MAGNIFICENT MOLDACOTS
Moldacot lock-stitch rotary sewing machine of
1885
Moldacots are my all-time favourite antique sewing machines and I have
the largest collection of them in the world.
Where do we start with this superb mechanical marvel, patented
in December 1885. The Moldacot burst onto our markets on July 17th
1886. Priced at 10/6 (about 50p or 75c) it took the sewing machine
market by storm. Described by the Financial News in glowing terms
"As the most useful invention of the century."
Within weeks the share issue was vastly over subscribed and
£100,000 poured in from investors hoping to make a killing with this
little gem. £100,000 was a vast sum in the Victorian era, when the
average weekly wage was a few shillings.
The advert read "The
Moldacot is a perfect lockstitch sewing machine that will take any
kind of material from the finest linen to the stoutest cloth."
Moldacot Sewing Machine Tins came in several
different colours.
Wow, was that an exaggeration! One of the reasons why this
ingenious machine fooled so many people was the fact that it was a
superbly engineered piece.
No stamped out piece of tin-plate this baby. And the idea was great, a
sewing machine that you could put in your pocket, wonderful.
" At last a machine well within the
reach of the classes" the papers of the day stated.
The reality was much further from the truth along with hair-loss
treatment and snake oil the Moldacot was a well engineered scam.
Now don't get me wrong they
are fantastic machines I have the largest collection of them in the
world but they just do not sew well at all. In fact
99% could hardly make a stitch except in trained and skilful hands.
Read on...
We are surrounded with questions about the Moldacots. In the centre
of our web are the almost invisible inventors A.D.Moll and J.C.Cottam.
From their names, we must assume that they were the beneficiaries of
the scam? What was their connection with S.Rosenthal, the main
inventor from Berlin?
I can't wait for the
Internet to develop so that I can track these people down.
Recent developments at the Smithsonian have
shown S. Rosenthal to be a woman named Sally. She was connected to a
later Moldacot patent application and another toy
machine called La Queen. La Queen sewing
machines, similar to the
Tabitha
sewing machine are very rare.
La Queen Sewing Machine courtesy of
Don Shepherd
Although little else has turned up
to date. Also the names of, C.J.Croft, F.Dowling, JJ.Robinson, and
J.Holroyd. Wm.Bown and F.S.Sharpe are all connected with other various
Moldacot patent applications.
This makes things as clear as London
pea soup.
Yet another patent application appears by Moll and Cottam in July
1886 when they applied for improvements to the Moldacot, mainly for
hand wheels that were later attached to the machines. However, they
were certainly not on the board of directors and no trace of them
turned up in the liquidation hearings. They seem to fade away into
history. Did they all run off together and live happily ever after in
a suburban semi-near Chelsea ?
The Moldacot bobbin and case are the smallest in the world!
Was the Moldacot bobbin and case from the
American Mitchell Patent of 1859, 26511?
The Moldacot offices were based at Bloomfield House London Wall and
58 Coleman Street London. The chairman Mr Arnold Pye Smith looked as
if he just sat by with the company secretary, Mr W.Irving whilst the
company fell apart around them. To begin with they blamed the
inability to manufacture the machines as the cause of their demise but
we later find that thousands may have
been produced.
It is a big may, considering how few have turned up and
how creative accounting is prone to exaggerate in failing
companies. Also taking into account the early floatation of the
company it is a very optimistic claim.
The possibility that 60,000 were produced is unlikely.
By now the company was
advertising itself as the
Moldacot Colonial & Foreign Pocket Sewing
Machine Company, Ltd.
One of the earliest
Moldacots to surface so far, serial No 348 in a leather deluxe box.
This is the only known example of the London Patent machine that I
have seen-pre hand-wheel with such a low serial number, now in my
collection.
There were at least three main manufacturers,
two in Britain and one in Germany, although
the German Company has yet to come to light. If you
know of the German manufacture please mail me I would love to find
out:
alexsussex@aol.com
The British companies
were J.Holroyd of Tomlinson Street Manchester, and W.M.Bown of
Brearley Street Birmingham. Surprisingly all these models have
the London stamp on them. However I am not ruling out a London
manufacturer turning up!
The machines sold
through a few retailers that did not normally stock sewing machines
like Stewart & Co of 249 Oxford Street, London. They also sold
watches, jewellery and fancy goods.
