Thomas McCabe: Belfast Charitable Society Member, Goldsmith, Watchmaker & United Irishman
caroline2019-01-22T09:19:54+00:00Thomas McCabe was a goldsmith and cotton manufacturer who had a business in North Street. Together with Robert Joy and Captain McCracken he financed cotton spinning machinery for the Poor House to teach the children and women a skill. This proved so successful that McCabe, Joy and McCracken opened the first water powered mill in Ireland for Cotton Spinning in 1784. The United Irishmen were explicitly anti-slavery and many of them refused to eat sugar, molasses, rum and other products associated with the slave trade. Thomas McCabe was a radical from his early days, and denounced Waddell Cunningham’s scheme to establish [...]