Death and disease behind the counter / by Thomas Sutherst.

  • Sutherst, Thomas.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Death and disease behind the counter / by Thomas Sutherst. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    able standing. Nominally there may be stated hours for meals in every establishment, but practically the time allowed is much too short, and the hours are varied to suit the ebb and flow of business in the shop. The assistant may be jaded, and ready to sink on the floor; the food may become cold and unpalatable, yet he must wait until the rush is over and the purchasers have been satisfied before the much needed rest and food can be had. Even then, if the assist- ants had a single hour all to themselves for rest and refresh- ment, as nearly all other employes have, it would be some compensation for having to wait; but when the dinner-table is reached, undue haste is invariably imposed, and the food must be hurriedly consumed in order either to make room for others, or to enable the assistant to resume his work behind the counter as speedily as possible. The result is that, on one day ten minutes is allowed for dinner, on another fifteen minutes, and the very longest time obtained—under circum- stances which are unusually exceptional—to rest as well as to eat the most substantial meal of the day, is only half an hour. It is of course said by some traders that these inconveniences are inevitable, but I shall defer dealing with this and similar contentions until I reAch a later stage of the narrative. These protracted hours, with inadequate time for meals, even if spent in the open air amid all the freshness that sur- rounds the plough-boy as he tills the earth under the broad canopy of heaven, surrounded with rural beauty and health- giving breezes, would be regarded as excessive. What then must they be in small low-roofed shops with an atmosphere laden with minute particles, and charged to the full with heated and gaseous impurities ? The best regulated and most spacious shops are not strikingly pleasant for any length of time. A ray of sunshine invariably reveals an otherwise almost imperceptible cloud of insidious dust which at every inspira- tion passes into the system only to clog the respiratory organs and interfere with their proper action. There are, of course, unpleasant circumstances in almost every calling by which men live, but those surrounding the shop-assistant are pecu- liarly treacherous, as their effect is not to maim or strike down the victim by a sharp, sudden blow, as in the case of artizans and mechanics who have to do with dangerous machinery or ponderous materials, yet the influences work stealthily, secretly, and almost imperceptibly, until in the majority of