The trades of Sheffield as influencing life and health, more particularly file cutters and grinders : read before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, October 5th, 1865 / by Dr. J.C. Hall.

  • Hall, John Charles, 1816-1876.
Date:
[1865?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The trades of Sheffield as influencing life and health, more particularly file cutters and grinders : read before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, October 5th, 1865 / by Dr. J.C. Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    lived longer it would be so full there would be no getting a living at it.” What can I say to such 'men ?—to dry grinders working without a fan—why this—if ever there was a trade more poisonous than the fabled valley of the upas—more slow in its effects it is true, but equally deadly with the inhaling of the atmosphere of the celebrated Grotto del Cani, it is that of a fork, a razor, or a scissors grinder, who works without employing the effectual means for his preservation which the fan affords; if bent on destroying yourselves thus recklessly, have the honesty to prevent others, the poor little boys, many of them your own sons, from entering the trade without a warning—write therefore, over the doorway leading to your infernal hulls “ ALL HOPE ABANDON YE WHO ENTER HERE ;” We do not use the fan, and without this protection your destruction after a few years misery and suffering is certain. The entrance to a dry grinders’ hull, without a fan, I say emphatically is unmistakably the gate that leads to certain death ! A good fan will cost from £1 10s. to £8, or £5, but after what I have stated, I think all present will agree with me, that the owner of • the wheel must be by law compelled to provide a fan as an absolutely necessary portion of the machinery of a wheel where dry grinding is carried on; and that he must be held responsible for having this fan always at work and in proper order. A small additional sum could be added to the weekly rent of the hull; which would not exceed one penny. The fan is on the principle of a winnowing machine, and with a flue properly constructed, leading from each ol the different stones in each room, the dust can most effectually be driven out of it, and both the particles of grit and metal which arise in grinding, and the dust created in glazing and polishing removed. I went last week into one of the rooms used for razor grinding at the wheel of Messrs. J. Rodgers and Sons, where many men were at work shaping razors; there was no dust, nor was I inconvenienced in the slightest degree, during the half hour I remained. Had the fan not been at work, I know by experience that I should soon have felt most uncomfortable. One of the men told me the wheel had been “ lame” for three weeks, (i.e. not at work,) and he had been working at another place without a fannie, and felt so bad at his chest that he Was glad to get back to his own “ trow” again. He never felt bad there.* At the Soho Wheel, and at the Union Wheel also, and I may add, at many other wheels, I have seen the fan at work -with the happiest effects, and in the next room I have seen a set of reckless fools destroying themselves because they would not use it. Many years ago, the late Mr. Trickett, at the Union Wheel, showed me how the different processes could be gone through without injury to the grinder from the dust, and at the Soho wheel, I saw that shaping razors and even racing a stone, by adding a properly contrived box could be rendered perfectly innocuous by the use of the fan; almost all the dust being driven off by the fan, up a shaft on the outside of the building. The particles of dust and steel not carried away by the fan, in “racing” a stone, may be prevented from entering the air passages by tying, as all intelligent grinders do, when performing this work, a light handkerchief over their nose and mouth. That these fans, or * The Messrs. Rodgers provide the fans free of charge, and will not permit dry grinders to work without them.