Wages book from Richard Arkwright and Company's Lumford Mill in Bakewell, Derbyshire

Sir Richard Arkwright's Lumford Mill cotton spinning opened in 1783 in the Derbyshire town of Bakewell. The machinery that powered the mill affected the fishing further downstream and interrupted the supply of water to a corn mill owned by the Duke of Rutland resulting in legal disagreements for decades.

The wages books for Lumford Mill are some of the earliest surviving records for any of the Richard Arkwright Company mills, and demonstrate the differentiation between types of workers, reflected in a wide variation in rates of pay. Some workers are grouped together by place of origin as "Youlgreave pickers" (Youlgreave is a nearby village) and the factory operated up to 24 hours a day, as the list of "Night Spinners" shows.