Part 40
“Where gain was dependant on the growth of better habits, I have seen, with the agency of judicious individuals, encouraging cases of complete reformation: an intelligent engineer in this neighbourhood was about paying off a man whose profligacy had left him without a decent covering, and who often depended for his victuals upon the generosity of his fellow-workmen. He begged hard to be retained, and his master at last consented, on condition that he himself should lay out his wages for the next three months. He provided the man with good lodgings, allowed him tea, sugar, and bread and butter night and morning; meat, and either bread or potatoes, with a pint of beer every day for his dinner; and before the appointed time was up, bought him with the surplus a new suit of clothes. The man was so sensible of the advantage of the change, that he became one of the most thrifty and valuable workmen; and his master has often since tried the same experiment with the same success. If we could collect all the philanthropy and much of the self-interest of the country into wise and profitable channels, we might, I believe in a twelvemonth, do much towards regenerating the most wretched classes.”
One employer of numerous labourers in a well-conducted establishment stated to me that after long experience he found it necessary, for the protection of the workpeople, as well as the efficiency of the establishment, invariably to discharge every workman who was guilty of drunkenness; and that the first visible sign to excite suspicion of the habits of intoxication was the absence of personal cleanliness, then a pallid countenance, on which inquiry was made. Another employer of numerous labourers, _Mr. William Fairbairn_, of Manchester (the brother of Mr. Fairbairn, of Leeds), who has had between one and two thousand workpeople engaged in the manufactories of machinery in the firm of which he is the first partner, stated, in answer to the question,—
“What are their habits in respect to sobriety?—I may mention that I strictly prohibit on my works the use of beer or fermented liquors of any sort, or of tobacco. I enforce the prohibition of fermented liquors so strongly that, if I found any man transgressing the rule in that respect, I would instantly discharge him without allowing him time to put on his coat.
“Have you any peculiar grounds for adopting this course?—No; but as respects myself I wish to have an orderly set of workmen; and in the next place I am decidedly of opinion that it is better for the men themselves and for their families.
“Are you aware that it is a prevalent opinion that strong drink is necessary as a stimulus for the performance of labour?—I am aware that that was a prevalent opinion amongst employers of labour, but it is now very generally abandoned; there are nevertheless some foundries in which there is drinking throughout the works all day long. It is observable, however, of the men employed as workmen, that they do not work so well; their perceptions are clouded, and they are stupified and heavy. I have provided water for the use of the men in every department of the works. In summer time the men engaged in the strongest work, such as the strikers to the heavy forges, drink water very copiously. In general the men who drink water are really more active, and do more work, and are more healthy than the workmen who drink fermented liquors. I observed on a late journey to Constantinople that the boatmen or rowers to the caiques, who are perhaps the first rowers in the world, drink nothing but water; and they drink that profusely during the hot months of the summer. The boatmen and water-carriers of Constantinople are decidedly in my opinion the finest men in Europe as regards their physical development, and they are all water drinkers: they may take a little sherbet, but in other respects are what we should call in this country, tee-totallers.
“What is their diet?—Chiefly bread; now and then a cucumber, with cherries, figs, dates, mulberries, or other fruits which are abundant there; now and then a little fish.
“Do they ever use animal food?—Occasionally I believe the flesh of goats, but I never saw them eating any other than the diet I have described.
“Did they appear to eat more than the European workmen?—About the same; if anything, more moderate as respects the quantity.”
I have collected much other information to the same effect. In the Appendix, I have given, as a contrast, an instance of arrangements which tend to promote the habit of drinking, and the consequences, a part of which are met and dealt with by the administrators of relief from the poor’s rates, in the shape of claims to relief on the ground of sickness and consequent destitution; and another part of which fall as disorders and crimes to be encountered by the police.
I submit here one important instance of the exercise of a wise influence on the habits of the agricultural population:—
In a form of lease used in leasing the Highland property of the Duke of Sutherland, which appears to be ably devised to ensure progressive improvement, care for the moral welfare of the population is not omitted. The poverty, disorder, and crime engendered by the destructive habit of whisky drinking, fostered by the practice of illicit distillation, is encountered by a clause which provides that if the tenant “distill whiskey, or shall permit any one to distill whisky, or shall sell or permit the same to be sold on the said premises hereby set, or on any part of the said estate, or shall contravene any of the regulations the said proprietors have established for the management thereof, and that if he or they shall be convicted of any of the said offences before the sheriff, depute, or substitute, or any two of his Majesty’s justices of the peace for the said county; then, in either of these events or cases, this agreement shall be, _ipso facto_, void and null, and the said tenant shall be forthwith removable by summary process before the judge ordinary, whereupon decree shall be pronounced upon relevant proof of the fact.”
