Can someone please explain to me what exactly a stitcher did? I know that they sat at sewing machines and I think that they put the finishing touch to handkerchiefs but I would welcome a description from someone knowledgable. Many of the women in my family tree were stitchers. Several of them worked in a factory on the Grosvenor Road, beside or not far from a cinema (Coliseum? - not the Ritz or the Hippodrome).
Thanks in advance for your help!
One of the following companies may be a possibility, taken from the 1951 Lennon Wylie website street directory entry for Grosvenor Road, you can look at other years as well:
28-30. Grosvenor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.34-38. Victoria Hemstitching Works Ltd.40-44. Rowntree & Co. Ltd. (York) depot Coliseum Picture House ...here is Durham StreetThere was also
Hardy, T. L., & Co. Ltd., linen handkerchief manufacturers on the same side, further down at nos. 10-12.
http://www.lennonwylie.co.uk/gcomplete1951.htmThe 1960 directory entry for the Grosvenor Manufacturing Company added
'light clothing manufacturers'. Newspaper advertisements show that both the Grosvenor Manufacturing Company and the Victoria Hemstitching Works employed stitchers.
There was a large fire in the Victoria Hemstitching Works in 1946 and in the ensuing salvage sale, there were newspaper advertisements for '500 Pieces of Cotton Handkerchief Cloth, Quantity White and Coloured Handkerchiefs, more or less damaged as the result of the recent fire...'.
Many of the newspaper advertisements by the Victoria Hemstitching Works were specifically for punch stitchers / punch hemstitchers, ie. folk who could use a hemstitcher sewing machine to punch a hole in the fabric (separating the fibres, not breaking them) and, using two needles, to sew around the hole, thereby creating a decorative design of holes, for example, like the edging of a handkerchief.