CHAPTER IV

DANGEROUS AND INJURIOUS PROCESSES; ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY

“’Tis a sordid profit that’s accompanied with the destruction of

health.”—B. RAMAZZINI, 1678.

Let us turn now from general conditions affecting women and girls in

factory life to special dangers due to “any manufacture, machinery,

plant, process, or description of manual labour.”[92] Here the aid given

by Women Inspectors, though extensive and indispensable, has hitherto

been ancillary rather than primary in character. They have not before

1921 been brought into the Factory Department expressly in the capacity

of medical, engineering, or chemical experts. And yet their early

research into many imperfectly explored causes of injury to health and

safety of women and young workers was so steadfast, and their evidence

in Annual Reports so freely read and quoted in Parliament and the Press,

that they stirred public opinion to a new outlook on women’s needs in

these matters. As time went on the Department was able to draw in an

increasing number of women candidates with good degrees in science, and

with considerable experience in research or in work of an administrative

character. The steady pooling of knowledge and experience that went on

in the Women’s Branch yielded good fruit.

The Women Inspectors were immediately called on by the Chief Inspector

of 1893 to 1895 to share both in enforcing new “special rules” for

dangerous and injurious processes,[93] and in conducting enquiries with

a view to strengthening these rules. They came into the service

practically at the beginning of the new movement for _applying_

scientific knowledge in these matters; knowledge of some of the ills had

existed before, but it had not been applied and was therefore

incomplete. They entered the Department five years before a Medical

Inspectors’ Branch was set up, and three years before the momentous

requirement was made that medical practitioners should notify certain

diseases (lead, phosphorus, etc., arsenical poisoning or anthrax),

contracted in a factory or workshop, to the Chief Inspector.

Before the entry of the Medical Inspectorate, the long-established

institution of part-time certifying surgeons[94] had brought some

medical observation, largely unco-ordinated, to bear on industrial

conditions. From their private practice among industrial workers the

certifying surgeons often gathered important records of individual cases

of industrial poisoning, respiratory and other diseases, arising from

injurious conditions of manufacture. These records could be and were

fully utilised by the Medical Inspectors in due course—as may be well

seen in the reports and other writings by Dr. T. M. Legge and Dr. E. L.

Collis.

Not until after the War (in 1921) was a medical Woman Inspector

appointed to the Medical Branch—Dr. E. M. Hewitt. During all the earlier

years from 1893 reliance was placed on the initiative of the Women’s

Branch of the Department for the highly necessary observation by women

of conditions and habits of women and girl workers. An outstanding

obstacle to obtaining exact knowledge of industrial mortality and

disease amongst women arose from the omission to enter in mortality and

hospital records the occupation of married women, whether occupied prior

to or during married life. This entailed a closer individual

investigation among women than among men for clues to industrial disease

and careful following up of their cases outside the factory as well as

inside. When information was needed on grave injury and early deaths

among, for example, asbestos workers or china scourers, in cases of lead

poisoning or phosphorus necrosis, or mercurial poisoning in the days

before notification was compulsory, indispensable contributions were

made by the investigations of Women Inspectors in many directions, and

especially as to the effects of lead processes on maternal functions.

The earlier tentative “special rules” for safeguarding the workers

against “dangerous and unhealthy incidents of employment” had been made

in 1892 and 1893, under the new powers of the Factory Act of 1891

suggested by the special rules under the Mines Acts. The special rules

were made on the proposal of the Chief Inspector to the occupier of the

factory after the process, machinery, or manual labour in question had

been scheduled by the Secretary of State as being, in his opinion,

“dangerous or injurious to health, or dangerous to life or limb, either

generally or in the case of women, children, or any other class of

persons.” Each occupier had a right of objection to the rules proposed,

and provision was made for arbitration. In the absence before 1896 of

any medical experts on the staff or of any substantial statistical

evidence of cases of industrial poisoning and disease, the earliest

special rules could only be few, simple, and experimental in character.

Gradually, under the direction of the first Medical Chief Inspector, Sir

Arthur Whitelegge, and the very slowly added medical staff, beginning

with Dr. T. M. Legge in July, 1898, knowledge and vigour of regulation

grew. Administrative methods of establishing regulation were greatly

improved, and the uncertainties of arbitration in such highly expert

questions were removed by the Act of 1901. The early years of the

twentieth century saw what was unquestionably the most remarkable

development that had ever yet been attempted in any age or country in

applying scientific knowledge and care to the protection of workers from

industrial disease and injury. At last the reproach made by many medical

observers (and, particularly in our country, by Medical Officers to the

Privy Council in 1860) began to be lightened; the reproach that “the

canker of industrial diseases gnaws at the very root of our national

strength,” that “the sufferers are not few or insignificant, ...” that

“the magnitude of the evil is most imperfectly appreciated,” whether by

the authorities or by the “slowly suffering artisans themselves”—and

that all this was going on for lack of expert advice and the

administrative application of scientific methods to the problems

involved.[95] It was so long before the idea of industrial labour as a

social service began to gain ground that only a few enlightened

manufacturers, here and there, could attempt to try remedies.

It was not only medical knowledge that was needed to trace effects on

the human frame of poisons (such as lead, arsenic, white phosphorus,

mercury, etc.); of anthrax and tetanus germs; of gaseous and acid fumes;

of injurious and excessive dust; of excessive moisture or heat; of

muscular or nerve overstrain and impure air. The work of experts in

engineering, physics, chemistry, and, not least, in patient observation

of the habits, working conditions, ways and circumstances of the workers

affected, was equally indispensable. This had been to some extent

provided for in the reorganisation of the Inspectorate that followed the

Consolidating Act of 1878. The Acts of 1883 and 1889 to regulate white

lead and cotton cloth factories carried this matter further by

exploration of some of the most injurious conditions. Thus, in the ranks

of the general Inspectorate knowledge was available for technical work

in some of these directions.

It must be remembered that the principal Act had long provided for the

great safeguard of exhaust ventilation for removal of dangerous and

injurious dusts, fumes, or other impurities generated in the processes

or handicrafts carried on—though its full preventive scope was only

gradually realised. Its significance was explicitly and repeatedly

emphasised in later days by the Senior Medical Inspector, Dr. Legge,[96]

and the pioneer work of such leaders as the late Mr. E. H. Osborn, H.M.

Superintending Inspector of Factories, and the late Mr. C. R. Pendock,

H.M. Inspector, in the application of engineering knowledge to these

matters, should always be specially remembered. Their work was carried

forward in due succession by Mr. Sydney Smith and Mr. Stevenson Taylor.

Under the Cotton Cloth Factories Act of 1889,[97] administered by Mr. E.

H. Osborn and by Mr. Williams, now Superintending Inspector, exact

standards of ventilation and hygrometers were first introduced in

dealing with the dangers to health from excessive humidity of the

atmosphere and high temperature in the workshops. Out of these

experiences came recognition of methodical tests of chemical purity of

the air of workrooms. Later, scientific emphasis was laid—by Dr. Leonard

Hill, F.R.S.—on the truth that it is rather the physical than the

“chemical conditions of confined atmospheres which influence health and

happiness” of the worker. Before it was laid down as a truth that

“overheated and still air decrease the activity of the body furnace and

so lead to lessened resistance of disease,” Women Inspectors were

steadily bringing persuasive pressure to bear on occupiers for

introduction of mechanical ventilation to ease the visible strain they

saw in industrial work in the stagnant heat of many a factory or

workshed.

