Yes David, the phrase "on tenterhooks" for a person anxious for a result does come from the old days of bleaching & dyeing. The fabric was hung to dry, like a tent, on metal hooks called "Tenterhooks", the idea being to let the air get to both sides at once. Many years ago fabric - in small handloom days- would have been slung over a handy bush or tree too. There were lots of handloom, cottage weavers in the Westhoughton area it seems, a bunch of them burned the first Mill built in Westhoughton and got hanged/transported for it. Didn't help as from then on nobody would chance building another so the Cotton boom passed WH by, leaving it dependent on the Pits for local industry. When they played out us wor' snookered! Though much of Lancashire is now in the same boat, even in the Sixties when I worked in the mill the Industry was on its way down the Swanee. When I was young you couldn't look out of a window in our house (in Shaw, near Oldham) without seeing a mill chimney, in fact three or four! All the mills near us however are now housing estates! Only one I know of is still open and working, in Steam too, the Ellenroad of Milnrow, and it is in fact (Though it belongs to Coates Lorilleux) a curiosity kept steaming by hobby enthusiasts. Yes, it is amazing how skills disappear; at one time for instance a Mill Engineer, who would probably be in charge of the "Engine Tenters", was a "reet proper nob", hoo 'ad letters after't name". Wore immaculate blue overalls and a fob watch, when I worked in one. Spinners, Carders, Winders etc. were actually machine minders, more of a technical trade than you might think as the yarn was extremely fragile and snapped at a harsh look. As I think I said my Mother could manage 40 "ends" in her heyday! Some were named after the particular machine or "frame" they used, Mum was a Ring Spinner, my maternal Great-Grandma was a "Throstle Spinner", the device was named a "throstle", the old dialect word for a thrush, from its squeaking as it ran. There were also Beamers, which wound onto what was in effect a massive cottonreel, thick as a telegraph pole, six or seven feet long and with cast iron ends. "Packers", of which I was one, were another trade, getting the tubes or bobbins of yarn into cases or "skips" for transport. You might find "bobbin lad" somewhere too, that was the lad who kept the frames on three floors supplied with new empty bobbins, cones or tubes, and took away the full ones. My mate Jackie Eccleston used to go through some shoe leather on that job! I think "engine tenter" as in "looker-after" or "minder", might have been a distortion of "engine Tender", a Lancashire accent is hard to manage phonetically?! As you may have gathered from my attempts! Yon educated fowk in owden days often didn't understand proper, and thi put down what thi thowt thi 'eard. "Overlooker" was another term for what we'd call a Supervisor nowadays. That was another high status "trade"! I actually know how Lanky sounds as my Nannas and Grandads, and the older people I used to work with in the Mill, all talked like that; but the old dialect, like the skills, is rapidly vanishing. It varies, by the way; Bolton, where I now live, has a completely different sound to Oldham where I grew up! Your name, Greenhalgh, as you doubtless know, is a wellknown one in this area, there are loads, I think it might have originated in the Rossendale-Ramsbottom area. My Winterbottoms come, I think, from Royton, while my Mum's Exleys are originally from Yorkshire, Holmfirth of Last of the Summer Wine fame! Moved to Lancs when the cotton boom started. The Nightsoil would have been the same thing, I guess, as the dogmuck; but hadn't heard of anyone collecting them! Though I have heard weary stories of horsemuck from my Grandad, when he was a kid in the early 1900s they abounded and one of his "duties" was running behind the horse tram with a shovel to get the byproduct for his Dad's roses! He also apparently had a pleasant little trick; in the days of the thumb latch, pre-the Yale lock, of putting a drawingpin on the latch with a blob of horsemuck. The hapless inhabitant would let himself in, get stabbed in the thumb and go "Ouch!", then suck his thumb...pleasant soul, me Grandad was! His other little gem was to tie the doorknobs together on opposite sides of the street with the clothesline, then knock on both doors and watch the fun as both sides tried to get their doors open at once, each of course yanking the other one shut as he did so. How he survived to father my Dad I will never know! Tarra, Ian . Not sure but I think "tenting" and similar terms had to do with outdoor > bleaching crofts and the phrase of someone being "on tenterhooks" derives > somehow from that. But "tenter" seems to have been used for a "looker-after", "carer", "minder" in almost any part of the cotton trade - certainly there seem to be quite a lot of "engine tenters" in the census records. Most of my aunts/uncles (well really my mother's aunts/uncles, and she had lots) were in the industry in Ramsbottom and Rossendale as spinners, weavers etc but now it seems so hard to get first-hand information about it. Amazing what knowledge can be lost in just a couple of generations!! > > And I seem to remember reading something about people going out collecting > dog turds but couldn't begin to speculate on how that differs from > "nightsoil".