Within two years the company had shot to the stars and collapsed
into the fiery pits of liquidation, manufacturing only a fraction of
the 5,000,000 machines that the chairman had
originally promised. There was no need for
Singer's to panic anymore.
Over £50,000, the
equivalent of well over a million today,
of shareholders money disappeared in such things as manufacturing
costs and patent rights. Or did it?
Was this possibly a nice retirement for our
two inventors, Moll and Cottam? At a cost of 8 shillings to
manufacture (an unacceptably high amount seeing, as they were only
selling for 10s 6d and only later at 16s or $1.25) that would have
accounted for many thousands of the `lost` shareholders cash.
Eventually they were being cleared out for a third of the price.
No matter what was going on in the book-cooking department by 1888 the
then called United Sewing Machine Company collapsed. The
Surplus machines were auctioned off to try and pay some of the debts.
1888 was the year that the notorious Jack the Ripper stalked the
streets of London. Amazing to think that he would have walked near the
Moldacot
business. The newest Fleet Street daily, The Star newspaper was the
first daily tabloid to dramatise the murderous exploits of who they
originally called the Murder Maniac. It was only after the savage
murder of Mary Anne Nicholes that the Name Jack the Ripper was born.
It would be a name that would live on in infamy across the decades.
Thomas O'Connor, editor of The Star, was not interested in sewing
machines, he was interested in mass media sales and the murderous wave
of death by a crazed lunatic was just what he needed. All the daily papers would have been full of
the frenzied
attacks on Whitechapel prostitutes. And so little notice would
have been paid to the demise of the humble Moldacot.
Rumours
A few machines were sold to an South
American/Spanish firm and renamed Bonita,
(beautiful) probably as a novelty more than anything, these are
amongst the most sought after models and as rare as hens teeth. I
doubt if they were sold as working machines. All
the Bonita models have thinner name plates as if the old names were
simply ground off and then re-stamped Bonita and plated.
Also all
the Bonita machines were from Germany. Was the German plant getting
some of its money back by selling of bankrupt stock?
Years later some more
machines
were discovered in a disused warehouse.
The
Titanic
The strangest story of all, and quite
unlikely, is that a stock of Moldacots found stored in a building
about to be demolished several decades later in
1912, were sold to an American
entrepreneur. He then shipped them to the States aboard the ill-fated
Titanic only to disappear in a watery grave.
The New York based paper
the Sewing World noted; "The machine will not be remembered as
the magnificent, but more likely as the notorious Moldacot". The
London Times chipped in renaming it "The Mouldy Cat".
The real reason for Moldacots demise was very simple, the machine
did not sew well, it was temperamental and full of design flaws. It
was released onto the market before it was perfected. Perhaps the
pressure from the shareholders was so intense they rushed forward with
manufacture.
"I remember my father trying to get it to
work, he attached it to the kitchen table
and started his cursing!"
On studying the mechanism a few simple improvements would work
wonders, a take up spring to remove slack thread from the shuttle
area, an adjustable shaft to allow individual timing for each machine,
a stronger action on the foot to allow the work to feed better, bobbin
case tension springs and so on. It is easy for a sewing machine
engineer today to say this with a 120years of sewing machine
mechanisms to fall back on.
But the fact remains that Moll, Cottam and
Rosenthal seemed to stop at the final hurdle and never got it quite
right. Were they so pleased with the influx of money they became side
tracked, did they believe it was finished? I doubt it; after all, if
the machine were easily operated, there would have been public
exhibitions and displays; the public were more than willing to invest
in the company.
You can see that the price of this Moldacot was
now 16 shillings and was sold through a jewellers rather than a sewing
machine shop.
Problems
Any one who tries to operate a Moldacot soon discovers the
pitfalls; only with careful manipulation can you give the impression
of successful sewing. I know there is the odd one
that does sew okay but not the majority. This makes no odds to
collectors who treasure them for their rarity and workmanship.
At the company headquarters there were specially
trained girls that knew just how to sew with the machine and could
give a good impression of the machine. However, they would not allow
anyone else to have a go.
Were Moll and Cottam removed by greedy
businessmen who only realised too late they were still needed? The
truth is that we will probably never know.
What we do know is Moldacots turn up in an amazing variety of
different boxes, green, red, blue, cardboard and my favourite,
leather. On the side of
the metal tins were adverts for Horrockse's finest cotton.
Needles
were produced by Henry Milward & Son of Redditch. The machine used
a No1 tapered needle.