When Departmental Committees were set up, from 1892 onwards, for enquiry

into various dangerous trades, outside medical experts were appointed as

members before the advent of the Medical Inspectorate. In 1893 the

precedent was first set of appointing a Woman Inspector, Miss Abraham,

to such Committees where employment of women in the industries made this

specially desirable. Miss Abraham also served on the main Dangerous

Trades Committee, 1895 to 1899, on whose recommendations various codes

of special rules followed. With Dr. Legge I served in the enquiry into

Enamelling and Tinning of Metals, begun in 1901, and reported on for

each section separately in 1903 and 1907 respectively. Less than ten

years’ application of the first special rules of 1892 for these

processes had sufficed to show their inadequacy for controlling the

risks of lead poisoning. Separate regulations of the entirely distinct

sources of danger in vitreous enamelling and in tinning of metals was

not at first seen to be necessary; the obscurity of the sources in the

latter led us to a point where our need of chemical assistance was

evident, and this was provided when the services of Mr. G. Elmhirst

Duckering, H.M. Inspector of Factories and a skilled chemist, were lent

to us. A difference of method in the tinning of hollow ware and of the

tinning of terne plates had given us a clue. His long studies and exact

measurements of the degree of contamination of the air by fumes from the

tinning bath, and from the surface of the tinned hollow ware article as

it emerged from the tinning bath, led to definite conclusions as to the

presence of lead chloride in the fumes breathed by the worker. And so—at

last—we reached the possibility of obtaining effectual measures of

control.[98] The number of cases of poisoning began to fall in the

period 1909–11, and in 1920 only two were reported (both women), and

these from a factory where there had been a breakdown in exhaust

ventilation. Meanwhile, methods of manufacture had become less dangerous

as well as methods of exhaust generally more effectual.[99]

From this experience and from the parallel activities of Inspectors,

chemists, manufacturers in the far greater earthenware and china

industry, came new methods of determination of dust and poisons in the

air of workrooms. There came also re-enforced activity in anemometer

tests of mechanical exhaust for poisonous fumes and dusts; amendment of

construction of exhaust apparatus, and other detailed progress in what

Mr. Pendock well described as “means of cleaning the atmosphere: the

science of _air purification_, and a highly important science it

is.”[100]

The extent of the work that was waiting, almost untouched, in the last

decade of the nineteenth century, to be overtaken by persistent,

meticulous application of this science to protection of the health of

the industrial worker, may be partly realised by a backward glance at

some of the appalling records as to disease and premature death in

certain dusty processes. It must be remembered in considering the early

figures that they were gathered before the discovery and recognition of

the ubiquitous tubercle bacillus.

Let us take, first, flax preparation and carding, where women workers

were in the majority:

“Dr. Purdon, in 1872, states the mortality as 31 per 1,000, and Dr.

Whitaker in his report on the health of Belfast, 1892, says the

carder’s average length of life is only 16·8 years of work. If a girl

gets a card at eighteen her life is generally terminated at thirty.

The preparer’s average is 28·7 years of work. The ‘rougher’ and the

‘sorter,’ said Mr. Osborn, work in a continual cloud of dust composed

of particles of the fibre ‘which is inhaled, and irritates and dries

the throat and gradually finds its way into the lungs, producing

chronic inflammation of the lining membrane, which soon manifests its

presence by the worker being attacked each morning with a paroxysm of

dyspnœa and coughing. A worker suffering thus is said to be ‘poucey’

(pouce=dust=_poussière_) ... some roughing rooms have no ventilation

but windows opening at the upper part, and the workers face the wall,

which, of course, reverberates the dust upon them.”[101]

Far higher was the mortality per thousand among “china scourers”—a few

hundred women exposed to fine flint dust in the china industry. This

flint dust also severely affected men in china biscuit-placing shops, in

saggar emptying, and other operations.[102] China scouring is a dry

process, of which the word is descriptive, to which the ware is

subjected after it has been fired in the kiln. Before firing each piece

is buried in a bed of fine flint dust in a receptacle known as a saggar,

in which it is placed in the kiln, so that it may not adhere to the

saggar or other pieces of ware during firing. On coming out of the kiln

it is necessary to free each piece from adhering particles of the flint

dust by friction of three kinds: scrubbing with a stiff brush moved by

hand or by power, rubbing with stiff flannel, and with sand-paper. The

extent of the injury from the process was found after patient research

by Miss Deane and Miss Paterson in 1898. Rediscovered, one might more

precisely say, for the enquiries of the Royal Commission of 1841 on

Employment of Children and Young Persons had made it clear that the air

of the rooms in which china scouring was carried on was filled with

finely pulverised flint, the inhalation of which was “nearly as fatal as

that of the grinding stones of Sheffield.” In these 57 years nothing had

changed essentially. “Not many scourers live long; we all feel

overloaded upon the chest and cough very much; I cannot lie down all

night” (Commission of 1841). “Against the danger of this occupation

scarcely any provision has been made” (Sir John Simon to the Privy

Council in 1860). In their preparation of some evidence for an

arbitration in Stoke-on-Trent in 1898 on revised special rules chiefly

concerning lead in earthenware and china, the Women Inspectors

discovered a remarkable weakness in the rule controlling flint dust.

Whereas the stronger rule for elimination of dust by a positive

requirement of fans, applied to “towing” of earthenware (i.e., rubbing

soft clay dust off the pots with tow), the far more dangerous flint dust

of china scouring was controlled only by a rule requiring removal of

dust “_as far as practicable_,” by mechanical or other efficient means.

With energy they set to work to complete the evidence as to the

mortality of this occupation—by examination of all death certificates,

during two and a half years, of women between fifteen and seventy years

who had died in Longton, the chief china town, from respiratory diseases

and phthisis, and by visiting the homes of the persons. Comparing deaths

per thousand among all women in Longton attributed by the certificates

to these diseases with those, similarly, among women who had worked

regularly at china scouring, they found that these deaths per thousand

in the two years immediately preceding the enquiry had been nearly

fifteen times as great among china scourers as among other women in

Longton. The figures were given in detail in the Annual Report for 1898.

The Inspectors referred several cases of advanced fibroid phthisis that

came under their notice to the newly appointed Medical Inspector, who

attributed the physical signs in the lungs to inhalation of flint dust;

three of these died within the year.[103]

The Inspectors visited all the factories where china scouring was

carried on and found that, whereas efficient fan extraction had been

installed in a few, yet generally full advantage had been taken of the

permissive character of the rule regarding mechanical extraction of dust

by omitting it. Some of the smaller china factories were wholly or in

part unfitted for use as workplaces. The rule was amended as from

January 1, 1899, with marked results in improved mechanical methods and

in reduction of the disease by degrees. I found, by a comparative

enquiry, ten years later, that the high mortality from respiratory

disease and phthisis was reduced to less than half among china scourers,

but this was still far too high a rate, and many extremely sad cases

showed the need of strengthened provisions.[104] This information I gave

with much other evidence to the Departmental Committee appointed in 1908

by Mr. Herbert Gladstone, since Lord Gladstone, to enquire into dangers

from use of lead and injury to health from dust in china and earthenware

and incidental processes.[105] The chairman was Sir Ernest Hatch, Bart.,

and the able secretary, Mr. E. A. R. Werner, a skilled chemist.

To the work of this committee reference must presently be made in

dealing with lead poisoning in potteries; here we must recognise the

immense advance in control of the dust problem in these works that

followed on the adoption of the recommendations of the committee. The

age of inactivity on proven ills had passed. Undoubtedly the presence on

the committee of leading manufacturers and workers largely conduced to

the practical thoroughness with which the problems were handled.

Many other dusty processes affecting women that were not under special

rules also engaged the close attention of Women Inspectors, of which the

following examples may be given:

(_a_) Asbestos sifting, mixing, and carding; an industry singularly

little considered until complaints from the girls employed came in to us

year by year, from 1898 onwards. The sharp, jagged edge of the insoluble

mineral dust has undoubtedly occasioned much illness, and death, from

respiratory diseases. The first asbestos factory I entered was entirely

without applied exhaust, one of the dustiest processes being carried on

in a cellar. In another, revisited in 1906, on a complaint thoroughly

justified by the thick, fog-like atmosphere in the carding room,

ineffectual fan extraction had been introduced, but not applied to the

points of production of dust. By this date there were good examples of

well installed mechanical exhaust in large asbestos factories, and

progress could be secured in the smaller works. In 1911 Miss Whitlock,

M.B., an Inspector in the Women’s Branch, made careful study for us of

this industry, and found a considerable amount of phthisical, bronchial,

and gastric trouble still present. The least defect in the working of

the applied ventilation was dangerous.

