Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    663/896 (page 197)
    to you the leading principles of sanitary law, not as they affect private rights, and form the subject of disputes between private individuals, but as they have been incorporated into statutes, the administration of which has been committed to certain public bodies. And as it is with administration in Scotland, that we are mainly concerned, I shall say most about statutes which affect Scotland only. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to mention the more important Sanitary Acts which apply to Eng- land and Scotland alike. First and foremost of these is the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878. I wish that time permitted me to sketch the gradual development of the Factory Laws : a movement with which the name of Lord Shaftesbury will for ever be associated. I wish I could point out how it has been found necessary in the public interest to put one trade after another under regulation, until now it is a little difficult to specify any workshop which is not a Factory : how clauses providing for education have been added to clauses providing for the safety of machinery ; and how reasonable restrictions on the labour of the young have been added to sanitary provisions. Those sanitary provisions are either general, applying to all factories and workshops, or special, being restricted to certain trades. The general rules are these : (1) That every factory and workshop shall be kept in a cleanly state and free from effluvia arising from any drain or nuisance. (2) That there shall be no overcrowding injurious to health. (3) That the shop shall be ventilated so as to make harmless the gases, vapours, dust and other impurities which are generated in the course of the manufacture. The Act itself prescribes what means must be taken to ensure cleanliness. If the inside walls and ceilings, and passages and staircases, have been painted with oil or varnished once in every seven years, then you must wash them with hot water and soap once in every fourteen months : if not painted with oil or varnished, then you must limewash every fourteen months. I daresay a good many of us have been in workshops where the smells were not quite heavenly, and where there seemed to be either too many hands, or too little