Great
Britain by individuals who, in some cases, are called the inventors of
the article. The pin-makers of former days seem to have been a body
somewhat difficult to please, of whom Guillim, in his _Display of
Heraldry_, writes:--"The Society of Pinmen and Needlers, now ancient, or
whether incorporated, I find not, but only that, in the year 1597, they
petitioned the Lord Treasurer against the bringing in of foreign pins
and needles, which did much prejudice to the calling." The Pinners'
Company was incorporated by Charles I. in 1636; the Hall is on part of
the ancient Priory of the Augustine, or Austin Friars; it has been,
since the reign of Charles II., let as a Dissenting meeting-house: it is
in Pinners'-hall-court, Old Broad-street.
The manufacture of pins formed early a lucrative branch of trade. Sixty
thousand pounds, annually, is said to have been paid for them to foreign
makers, in the early years of Queen Elizabeth; but, as we have seen,
long before the decease of that princess, they were manufactured in this
country in great quantities; and in the time of James I., the English
artisan is regarded to have "exceeded every foreign competitor in the
production of this diminutive, though useful article of dress."
Pennant, in his description of old London Bridge, states that "most of
the houses were tenanted by pin or needle makers, and economical ladies
were wont to drive from the St. James's end of the town to make cheap
purchases." But Thomson, in his minute _Chronicles of London Bridge_,
does not mention pin-makers among the trades common on the bridge;
haberdashers, who came here _late_ from the Chepe, however, sold pins.
Yet vast quantities of early pins have been recovered from the Thames
near the site of the old Bridge. In 1864, Mr. Burnell exhibited to the
British Archæological Association fifteen brass pins, varying in length
from one inch and three-eighths to five inches and a half, stated to
have been found on the paper on which they now are, in a cellar on the
northern bank of the Thames, in excavating for the foundations of the
South-Eastern Railway bridge. Most, if not all, of these pins have solid
globose heads. At the same meeting, Mr. Syer Cuming exhibited two brass
pins recovered from the mud of the Thames some years since. One is
little less than two inches and a half in length, the other full seven
inches and three-quarters long. The heads of both are formed with spiral
wire; the shortest being globose, the other somewhat flattened. Mr.
Cuming stated that quantities of such early pins as those then produced
have been found in and along the banks of the river, some of them
measuring upwards of a foot in length. These great pins may have been
employed in securing the wide-spreading head-dresses of the Middle Ages,
and fastening the ends of the pillow-case, a use not quite obsolete in
the time of Swift, who speaks of "corking pins," for this purpose, in
his _Directions to Servants_.
For some time after their introduction pins must have been costly, for
we find that they were acceptable New Year's gifts to ladies, and that
presents of money were made for buying pins; whence money set apart for
the use of ladies received the name of _pin-money_.
In France, three centuries ago, there was a tax for providing the queen
with pins; from whence the term of _pin-money_ has been, undoubtedly,
applied by us to that provision for married women, with which the
husband is not to interfere. In Bellon's _Voyages_, 1553, we
read:--"Quand nous donnons l'argent a quelque chambrière, nous _disons
pour ses épingles_."
Pins must soon have been made and sold at a very cheap rate, to justify
the common remark, "Not worth a pin," and equivalent expressions in some
of our early writers, such as Tusser:
"His fetch is to flatter, to get what he can;
His purpose once gotten, a _pin_ for thee than."
Pins are of various sizes, from the blanket-pin, three inches in length,
to the smallest ribbon-pins, of which 300,000 only weigh one pound.
Insect-pins, used by entomologists, are of finer wire than ordinary
pins, and vary in length from three inches to a size smaller than
ribbon-pins. It has been calculated that ten tons of pins are made every
week in England alone, requiring from fourteen to fifteen tons of
brass-wire.
"What becomes of all the pins?" a question every day asked, received an
answer, a few years since, upon the opening of an old sewer for repair,
in Rea-street, Birmingham. At the bottom of it was a deposit as hard as
the "slag" from a blast furnace, and in this deposit a vast number of
pins were embedded: a piece about the size of a man's fist bristled with
them, and this was but a specimen of a great mass of such matter. In
another way, too, the deposit was a curiosity; for, independently of the
pins, it inclosed a heterogeneous collection of old pocket-knives,
marbles, buttons, &c.
Anciently, there were local springs, known as _Pin Wells_, in passing
which the country maids dropped into the water a crooked pin to
propitiate the fairy of the well. In some places, rich and poor believed
this superstition.