The lease ensures the improvement of the tenements, and provides that “no earthen houses or huts are permitted to be built on any consideration.” The one provision is the proper complement of the other; and Mr. Hill gives his testimony to the excellent effect which the support given to the law, and the prevention of whisky drinking, produce on the habits of the population.
_Employers’ Influence on the Health of Workpeople by the Promotion of Personal Cleanliness._
I proceed to another instance of the power of the employers to protect the health, as well as the morals of their workpeople, by influencing their habits of personal cleanliness.
But I shall first submit a few instances of the extent and prevalence of personal uncleanliness amongst whole classes of workpeople.
_Mr. John Kennedy_, in the course of the examinations of some colliers in Lancashire, asked one of them—
“How often do the drawers (those employed in drawing coals) wash their bodies?—None of the drawers ever wash their bodies. I never wash my body; I let my shirt rub the dirt off; my shirt will show that. I wash my neck and ears, and face, of course.
“Do you think it usual for the young women (engaged in the colliery) to do the same as you do?—I do not think it is usual for the lasses to wash their bodies; my sisters never wash themselves, and seeing is believing; they wash their faces, necks, and ears.
“When a collier is in full dress, he has white stockings, and very tall shirt necks, very stiffly starched, and ruffles?—That is very sure, sir; but they never wash their bodies underneath; I know that; and their legs and bodies are as black as your hat.”
One labourer remembered that a particular event took place at Easter, “because it was then he washed his feet.” The effects of these habits are seen at the workhouse on almost every one of the paupers admitted. When it is necessary to wash them on their admission, they usually manifest an extreme repugnance to the process. Their common feeling was expressed by one of them when he declared that he considered it “equal to robbing him of a great coat which he had had for some years.” The filthy condition in which they are found on admission into the hospitals is frequently sufficient to account for the state of disease in which they appear, and the act of cleansing them is itself the most efficient cure. The out-door service of the union medical officers amidst such a population is often most painful and disgusting: _e. g._—
_Mr. J. F. Handley_, medical officer of the Chipping Norton union, states in his report—
“When the small pox was prevalent in this district, I attended a man, woman, and five children, all lying ill with the confluent species of that disorder, in one bed-room, and having only two beds amongst them. The walls of the cottage were black, the sheets were black, and the patients themselves were blacker still; two of the children were absolutely sticking together. It was indeed a gloomy scene. I have relished many a biscuit and glass of wine in Mr. Grainger’s dissecting-room when ten dead bodies were lying on the tables under dissection, but was entirely deprived of appetite during my attendance upon these cases. The smell on entering the apartments was exceedingly nauseous, and the room would not admit of free ventilation.”
Such conditions of the population, of habitual personal and domestic filth, are not necessary to any occupation; they are not the necessary consequence of poverty, and are the type of neglect and indolence; this is proved by the example of men engaged in the same occupations with improved habits. The medical officers of the Merthyr Tydvill union, in their returns, represent the health of the colliery population to be very good, a circumstance which is ascribed to their habitual cleanliness.
_Mr. J. L. Roberts_, surgeon, states—
“The colliers in our district invariably, on their return from the pits in the evening to their houses, strip to the skin, and wash themselves perfectly clean in a tub of lukewarm water, and wipe with towels until the cuticle is dry. The miners are not so particular. I firmly believe that the health of other workmen employed generally about the ironworks is not so permanently good as the colliers; they, generally speaking, not undergoing complete ablution as the colliers do. Generally, the colliers are quite free from any cutaneous disease, or at least not so much affected with psora, &c., as the generality of their fellow-workmen. Cutaneous diseases are frequent amongst children from want of cleanliness.”
In the places of work where there is the greatest need for cleanliness, in every place where there is a steam-engine, hot water, which is commonly allowed to run waste, is already provided in abundance for warm or tepid baths, not only for the workpeople, but, where there are numerous engines, for the whole population. If the same hot water arose at the same heat and abundance from any natural spring, baths would be erected, and medical treatises would be written in commendation of its medicinal virtues, which, the better opinion appears now to be, are ascribable, in the majority of instances, simply to the hot water, and to its application in cases where it had not before been used. Hot or tepid baths are deemed of more importance for the labouring classes in winter than are cold baths in summer, and they might be generally provided for the working classes in the manufacturing districts at a cost utterly inconsiderable.
