Description:
One of two prints depicting the processing of hemp (Cannibis sativa); an illustration from the Universal Magazine (1756), depicting "The Manner of Dressing of Hemp/ Engraved for the Universal Magazine for J. Hinton in Newgate Street." In this image reading from right to left: five men at a table are taking long strands of hemp fibers and placing them through successively finer heckles to remove any debris or rough outer coating. Two boys in the foreground place the finish hemp fibers on the floor in a mound. A heckle and a mound of hemp fibers are on the left hand side on the floor. For its valuable fiber hemp (Cannibis sativa) was largely cultivated in Europe, but chiefly in Russia and Poland, for use in cordage and canvas cloth. It undergoes the same process for decomposing the parts of the stem as flax, called water-retting, by which the cellular tissue of the bark and medulla is destroyed, and the long fibres of the woody part are set free. This is not done by simply soaking in the waters of ponds and streams, for it requires to be dried both previously and subsequently to the retting process; after which it is beaten with wooden beetles or mallets, or by an apparatus called a break or brake worked by a treddle. Sometimes, however, this laborious operation is effected by water or steam-power. After breaking the stalks are conveyed to the scutching-mills, where the separation of the fibres is still further effected by rubbing and striking, after which it is heckled or hackled - the heckler taking as much as he can conveniently hold and drawing it through a number of iron spikes fixed in a board forming a kind of comb. The process called dew-retting is also adopted for very fine varieties of hemp, such as the white crown Marienburg, and the Italian garden hemp; and in Russia and Sweden another method called snow-retting is used. After the first fall of snow the hemp which has been put up in stacks is spread out over the snow, and left to be buried by successive falls. It thus remains covered until the snow disappears, and is then sufficiently retted. Once the fibers have been sufficiently cleaned and straightened it is time to spin the fibers into thread to make cloth.
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