(_b_) Silk waste carding and spinning gave rise to woeful complaints of

dust from women, from 1898 onwards. Increased injuriousness of the

excessive dust in preparatory processes coincided with the introduction

of an inferior quality of silk. Dr. Legge found, in samples referred to

him by Miss Squire, débris of silkworms containing “an enormous number

of hook-like structures, probably portions of the thoracic and abdominal

segments of the pupa case.” This gave support to the apparently strange

opinion of the workers expressed to Miss Squire that they were coughing

up not silk but silkworms; and it led us back to Ramazzini’s account, in

1678, of the effect on silk workers of the combing of “grosser

filaments, which have parts of the bodies of silkworms mixed with them,”

that they were troubled with “a vehement cough and great difficulty of

breathing ... and few of them live to an old age.”[106] Again and again

the need for scientifically applied exhaust had to be pressed for in

this side of the silk industry, something inadequate was repeatedly

tried, and choked-up ducts to fans even led to the beating back of dust

on the workers. Eventually the introduction of machinery for cleaning

the material before carding—steadily urged on the occupiers—helped to

solve the problem of efficient extraction of dust.[107]

(_c_) Teazle brushing in hosiery factories, a finishing process for

smaller articles in Leicester and Nottingham, produced excessive dust of

broken powdery wool and cotton fibre, causing great discomfort in eyes,

and choking sensations in throat and chest. The trouble was removed and

valuable surplus dust for reselling was saved by applying exhaust with

closely fitting cover to the machine and also a patent delivery roller

at the back. Excellent results were reported in the following year, to

the satisfaction not only of workers, but also manufacturers and

foremen.[108]

(_d_) Mercerised cotton yarn dust was first noticed in 1902 as giving

rise to what was known as “mercerised fever,” shivering and sickness

with cough and oppression in the chest. It was attributed to strong

caustic soda in the cotton fibre, which was irritating to the bronchial

and nasal passages. The trouble was removed by requiring exhaust

ventilation.[109]

(_e_) Miss Squire and her staff, when localised in Manchester from 1908,

had their attention drawn (by complaints) to excessive dust in the

making-up warehouses in which girls were employed in “hooking and

lapping” heavily “sized” grey shirting and stiffened muslin. “Stuffed-

up” chests and throat trouble and sickness were the results, and great

discomfort was felt even by the Inspectors on their visits. They

systematically served notice on the occupiers to provide localised

exhaust ventilation, which removed the trouble.[110]

(_f_) Buffing of plated articles—_i.e._, mechanical friction with Trent

sand sometimes mixed with lime—in Sheffield electro-plate works was the

subject of a careful study by Miss Whitlock, M.B., to whose interesting

report reference may be made by those desirous of following up the

subject.[111] In the majority of buffing shops the women stayed in for

their meals, and application of exhaust ventilation was only found in

one shop. She found that the cases of phthisis among them were more than

double the rate per thousand of those amongst women over fifteen years

in the town, and that anæmia was prevalent.

(_g_) Dust as well as other injurious features in little scattered

country flax scutch mills was specially followed up by Miss Martindale

from 1907 onwards in North Ireland. Ineffective fans were fixed in many

of these mills, and described by the workers as “a pest and a torment,”

through their alternative capacity for stirring up the injurious dust

and for getting choked up with fibre! In 1914 I took part in a

conference in Belfast between representatives of the Factory Department

and the Irish Board of Agriculture and Technical Instruction with the

aim of concerted action as regards mechanical ventilation of the scutch

mills. These mills, being mostly situated near flax fields for the first

stages of preparation of the dried fibrous material for manufacture,

concerned both Departments. The War intervened, and these problems have

there fallen to the charge of a new administration. The question was

again raised for the Factory Department during the War, when flax

growing and scutching was initiated by Government action in various

parts of England.

Many other dusty processes and the health of women in them engaged our

attention; in rag and refuse sorting, fur-pulling, in hatters’ furriers’

factories and horsehair factories, in starch rooms of confectionery

works, hemp-rope works, sackmending, cotton waste works, india-rubber

works, eiderdown and kapok-filling factories, clay pipe scouring,

embossed paper lace-making, etc. In a lace-tinting business for

dressmakers we called in Dr. Collis’s aid for investigation of marked

injury to health of all the workers; he not only found the soreness of

nostrils and pharynx associated with inhalation of dust, but also

phthisical results from the finely divided dust shaken out by hand from

the lace. Here the occupier at great expense provided efficient exhaust,

drawing off dust from the lace without this shaking by hand. Improved

methods of working were in our experience a frequent consequence of our

demands for extraction of dust.

In connection with an enquiry in Sheffield into the association of

phthisis and dusty trades Miss Whitlock found that the system of

compulsory notification of consumption already in practice there in

1911, combined as it was with enquiry into occupation of the patient,

greatly facilitated her work.

Bronzing,[112] whether by hand or machine, of all kinds of paper

programmes, showcards, prospectuses, Christmas cards, etc., in

lithographic works or departments of works, affected workers in ways

that almost perennially commanded our attention. Dust from bronzing was

on the border line between those that are simply mechanical in action on

the respiratory passages and those that are either irritant or

poisonous. In the earlier years the work itself was generally

intermittent, not continuous. Although the Dangerous Trades Committee in

1896 made recommendations in their first interim report for control of

risks in this process by special rules, the apparent absence of

permanent injury to health among those engaged in it led in the first

place to the application by the Home Office of voluntary, not

compulsory, rules for protection of the workers. Our activities,

conjointly with District Inspectors, in pressing questions of dust

extraction, means of maintaining personal cleanliness, overalls, supply

of milk, examination of workers by the certifying surgeon, and so on,

fortunately led to improvement in bronzing machines with vacuum

arrangements for dust. Probably they led also in part to the

concentration of the work in the hands of a few occupiers that followed;

finally, special regulations were made compulsory in April, 1912.

In 1911 an important step was taken for more systematic work by Women

Inspectors in the field of dangerously dusty processes. In conference

with Mr. Pendock, as District Inspector and ventilating expert,

arrangements were made by Miss Lovibond (Mrs. Moorcroft) for the taking

of records, on tabular cards, of anemometer tests at hoods connected

with mechanical exhaust ventilation, so as to bring steady pressure to

bear on occupiers of factories for testing and maintaining efficiency in

their installations. As I said then: “There can be no question that

supervision of the provision of really efficient exhaust, and steady

maintenance of it, when provided, in thorough working order is the

supremely important task of the Inspectorate in all dusty trades where

dust is of a kind inhaled, whether the dust is simply mechanical or

irritant or poisonous in contact with the mucous membrane or respiratory

tracts.”[113] The taking of these records, of which copies were supplied

to occupiers, fortunately aroused much interest, and among workers as

well as employers. In the next year about 1,000 records were made in the

Potteries alone, including all places where workers, reported for lead

poisoning, were working at or near the exhaust ventilation. Miss

Whitlock took over this work at the close of that year and added an

invaluable enquiry into nearly all the reported lead cases among women

in potteries in 1913, giving us careful studies of the conditions and

ways of workers, with suggestions for future prevention. Early in 1914

we lost her increasingly valuable aid in medical questions concerning

women through her transference to the Industrial and Reformatory Schools

Department. Then the great upheaval of the War turned us away from

quiet, fruitful, concentrated activities of this nature to the many

problems arising from the intensified industrial production by women for

national needs.

I have been here led from point to point by following up one kind of

protection, which is a fundamental one, against risks in industry from

the various types of dust and from lead fumes. This will suggest,

perhaps, as well as any other method of approach, something of our share

as Women Inspectors on behalf of women workers in the immense work that

was carried on by the Factory Department during the years 1893 to 1914

in striving to lessen the special risks of injurious and dangerous

processes. It is impossible, except by devoting a whole book to it, to

do more than give samples of our service in this side of Factory Act

administration.

Some notion of the magnitude and complexity of dangers to be regulated

and injuries to be prevented, with the chief preventive measures

embodied in “special regulations,” can be gathered from Appendix I.—a

tabular summary that I made in 1913 (and which has been brought up to

the present date by Miss Squire, O.B.E.), giving these details in

alphabetical order for all the trades, processes, and descriptions of

manual labour, that are certified by the Secretary of State as

“dangerous or injurious to health or dangerous to life or limb.”

In addition to the research needed before regulations were made, to the

giving of evidence to Committees, Arbitrators, and Commissioners

appointed by the Secretary of State, when objections to draft

regulations had to be reviewed—besides instruction to occupiers and

workers, and prosecution when necessary—we gave a great deal of

attention to another side: the exclusion, or proposed exclusion, from

very dangerous processes of classes of persons whose age or sex made

them specially susceptible to poison or other risks. The special

interest of the whole community in protection of maternity and health of

young workers, for example, was the chief point on which we had

influence in developing regulations for the white lead industry, in

which the extraordinarily dangerous character of the main processes had

led to special control years before Women Inspectors entered the Factory

Department. Those who desire to follow out the history of regulation in

this industry, originally the foremost among “occupations injurious to

health,” might begin with the account in the Annual Report of the Chief

Inspector for 1879, when it was already illegal to employ in it any

person under eighteen years of age; and might further consult a complete

concise account of the various processes, their dangers and prevention,

in “Lead Poisoning and Lead Absorption,” by Dr. T. M. Legge and Dr. K.