There is a brilliant needle
Museum in Redditch and well worth a visit if you are in the area.
The famous East End London matchmakers Bryant & May also made the
cardboard boxes with the metal strips on each corner. Bryant & May
still produce matches to this day under far stricter regulations.
Back
in Victorian London factories employed children. The sulphur and
chemicals gave rise to many illnesses. This was the London of Charles
Dickens and Jack the Ripper where a poor child's life was only
measured in their working ability. Dr Bernardo was so stunned on
passing through London that he stayed and helped the poor orphans
rather than go on with his journey.
Bryant & May made some of the rarest
Moldacot cardboard boxes
this isn't one of them!
Back to the Moldacots.
The machines themselves differ quite considerably, plungers,
hand wheels, closed and open (open being the more popular amongst
collectors), many different stampings on the plates and other parts,
crowns anchors, moons and crosses.
A rare leather Moldacot sewing machine box now
in my collection
The rarest of the Moldacots (but
not the most sought after at present) did not have a hand wheel at
all. Although you have to be careful that someone has not just removed
the hand assembly. You
will note there are no mounting holes on the side of a genuine
non-hand-wheel Moldacot, also a single thread guide wire hole and no
quick release for the bobbin case. This is easy for an expert to see.
Hand
Wheels
After the
first year of manufacturing all Moldacots, both German and British,
had the holes in the side regardless of being supplied with a hand
wheel or not.
The
hand-wheels, in open or closed form, were an optional extra priced at
2/- and 3/-(shillings). The machine can operate without the optional extra
but it was a nice little earner for the company to sell the different
hand wheels after the original purchase.
Some Moldacots survive
complete without the hand-wheel, some early models not even having the
mounting holes for the extra assembly. These are the rarest and most
collectible of all the Moldacots.
You will note,
if you have a Moldacot, in its original tin, that the instructions on
the tin make no mention of the additional hand-wheel, just the plunger
operation. Also it is almost impossible to cram a Moldacot with a hand
wheel into the tin. It makes me wonder if the tins were made in one go
at an earlier date by one manufacturer.
Bobbins
From serial No
1 to 11,000 the bobbin case was pushed out of the sewing machine with a pointed object. Tricky
and frustrating as I always drop the bobbin and case. After 11,000 production modifications and the 1886 Isaac Patent allowed the bobbin
case to be removed with
an extra hinged locking bar which was far easier. It saves me bending
over to pick up the bobbin and case as well!
One other
technical point to note is that the British Moldacots had an extra
hole in the side to push in the bobbin winder stem which acted to set the needle to the
correct height. The German ones did not have this very useful feature.
I wonder why?
This fascinating piece of paper tells a real
story. Notice the discount from 16 shillings down to 3/6! A massive
discount to clear stock ASAP!
All the different markings on
the machines may lend some credence to the chairman’s report stating
the original difficulties they had in securing reliable manufacturers.
Were they hoping that the manufactures would sort out the fine-tuning?
Whatever the truth there is no doubt a lot more will come to light
about the machine.
In effect, what do we have? One of the most
sought-after small sewing machines
of all time, collected by toy and full sized sewing machine
enthusiasts, treasured by other collectors as well for its superb
design.
With a little more effort it could have become a fine sewing
machine carried by seamstresses and tailors in their pockets all over
the world. Instead, the Moldacot disappeared for over a century to
reappear as a unique collectors item.
The quality of construction of this little masterpiece is what
makes it stand out so much.
Scam or no scam in 1886 the Moldacot was
greeted by an excited Victorian public as the perfect pocket
portable.
Values
Made so long
ago and now so rare Moldacots come up now and again. All depends on
condition. For example one missing a part is practically useless as
you will probably not find a spare part for a machine made in
1886!
All serious
collectors have a Moldacot or two in their collection some like me have
many. They reflect an historic time in our history.
Perfect Moldacots have fetched well over $1,300 so if you see
one going cheap grab it while you can they will only get scarcer,
rarer and more valuable as time goes by.
The most
valuable Moldacot you'll ever find will be in a leather case, Stamped
Patent, London, very low serial number and no hand wheel. plunger
only, no mounting holes for one and no release catch for the bobbin
case. I have only come across two in 30 years of searching.
Elvis has left
the building!
The End
Written by
Alex I Askaroff
©
I do hope you
enjoyed the Moldacot history, It has taken many years to compile. Do drop me a line
and let me know: alexsussex@aol.com
Alex I Askaroff
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