Thimble Throwing

An extract from the book 40 Humourous British Traditions

In the mills of Lancashire, sewing fabric together with a thread from each new bale of cotton from North America was very important. In this way, the owners could determine how strong the cotton was and so they employed professional sewers for this reason. The sewers were issued with a new thimble every six months to protect their fingers from the needles.

If the sewer lost their thimble they had to pay for a new one, so there was a tendency to share the thimbles. In order to save time, thimbles were thrown from sewer to sewer. Some throws were more accurate than others, which led to thimble throwing contests on the annual works day out to Blackpool. This was first recorded in 1862 and the Thimble Throwing contest has taken place every year since then on July 5^th.