W. Goadby, Chapter XVI.[114] On and after July 1, 1899, it became

illegal under special rules to employ a woman in the peculiarly

dangerous processes in white beds, stoves, etc. And, so far as _this_

industry is concerned,[115] most of the effect of the Women and Young

Persons (Employment in Lead Processes) Act, 1920, passed in pursuance of

the Washington Convention of 1919, had been long ago attained in our

country.

Other dangerous lead processes, originally highly serious for young

women workers, are found in the electric accumulator industry. Here

again our evidence supported the exclusion of these workers from such

risks, and since 1903 “no woman, young person, or child” may be employed

“in the manipulation of dry compounds of lead or in pasting.”[116]

Although it was not until 1908 that the primary investigation by an

Inspector of reported cases of industrial poisoning or anthrax cases

affecting women and girls was assigned by the Home Office to the Women

Inspectors, we had always used these reports for supplementary

enquiries. We had already, before 1900, a wide knowledge of the

conditions under which lead, phosphorus, and mercurial poisoning had

occurred, and had brought to light unreported cases, particularly of

lead and phosphorus necrosis, and some secondary effects of lead

poisoning in women.

The latter point was strongly exemplified in some information that I

presented in the Annual Report for 1897, gathered by Miss Paterson and

Miss Deane during that year. They enquired into seventy-seven reported

cases of plumbism amongst married women employed in lead processes in

the Potteries of Staffordshire, where the most injurious lead processes—

_e.g._, colour dusting, ware-cleaning—fell to women. They found among

these a high degree of childlessness, stillbirths, and miscarriages;

that thirty-six only had had living children averaging three each, and

of the total number of children two-fifths had died, the majority

succumbing to convulsions in infancy. Two sample cases gave a tragic

warning as to the social as well as individual physical effects of

employment in lead processes on maternity: “A.B., aged twenty-nine,

married seven years, had worked in lead ten years, had three

miscarriages, five stillborn children, and one child alive who died in

convulsions when a few weeks old. C.D., aged twenty-five, married seven

years, began to work in lead in her seventeenth year, had had four

miscarriages and three stillborn children; her one living child was born

after she was absent from her work.”[117]

Other cases as sad and sadder were found first by Miss Martindale, then

by Miss Vines, during their successive and systematic work in the

Potteries from 1903 to 1908. The latter visited practically all women

reported for lead poisoning, and a striking example was the case of Mrs.

B., colour duster and paintress, aged thirty-eight, married fifteen

years, who had nine miscarriages and one living child, ill all the three

years of its life; was herself disabled with wrist drop of both hands.

She had to take her case into court to obtain compensation due to

her.[118]

Although such enquiries dealt with a grave evil to some extent

understood before, the subject gives a good example of ways, arresting

to the general onlooker, in which women investigators seized on features

or consequences of industrial employment of women that concerned the

nation. Their consequent action and recommendations emphasised the need

of steady investigation by qualified women of absenteeism among women

workers in lead processes, and the extremely unsuitable conditions of

publicity under which medical examination in these early days sometimes

took place in the factory. “This led, not infrequently,” said Miss

Deane, “to failure in detecting the very evils which it is the object of

the examination to find out and eliminate.”[119] It appeared in 1900,

when I took some prosecutions against leading employers for neglect of

duties regarding medical examination, that there was a strong tendency

for girls who felt ill to leave a pottery without the suspension by the

certifying surgeon provided for in the special rules of 1899. Poverty,

dread of loss of employment without compensation—which was later made

available for them in such cases by the voluntary action of the

manufacturers themselves—seemed to me the strongest cause of that

tendency. Records of poignant individual cases accumulated by the

Inspectors made this factor very clear.

In the remarkable Pottery Code of Regulations, 1913, which followed on

the general lines of drastic recommendations made by the Departmental

Committee under Sir Ernest Hatch,[120] careful requirement was made that

a private room should be provided for the examination of workers by the

certifying surgeon, and other safeguards of privacy were laid down. Some

other provisions needed to secure effectual use by the workers of

safeguards provided for them followed the lines indicated by complaints

of women workers to the Women Inspectors. On these they had accumulated

evidence, sometimes with the aid of information given by officials of

the “Potteries Fund,” a voluntary fund for assistance of women and girls

suffering from lead poisoning in this industry. For example, separate

washing conveniences were now required for the sexes; women had

explained to me in detail how they could not use the same conveniences

as men coming from hot and dusty processes such as “glost placing,” in

which a large proportion of the men and boys were employed. New detailed

care was given in the regulations to provision and maintenance of

protective clothing and messroom arrangements; suppression of dust by

methods and means additional to those of exhaust ventilation; better

control of temperature; control of heavy weight carrying by young

workers, cleaning of floors, boards, and benches; new limitation of

hours for men as well as women in dangerous processes; exclusion of

women and young workers from certain processes. These and other matters,

particularly rules against heavy weight carrying, and for better methods

of cleaning floors, boards, etc., which were strongly supported by the

evidence arising out of our long researches, were remarkably thoroughly

dealt with in the code. An entirely fresh stimulus was applied to the

sense of responsibility in the occupiers of potteries by a requirement

that the occupier himself should appoint a competent person to carry out

systematic inspection of the working of all the regulations, and to keep

records of the inspection. This was truly a novel requirement in so

ancient an industry, relying as it too long had done on traditional

methods. How much it was needed may be seen in a sample prosecution by

Miss Martindale in 1913. She had found that, so far, the tendency had

been to note and record only breaches of the code by workers. She said:

“Undoubtedly this is salutary, but not, I take it, all that regulation

27 was intended to do. I revisited with Miss Whitlock a factory in which

in October she had noted not less than twenty-six breaches of the

regulations. The record of self-inspection showed no irregularities

since July.... The Works Inspector stated that he ‘had not observed

any,’ although the irregularities were such palpable ones as: not

providing milk, not affixing thermometers and placards, not painting

boards red.”[121] Conviction and heavy penalties followed the taking of

proceedings.

In addition to the industries above touched on, where women and girls

have run risk of lead poisoning, litho transfer making for decoration of

earthenware china gave us much thought in the past owing to the exposure

of young, anæmic girls to finely powdered dust containing lead.

Inclusion of the process under the stringent Pottery Regulations, and

improved methods of dust extraction, have greatly reduced the risks. The

glazing of bricks with lead in the glaze, later shown to be unnecessary,

was found by Miss Squire in 1898 to be causing fits among the girls who

were scraping the edges of the bricks. These attacks had been

thoughtlessly attributed to hysteria until brought under medical

observation. Heading of yarn dyed by lead chromate and painting of

perambulators still take prominent place amongst other industries from

which lead cases affecting female workers are notified. This may be seen

in the Table given below in Appendix II., which is included in order to

enable readers to appreciate the reductions in industrial poisoning that

have followed the changes indicated since 1900. The interesting

liability of lead to turn up in miscellaneous industries, in quite

unexpected ways and places, and especially in the great range of small

metal industries in the Midlands, is too wide a subject for further

consideration here. Sample cases and a long list of industries may be

seen in the Annual Report for 1913.[122]

