Peter McIntyre, was born in Paisley, Scotland and came to Derry in 1844 to work for William Scott. He and Adam Hogg, who managed Tillie and Henderson’s factory, started their own shirt business in Foyle Street in 1853.
In 1864 McIntyre, Hogg & Co moved to large and modern premises at the City Factory in Queen Street. The scale of their business can be easily judged from this view of the factory’s collar machine room taken in 1919

With the rapid growth of cities in Britain, their need for clothing and the growing fashion towards cotton shirts with embroidered linen fronts, circumstances in the 1830’s were very favourable for the establishment of a shirt industry.

Derry City was, for years, built upon the textile trade with factories dominating the cityscape. A female workforce powered much of the industrial development of Derry, and produced some of the finest shirts in the world.It was the introduction of the factory system from the 1850’s which saw the real establishment of the shirt trade in the city, and contributed much to the city’s expansion and prosperity in the second half of the 19th century. The invention of the sewing machine in 1853 and the arrival of several Scottish businessmen ensured that, within ten years, the shirt industry in Derry was a factory based one.

William Tillie was perhaps the founder of the modern shirt industry in Derry. Tillie, a shirt and collar manufacturer in Glasgow, came to Derry in 1850. It was Tillie who first recognised that it would be a great improvement to bring workers all together in one building rather than having them scattered all over the countryside. In 1851, with partner John Henderson, Tillie set up Derry’s first shirt factory at the corner of Sackville Street and Little James Street.

The firm of Welch Margetson, founded in London in 1824, was by the 1840s looking for new sources of supply, as the demand for shirts in Britain was so great. The success of William Scott’s business led them naturally to choose Derry, where in 1847 they opened a warehouse in the Waterside. In this warehouse their shirts were cut and then supplied to workers to be made up at home.

William Scott laid the foundations of this new industry in Derry. Born on 12 March 1765 at Ballougry, of Presbyterian parents, Scott learned the art of linen, cotton and woollen weaving as an apprentice to Gilmour’s linen factory in Artillery Street. He then became a master weaver and from his weaving shop on Weaver’s Row he produced linen cloth on a hand-loom. With the establishment of a regular steamboat service between Derry and Glasgow in 1829, William Scott began to travel to Glasgow to sell his webs of linen cloth to the firm of William Gourlie & Son.