feet by 15. The baths, to the number of seven, are ranged along the
walls, and a screen about six feet high, with benches on each side of
it, is fixed down the middle of the room. The cold water is supplied
from a cistern above the engine-house, and the hot water from a large
tub which receives the waste steam from the dressing-room, and is kept
constantly at boiling temperature. A pipe from each of these cisterns
opens into every bath, so that they are ready for instant use. The men
and women bathe on alternate days; and a bath-keeper for each attends
for an hour and a half in the evening. This person has the entire care
of the room, and is answerable for everything that goes on in it. When
any one wishes to bathe he comes to the counting-house for a ticket,
for which he pays a penny, and without which he cannot be admitted to
the bathing-room. Some families, however, subscribe a shilling
a-month, which entitles them to five baths weekly; and these hold a
general subscriber’s ticket, which always gives him admittance to the
room. I think the number of baths taken weekly varies from about 25 to
70 or 80. We pay the bath-keepers 2_s._ 6_d._ and 2_s._ a-week, and I
believe this amount has been more than covered by the receipts. The
first cost of erecting the baths was about 80_l._”
The feet of the female as well of the male workers in such
establishments, who work in the mills without their stockings, are seen
coated with the filth of years, for which there is no other necessity
than their own habitual indolence. These habits mere admonitions will
not always remove from the adult population. A manufacturer in London,
who did not care to take this trouble with them, began with his
apprentices, and took them several times to the new tepid baths, as a
holiday and a reward, until they had experienced the comfort, and had
formed a habit, when he left them to themselves, and they paid out of
their own pocket-money the small amount necessary to defray the
expenses. Where the use of hot or warm water has been given to the
workpeople, and baths have been provided, they have frequently been
defective in some important point. _Dr. Barham_ states that the miners,
on their ascent to the ground, have commonly only the means of using the
hot water from a rivulet on a bleak and exposed situation; in other
places, as where bath-rooms are provided, the accommodation for dressing
was defective, in being cold and chilling instead of being made warm, as
it might be at a very trifling expense. It was only at Camborne, the
mine already noticed, that anything deserving the name of proper baths
had been erected. _Dr. Barham_ observes, in a communication on this
subject—
“The security from chill during the ablution, and the abundance and
comfortable temperature of the water in the cases mentioned as
examples of superior accommodation, have no doubt contributed to a
comparative immunity from pulmonary disease and catarrhal affections,
which the managers and the men themselves have noticed since this
provision has been made.
“The cost of the practice is so inconsiderable as to be unworthy
notice. Timber and iron for such purposes are always to be found in
our mines among what is no longer fit for its original destination. No
charge of any kind is made for the use of these accommodations.
“The owners of steam-engines might always supply hot water, in
proportion to the amount of condensation effected, without any extra
cost to themselves, when they do not employ the heated water to some
purpose of their own. In some mines the warm water is husbanded for
the cleansing of the ores, but this is an exceptional case. Generally
speaking, there is a great quantity of iron cylinder and other
materials convertible to the conveyance of the water, which maybe
supplied at a very low rate, as unserviceable for engine-work.
“I have thought that steam-engines are not the only sources for the
supply of hot water to the public at an insignificant cost. All works
in which great heat is employed, or almost all such works, might
supply heat to large bodies of water after the fuel has been most
economically applied to their own purposes. Smelting-houses,
foundries, glass-houses, for instances, have always heat enough to
spare for the warming of extensive thermæ. By the use of brick pipes,
surrounded by wood or some bad conductor, such heat, first applied to
the bottom of large reservoirs, might be distributed over extensive
districts, and buildings might be warmed and workshops supplied with
warm water for the thorough purification of the labourers, at a very
trifling expense. My own opinion is, that a system of _washing_ is
more desirable as a national habit than a system of _bathing_. The
latter is doubtless excellent for bodies of men who are under
effectual control, and for the young.”