A few years since a gentleman, observing some ditches in London, in the neighbourhood of the City-road, smoking with clean hot water running away from the steam-engine of a manufactory, directed attention to the waste, and suggested the expediency of using that water to supply public warm or tepid baths. After a time the suggestion was acted upon as a private speculation, and large swimming-baths were constructed; one, with superior accommodation and decorations at 1_s._; another, with less costly fittings-up, at 6_d._ the bath. These were luxurious tepid baths, kept at a heat of 84°. The example appears to have been followed in Westminster by the establishment of similar tepid swimming-baths, where only 3_d._ is charged to persons of the working-class. As many as 2000 and 3000 of this class have resorted to these baths in one day, and the bath at the lowest charge is stated to make the best return for the capital invested in it. Similar establishments are, we believe, in progress in other parts of the metropolis. _Mr. Samuel Greg_, at Bollington, has formed baths for the use of his workpeople, which he thus describes:—
“The bathing-room is a small building, close behind the mill, about 25 feet by 15. The baths, to the number of seven, are ranged along the walls, and a screen about six feet high, with benches on each side of it, is fixed down the middle of the room. The cold water is supplied from a cistern above the engine-house, and the hot water from a large tub which receives the waste steam from the dressing-room, and is kept constantly at boiling temperature. A pipe from each of these cisterns opens into every bath, so that they are ready for instant use. The men and women bathe on alternate days; and a bath-keeper for each attends for an hour and a half in the evening. This person has the entire care of the room, and is answerable for everything that goes on in it. When any one wishes to bathe he comes to the counting-house for a ticket, for which he pays a penny, and without which he cannot be admitted to the bathing-room. Some families, however, subscribe a shilling a-month, which entitles them to five baths weekly; and these hold a general subscriber’s ticket, which always gives him admittance to the room. I think the number of baths taken weekly varies from about 25 to 70 or 80. We pay the bath-keepers 2_s._ 6_d._ and 2_s._ a-week, and I believe this amount has been more than covered by the receipts. The first cost of erecting the baths was about 80_l._”
The feet of the female as well of the male workers in such establishments, who work in the mills without their stockings, are seen coated with the filth of years, for which there is no other necessity than their own habitual indolence. These habits mere admonitions will not always remove from the adult population. A manufacturer in London, who did not care to take this trouble with them, began with his apprentices, and took them several times to the new tepid baths, as a holiday and a reward, until they had experienced the comfort, and had formed a habit, when he left them to themselves, and they paid out of their own pocket-money the small amount necessary to defray the expenses. Where the use of hot or warm water has been given to the workpeople, and baths have been provided, they have frequently been defective in some important point. _Dr. Barham_ states that the miners, on their ascent to the ground, have commonly only the means of using the hot water from a rivulet on a bleak and exposed situation; in other places, as where bath-rooms are provided, the accommodation for dressing was defective, in being cold and chilling instead of being made warm, as it might be at a very trifling expense. It was only at Camborne, the mine already noticed, that anything deserving the name of proper baths had been erected. _Dr. Barham_ observes, in a communication on this subject—
“The security from chill during the ablution, and the abundance and comfortable temperature of the water in the cases mentioned as examples of superior accommodation, have no doubt contributed to a comparative immunity from pulmonary disease and catarrhal affections, which the managers and the men themselves have noticed since this provision has been made.
“The cost of the practice is so inconsiderable as to be unworthy notice. Timber and iron for such purposes are always to be found in our mines among what is no longer fit for its original destination. No charge of any kind is made for the use of these accommodations.
“The owners of steam-engines might always supply hot water, in proportion to the amount of condensation effected, without any extra cost to themselves, when they do not employ the heated water to some purpose of their own. In some mines the warm water is husbanded for the cleansing of the ores, but this is an exceptional case. Generally speaking, there is a great quantity of iron cylinder and other materials convertible to the conveyance of the water, which maybe supplied at a very low rate, as unserviceable for engine-work.
“I have thought that steam-engines are not the only sources for the supply of hot water to the public at an insignificant cost. All works in which great heat is employed, or almost all such works, might supply heat to large bodies of water after the fuel has been most economically applied to their own purposes. Smelting-houses, foundries, glass-houses, for instances, have always heat enough to spare for the warming of extensive thermæ. By the use of brick pipes, surrounded by wood or some bad conductor, such heat, first applied to the bottom of large reservoirs, might be distributed over extensive districts, and buildings might be warmed and workshops supplied with warm water for the thorough purification of the labourers, at a very trifling expense. My own opinion is, that a system of _washing_ is more desirable as a national habit than a system of _bathing_. The latter is doubtless excellent for bodies of men who are under effectual control, and for the young.”
