From Cradle to Grave
Lecture 15
Lecture Outline and Themes
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Effect of industrialisation on health (19thC)
Relationship between working conditions
and health (factory system, individual
trades)
How successful were the measures taken
to solve health problems caused by
industrialisation?
Can work be good for health?
Relates to working population – prime of
life/middle working years, but for much of
19thC also old and young people. One of
biggest influences on health of individual
and family.
Population & Urbanisation
1800
1850
Population of Britain
11m
21m
London
1m
2.4m
Manchester
% urban dwellers
25,000 (1775)
c.50%
c.80%
400,000
1851
1901
Crowded and insanitary conditions for the labouring poor
resulting from industrialisation
Poverty and squalor - Blue Gate Fields, 1872. Taken from London: A Pilgrimage
by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré. (Note the date!)
‘everywhere the heaps of debris, refuse, and offal;
standing pools for gutters, and stench which alone
would make it impossible for a human being in any
degree civilised to live in such a district’ (Engels,
1830s)
‘I saw, or thought I saw, a degenerate race - human
beings stunted, enfeebled, and depraved - men
and women that were not to be aged - children
that were never to be healthy adults.’ (Thackrah,
1832)
Charles Thackrah, The Effects of the Principal Arts,
Trades and Professions, and of Civic States and habits
of Living, on Health and Longevity (1831) First to write
on relationship between work/different trades and
health
J P Kay, The Moral and Physical Condition of the
Working Classes employed in the Cotton Manufacture
in Manchester (1832)
P.Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of England, Its
Moral, Social and Physical Condition (1833)
Contemporary Accounts
Edwin Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary
Condition of the Labouring Population (1842)
Dr Calvery Holland, Diseases of the Lungs from
Mechanical Causes and Inquiries into the
Condition of the Artisans exposed to the
inhalation of dust (1843) (Sheffield physician)
Industrialisation - Optimists
 Industrialisation allowed Britain to escape from
population pressure on limited resources
 ‘First industrial nation’ – prestige of Britain
 Belief in continual progress – socially,
economically – will raise the standards of living
for all
 Measurable by rising incomes, falling mortality. Ill
effects have been exaggerated
 Pessimists rely on impressionistic evidence of
‘horror stories’
Industrialisation – Pessimists (e.g. E.P.
Thompson)
 Rapid urbanisation and industrialisation caused
a drastic deterioration in living and working
conditions
 Economic growth did not justify this –
exploitation of working classes by ruling elite
 Children and women in particular exploited by
industrialisation, but we should also remember
that people continued to work well into old age.
Retirement a relatively new concept.
Discipline: ‘For 12 mortal hours does the leviathan of machinery toil on
with vigour undiminished and with pace unslackened and the human
machines must keep pace with him. What signify languor, sickness,
disease? The pulsations of the physical monster continue and his human
agents must drag after him’.
Danger: ‘Unfenced machinery took its toll of fingers; hair and loose
clothes which, often because of fatigue, were allowed to fall into what
the novelist Francis Trollope called “the ceaseless whirring of a million
hissing wheels,” and the long hours of standing and bending produced
the characteristic weak legs and arched back of the former child
operative’.
Morality: ‘Factories and especially mines were corrupting influences
upon young children, who soon adopted the licentious morals of their
young adult colleagues’.
‘Thousands of little children, both male and female, but
principally female, from seven to fourteen years of age,
are daily compelled to labour from six o’clock in the
morning to seven in the evening, with only - Britons,
blush while you read it! - with only thirty minutes allowed
for eating and recreation. Poor infants! Ye are indeed
sacrificed at the shrine of avarice, without even the
solace of the Negro slave; ye are no more than he is,
free agents; ye are compelled to work as long as the
necessity of your needy parents may require, or the
cold-blooded avarice of your worse than barbarian
masters may demand! Ye live in the boasted land of
freedom, and fell and mourn that ye are slaves, and
slaves without the only comfort which the Negro has’.
‘Yorkshire Slavery’, Richard Oastler to Leeds Mercury 16 Oct 1830
(From Fraser, Welfare State, pp.254-5)
Saltaire, Titus Salt’s new industrial community,
c.1850, ‘paternalistic’
Robert Owen, New Lanark
Legislation
1802 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act
maximum 12 hour day for pauper apprentices
1819 Peel’s Act Forbad children under 9 from working in cotton mills and
children over 9 were limited to a 12 hour day
1833 Factory Act (textile industry only)
Minimum age of 9 in cotton mills
9-13 Maximum 8 hour day
13-18 Maximum12 hour day
1842 Mines Act Excluded women and children under 10
1844 Factory Act Allowed children of 8 – but only 6.5 hours
1867 Factory Act Extension Act - (premises over 50 people)
Minimum age of 10
10-14 Half day working
14-18 and women, maximum 10 hour day
‘The general rule - a rule not more beneficial to
the capitalist than to the labourer - is that
contracts shall be free and that the state shall
not interfere between the master and the
workman. (Although) This is the general rule
there is an exception. Children cannot protect
themselves and are therefore entitled to the
protection of the public.’
( Derek Fraser, Welfare State, p.21)
It appears, that in 1822, ‘out of 2,500 grinders, there were not 35 who had
reached the age of 50, and perhaps not double that number who had
reached the age of 45.’
‘the symptoms of the grinders’ disease are difficulty of breathing...
sonorous cough... spitting of blood... expectoration of mucus, containing
often dust, and , in the latter stage, of fetid and purulent matter;
muddiness of complexion; anxiety of countenance; pulse quickened...
sweats and diarrhoea; emaciation; - in a word the signs of slow but
certainly fatal consumption.’
