ON women's labour. 351 



Inspectoi- of Factories presented reports from his staff on the result of 

 inquiries made, of employers and managers on the one hand and workers 

 on the other hand, and of observations made in the laundries where the 

 occupiers pex'mitted the inspector to enter. On those reports the Chief 

 Inspector recommended inclusion of laundries under all the ordinary 

 provisions of the Act with regard to safety and sanitation, and with 

 regard to the ordinary hours of employment, with special exceptions for 

 liberal overtime and for elastic arrangements as to the weekly half- 

 holiday ; at the same time he recommended special regulation in the 

 matters of use of gas-irons, separation of stoves from ironing-rooms, 

 drainage of floors. As regards convent and charitable institution laun- 

 dries, he recommended their inclusion under the law, but that inspection 

 should be in each case only on the express instruction of the Chief In- 

 spector. 



The Act of 1895, in the event, included all these recommendations 

 except the form of regulation for hours of labour and those recommenda- 

 tions relating to the convent and charitable institution laundries. The 

 Act of 1901, which consolidated and amended the general law relating to 

 factories and workshops, merely repeats, as regards laundries (after an 

 unsuccessful attempt had again been made in the bill to treat laundries 

 as factories and workshops), the main provisions enacted in 1895, but 

 made possible further control of sanitary conditions among ' out-workers ' 

 in this industry. This was done by empowering the Local Authority (now 

 the District or Borough Council) to prohibit home-work where there is 

 infectious disease, and by providing for returns of lists of out- workers by 

 occupiers (and givers out of work) to the Local Authority, 



The Existing Law Regulating Laundries may he Summarised asfolloics : — 



Those lavindries are covered by the provisions in the Act, applied 

 specifically or by reference in Section 103 of 1901, which are ' carried on 

 by way of trade or for purposes of gain.' Certain laundries are expressly 

 exempted, but there is no definition of the term laundry. The exempted 

 laundiies are those in which the only persons employed are : (a) Inmates 

 of any prison, reformatory, or industrial school, or other institution for 

 the time being subject to inspection under any Act other than the 

 Factory Act ; (6) inmates of an institution conducted in good faith for 

 religious or charitable purposes ; (c) members of the same family 

 dwelling in the laundry ; in these cases also, if not more than two 

 persons dwelling elsewhere are employed, the laundry remains exempt 

 from regulation. The ordinary provisions of the law which are applied 

 by reference in Section 103 are those which relate to sanitation, safety, 

 and accidents, affixing of prescribed notices and abstracts and the matters 

 to be specified in them (so far as applicable to laundries), notice of 

 occupation, education of children, powers of Inspectors, fines and legal 

 proceedings ; these take eflFect as if every laundry in which mechanical 

 power is used in aid of the process were a factory and every other 

 laundry were a workshop. The age-limit for children (twelve years) and 

 the time-limit for re-employment of women after childbirth (four weeks) 

 are also applied. Laundries are further covered by certain Sections 

 relating to home-work, i.e. : (a) Power of the Secretary of State to 

 require lists of out-workers (Section 107) ; (b) penalty on occupiers for 

 causing or allowing wearing apparel to be cleaned in any dwelling-house 



