My stepbrother uses a metal detector on lots of different farms around S.E. England. In the last four years he has found hundreds of thimbles which are mostly mass-produced 18th/19th century ones. There are older ones too, including some irregular hand-made medieval ones called beehives. Why are they there?
I'm also curious how you might research a question like this - I've turned up no hints on Google Books. Metal detecting forums contain various ideas, but all rather speculative.
I don't have an insight into thimbles specifically, but it perhaps taps into an enduring puzzle about the nature of surface archaeology in general.
Archaeologists are interested in surface artefacts because collecting them is a quick and easy way to map out the intensity of archaeological material over large areas. When we find dense 'scatters' of artefacts in a confined space—say more than a few per square meter—the assumption is that there is an ancient structure of some description buried underneath it, the contents of which is being dredged up by farmers' ploughs. That's what we'd call a 'site'.
However, it's long been recognised that around and between sites there is a continuous background of low density, 'off-site' surface material. That is, if you pick a random field in a reasonably densely populated part of the world and look closely enough you are going to find a small but appreciable volume of prehistoric stone tools, potsherds, coins, nails, bottle caps, bits of scrap metal, building rubble, fragments of animal and human bone and (apparently) thimbles accumulated over the last ten thousand years.^* There aren't any ancient cities lurking under these fields, so where did it all come from? Why do we consistently find so much domestic rubbish miles from the nearest settlement, modern or ancient?
We don't really know the answer for sure. The most widely accepted explanation is the manuring hypothesis. The idea is that farmers would go to villages and towns to collect rubbish and then use it to fertilise their fields. Amongst the organic waste the farmers were really interested in, there'd inevitably bits of non-decomposable rubbish like potsherds or bits of metal, and so as a by-product these would be spread across the fields. Admittedly it's a difficult hypothesis to test, and some people have their doubts that it explains the sheer amount of off-site material you find. Certainly it doesn't work everywhere. We find just as much off-site artefacts doing surveys in desert regions of the Near East, for example, which is hardly going to be from fertiliser. I'd guess it's more likely to be rubbish from nomadic camps moved around by the wind. It's also very debatable that small scale prehistoric societies, with low intensity farming and no urban centres, would have bothered to fertilise their fields in the first place, never mind saving their rubbish to do so. But on the whole, when it comes to densely populated, agrarian Europe and more recent eras, the manuring hypothesis fits pretty well.
British and early modern/industrial archaeology really isn't my thing, so there very well might be some context I'm missing, but my instinct would be that all these thimbles are just a manifestation of this more general phenomenon. Thimbles will have been cheap, ubiquitous and easily lost and so very likely to find their way into domestic rubbish. If we go with the manuring hypothesis, this would then have been transported to fields as fertiliser. In any case, thimbles will have been one of the few things made of metal that were considered relatively disposable in the premodern era. As such they will have made their way to fields by whatever process transported other bits of domestic rubbish like potsherds, bones or asbestos – but of course metal detectorists only find the things made out of metal.
^* But please don't do this. As crappy as surface archaeology is individually, collectively it's an important part of our cultural heritage and a valuable scientific resource.
And on the subject of protecting cultural heritage, I'm sure your stepbrother is a responsible detectorist but do suggest to him that he records and registers his finds (even all those thimbles) with the Portable Antiquities Scheme, if he doesn't do so already.
Thimbles sort of have the perfect situation to be an easily found item. They were incredibly common (and cheap). Many, if not most, would have one. While most people were not making their own clothing during the 18th/19th centuries in that region, sewing was considered a basic life skill everyone learned. So we know there were certainly a large number of them during the time. As for how they arrived in the fields, it's probably a combination of things. It is possible to eventually wear through your thimble, particularly as older ones are often silver (steel was added to some as of 1884), so some were certainly thrown out into those midden piles that might be later used for manure as u/brigantus mentioned. They're also easily lost from a pocket or sewing bag, as carrying about a small project or mending would not be uncommon. If you look at what's recommended to keep in a work bag/box many of the items are too large to be easily lost (scissors), too small to be found by metal detector (pins), or quickly deteriorate (thread). Think of it less about the unusual number of thimbles and more about how many common items don't survive and aren't found!
If I may ask, have any open top thimbles been discovered? I'm assuming most are the standard style, but the open tops are specific to the tailoring trade and would be far more likely to be sourced from a midden pile than lost.
It might be helpful to list the farms. It seems like a bit of a leap to conclude that this applies to all of England.
You may want to cross post this with /r/AskAnthropology. Archaeology is a field of study within anthropology and I think you may find a better answer there, as I suspect the reasons for this seeming overabundance of thimbles are related more to archaeological happenstance than historical reasons.
Can We get some pictures of the ones He has found?
A few reasons:
Easy to lose
Lasts a long time
Mass produced
Cheap
Gives off exactly the type of signal a detectorist is looking for and so is most likely to dig
This "Lofting" type child's thimble (that's a 1 pence coin for scale, the thing is petit!!) from the 18th Century I found recently:
gave off a signal that nobody that knows what they are doing is going to ignore and those signals, 9 times out of 10 , are either coins, musket balls or thimbles. All mass produced, common and easy to lose. You're going to ignore iron and slag if you can but you won't ignore a signal like this.
I recommend reading this page here: http://www.ukdfd.co.uk/pages/thimble.html
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