_Employers’ Influence on the Health of Workpeople by the Ventilation of
Places of Work, and the Prevention of Noxious Fumes, Dust, &c._
In some of the “dusty trades,” the excessive amount of premature
mortality is so great as to justify interference, defensively, as
against the charges which, from the neglect of sanitary measures, fall
neither upon the employer nor upon the consumer, who directly benefit by
the produce of the industry, but upon ratepayers, to whom the
manufactory itself may be a nuisance. In the instance of such trades,
personal cleanliness is so far a requisite as to justify an additional
rate of insurance where it is neglected. Yet the regulations preventive
of disease are by no means onerous, either in their cost or their
interference with the processes. Some of the noxious manufactures, and
especially those in lead, have been the subject of examination by the
“Conseil de Salubrité of Paris,” and the preventive rules they
prescribed were as follows:—1. The establishment of a good ventilation
in the workshops or manufactories. 2. Exacting from the workpeople close
attention to personal cleanliness; obliging them to wash the hands and
face before dining, and before leaving the workshop; forbidding them
taking any of their meals in the workshop, and, by reasoning and
information, directing their attention to the dangers by which they are
surrounded. 3. Employing the practicable means for conducting the
processes so as to raise the least dust possible. 4. Boarding off the
mills and sieves, so as to prevent the escape of the smaller particles.
5. Requiring of the workmen engaged in the processes where there is
lead-dust or any other injurious dust suspended in the air, that they
cover the nose and mouth with a handkerchief slightly moistened. 6.
Subjecting the workshop to occasional medical inspection, in order to
prevent the intensity of any maladies that break out, and with that view
to examine the workmen from time to time to detect any symptoms of
disease, and to oblige the workman attacked to abstain from work until
the medical officer declares that he may resume it without
inconvenience. 7. Obliging workmen to wear frocks or blouses, which they
should leave in the workshop when they quit work; and these blouses
should from time to time be washed. 8. Sending away from the workshop
every workman who gives himself up to debauchery or drunkenness. 9.
Endeavouring to get the workmen, (_i. e._ workers in lead) to form the
habit of drinking every day, on leaving the workshop, a little
hydro-sulphuretted water, to neutralize the effects of the lead that may
have been taken into the stomach.
All these regulations, with the medical attendance for the purpose of
prevention, would be greatly below any charge of insurance to the
individual workman for procuring medical attendance and remedies when
thrown out of work by sickness.
In some of the trades, scattered instances of attention to cleanliness
and measures of prevention are found: for example, amongst the
journeymen painters. In answer to a question put by Dr. Mitchell to _Mr.
Tomlins_, the clerk to the Painters’ Company, whether painters suffer so
much as formerly from the disease to which they are peculiarly liable,
the clerk says,—
“Not so much as formerly. This has been ascertained by a charity
administered at Painters’ Hall to men labouring under sickness. The
men are now more attentive to cleanliness. Formerly they would throw
their clothes on their beds and go to their meals without washing
their hands. A large proportion of the journeymen now carry a
workingdress to their job with them, and when they quit work at night
they exchange and put on clean clothes which are free from paint. This
applies more particularly to the westward of Temple Bar. One
master-painter of my acquaintance, Mr. Thornton, of Doctors’ Commons,
keeps a pail of solution of potash in his shop, in which the men wash
their hands, and which takes off every particle of paint; and it is
worthy of remark that only two men in 20 years have been afflicted
with paralysis in his employ. This is taken from 15 men constantly
employed on an average for seven years.”
It will suggest itself that another generation of workpeople, and their
premature sickness and death, ought not to pass away leaving this
practice confined to the painters to the west of Temple Bar, and leaving
the beneficent expedient exclusively to the shop of Mr. Thornton, of
Doctors’ Commons.
In connexion with the instance of the painters, I may give the following
from _Mr. James Gibbins_, a manufacturer of colours at the Mile-end
road. He was asked—“Are there any peculiar hazards to health connected
with the trade?” He replies,—
“Arsenic and lead are employed in making colours, and hence injury
does arise, but such need not necessarily be the case; but although
water, towels, and soap are placed at the use of the men, there is no
persuading them to be habitually cleanly. After making or grinding
colours, they will not take the trouble to wash their hands, but
merely wipe them a little on their clothes, and then will take their
bread and meat, by which particles are carried off into the stomach.