_Employers’ Influence on the Health of Workpeople by the Ventilation of Places of Work, and the Prevention of Noxious Fumes, Dust, &c._
In some of the “dusty trades,” the excessive amount of premature mortality is so great as to justify interference, defensively, as against the charges which, from the neglect of sanitary measures, fall neither upon the employer nor upon the consumer, who directly benefit by the produce of the industry, but upon ratepayers, to whom the manufactory itself may be a nuisance. In the instance of such trades, personal cleanliness is so far a requisite as to justify an additional rate of insurance where it is neglected. Yet the regulations preventive of disease are by no means onerous, either in their cost or their interference with the processes. Some of the noxious manufactures, and especially those in lead, have been the subject of examination by the “Conseil de Salubrité of Paris,” and the preventive rules they prescribed were as follows:—1. The establishment of a good ventilation in the workshops or manufactories. 2. Exacting from the workpeople close attention to personal cleanliness; obliging them to wash the hands and face before dining, and before leaving the workshop; forbidding them taking any of their meals in the workshop, and, by reasoning and information, directing their attention to the dangers by which they are surrounded. 3. Employing the practicable means for conducting the processes so as to raise the least dust possible. 4. Boarding off the mills and sieves, so as to prevent the escape of the smaller particles. 5. Requiring of the workmen engaged in the processes where there is lead-dust or any other injurious dust suspended in the air, that they cover the nose and mouth with a handkerchief slightly moistened. 6. Subjecting the workshop to occasional medical inspection, in order to prevent the intensity of any maladies that break out, and with that view to examine the workmen from time to time to detect any symptoms of disease, and to oblige the workman attacked to abstain from work until the medical officer declares that he may resume it without inconvenience. 7. Obliging workmen to wear frocks or blouses, which they should leave in the workshop when they quit work; and these blouses should from time to time be washed. 8. Sending away from the workshop every workman who gives himself up to debauchery or drunkenness. 9. Endeavouring to get the workmen, (_i. e._ workers in lead) to form the habit of drinking every day, on leaving the workshop, a little hydro-sulphuretted water, to neutralize the effects of the lead that may have been taken into the stomach.
All these regulations, with the medical attendance for the purpose of prevention, would be greatly below any charge of insurance to the individual workman for procuring medical attendance and remedies when thrown out of work by sickness.
In some of the trades, scattered instances of attention to cleanliness and measures of prevention are found: for example, amongst the journeymen painters. In answer to a question put by Dr. Mitchell to _Mr. Tomlins_, the clerk to the Painters’ Company, whether painters suffer so much as formerly from the disease to which they are peculiarly liable, the clerk says,—
“Not so much as formerly. This has been ascertained by a charity administered at Painters’ Hall to men labouring under sickness. The men are now more attentive to cleanliness. Formerly they would throw their clothes on their beds and go to their meals without washing their hands. A large proportion of the journeymen now carry a workingdress to their job with them, and when they quit work at night they exchange and put on clean clothes which are free from paint. This applies more particularly to the westward of Temple Bar. One master-painter of my acquaintance, Mr. Thornton, of Doctors’ Commons, keeps a pail of solution of potash in his shop, in which the men wash their hands, and which takes off every particle of paint; and it is worthy of remark that only two men in 20 years have been afflicted with paralysis in his employ. This is taken from 15 men constantly employed on an average for seven years.”
It will suggest itself that another generation of workpeople, and their premature sickness and death, ought not to pass away leaving this practice confined to the painters to the west of Temple Bar, and leaving the beneficent expedient exclusively to the shop of Mr. Thornton, of Doctors’ Commons.
In connexion with the instance of the painters, I may give the following from _Mr. James Gibbins_, a manufacturer of colours at the Mile-end road. He was asked—“Are there any peculiar hazards to health connected with the trade?” He replies,—
“Arsenic and lead are employed in making colours, and hence injury does arise, but such need not necessarily be the case; but although water, towels, and soap are placed at the use of the men, there is no persuading them to be habitually cleanly. After making or grinding colours, they will not take the trouble to wash their hands, but merely wipe them a little on their clothes, and then will take their bread and meat, by which particles are carried off into the stomach. It is impossible to persuade the men to be more cautious. The lead is much more in use than the arsenic, and on the whole does more harm, as the men are more on their guard against the arsenic.”