Daily AncestorScutcher
A scutcher beat flax, hemp or raw cotton to knock out the woody stalk, seeds and dirt, by hand or with a scutching machine.
Scutching came early in preparing fiber for spinning. With flax and hemp it broke away the straw and woody core from the fiber; with raw cotton it cleared out seeds and trash. Early on it was done by hand with blades or sticks, later by machines also called scutchers.
In a cotton mill the scutcher worked in the picker or opening room at the start of the process, a dusty and noisy job.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1900 to 1940 census
Thos. Kerr, 30, Scutcher, Cotton mill
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Daily Ancestor. "Scutcher." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/scutcher. Last checked 2026-10-01.