It is impossible to persuade the men to be more cautious. The lead is
much more in use than the arsenic, and on the whole does more harm, as
the men are more on their guard against the arsenic.”
The prevalent impression upon such instances would be expressed by such
phrases as, “If men will be so careless, there is no help for it; they
must take the consequences:” but they only take a part of the
consequences—the sickness; the main part of the consequences are taken
by others, especially if they are married, when the premature widowhood
and orphanage are sustained by the wife and children, who are maintained
at the expense of the relations or of the public. This recklessness is
however the result of neglected education, of which the workmen are the
victims, and for measures of beneficence such workmen are to be regarded
and treated as children, for they are children in intellect. An instance
of a beneficial measure of compulsory prevention taken by some employers
of labour is mentioned by Mr. John Kennedy, jun., in a report on the
condition of some classes of workpeople examined under the Commission of
Inquiry into the Employment of Children, not included in the regulations
of the Factory Act. Some workmen employed in “Kyanizing” wood became
frequently ill from the fumes created in the process, to which fumes
they unnecessarily exposed themselves. Admonitions to care were found to
be of no avail, and the employer at length gave notice that he would
discharge entirely from employment the first that was attacked with the
peculiar illness produced by the fumes of the metal. This threat was
acted upon, and no other cases of illness afterwards occurred.
In France, where the diseases by which the working classes are afflicted
have been investigated by those medical men who have given their
attention to the improvement of the public health, the general
conclusion has been established of the futility of leaving protective
measures to the voluntary adoption of the individual workman. In the
course of one of his reports, _M. Duchâtelet_ observes, that—
“It appears certain that the greatest part of the attacks of asphyxia
which have taken place in the sewers have arisen from the traps being
closed. I know that it is now enjoined on the workmen to open these
traps while they are at their labour. But do they do this? Assuredly
not in by far the majority of cases. Is it not a maxim to render
independent of the will and superintendence of men, and above all of
workmen, everything which appertains in a notable manner to their
preservation? In the grave and learned discussions which have occupied
this year (1824) the Academy of Sciences, on the means of preventing
the dangers arising from steam-engines, not only all the members of
the Commission, but the entire Academy, have been unanimous on the
necessity of rendering independent of the workmen the direction of the
level of the water in the boilers, and the tension of the steam. It
evidently appeared that on this depended the solution of the problem.
The same thing is now discussing on the subject of lighting by
hydrogen gas.”
I will further adduce parallel examples, drawn from experience, in
respect to the condition of the working population in France. It is
contained in a treatise by _M. Emile Beres_, on the Means of
Ameliorating the Condition of Artisans:—
“The condition of the labouring population would be less precarious,
and their lives less exposed to accidents of every kind, if more
foresight presided over their operations. Employers are often guilty
of unpardonable carelessness with respect to the employed. To see
their conduct, one would suppose that the men in their service were
inert machines, or else that they possessed the power of the Creator
to reconstruct broken limbs, to restore exhausted constitutions, or to
give life to the dead. Here a deleterious atmosphere, which ought to
be carefully purified, is imprudently allowed to be inhaled; there a
poison, which ought to be handled with precaution, is allowed to
penetrate every pore. Further on, as if man had wings, he is embarked
on the most fragile scaffolds. Again, he is inconsiderately left to
prosecute dangerous researches which demand the utmost care. It is not
thus that we should act when the health and life of human beings are
in question. To such neglects how many families owe their poverty and
misery!
“There have long existed mills to grind plaster, which have not,
nevertheless, prevented the unhappy workmen from being employed, in
many places, and even in Paris, to pound it with a wooden club, their
bodies bent towards the ground, and thus inhaling it in such
quantities that the greatest number of them die young, of pulmonary
phthisis.
