READING Ron Freethy's article (LET, February 12), about mole-skins reminded me that the weaving trade used an enormous number of them, as strips of moleskin were glued inside the flat sides of shuttles on looms which were weaving rayon and similar man-made filaments.

These weft threads were heavier and stiffer than cotton and the moleskin fur prevented 'ballooning' and 'snarling' of the weft as it came off the pirn when the shuttle was flying across the loom.

Moleskins were worth a shilling each then. There was no shortage of trappers, who kept down the mole population in the main weaving areas.

Regarding the 'mad hatters,' surely, it was mercury and not arsenic which was used in hat making, the vapour of which damaged the hat-makers' central-nervous systems, sending them mad.

ALBERT J MORRIS, Clement View, Nelson.

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