BLANKET, in Commerce, a warm woolly sort of
VOL. III. Part II.
stuff, light and loose woven, chiefly used in bedding. Tossing in a
The manufacture of blankets is chiefly confined to Witney in Oxfordshire, where it is advanced to that
height, that no other place comes near it. Some at-
tribute a great part of the excellency of the Witney
blankets to the absterfive nitrous water of the river
Windrush, wherewith they are scoured; others rather
think they owe it to a peculiar way of loose spinning
which the people have thereabouts. Be this as it will
the place has engrossed almost the whole trade of the
nation for this commodity; inasmuch that the wool
fit for it centres here from the furthest parts of the
kingdom. Blankets are made of felt-wool, i. e. wool
from off sheep-skins, which they divide into several
sorts. Of the head wool and bay wool they make
blankets of twelve, eleven, and ten quarters broad;
of the ordinary and middle sort blankets of eight and
seven quarters broad; of the best tail wool blankets of
six quarters broad, commonly called cuts, serving for
seamen's hammocks. See HYKES.
Tossing in a BLANKET, a ludicrous kind of punishment, of which we find mention in the ancients under the denomination sagatio. Martial describes it geographically enough. Ibis ab excusso, missus ad astra, sagio. A late writer represents it as one of Otho's imperial delights. But this is turning the tables: that emperor's diversion, as related by Suetonius, was not to be the subject, but the agent, in the affair: it being his practice to stroll out in dark nights, and where he met with a helpless or drunken man to give him the discipline of the blanket.