Remedies recommended by Dr Knight: ‘Dusting the machines... great
reduction in the time of labour... use of wet stones as much as possible...
large flues to be laid on the floor for ventilation... fork-grinding to be
confined to criminals.’
Matchmakers and phossy jaw
 Phossy jaw, phosphorus necrosis of the jaw
occupational disease caused by white phosphorus used
in matchmaking industry 19thC/early2othC
 Toothache/swelling of gums followed by
abscesses/death of bone/brain damage and death
 Active ingredient matches up to 1910. London
matchgirls strike 1888, William Booth (Salvation
Army) opened matchmaking factory in 1891 using red
phosphorus. While phosphorus prohibited
internationally 1906 and legislation in individual
nations followed.
Phossy jaw
More Legislation
 1878 Factory and Workshops Act - banned women and
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children from working with white lead and phosphorous
dipping.
1883 Preventing Lead Poisoning Act - set standards for
ventilation, lavatories, meal rooms, baths, protective
clothing and respirators
1896 Dr Arthur Whitelegge appointed Chief Inspector of
Factories. Emphasis on industrial disease rather than
sanitation
1891 Factory Act transferred sanitary control away from
factory inspectors to local authorities.
1895 Factory and Workshop Act required notification of
industrial diseases for first time
 See Antony S. Wohl, Endangered Lives (1984) for more details on
public health and occupational health legislation.
State Intervention
Idea from c.1870s that active management – including of
conditions and health – necessary to manage productive
labour (Steve Sturdy)
Reform delivered unevenly and very localised
Resistance to state interference though gradually
implemented reforms
Humanitarian concerns - campaigns
Gender and protective model (motherhood): see Barbara
Harrison
Limitations
– Supported capitalists - by protecting children and womenthe adult male worker was left unprotected
– Patriarchal system - by excluding women from areas of
work it supported sexual segregation of the labour market
and gender inequalities in wage rates and access to work
– Some workers traded off earnings against health or were
resistant themselves to employer or state intervention in
health at work
Turn of 20th century: women and work
Women’s work opposed due to race issues – damage of
industrial labour/unfitted women for motherhood
- reduced physical capacity for childbearing; breastfeeding
more impractical; detrimental to moral fibre of society if
mothers not at home with young children
Women’s work not necessarily damaging but worked long
hours e.g. as chars, factories, shops, restaurants (home
workers/sweated labour)
Yet extra money important to families. Textile districts of
West Yorkshire infant death rate lower than e.g. South
Wales and Durham where women less likely to work
Conflicting evidence : Birmingham 1909-10, babies better
chance of reaching first birthday if mothers worked; in
Glasgow same period high IMR related to mothers working
up to delivery.
Early 20th century
 Small children also continued to contribute to economy –
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delivery boys, servants, domestic workers
Half-timers/‘little mothers’/boy labour problem
1909 Trades Boards Act – minimum wage sweated trades,
though condition remained notorious
1901 Factory and Workshop Act women and children still
permitted to work 60 hours a week, up to 12 hours at a
stretch. Many factories fell below conditions set for
ventilation, drainage, heating, etc
1840 Factory Inspectors appointed, 1893 first female
inspectors – slowly expanding
Workmen’s compensation – response to work-related illhealth, prompted by organised labour (accidents and ill
health not responsibility of worker but employer)
st
1
World War
 By end of 19th cluster of legislation to project men and
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women in the workplace, though much ignored or not
properly implemented; smaller workshops harder to
supervise
Impact of 1st WW – War emergency. Factory Acts relaxed,
labour shortage, new machinery meant safety
compromised
Highlighted women’s health issues, due to drafting in of
large numbers of women into workforce
Munitions – highlighted specific dangers. Health of
Munition Workers’ Committee – concern with hazards,
fatigue, etc
Role of welfare supervisors - moral as well as health
imperatives
Later stages of war recognised good health of workers
crucial – welfare provision extended e.g. canteens.
Munitions work
Interwar years
 Standards still low, worsened in Depression – filthy
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conditions, health hazards, noise, risk of accidents
1937 Factory Act – raised standards of safety, health
and welfare
Large, well-organised and successful firms increasingly
improved welfare services, including health provisions
Industrial medicine emerges as part of industrial
welfare – factory potentially a site of health (Vicky
Long). Interest in relationship health and productivity.
Those in work liable to poor conditions and health
risks but also those out of work – poverty, poor diet
and demoralisation (Pilgrim Trust).
See also London’s Pulse (MOH reports, Wellcome
Library)
Bournville village and factory
2nd World War
 Safety, health and welfare at work a priority
 Ernest Bevin (General Secretary Transport Workers
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Union) appointed Minister of Labour and National
Service 1940
Factories (Medical and Welfare Services) Order July
1940 – extended medical supervision, welfare
supervision, nursing and first aid.
Workplace becomes place of health promotion –
posters, films, leaflets on food safety, hygiene, spitting
and TB.
Provision of workers canteens extended
Research into absenteeism – highlighted strain of war,
lowering of physical fitness, stress
Employment, unemployment and health
 Working class suffered disproportionately from
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unhealthy working conditions and unemployment
Workplace itself increasingly vigilant and also a site of
good health practices
Intensification of work and new forms of organisation
lead to fatigue and stress (replaced risk to physical
health/accidents/poor environmental conditions)
Relationship between depression, recession and health
– anxiety, poor standard of living, risky jobs.
Unemployed appear to have worse health, higher risk
of suicide and death
Strong relationship between mental health and
employment – work actually good for health
Modern Records Centre
 If this topic interests you, then you should visit the
Modern Records Centre on campus, which houses the
largest collection of Trade Union material in the UK –
occupational health, women and health at work,
maternity, material on individual trades.