How did the working conditions of both the pointers and the scourers change during the nineteenth century?
Scourers and pointers were two very different jobs in a needle mill, but they both were changed greatly over the course of the nineteenth century by the improvement of working conditions and the introduction of new equipment, even though this did not go down too well it changed the jobs of pointers and scourers for the better.
The pointers job was to hold the unpainted needles to a circular grinning-stone that was rotating at high speed. This would cause the needle to wear down in a specific place thereby making the needles pointy. Unfortunately this process was very dangerous as there was a lot of metal dust floating around an poisonous gases from the metal swell, also if the grinding-stone was an old one then when a needle hit a dint the whole stone would explode and kill the pointer and anyone who happened to be particularly close. Another possible danger was that of small pieces do needle flying off from the main mass of the needle ands striking the pointer in the eye, thus blinding him and ending in redundancy from work, after all a blind pointer is of no use. As you would expect pointers were the most highly paid workers in a mill but this was because of all the danger and the fact that the metal dust is so derogatory to ones health. There is an explanation, in The History of a Needle by Edgar R.S. Bartlett in the 1890's, of pointers rot. It was from a doctor his patient complained of having what felt like "a hard ball of something in his windpipe". The doctor was not convinced but the pointer asked to be examined on his death. When he was examined there was a "solid mass of steel and stone dust ago the size of a blackbird’s egg in his windpipe", his lungs were ales "so encrusted in steel that a knife would scarcely pierce them". This was most undoubtedly caused by the fact of being a pointer. Because of this pointers rarely lived past thirty-five.
