doffers

Noun

doffer (plural doffers)

1. (textile manufacturing) In a carding machine, a device such as a revolving cylinder or a vibrating bar with teeth, that doffs, that is to say strips off, the carded cotton or other fiber from the cards; or a hand tool for the same function in smaller machines or in manual carding.
2. A worker who replaces full bobbins by empty ones on the throstle or ring frames. The job was often done by children.
   • It has more varied exercises too than has the hand of the child who enters a mill. For though a doffer or factory child does use his hand all day long, it is but a very small group of muscles that is brought into activity.1907, Margaret McMillan, Labour and Childhood, The Child-Hand To-Day