The great general fall in number of reported lead cases, particularly in

potteries, that had come about by 1914 (see Appendix II.), and is still

more marked in later years, is no doubt due in the main to the

preventive measures I have so briefly indicated. Foremost of all came

improved methods of exhaust ventilation, but very important also were

cleanliness and reduction in hours of work. Until trade is quite normal,

however, the true effect of these measures and of the great aid given

first by legal compensation and then by National Health Insurance—which

enable workers to obtain treatment and rest from work at an early stage

of illness—cannot be fully known. The detailed, thorough investigation

done among the women exposed to lead by Women Inspectors (and

particularly in 1912 to 1914 by Miss Whitlock), which culminated in a

series of prosecutions for numerous contraventions of the new

regulations affecting them in potteries, no doubt led to a fresh start

for them. Of industrial poisoning Miss Whitlock wrote in 1913: “Poverty

with its attendant worry and lack of nourishment appears to be a

predisposing cause in many cases. The youth of many of the workers is

noticeable.... Apart from the painful character of the illness, the

length of time the cases last is a serious matter.... I often came

across cases which had been over a year on compensation.” “A woman in a

warehouse told me that she had been over three years at work after three

years on compensation and still suffered from pains in her limbs, and

was obliged sometimes to absent herself from work.” Of cases of serious

illness among women heading yarn dyed in lead chromate, Miss Tracey

observed: “Without home visits it would have been impossible to gauge

the extent and severity of the illness.”[123] Unquestionably specialist

work by Women Inspectors still remains to be done for women workers in

dangerous trades, even though the figures of poisoning seem to show them

to be now in a much safer position than men. The figures alone do not

disclose the whole matter. Much may yet be learned by following up

“absent” or “left” women workers, as well as by seeing reported cases in

their homes. A marked mobility of women’s labour in lead processes in

potteries was found in 1911 by Miss Sadler. In sixty-eight potteries at

the time of inspection (between January and September) no less than 258

were marked in the special register as “absent” or “left,” apart from

suspensions and reported cases. Out of forty cases diagnosed as lead,

she found twenty-four still suffering and in receipt of compensation;

and also that the majority were under thirty years and not suffering

from accumulated effect of bygone conditions.[124] When compulsory

compensation began to take effect it was gratifying to watch the growth

of realisation among manufacturers of the poverty caused by plumbism. In

the past much had been hidden in obscurity by the tendency of the poor

to suffer in silence. Manufacturers showed increasing recognition of the

importance of utilising compensation to the best advantage for the

individual cases.

From time to time, though rarely, mention was made in Annual Reports of

the appointment of a medical woman by employers to supervise the health

of women and girls in a large factory. This movement passed into a new

phase during the War, when national munition factories set the example

of appointing whole-time women medical officers. In 1920 we learned that

in “a growing number of factories medical women are appointed to

supervise health of women and girls.”[125] In the same year the first

appointment of a woman as certifying surgeon was made by the Chief

Inspector—in West London.

These developments in drawing medical women into official contact with

industry, and particularly the appointment of a woman as one of the

Medical Inspectors of Factories, have a greater significance for future

protection of the health of women workers since the absorption of the

Women Inspectorate, from August 1, 1921, onwards, into the general

district work of the whole country. Instead of concentrating enquiries

and action on behalf of working women, the Women Inspectors must

necessarily give their time largely to men and boy workers, male workers

being not less than 65 per cent. of all persons employed in factories

and workshops.

Meanwhile the whole pottery industry, the matchmaking industry, and

others with features that concerned the health and safety of women in a

special degree, have reorganised themselves on lines recommended by the

Whitley Report. Their Councils have happily immediately concerned

themselves with improving conditions of health and welfare. When one

sees, as I have, the admirable detailed work done for health and safety

in a factory with the aid of workers on a works’ committee in an

industry with a National Council—particularly in a factory with an

experienced welfare superintendent working harmoniously with the works’

committee—one realises what a long way has been travelled since 1893.

Each year, since 1919, has seen contact of the Factory Department with

new Councils, in questions relating to health, safety, and welfare—a

matter to which we may revert in Chapter VIII.

The pursuit of certain salient developments in control of foremost

industries responsible for lead poisoning where women are concerned has

led me so far to pass by absorbingly interesting work of Women

Inspectors on varied risks and injuries during the twenty-seven years

under review, thus only (as in the question of control of dust and fume

by mechanical means) could I, in so enormous a subject, sketch some kind

of picture, that might remain, of the women’s claim and our lines of

response.

It is necessary, however, in order to have any true picture of the work

of the Women Inspectors to sketch rapidly some other of its less closely

interwoven features. The effects of bisulphide of carbon as a solvent in

the making of rubber articles; of white phosphorus for the dipping paste

in matchmaking, producing phosphorus necrosis, called, with a sinister

familiarity, “phossy jaw”; of a solution of mercury to assist felting in

hatters’ and furriers, causing varying degrees of mercurial poisoning;

these took even more of our time and thought in early years than did

many of the injurious dusts already mentioned. As for white phosphorus,

considerable as was our share in tracking down hidden cases of necrosis

and other ill-health in lucifer match girls, and in helping to build up

special rules against the horrible risk of painful and disfiguring

disease, yet all that is now only of historical interest, for statutory

prohibition of the deadly ingredient in matches, whether manufactured in

our country or imported, came in 1908 by an Act which took effect from

January 1, 1910. And the active Joint Council of this reformed industry

and intelligent works’ committees in some factories, with their highly

developed mechanical methods, fittingly bear moral responsibility for

seeing that no such risks ever arise again. Our last reference to any

cases of necrosis was in the Report for 1909, when three young women

were (all from one factory) under treatment in a local hospital—one for

her first operation on the jaw, another for her fourth, while the third,

seen at home, had had two operations. All had suffered much. Some cases

arose during the War among men employed in manufacture of phosphorus. In

india-rubber works of recent years we have seen and dealt more with the

effects of naphtha fumes, dust, lead, great heat, and heavy weights,

than with bisulphide of carbon covered by special rules. The last bad

case we had was in 1911, from a factory where press of work led to

employment of girls for a longer consecutive spell than the two and a

half hours permissible under special rules. Hysteria, bordering on

insanity, followed, and the poor girl was summarily dismissed for

“insobriety and rowdyism.” She recovered quickly on separation from the

work, and was restored to her usual quiet self-control.[126] In the

following year we had some cases of mercurial poisoning in a hatters’

furriers’ workshop due to particles of dust from rabbit fur previously

brushed with a solution of mercury, the process being known as

“carotting.” These were attributed to a failure to maintain, in good

repair and efficiency, the otherwise excellent system of exhaust

ventilation, and to the use of an extra strong solution of mercury to

assist the felting property of inferior fur.[127]

As for anthrax, owing to the supreme importance of bacteriological

research and technical remedies requiring specialists in this industrial

disease, such services as we were able to render, in investigation of

the circumstances in reported cases affecting women, although far from

negligible as regards conditions in factories, were entirely subsidiary

to the work of the medical branch. Sometimes, too, we disclosed hidden

risks to women, engaged at home in cleaning and mending of a husband’s

clothing when he was employed in handling hides or other infective

material. Two out of six cases affecting women in 1914 occurred amongst

women not working in industry, one the wife of a tanner. The prosecution

of a brush manufacturer for breach of regulations in his factory brought

out the fact that one of his outworkers, who had suffered from an attack

of anthrax, was not covered by protective regulations. The obscure

origin of some cases, even among factory workers, appeared in a case

affecting a cotton spinner engaged in cotton that had been shipped from

Alexandria, and in various cases among women sorting or mending sacks

that had conveyed bone dust.[128]

Carbonic oxide poisoning, particularly in laundries, traceable to escape

of gas through defective fittings of ironing machinery, was a subject

that repeatedly engaged the attention of Women Inspectors receiving

complaints of illness among the girls employed on this work. In one

laundry, which had escaped inspection through failure of the occupier to

notify its existence, girls were found to have been gravely ill with

severe symptoms of this form of poisoning. Proceedings instituted

against the occupier for the failure to notify occupation and for using

a gas iron emitting noxious fumes led not only to conviction, but to a

special penalty (on account of the injury to health due to his neglect

of provisions of the Act), which was applied to the benefit of the

injured worker.[129]

The use of bichromate of potassium, causing “chrome holes” in the hands

of workers taking a very long time to heal, in dye works and in

wholesale photography works, was also brought under our observation.

In these kinds of risks, in cases of illness in tobacco works attributed

to nicotine poisoning, and in numerous cases and varieties of trade

eczema (inflammation of the skin or dermatitis), we brought much

information to the Senior Medical Inspector, and received his help in

taking action to secure remedies. Among the trades and processes in

which we gathered or discovered instances of dermatitis—some severe and

obstinate, others quickly yielding to treatment—were lime-juice

manufacture, fancy biscuit finishing in confectionery works, electro-

plating with use of potash, mercurial processes in electric meter

fitting, enamel dipping in metal hollow ware works, use of oil in

tobacco twist rolling, spinning and “batching” with use of shale oil for

softening the fibre in jute works, use of naphtha as a solvent for paint

on the hands, lacquering in brass foundries, claret bottling, gut

preparing at salt machines. In fish curing, where salt sores from the

brine have been an affliction for centuries for the workers engaged in

pickling herring, we did but turn fresh powers of observation on to a

well-known industrial ill; and in this seasonal calling the making of a

Home Office Welfare Order providing for first-aid as well as rest rooms

and other amenities, has brought remedies that should be thoroughly

effective in Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

At the outbreak of the War the whole position as regards the control of

dangerous and injurious trades and processes stood in complete contrast

to the almost stagnant conditions of legislation for hours of labour.

