Probably few, if any, women became members of the Company of Gold Wire Drawers, and henceforward they were employed only as spinners. Their poverty is shown by the frequency with which they are mentioned as inmates of tenement houses, which through overcrowding became dangerous to the public health. It was reported to the Council for example, that Katherine Barnaby “entertayns in her house in Great Wood Streate, divers women kinde silver spinners.”[290] Footnote 290: _S.P.D._, ccclix., Returns to Council ... of houses, etc., 1637. These poor women worked in the spinning sheds of their masters, and thus the factory system prevailed already in this branch of the textile industry; the costliness of the fabrics produced forbade any great expansion of the trade, and therefore the Masters were not obliged to seek for labour outside the pauper class. The Curate, Churchwardens, Overseers and Vestrymen of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, drew up the following statement: “There are in the said Parish, eighty five sheds for the spinning Gilt and Silver Thread, in which are 255 pair of wheels.” The Masters with their Families amount unto 581 These imploy poor Parish-Boys and Girls to the 1275 number of There are 118 master Wire-Drawers, who with their 826 wives, Children and Apprentices, make Master weavers of Gold and Silver Lace and Fringes 106 Their Wives, Children, Apprentices and Journey Men 2120 amount unto Silver and Gold Bone-Lace makers, and Silver and 1000 Gold Button makers with their Families Windsters, Flatters of Gold and Silver and Engine 300 Spinners with their Families ──── Total 6208 They continue: “The Poor’s Rate of the Parish amounts to near Four Thousand Pounds per annum.... The Parish ... at this present are indebted One Thousand Six Hundred and Fifty Pounds. Persons are daily removing out of the Parish, by Reason of this heavy Burthen, empty Houses increasing. If a Duty be laid on the manufacture of Gold and Silver wyres the Poor must necessarily be increased.”[291] Footnote 291: _Case of the Parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate._ Such a statement is in itself proof that Gold and Silver Thread making ranked among the pauper trades in which the wages paid must needs be supplemented out of the poor rates. E. CONCLUSION.