42655: Life and Times of Jimmy ‘Tod’ Macdonald

Jimmy Tod Macdonald, native of Habost, played a significant and sometimes controversial role in the development of the Harris Tweed industry.

James Macdonald, a crofter’s son from Habost, Lochs had a profound influence on the life of the Island of his birth in his day. He was prominent among those who were responsible for changing the course of the small Harris Tweed Industry of his youth. By campaigning vigorously for the amendment of the definition of the hand-spun Harris Tweed trademark he laid the foundation for a unique cottage industry which has been able to hold it’s own on a world-wide scale.

The immediate benefits resulting from the amending of the definition in 1934 was to arrest the drift of the weaving of the cloth into the spinning mills, which had already taken place to a large extent. Also, because of the increase in the production of Harris Tweed after the amendment, the cottage home weaving helped to retain the population in the Island in the lean years between the world wars.

Born at 9 Habost in 1885, he was the sixth child of a family of nine children born to Alastair Hamish Macdonald and Bella Macdonald. Educated at the village primary school at Ravenspoint, Kershader, to the age of 14 years, which was the leaving age at that time. Then he went to work at Manor Farm, Stornoway. Later he joined the herring fishing fleet as was customary for young Lewismen at that time.

Early in the 20th century the family moved to croft 1 Habost and at the outbreak of the 1st World War he joined the Royal Navy while still a teenager. He served as a petty officer and was later elevated to mate of a ship in the trawler section of the navy where he remained until the end of the hostilities. Three members of his father’s family served in the 1st World War as follows; Calum was a sergeant in the Cameron’s where he served for six years. First of all in India before coming to the Western Front where he was killed in action in Belgium in May 1915 at the age of 28 years, Neil, like James served in the Royal Navy.

After the war James continued at sea for a while before taking up work ashore in the Edinburgh area. While he was there he responded to an advertisement for work as a commercial traveller for a large firm of wholesale provision merchants known as J & J Tod Ltd, of Leith, which was owned by the millionaire Gilbert Archer. Having secured the agency for J & J Tod which covered the whole of Lewis and Harris, James turned his boundless energy to making a success of the job.

From then on James was affectionately known as “Jimmy Tod” and the partnership of James Macdonald and Gilbert Archer was to have a profound influence on the history of Harris Tweed and indeed the history of the Outer Hebrides. Back in Stornoway James started work with a bicycle visiting the shops etc., but soon he owned a car and his success convinced his employers that the potential in the area justified the building of new purpose built premises for the sale of wholesale provisions and feeding stuff.

The new Stornoway branch of J & J Tod was opened on the corner of Francis Street and Kenneth Street with James Macdonald as manager. The business prospered for decades until the village shops began to close owing to competition from the travelling shops and multiple stores. Eventually the firm withdrew and sold their premises to the Stornoway Gazette Ltd., who continue to use the building without any major change in the structure of the building to this day.

During the early years of James Macdonald at Lochs, the district was the main area in Lewis for the manufacture of Harris Tweed, but changes began to take place before the 1st World War. The age-old method of hand carding and hand spinning was tedious and slow, and in the early 20th century (about 1902) small carding machines were set up in Stornoway and Harris as well as the practice by crofters of sending their wool to mainland mills for carding only.

It was a small step for the crofters to ask the mainland mills to spin their wool as well as card it and that was what happened in the 1st decade of the 20th century. Then, before the end of the 1st decade of the 20th century a spinning plant was set up in Stornoway, ostensibly in order to card and spin the crofters own wool, because by this time almost every family in Lochs and elsewhere manufactured at least one roll of tweed from their own wool every year.

The temptation to buy mill spun yarn, whether from the mainland or Stornoway depended on the market as well as the quality and price of the yarn. The market for the cloth was improving and so more and more mill spun yarn was being used. After a while the Stornoway spinner became a manufacturer of tweed in its own right, and was in a position to compete with the age-old cottage industry.

Many felt that mill spun yarn, whether mainland or Hebridean was a threat to the genuine age old hand spun product of the cottage industry on the islands. The next move was the process of registering a trademark in order to protect the hand spun Hebridean cottage industry from both mill spun as well as power woven imitation Harris Tweed. The possibility of a Harris Tweed trademark was first raised about 1906 but it was 1911 before the “Orb” communal trademark was registered and ready for application to hand spun Harris Tweed made in the Hebrides of Scotland.

From then on two kinds of Harris Tweed was produced and marketed from the Hebrides. One of them qualified for the registered communal Orb trademark, while the other kind was similar but manufactured from mill spun yarn.

By the 1920s fairly large quantities of mill spun yarn was used for the manufacture of Harris Tweed in the Islands, both mainland and Hebridean spun. Most of the production of Tweed was by the more enterprising crofters as well as the merchants which were usually referred to as “small producers” in order to distinguish between them and the Hebridean mill spinning manufacturers. Production of unstamped Harris Tweed soared in the 1920s but as it was not stamped there is no record of the yardage produced.

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