350 REPORT— 1903. 



the employers and employed accept the Acts as desirable and beneficial with 

 great unanimity ; that their extension to small laundries, especially in urban 

 districts, is desirable; and that the Acts may have favoured an increase in the 

 supply of casual and partially employed labour, by making it necessary to 

 take on more hands in times of pressure instead of lengthening the hours. 



APPENDIX II. 



Note : — Since laundries form an important industry which has re- 

 cently come under the Acts, and in which the process of regularisation 

 can be seen at work, the Committee think it advisable to offer a careful 

 account of the recent history of the trade. 



Uconomic Effect of Legislation Regulating Woinen's Labour in 

 Laundries. By Miss A. M. Anderson. 



Documents. Acts cf Parliament : Factory and Workshop Acts, 1891, 1895, and 

 1901. Parliament arij Reporis : Factory and Workshop Acts Commission, 1875, 

 3Iinutes of Evidence ; Royal Commission on Labour, 1893 (Miss Collet's Report 

 on Employment of Women in Laundries) ; Reports of H.M. Inspectors of Fac- 

 tories on Hours of Work, Dangerous Machinery and Sanitary Conditions in 

 I-aundries, 189i ; Annual Reports of the Chief Inspector of Factories, 1892 to 

 1902 ; Census returns, 1901. 



History and Summary of Legislation. 



The first authoritative recommendation that the Factory Acts should 

 regulate laundries is contained in the Report of the Commissioners 

 appointed to inquire into the working of the Factory and Workshops Acts, 

 1876 : ' The definition of work to be regulated by the Act should include 

 labour in or incidental to the washing, cleaning, or furbishing any article.' 



These words were not added to the words ' altering, repairing, orna- 

 menting, finishing,' in the definition section of the Act of 1878 (section 93), 

 and treatment of the question was postponed until the bill which became 

 law in 1891 came under discussion. In that year the proposal expressly 

 to include laundries for regulation of hours as well as conditions of 

 health and safety was thrown out, and only certain limited powers for the 

 Factory Department to intervene and set the local sanitary authority in 

 movement, as regards .sanitation of laundries, actually in that year 

 became law. The Secretary of State was empowered to make a special 

 order authorising an inspector to take steps for enforcing the law of 

 Public Health as to effluvia, cleanliness, ventilation, overcrowding in 

 laundries, for a specified period, if he was satisfied that the provisions of 

 the law were not observed. Further, an inspector was empowered to 

 notify (without such an order of the Secretary of State) to the local 

 authority any act, neglect, or default in any sanitary matter which ap- 

 peared to him to be remediable under the law relating to Public Health. 

 (See Sections 1 and 2 of 1891.) No express powers were, however, given 

 to the inspector (such as for factories and workshops) to enter and inspect 

 laundries in order to inquire whether such acts, neglects, or defaults in 

 sanitary matters existed ; so that the powers to set the law of Public 

 Health in motion (if knowledge had been obtained) remained necessarily 

 inoperative. 



The evidence laefore the Royal Commission on Labour, 1892-93, 

 reopened the question, and a renewed effort to bring laundries within the 

 scope of the Factory Acts was made in 1894. In 1893 the Chief 