Just when a new stage was set for new risks as well as new experiments,

the Factory Department held the great advantage-point secured by the

long scientific work, described above, in many different kinds of

dangerous and injurious occupations. A markedly successful reduction in

industrial poisoning had been achieved. Having this body of knowledge

and experience it was a comparatively simple matter to supply the same

methods of control, when serious new kinds of industrial poisoning

appeared during the War, in connection with the rapid development of

aircraft and explosives manufacture. Cases of “toxic jaundice,”

popularly known as “dope poisoning,” which occurred in the varnishing of

the wings of aeroplanes by means of a solution containing

tetrachlorethane and, later, in the manufacture and use of

trinitrotoluene for high explosive known as T.N.T., could be quickly

studied and the causes regulated. In the varnishing of wings of

aeroplanes the ingredients of the solution were ultimately changed.[130]

In the case of T.N.T. poisoning, resulting also in toxic jaundice, the

Factory Department were able to supply to the Ministry of Munitions and

Explosives Supply Department a sufficient body of evidence and the

example of special regulations, for them to develop their own necessary

safeguards in the national and the controlled factories. In the national

and some of the controlled factories medical officers were specially

appointed at the works,[131] and the whole of the evidence was reviewed

both by Dr. Legge, Senior Medical Inspector at the Home Office, and the

Medical Officers at the Ministry of Munitions. The remarkable reduction

in cases of toxic jaundice may be seen in Appendix II.

Let us turn from disease or injury, the causes of which—such as dust,

poison, germs, irritants, or a combination of any of these—could be

definitely ascertained and controlled, and let us glance at more general

features and conditions of work that tend to impair the strength or

diminish the resisting capacity of the worker. Under this category the

items on which the Women Inspectors concentrated energy and action, with

marked results, were many. Some I have already dealt with, such as

excessive hours, bad general sanitation, extremes of temperature,

uncertain and low wages (leading to grave insufficiency of food and

other necessaries). Foremost among those with which I have not yet dealt

were heavy weight lifting, carrying or moving, beyond the physical

strength or growth of the worker; long hours of unnecessary standing;

heavy treadling or other undesirable use or strain of parts of the body

in processes where adapted appliances should be substituted; excessive

vibration from heavy machinery; excessively monotonous specialised parts

of processes that could not be carried on for long without nervous

strain; excessively wet or humid conditions of work; lack of means of

preparing or taking food at the works, or of maintaining personal

cleanliness in dirty or offensive processes (by suitable washing

appliances and protective clothing).

It is impossible to enlarge on the study and action of the Inspectors in

all these directions. The questions of messrooms and food, washing

conveniences, cloakrooms, protective clothing, and seats are touched on

in the last two chapters of this book. A few words may be said here on

heavy weights which—in their great strain on children and adolescent

girls and on mothers—made a special appeal to the Women Inspectors, and

on undesirable use of parts of the body for certain processes.

In 1897 I first reported on investigation of complaints of an injurious

pressure upon girls and women in factories to lift or carry heavy

weights. I had to point to the fact that such complaints must be

classified as “outside the scope of the Factory Acts,” and that our

“action has been confined to noting the conditions, and, where it

appeared possible or likely to lead to good results, we have drawn the

attention of the employer to them.” I suggested that the system of

preliminary examination as to physical fitness for the work to be done

should be a possible way of partly meeting the difficulty in the care of

young workers.[132] In the Factory Act of 1901 a provision was included

empowering the certifying surgeon to qualify his certificate of fitness

of young workers entering a factory by conditions as to the work on

which a child or young person under sixteen is fit to be employed. At

the suggestion of the Factory Inspectors this power was frequently used

by certifying surgeons in many different industries to limit the weight

that might be lifted, moved, or carried by these young workers—and with

great effect in the Staffordshire Potteries.[133]

It was in 1900 that I quoted a view, expressed with some prescience by

Miss Squire, on the probable effect of introduction into the English law

of a requirement (such as there was then in the French law) specifically

limiting the weights that might be lifted, carried, or moved by young

workers and women. It has special interest in view of wartime

experience, in national factories, of State control of labour-saving

appliances to prevent overstrain of women and girls.

“We should probably see,” she said, “a speedy increase in mechanical

means of lifting and carrying in factories and workshops, such as

hoists and cranes, trollies, endless bands, and other contrivances,

now so conspicuous by their absence.... The introduction of such

apparatus would not mean displacing of women and girls, it would only

increase their remunerative work, for most of these affected are

pieceworkers, and the time now taken up by journeys to and fro,

fetching and carrying their materials or work, would be occupied in

manufacture, and increase both their wages and the output of their

departments.

“It is pitiable to see young growing girls employed as beasts of

burden, staggering under loads that men hesitate to lift—yet in some

trades this is an ordinary sight.... In brick-making, in tinplate

works, in iron hollow ware, and in warehouses in hardware trades, I

have found girls aged thirteen to seventeen carrying loads which

weighed from 30 pounds to 111 pounds in the ordinary course of their

employment. Many are the complaints of weariness and overstrain made

to me by girls and young women—some of them mothers—who are too poor

or too unskilled to leave an employment which is making too great a

demand on their physical powers, and which in some instances has

caused serious injury.”[134]

I myself saw in a hollow ware works, and had weighed on the spot, a

weight of upwards of 50 pounds, consisting of piled-up galvanised iron

buckets, that a young girl had carried across a yard and up a steep

ladder steps without handrail. Yet even that seemed to me less serious

than the heavy loads of damp clay carried by thirteen-year-old boys in

Staffordshire Potteries, with strained looks and beads of perspiration

on their brows. This matter has been carefully regulated, thirteen years

later, by the special regulations for potteries.

In tinplate works girls of fourteen and fifteen years were found to be

carrying loads of sharp-edged plates, weighing 100 pounds and over: one

particularly small and slight girl of fourteen years was carrying 107

pounds with difficulty. Complaints were made of pains in the side and of

swellings and bruises from the heavy weight on the hip. In one tinplate

works boys with trollies were fetching and carrying the loads for the

girls, a measure said to be impossible in other tinplate works.

“Women are very much at the mercy of their foremen and of the men with

whom they work in such matters ... girls in a wire-bound hose factory

were slowly heaving up large coils of iron wire weighing 108 pounds

from stair to stair up a steep ladder staircase, resting at intervals

to take breath, while the foreman stood by and the rope for elevating

the coils to the girls’ machine-room hung idle.... The employer gave a

sharp reprimand when he was made aware of it.... An obligation not to

‘allow’ the lifting and carrying by young persons and women of weights

above a certain standard would probably best effect ... the adjusting

of work or the wages, the increased vigilance to protect the weak from

being imposed upon, or the provision of labour-saving appliances ...

required to remove the evil.”[135]

Remarkable examples were given by Miss Martindale between 1902 and 1904

of weights, and aggregate material, handled or moved in a day, in

potteries and brickworks—_e.g._, quarry bricks weighing 50 pounds each

were carried by a woman or girl to the kiln and handed up to a man to

place; girls wheeled barrows containing forty bricks weighing 9 pounds

each; a girl handled 55 tons of clay a day in lifting bricks from a

machine;[136] a boy of fourteen years weighing 77 pounds fetched clay

for a moulder who worked in a shop up a steep flight of stairs, the

weight of the piece of clay he was carrying was 69 pounds;[137] a

delicate girl of fourteen years fetched on an average three to five

lumps of clay an hour for the moulder, and was found carrying 67 pounds;

a girl of seventeen fetched clay for eleven moulders, bringing them each

four lumps a day, each lump weighing ½ cwt. The mother remarked to the

Inspector on the exhausted state in which her daughter returned home

after doing “men’s work”;[138] a boy of thirteen years was found

struggling up a steep flight of stairs carrying clay weighing 78 pounds.

