The solution of the difficulty was reserved for James Hargreaves, a weaver of Stanhill, near Blackburn, a town which had then about 5,000 inhabitants, many of whom were employed in making a kind of cloth known as "Blackburn gray." Hargreaves for several years was engaged in making improvements in the carding machines, which displaced the hand-cards then in use for clearing and straightening the cotton fibres preparatory to their being spun; but in 1765 he turned his attention to the mechanical operation for spinning yarn, and having matured his ideas, he had a machine secretly made in his house, where he afterwards used it to great advantage. The machine was subsequently called the spinning-jenny, and did for the spinner even more than the fly-shuttle did for the weaver. Several of these machines were soon privately sold to some of his neighbours, who were not slow to discover the immense advantages which they furnished. Of course, an invention like this could not long be kept secret, and when it became known that here was a machine by which one spinner, instead of working with one thread, could, with equal ease, work with sixteen or even twenty threads, and that henceforth much of the female labour at the spinning-wheel would no longer be wanted, the unreasoning and ignorant populace began to rise against it and its inventor. The result was that, on a fixed day, weavers from Darwen, Mellor, Tockholes and Oswaldtwistle met in Blackburn (where their numbers were greatly augmented), and from thence made their way to Hargreaves' house; but not finding the inventor at home, they broke to pieces the spinning-jenny, and totally destroyed the household goods and furniture. They then proceeded to a mill of Robert Peel's, where the jenny was used, and reduced the place to ruins. After this, Hargreaves fled to Nottingham, and in 1770 took out his first patent for the machine which may almost be said to be the foundation of the cotton trade. Like most other great inventors, Hargreaves did not make much money from his invention; but after a vain attempt to protect his patent, he settled down at Nottingham, and, in partnership with Thomas James, a joiner of the town, erected a small building which they ultimately used as a cotton factory, and which is believed to have been the first cotton mill in the world;[229] it was originally 40 feet long and 20 wide, and consisted of three stories. Hargreaves died at Nottingham in the spring of 1778.[230] Notwithstanding the working-man's opposition to the spinning-jenny, before 1771 it had been adopted by nearly every spinner in Lancashire. Riots against the "jenny" continued, however, for a time to break out in the neighbourhood of Blackburn for several years after Hargreaves' death.