'Sometimes, a metal sliver may fly into his eye. Occasionally, the pointing stone will cause a fatal injury': The dangerous but well-paid world of needle making

The Searchers sang about them in the Swinging Sixties, Jane Austen used them with as much professionalism and sharp observation as she did a quill pen and countless people have searched for them in haystacks — usually fruitlessly.

Needles captured Shakespeare’s attention, with Helena intrinsically linking them to friendship in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As a needle joins stitches and attaches them to material elements, so she says: ‘We Hermia, like two artificial gods,/Have with our needles created both one flower,/Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion.’ Slight, svelte, invariably shiny and pin sharp (note not ‘needle sharp’, for in a linguistic slight the eyeless pin has somehow out-pointed the needle), needles have, throughout history, punched above their weight.

They can pierce through fabric and flesh and are adept at taking on a diverse range of tasks, from creating clothing to tattooing and drawing blood; they deliver medication (or worse); they are used to make sutures in all kinds of creatures; they are a key tool of the acupuncturist; and they give sound to singles spinning on record players. Where would we be without a needle — made up simply of a shaft, an eye and a point — to prise out a deeply embedded thorn from a sore finger?

Our ancestors understood the power of needles and were using them at least 50,000 years ago, no doubt to unite various animal hides in the earliest examples of cave couture. The oldest needle fragment, made of bird bone and discovered in 2016 in Siberian Russia’s remote Denisova Cave, has been dated to the Palaeolithic period. This was aeons before one of the latest developments, the ‘modern’ sewing machine needle — with a plump, rounded shank and front groove that set it apart from the hand-held needle — was even a twinkle in designer Thomas Saint’s eye. (The term ‘modern’ is used loosely, for Saint’s first sewing machine design appeared in 1790.)

Worcestershire’s Redditch, famous in recent times for its designation as a new town (in 1964) and the butt of comedian Jasper Carrott’s jokes about the inescapability of its ring road, was once something more formidable — the needle-making capital of the world.

Documents show William Lee making the slender spikes in Studley, a satellite village, in 1639, with small-scale producers subsequently proliferating, until the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the‘dark satanic mills’ of William Blake’s poem, with brutal work practices and unceasing production.

In Hard Times, Charles Dickens writes of the rattle and tremble of the windows caused by the machines running ‘all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness’.

By 1869, Forge Mill was one of 116 mills in Redditch. The former iron forge turned to needle-making and scouring/polishing in the 1730s and only fell silent in 1958, after which it was transformed into a museum. Today, it’s tranquil. The half-dozen visitors meander, sit at the picnic tables with ice cream or browse the well-stocked gift shop.

As a keen, but time-deprived hand-sewing curtain-maker, I can’t resist a teal-coloured pack of ‘general needles’, assembled and inspected on nearby Washford Industrial Estate by 186-year-old firm John James Needles, a rare survivor.

A couple of sightseers have found their way into the three-storey, red-brick museum and are reading placards that recall how this building once thrummed with ceaseless toil.

Firstly, coils of Sheffield steel wire would be drawn through a series of diminishing holes, until, slim enough, the wire would be cut about 30,000 times, each time into the length of two needles, point to point, these conjoined twins heading through the factory together. Next, a bunch of some 15,000 wires would be heated, rolled and straightened before they made a beeline for the pointing process — a job fraught with danger.

Jo-Ann Gloger, curator, is explaining the many processes of needle-making (there are 30 stages in all) and listening to her is not unlike tuning in to Aggers delivering a cricket masterclass for the BBC. She knows her stuff. ‘To point the wires, the worker would press them hard against the grindstone and roll them,’ she elaborates. ‘Then, he would flip the wire over and point the other side, all in less than 30 seconds. Because he’s dry grinding, the metal dust goes into his lungs and causes silicosis or “pointer’s rot”. Within two or three years, he'll be coughing up blood and, by the age of about 35, he’ll be dead. Sometimes, a metal sliver may fly into his eye, blinding him. Occasionally, the pointing stone will fracture and cause a fatal injury, the fate that befell Edward Matthews in 1816. It was pretty horrific, but they were very well paid because it was so dangerous.’

The next stage saw a fly press stamp out the two eyes, with outworkers trimming away the excess metal left by the weighty drop hammer. The conjoined pair of needles was then split in two and sent to a hardener, who heated them to 800˚C until they glowed cherry red, at which point they were plunged into whale oil for quenching. Reheated to 200˚C and left to cool slowly to temper their brittleness, the needles were then scoured/polished before finally being tucked into folded paper packets.

‘This is the only water-powered needle-scouring mill left in the entire world,’ reveals Gloger proudly, adding that the process she has just detailed remains ‘very similar today. They’ve simply mechanised it more extensively. At its height, this mill was scouring something like three million needles per week. Early needles were really treasured because they were expensive, but, when machines were introduced, they became cheaper. In the 1880s, they cost just 1/d a packet.’

Armed with this fascinating knowledge, I head from the gloom of the former mill into the sunshine of the tranquil museum garden. ‘Any more questions?’ asks Gloger. I do have one, but I think she might baulk at being asked whether it is at all plausible that a camel — a diminutive one, certainly — could pass through the eye of a needle.

Visit the Forge Mill Needle Museum website for more information.

This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.