Patient observations of this kind went on in numerous industries year

after year, and the mass of material in the published Annual Reports is

great. Ventilation of the question led to its inclusion in various Home

Office Orders of Regulations (_e.g._, fruit preserving works in 1907,

potteries in 1913). The most important step, however, was the passing of

Clause 3 (4) in the Employment of Children Act, 1903: “A child shall not

be employed to lift, carry, or move anything so heavy as to be likely to

cause injury to the child,” and “child” was defined as a person under

the age of fourteen years. In due course the Factory Inspectors took

cases into court under this clause, and penalties were obtained. Public

opinion awakened to the evil, and much good was done by the Inspectors

when they simply called the attention of many employers to the need of

limiting weights lifted and carried by young growing workers. When Miss

Lovibond, for example, drew the attention of employers in Burnley to

heavy cloth carrying by children, they made no objection to

discontinuing the practice. In 1909 in the glass factories of Sunderland

women were working in pairs carrying large iron trays piled with flint

glass dishes weighing up to 120 pounds, cumbersome as well as heavy to

carry. “The difficulty could be overcome by suitable mechanical means,

and it is satisfactory that in these cases the danger had only to be

pointed out to have it remedied, although we were told that for forty

years the women had thus been beasts of burden.”[139] In 1912 in the

Staffordshire Potteries the employment of men instead of boys for

carrying, together with the increased use of trollies, is mentioned as a

consequence of the action of the Inspectors in drawing attention to the

subject of injurious weight carrying, and particularly to the

prohibition in the Employment of Children Act, 1903. In Manchester

“making-up” warehouses many instances were found of girls and women

carrying pieces of cotton cloth weighing from 60 to 70 pounds, a great

strain and a continual grievance; serious cases of overstrain resulting

in absences from work, unnoticed by employer, were traced by Women

Inspectors visiting their homes. In answer to the employers’ plea that

the women were themselves to blame, the Inspectors pointed to the

systematic laying of pieces weighing 70 pounds by men on the shoulders

of women (slight, city and slum dwellers, and undeveloped girls), who

filed past the men to receive the cloth delivered by a chute from a room

above. Similar and greater overstrain was found by Miss Squire and her

staff in Lancashire among weavers lifting loom weights at the back of

their looms. The injury caused is “often not noticed until later in

life.”[140] Improvements in both these classes of cases were reported in

1913.

Of all the various ways of using a part of the human body in a

disproportionate or unsuitable manner to perform an industrial operation

for which a mechanical contrivance should be used, I may mention here

the one that appears most frequently in my Annual Reports. The “licking

of labels” by girls or boys instead of moistening the gum on the labels

by pads or a machine was brought to my notice by a thoughtful employer

in a country thread mill, in the first year of my service with the

Factory Department, as a very undesirable practice specially injurious

to the health of young workers. I investigated this practice, and

finding it in fact frequent, and associated with signs such as swollen

glands in the neck, I reported the matter for further enquiry by the

Dangerous Trades Committee. They found that this was a practice not only

in thread mills, but also in silk and aerated water industries, and

probably in other trades also, and that in a large Lancashire thread

mill the tickets for bobbins were almost entirely moistened by twelve

full-time young workers, licking up to fifty gross labels, and thirty-

five half-timers, licking up to twenty-five gross labels a day, while a

woman managed to lick forty-five gross a day. As the firms concerned

abandoned the practice in favour of a damper when attention was drawn to

the subject, no regulation was recommended, and the Committee merely

laid stress on their opinion that such a practice could not but be

prejudicial to health, particularly at an age when growth is active and

the system requires all its digestive secretions, even if the gum used

were perfectly pure. More serious injury might be done if infective

organic material or poisons were present on the labels.[141]

Many years’ pursuit of this subject by the Inspectors showed that the

effective cause of the continuance of the undesirable, and sometimes

injurious, practice was the pressure for rapid output; under a system of

piecework remuneration a young worker could, by use of tongue and

saliva, acquire a rapidity exceeding the speed obtained from the use of

any available hand-damper. By persistent work the Women Inspectors

tracked down factory after factory where the method continued, and got

the practice stopped. The last bad instances reported on were by Miss

Whitlock, M.B., in 1912, in an Irish mill, where she found girls fixing

blue labels to a bronze band wrapped round balls of thread. They had to

lick the whole surface of the blue label, and although not continuously

engaged on the work, a girl would label as many as 960 balls in a day.

They suffered from soreness of lips and tongue and bad taste in the

mouth, while a mother seen at home said her daughter had lost her

appetite and “failed terribly” while at this work. She took her away

from it, and the girl had quite recovered her health when employed as a

spinner. Not only did the manager abolish the licking by providing and

enforcing use of dampers, he also raised the labellers’ piece rates by

one-third. It is a valuable example, for it is not seldom that

introduction of improved methods of working may cost the workers more in

immediate loss of wages than it is possible for them to afford.[142]

Among the industries other than thread-spooling where licking was

checked by the Inspectors, were packeting of sweets (in gelatine bags

closed by licking), siphon-labelling, tin-labelling, and cigar-banding.

In 1903 I was able to give an account of a good power-driven machine for

punching labels and pasting them on to thread-spools which I had seen

that year at work in silk mills in the Grand Duchy of Baden, a health

and time-saving machine doing the work very efficiently.[143]

Accidents causing bodily injury or loss of life, and problems of safety

connected with fencing of machinery[144] moved by mechanical power, and

other special safeguards against explosion, escape of steam, falls,

etc., involve highly technical questions. In factory industry as a whole

they affect male workers in a far higher degree than female workers; in

1920 there were more than thirty times as many fatal accidents to men as

to women, and more than nine times as many accidents non-fatal as well

as fatal to men as to women.[145] Thus the first concern of the Women

Inspectors, lacking as they did at the beginning knowledge and

experience in these matters, was to refer risks of accident, observed by

them in connection with unfenced machinery, to Men Inspectors in charge

of districts. These then took the action or gave the instruction to the

occupiers, and we were thus left free for concentration on the urgent

questions already touched on, to which we could bring new and

indispensable contributions.

The Women Inspectors, however, took great interest in complaints made to

them by the women of dangers and of accidents actually occurring. They

soon gathered useful facts by their own observation, and the interest

rapidly grew as they began to see the close connection of accidents with

conditions of labour—other than fencing of danger points—including

pressure for output, long hours, and very low rates of pay under the

piecework system, as well as methods of lighting the factory.

It soon appeared to them probable that the effectual prevention of

accidents rested not only on skill in fencing, but on detailed study of

conditions, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, on responsible

supervision of all conditions by good management in the factories and

workshops. The knowledge they steadily acquired, through following up

complaints, of the immense suffering and loss to individual workers and

through them to national production, by preventible maiming and injury,

led them to give increasing time to study of the subject.[146]

The important amendment of the code governing notice of accidents in the

workplace and their investigation by the Inspectorate, that came into

operation on January 1, 1896, brought them new opportunities of

acquiring information. It became compulsory for every occupier to keep a

register of the accidents occurring in the factory or workshop of which

notice had to be sent to the Inspector for the district, and to enter

particulars in the register regarding such accidents within a week of

their occurrence. Immediate access to this register certainly increased

the value of an inspection. It acted as a finger-post to special causes

of accidental injury to workers in the particular workplace. Much more

important, however, for practical knowledge of broad means of preventing

accidents was access to a general review of dominating risks in an

industry as a whole. This opportunity came to me and my staff as an

unforeseen consequence of the devolution in 1898 upon a Woman Inspector

of district charge of a “special” district containing a particularly

large number of all kinds of power-driven and hand laundries,[147] as

well as factories and workshops in which the making of wearing apparel

was carried on. It was soon discovered that, so far as practical

prevention of accidents went, the Inspector in charge of the special

district, by receipt of notices of accidents, by thorough investigation

of their circumstances and of the complaints of the workers, by

conferences with laundry and other engineers and study of safety

appliances, largely made up for her initial lack of training as an

engineer. Lack of engineering training was not confined to Women

Inspectors; and, as laundries first came under the Factory Act after the

Women Inspectors were appointed, a special opportunity arose for them of

acquiring useful new knowledge which was then available for the whole

Factory Department. This opportunity was seized, the sympathies of a

considerable number of laundry occupiers and engineers were aroused, and

fruitful experiments were rapidly begun in this small special district

in development of guards for the prevention of extremely painful and

frequently maiming accidents—chiefly to fingers, hands, and arms, and

largely to young workers—on ironing machinery, wringers, hydro-

extractors—in fact, on the most dangerous machines in laundry plant. The

comparatively recent development of specialised power-driven machinery

in laundries, and the incidence of the most painful accidents on young

girl workers, tended to melt away opposition (on the part of occupiers)

to the Inspectors’ zeal for encouraging early trial of automatically

acting guards for preventing such accidents. An ingrained habit of

regarding accidents as somewhat unavoidable was not, in laundries, a

legacy from the past, nor had it been acquired by the industry, and the

presence of women as manageresses and owners (as well as their being the

great majority of the workers) led to a ready acceptance of a Woman

Inspector as one likely to know something about the subject. The

systematic tabulation of classified causes of all serious accidents in

laundries soon brought to their notice, further helped to a reasonable

outlook on the problems of fencing.

