The Arkwright Society
Richard Cavendish visits an historic mill in Derbyshire central to the Industrial Revolution.
When George III recovered his health in 1789, Sir Richard Arkwright put on put on a tremendous celebration at his Derbyshire factory at Cromford. An enormous sign was fastened up, saying in menacing capitals: REJOICE ALL MEN FOR THE KING LIVERTH. That night hundreds of mill hands went in a procession with torchbearers and a band to Sir Richard’s house, where loyal toasts were drunk in profusion.
When Sir Richard Arkwright told you to rejoice, rejoice you did. He was not a good man to cross. A self-made business genius, he was a pioneer of the factory system and one of the prime movers of the Industrial Revolution. A formidable portrait of him in his fifties by Wright of Derby shows a plump, paunchy figure, straddling a chair, with a big nose, shrewd little eyes and an expression of vigorous pugnacity. A touch of tough humour, too.
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