Batley deserves credit for the development of shoddy and mungo cloth - Yorkshire Post Letters

Well done to Andrew Vine, in his column on October 3, for encouraging us all to promote Yorkshire's rich industrial heritage.

However, let's give credit where it is due. His article suggests Dewsbury was a pioneer of recycling with its contribution to the development of shoddy and mungo cloth, a process of combining woollen rags with new wool fibres to make a much cheaper cloth.

That honour goes to the neighbouring town of Batley. Here Benjamin Law and his brother in law, Benjamin Parr, were the ones that invented shoddy.

Together, in secret and over several years, they purchased rags from all over the country, developed the machinery necessary to grind rags to the required standard and experimented with the relative quantities of new and used fibres needed to weave a usable cloth.

The secret came out around 1813 when local lads found bundles of Tam o' Shanter hats from Scotland in Parr's mill yard. They could not resist showing them off in the local street which caused questions to be raised and the story of Law and Parr's invention became public knowledge.

That was the start of Batley's rise from a mere hamlet to an ever expanding textile town. 'From rags to riches' as it has been called.