During the first two years of responsibility for this special district,

with so many laundries in it, we studied the conditions, the machines,

the time, and other circumstances in the occurrence of the accidents,

but I soon felt that a wider body of statistical information, from all

over the country, was needed to strengthen our demand for use of good

guards on the dangerous machines.[148] I therefore examined every report

by a certifying surgeon to the Chief Inspector on an accident in a

laundry from every part of the United Kingdom, and tabulated these

according to source or causation of the injury and according to age and

sex of the workers. The results were published in the Annual Report for

1902, and the work of tabulation was thereafter carried on for me by

Miss Tracey down to 1914. At first the reporting of the accidents was

incomplete, and the total annual number gradually rose from 289 in 1901

to 435 in 1908, after which, in spite of great increase of employment in

factory laundries, and in use of dangerous power-driven ironing

machinery, the total number of accidents in the industry annually on the

whole declined, the average for the five years 1909 to 1913 being 391·4.

In all these years the classification of sources of accidents was

unchanged, the material risks had been rightly inferred at the outset

from close examination of the machines and from investigation of

individual accidents. The stress we laid on the value of automatic

guards for stopping indrawing rollers (risk arising from feeding all

kinds of articles in between the rollers) was justified by the

proportionate decline in number and severity of these accidents.

Probably in few other industries were accidents so predominantly caused

by definite danger points in power-driven machines. Out of a total

during twelve years of 4,235 accidents reported on by certifying

surgeons (including scalds and burns, which numbered 379), 2,648 were

caused by indrawing rollers of ironing and wringing machines, and an

abnormally high proportion affected girls under eighteen years of age—

who were so largely employed in machine-ironing.[149] These facts were

brought out at a conference of the Department with the laundry trade in

1910, at an interesting exhibition of laundry machinery, where the

latest developments in machinery and guards could be studied. After this

conference a memorandum standardising fencing of laundry machinery was

issued to the trade.[150] Definite steps in this direction had been made

possible by the concentrated work of the Women Inspectors on the

industry, first when they were definitely instructed to follow up

fencing in laundries throughout the kingdom, and secondly when, from

1908, all accidents affecting women and girls in laundries were referred

to the Senior Women Inspectors in the various divisions for

investigation and the necessary action.

The industry was not one in which the general risks of accident were

high; the total accidents and the accident rate were small compared with

those of other industries. Without such concentrated team-work on the

question, the predominant risks would probably long have escaped

effective observation and control, and the painful and maiming accidents

to many young girls would have been obscured by the greater roll of

accidents in other industries; they would have failed to receive the

effectual check that they in fact did receive in consequence of the

assignment to this branch of the Inspectorate of a special opportunity

and responsibility in relation to the trade. It is an interesting

illustration of the value of special work on selected trades, and raises

the question whether such special work is not an adjunct that is

indispensable for efficiency in a system of administration by area or

territorial districts.

Important prosecutions were taken from time to time, and repeatedly

penal compensation was obtained and applied to the benefit of workers

injured through neglect of the occupier to provide or maintain good

guards. In 1913 an unusually interesting prosecution, of importance for

Scottish laundry workers, was taken by the late Miss Vines in the

Edinburgh Sheriff Court, for a failure to fence securely the intake of a

calender in consequence of which neglect a young girl had lost the use

of her hand.[151] It was keenly contested, and Miss Vines’s account of

the hearing may well be remembered here:

“A plea of ‘not guilty’ was tendered, and evidence was led at

considerable length—I had eleven witnesses—as to the question of

secure fencing. At the time of the accident the feed of the calender

was fenced only by a fixed bar guard, while our contention was as to

the necessity of the provision of an automatic guard. We had expert

evidence from two witnesses, one the member of a large firm of laundry

engineers, the other Miss Perry, whose evidence, owing to her

university degree in engineering, carried considerable weight. The

advocate for the respondents also had two expert witnesses. In my

argument I referred to the case of Schofield v. Schunk (1855) 24 L. T.

(o.s.), 253, in which it is laid down that the machinery must be

fenced according to the best method known at the time, not merely in

the manner usual in the best regulated factories in the district.

After a hearing of some hours the Sheriff convicted, saying that he

thought it clear from the evidence that the fence consisting of a

fixed bar was not of a satisfactory nature, and that an improved type

was now largely used.”

A similar responsibility and opportunity arose in the wholesale clothing

trades, but the accident risks were far smaller and chiefly due to

“transmission machinery”—_e.g._, shafting, driving bands and pulleys to

sewing machines, found also in many other trades—these risks being

already well known. The one really new contribution there made by the

studies of the Women Inspectors lay in needle-puncturing accidents with

septic results, from the use of power-driven sewing machines driven at a

very high speed, 2,000 to 3,000 stitches a minute. Analysis of reported

accidents showed that in 1907 35 per cent. of the total accidents to

women and girls in clothing factories arose from this cause, and of

these not far short of one-fifth resulted in septic poisoning and

consequent great loss of time. Often the needle has to be removed

surgically, and sometimes X-rays applied. A needle may enter the finger

several times before the hand can be withdrawn, and serious injury

sometimes results. So far no guard had been devised to prevent these

accidents. Next year over 40 per cent. of the accidents to women and

girls in clothing factories were due to this cause, and in relation to

these and other injuries the importance of skilled first-aid was brought

out. In 1909 again the very great loss of working time and health

through these accidents, at first classed as “slight,” was illustrated,

and the extra urgency of first-aid where invention of preventive

safeguards against the accidents was still lacking was further pressed

home. In one large clothing factory seven out of twelve accidents were

of this nature, and in even the slightest of them the workers had been

absent from work several weeks.[152] Enquiry of a systematic kind was

made into the arrangements provided by the employers for rendering

first-aid at the works from this time on by the Women Inspectors—not

only when investigating these, but all kinds of accidents. It was found

that the very enquiry and the recording of results on the point

stimulated employers already doing good work in this direction, and that

it aroused others to a new interest in the matter. Miss Whitlock’s

investigations showed how greatly lack of knowledge of first-aid

increased suffering to the injured person. For example, “a child’s head

was badly scalded with boiling starch, and the wound made worse by the

forewoman immediately bathing it in cold water. When a young woman was

scalped in a clothing factory, time was lost in getting her attended to,

for no one knew the quickest way in which to get in touch with the

ambulance authorities; neither did anyone think of removing the scalp

from the overhead shafting until an hour after the accident, so that by

the time it arrived at the infirmary it was too cold to treat in the

usual way in such cases.”[153]

Tin cutting, pen-making, metallic capsule making, bottle washing, and

many other processes furnished for our observation cases of septic

poisoning, following relatively slight accidents, which strengthened our

appeal for systematic development of first-aid in industry. It was

wartime pressure for output that ultimately clinched our argument as to

its value from the standpoint of production as well as of humanity.

One example out of many may be cited to illustrate how guards preventing

accidents were secured systematically on a machine when its danger was

brought to our notice. Teazle-brushing machines in hosiery factories

thus arrested the attention of Miss Squire and Miss Tracey almost

simultaneously. Miss Squire was interested in complaints of dust, Miss

Tracey was engaged in tabulating accidents affecting women and girls in

the hosiery trade for my information. The former saw the points of

danger apparent in the machine which was new to her, and heard of severe

accidents from the indrawing teazle-covered rollers for the brushing of

hosiery. Miss Tracey presented the fact that seven out of the fourteen

reported accidents from this machine in 1906 were “severe.” Guards were

asked for through the District Inspector, and in 1909 I was glad to see

that accidents had been consequently reduced to three for the year.[154]