“The use of the moveable inodorous tanks has been long understood in
Paris. It consists in substituting for the tanks of masonry vessels of
oak, painted, and strongly hooped with iron, so as to allow neither
matter nor smell to escape. They are placed beneath the pipe which
conveys the contents of the water-closet, and, when full, are carried
away, and replaced by others at every hour of the day, without
difficulty, without danger to the workmen, without inconvenience to
the inhabitants. Well; not only are the ancient tanks not suppressed
in favour of this system, so convenient in all respects, but every day
new ones are constructed, though not a year passes in which we do not
hear of unhappy men perishing in the process of emptying, suffocated
by the gas which escapes in their disgusting operation. Now, if we add
to the danger of emptying the receptacles, the nuisance to all the
inhabitants of the house, which is infected in its remotest corners,
as well as the neighbouring houses of the same street, or even
quarter; when we take into account the damage to furniture (especially
to things that are gilt) by the escape of sulphureous gas, we shall
have the measure of the negligence, I will not say of the proprietors
only who maintain such an abuse without any justifiable motive, but
even of the authority that suffers it. It is no rare thing, after the
emptying has taken place, to see asphyxia produced in the masons who
are employed in repairing the walls, or in remedying the infiltrations
from the privies.
“There is another method, more recent, and, in all probability, more
advantageous, of preventing the inconveniences of the ancient
receptacles; it is the system of disinfecting fecal matter, discovered
by a learned chemist, M. Payen. Independently of its hygienic
advantages, and the procuring a powerful manure, this method comprises
a question of human dignity of great value. It is necessary, as far as
possible, to take from our fellow men the mischievous necessity to
perform labours which invest them with ideas of disgust.
“Since the use of gas for lighting, several accidents have happened.
Are they not due, for the most part, to the want of precaution in the
directors of these manufactories, who have not sufficiently prescribed
to their men the necessary measures of prevention? Should they not all
know that one must not run with a candle into a place where there is a
stream of gas, as one would go in search of a stream of water? It is
this imprudence which commonly occasions the explosions that happen,
and which are ordinarily followed by the gravest accidents. Do we not
find the same carelessness in our mines, followed by the same
catastrophes? It is in vain, therefore, that Sir Humphry Davy applied
his genius to the discovery of the safety-lamp! Do not the most
ordinary rules of health condemn the ignorance with which the
preparations of mercury, of sulphur, of lead, of oxide of copper, &c.,
are made? In the places, lastly, in which wool, hides, and other
animal substances are prepared, why not purify the atmosphere in which
the workmen exist with such difficulty? This omission is the more
strange, that some centimes of solution of chlorine every day would be
sufficient to purify the largest shops.
“I insist strongly on the contents of this chapter, because it reveals
one of the deepest plague-spots of the labouring population of towns,
and because the remedies that it indicates are neither difficult to
discover, nor expensive in their application. With more solicitude and
surveillance on the part of the government, with more philanthropy on
the part of masters, with more precaution as well as self-love on the
part of the workmen, would our hospitals receive so many unhappy
beings, and death reap so many victims?”
_Employers’ Means of influencing the Condition of the Working Population
by regard to respectability in Dress._
Besides those means which affect immediately the health and moral
condition of the workpeople, others are within the control of their
employers which affect the personal appearance, and, through the
self-respect, the morality of the population. _Mr. William Fairbairn_,
in the course of an examination, adverted to the means of promoting
respectability in personal appearance:—
“It is always,” said he, “an indication of looseness of character, and
a low standard of moral conduct, to see a mechanic in dirt or in his
working-clothes on Sunday. Thirty years’ experience leads me to draw a
very unfavourable conclusion as to the future usefulness to me, and of
success to himself, of any workman whom I see in dirt on a Sunday.
“As a general rule, does the advance of his house keep pace with the
advance in condition of the person?—As a general rule, it does. Better
personal condition leads to better associates, and commonly to better
marriage, on which the improved condition of the house is entirely
dependent. It is due to the labouring classes of females in Lancashire
and the surrounding districts to state that, in the important
household virtue of cleanliness, they are superior to the females of
the same class in Scotland.
