The spinning jenny really caught my imagination.

There were very few Jennifer's in my school and none in my family. Numbers do not lie. Jennifer was not a popular name.

I was always on the look out for reasons that my name - pronounced Jenny-fur in south Manchester and very differently to Jen-if-fa in north Manchester - wasn't a universal sign that I was a minority, outsider, destined always to be be a misfit.

During primary school there was a whole term focused on the industrial revolution and I think it was the first time I really started to enjoy school lessons. The spinning jenny caught my attention - a machine that reduced work and increased output. How delightful! Why would people not welcome that? I would definitely not be a luddite, I'd welcome all productivity hacks to work less hours and have more time for adventure. I decided to rebrand myself and embrace change starting with my name. Jennie Hannah.

The design of the spinning jenny by one man James Hargreaves and iterated by others had kickstarted an industrial revolution that changed the world and put my home city Manchester on the world map. Cottonopolis nurtured the factory system - a system that had employed my mum and some of her sisters in the 60s and 70s. Less so in the 1980s when I was at said school.

I knew my mum was a dab hand on the sewing machine whether it was tailored jackets or curtains. The fabrics that were laid out, pinned and stitched up in our house were a marvel to watch her transform. At speed. Occasionally sewing a finger into the lining. Her speed was exceptional. Little did I know then that mums speed had not always been welcome when quality management teams were measuring time and output against Margaret M's efficiency rates. Paid per quality garment, output and high standards meant hard cash.

The peoples history and politics of cotton weaving machines that reshaped jobs in the 1700s were still impacting the world then. Highlighted below is a building still visible in Manchester today. I estimate that I had driven past this building with my parents two hundred plus times before I first heard this story in 2022...

'Mary and I worked in that building in. There were employers on every floor. If you were a good machinist you could walk out of work on one floor and get a job with a different firm on another floor and start the next day. In 1979 we all finished work one Friday and when we returned on the Monday the whole building was empty. Not a machine or an boss in sight. Rumour had it all the machines had been sold to where there was cheaper labour. And it turned out that our employer was not paying our stamps so there was no income support when they disappeared. It was a tough time that period'.

Where did those machines go? Which workers were on the books? This was a different information era where paper documentation was easily lost and destroyed.

Do you know how the spinning jenny got the name? Well there is more myth and legend about it than documented hard facts. Some believe that jenny is Lancastrian dialect for engine. Others believe that it was not James Hargreaves that invented the machine but in fact another fellow who was married to a Jenny and named the machine after her.

As a regular walker through Quarry Bank Mill I often see school children visiting Styal. Classes visit from all over because Quarry Bank Mill - as featured in The Mill on the BBC - has a functioning water mill and operational textile machines. Recently I listened to school teacher telling a class that we are in the middle of an other industrial revolution and the future of work is about to change again with Artificial Intelligence. It reminded me that I have a few things to share about industry and machines whilst they are fresh in my mind.

Here's a bloody awful image of me outside the Ship Inn in Style - note the writing on the door. Who doesn't love a bit of local history when you are out in public houses?

Jenx