Page 8 - Points, Pints & Longevity

Redditch Heritage Pots, Pints & Longevity

This brief examination shows, if nothing else, that if needle pointers could pull out of the
trade before too late they still had some expectation from life.

Fanny

To emphasise the importance of the extractor fan it is worthwhile quoting a few verses
published in the “Redditch Indicator” some time after the dispute.

From death's wormy neighbours
To guard us she labours
Our days to make mirthful and merry.
The death dust she scatters
Away on the waters
And gladdens the hearth stone does Fanny.

In years gone before us
Ere fair science bore us
This Maid of the Mill Stream so bonny
Our fathers too thickly
Fell victims too quickly
Through lacking the friendship of Fanny.

In the churchyard just yonder
They calmly lie under
The green sod so sacred and sunny.
Deaths "Twitter" was blinding-
Life's "Stone" stopt its grinding-
At noonday they fell without Fanny.

So here's to the ''Spindle''
The ''Tram'' and the ''Trundle''
And hearts that are buoyant and sunny-
The fiery-flare fringing-
The hoary hand singeing-
Befriended and guarded by Fanny.

In the 1850's an automatic pointing machine was invented and tradition has it that the
first one was purchased by the pointers and smashed on Chapel Green. However by the
1870's the needle pointer was almost a thing of the past. A modified pointers tram was
retained for special orders involving high grade polishing, and two of these, heavily
protected, were certainly in use for finishing surgical needles at Showells factory as late
as 1984. Today the 'dry grinders', and indeed their pubs, are only a memory.

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