“Are you aware of what is the condition of their houses. Have you
visited them?—I have not made it a practice to visit them, I chiefly
judge of their circumstances from seeing them with their wives and
families, and their well-dressed and respectable condition on the
Sundays. These externals are always indications of greater comforts
and respectability at home. I am a strong advocate for dress, and
encourage the working men to dress well; if I see any workman in a
dirty condition and in his working-clothes in the streets on the
Sunday, I do not, perhaps, speak to him then, but on the Monday I tell
him that I have been looking over the books, that I find that he has
had as good wages as other men who dress respectably, and that I do
not like to have any one about me who will not dress well on the
Sunday. This intimation has generally had the desired effect.”
_Employers’ or Owners’ Influence in the Improvement of Habitations and
sanitary Arrangements for the Protection of the Labouring Classes in the
Rural Districts._
I would now submit, for consideration the evidence collected to show the
appropriate means for the improvement of the condition of the labouring;
classes in the rural districts; and first, as to the effects produced by
improved residences:—
These are stated in a letter from the chairman of the Bedford union to
Mr. Weale, the Assistant-Commissioner of the district, who had been
requested by the Board to inquire as to the moral as well as the
sanitary effects of improved tenements:—
“_Turvey Abbey, January 4, 1841._
“My dear Sir,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the
1st of January. You there state that, in a Return made to you by the
Board of Guardians of the Bedford Union on the sanitary condition of
the labouring population, it is reported that, in a few instances,
cottages of an improved description have been erected by the employers
of labour, the advantages of which have had a salutary influence on
the moral habits of the inmates: and you request to know in what
particular acts the improvement in moral conduct is displayed.
“I have much pleasure in saying that some cases of the kind have come
under my own observation, and I consider that the improvement has
arisen a good deal from the parties feeling that they are somewhat
raised in the scale of society. The man sees his wife and family more
comfortable than formerly; he has a better cottage and garden: he is
stimulated to industry, and as he rises in respectability of station,
he _becomes aware_ that he has a character to lose. Thus an important
point is gained. Having acquired certain advantages, he is anxious to
retain and improve them; he strives more to preserve his independence,
and becomes a member of benefit, medical, and clothing societies; and
frequently, besides this, lays up a certain sum, quarterly or
half-yearly, in the savings’ bank. Almost always attendant upon these
advantages, we find the man sending his children to be regularly
instructed in a Sunday, and, where possible, in a day-school, and
himself and family more constant in their attendance at some place of
worship on the Lord’s-day. I know of more instances than one where, in
consequence of encouragement of the kind above mentioned to the father
of a poor family, the children were regularly sent to school, and
there became so much improved in character and learning that they are
now filling situations of high respectability, (one a confidential
clerk in a large mercantile house in London,) and are assisting to
support their parents in a manner as delightful as it is creditable.
“A man who comes home to a poor, comfortless hovel after his day’s
labour, and sees all miserable around him, has his spirits more often
depressed than excited by it. He feels that, do his best, he shall be
miserable still, and is too apt to fly for a temporary refuge to the
alehouse or beer-shop. But give him the means of making himself
comfortable by his own industry, and I am convinced by experience
that, in many cases, he will avail himself of it.
“Believe me, my dear sir, sincerely yours,
“CHARLES LONGUET HIGGINS.
“_To Robert Weale, Esq._,
“_Assistant Poor Law Commissioner_.”
The next exemplification is afforded in a letter from the clerk of the
Stafford Union:—
“_Marston, Stafford, January 20, 1841._
“Sir,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st
instant, as to the Return made by the Board of Guardians on the
sanitary condition of the labouring population of this Union, in which
it is stated that improved cottages have been erected by landed
proprietors for their labourers, and the advantages afforded by such
cottages have had a salutary influence on the moral habits of the
inmates, and requesting to be informed in what particular acts the
improvement in moral conduct is displayed.