The following is a summary view of the causes of death, from which it will be seen that out of 212 deaths 69 fell from diseases of the respiratory organs, and of these 52 died from consumption, whose average age of death was no more than 36½, and that no less than 58 were destroyed by accidents.
| Statement of the Causes of Death amongst Miners in the Unions of Cumberland and Westmoreland and parts of the Counties of Lancaster and Northumberland, during the Year ended 31st December, 1839, as shown by the Mortuary Registers. | ||
|---|---|---|
| Cause of Death. | No. of Deaths. | |
| Disease of Respiratory Organs:— | ||
| Consumption | 52 | |
| Other Diseases | 17 | |
| Epidemic and Contagious Disease | 20 | |
| Accidents:— | ||
| In Mine | 37 | |
| Not stated to be in Mine | 21 | |
| Diseases of the Brain and Nerves | 12 | |
| Diseases of the Digestive Organs | 10 | |
| Disease of the Heart | 2 | |
| Other Causes of Disease | 22 | |
| Natural Decay and Old Age | 19 | |
| Total Deaths | 212 | |
In a subsequent portion of this report I shall advert to the state of the health of the miners in Cornwall, as compared by Dr. Barham with the state of the agricultural labourers in the immediate vicinity of the mines.
I would here request attention to a suggestion which appears to me to arise from a consideration of the evils above displayed, (and that will receive further corroboration in the course of this report,) that if there were a regular system of periodical inspection of the places of work or places of large assemblage, it would be attended with great advantage to the lower orders of the community, in which the other classes could not fail to participate.
One most important result of such investigations would be to disabuse the popular mind of much prejudice against particular branches of industry arising from the belief that causes of ill health really accidental and removable, and sometimes unconnected, are essentials to the employment itself. By pointing out the real causes, warning will be given for their avoidance, and indications extended for the application of more certain remedies. Medical men who see only a few patients of the same occupation at distant intervals; who see them in their own dispensaries or in the hospitals, and who have no opportunities of observing such patients under the varied circumstances in which the disease may have been contracted, are left to mere guesses as to its cause. A working person of any of the classes whose condition I have described, presenting himself with the symptoms of a consumption, the medical man has no means of detecting the one of many causes by which it may have been occasioned, and the individual patient himself is more likely to mislead than to inform him. Unless his attention were accidentally directed to it, or unless the medical investigator had himself the means of observing the different personal condition of the different sets of persons following the same occupation in town and in country, it is highly probable that the evidence that the disease is not essential to the occupation would escape him. Thus, between different sets of workmen who work at the same descriptions of work during the same hours, and in the same town, but in well or in ill-ventilated factories a marked difference in the personal condition and general health of the workpeople has been perceived. Great differences are perceptible in the general personal condition of persons working during the same hours in cotton-mills in town, and in cotton-mills in rural districts, where they have not only a purer atmosphere, but commonly larger and more commodious places of abode. The factory superintendents generally state that the workers in the country mills are distinguishable at sight by their more healthy appearance, and by the increased proportions amongst them who have florid complexions. Very lately the attention of the Austrian government was called to the labour of the persons working in the cotton-factories in the neighbourhood of Vienna.[[14]] One half, perhaps, of the mills are of the ordinary construction of the cotton-mills in England of from thirty to forty years’ date, and they work on the average as much as fifteen hours per diem. But it appears that the houses in which the workers live belong to the capitalists who own the mills, many of whom have displayed a desire to ensure, as far as the state of the private residences can ensure, the comfort of those whom they employ, and they have accordingly built for them a superior description of tenements. It is stated that the result of the inquiry conducted by the government physicians was, that the average health enjoyed by the workers in those mills is greater than that of any other class of workpeople in the neighbourhood where the mills are situate, and where the general condition of the population is deemed good; the difference in the general health of the two classes (indicated by the proportions of death—of 1 in 27 of the general population, and 1 in 31 of the manufacturing population), was ascribed to the difference of the residences. My colleagues and myself of the central board of the Factory Commission of Inquiry were fully sensible that the effect of one cause on the health of the working population could not fairly be judged of unless its operation was observed under various circumstances, and unless amongst them the influence of the domestic circumstances, as well as the nature of the work and the place of work, were duly examined. We could not but deem it important that the state of the dwellings of the workpeople, who were the subject of inquiry, should also be investigated; and we gave instructions with that view to the district medical commissioners; but the limited time allowed by Parliament for the investigation, prevented its being made as we desired, a circumstance that, for the sake of the workpeople, is much to be regretted, as great injury is done to them by attention being diverted, as it commonly has been, from the real means of prevention.[[15]]
M. Parent Du Châtelet and M. d’Arcet having presented to the Board of Health of Paris a report on an investigation with a view to discover the physical or medical means by which particular sorts of work might be ameliorated, observe—
“Perhaps it will be said that the task has been already performed, and that several celebrated men, whose works are in the hands of all the world, have preceded us in this career, without leaving to their successors the hope to add anything to what they have published.
“We are assured beforehand that this objection will not be made by our colleagues, who have penetrated into manufactures and have studied their influence with a mind free from prejudice. It is because we have studied the works which treat of the maladies of artisans, and have seen a great number of these workmen in their shops; it is because we have compared books with actual observation; it is, finally, because we have not believed authors on their word, and have subjected them all to a severe verification, that we have seen the insufficiency, nay more, the inaccuracy of the greater part of their assertions.
“This method of proceeding has demonstrated to us that the works of which we speak, far from being the fruit of long observation, have been composed in the silence of the cabinet by men who have only had a casual view of artisans and manufactures; and who, generalizing a few facts presented to them by accident, have singularly exaggerated the inconveniencies of some professions, and attributed to others influences which they are far from exercising.”—Mémoire sur les Véritables Influences du Tabac sur la Santé des Ouvriers. Par M. Parent Du Châtelet.
They give, as an illustration, the exaggerated accounts of the manufacture of tobacco, of which the supposed evils are proved to be entirely fictitious, or at best an erroneous application to the manufacture,—of effects which, though incidentally met with in the workmen, were equally common to others of their station. In an abstract of their paper, inserted in the Appendix, there is even an enumeration, by eminent physicians, of specific cases of death from the fancied agency of tobacco, but they only show the extent of error produced in this and kindred instances by the previous conviction of the noxious influence of particular circumstances, and by referring all existing maladies to these without further inquiry. If I might add my testimony on this point, derived from my own observations on two of the commissions of inquiry on which I have had the honour to serve, it would be entirely in corroboration of the above statement. On comparing the actual condition of workmen with the medical descriptions of these diseases, and the causes, we commonly found that the results of a cluster of causes are commonly ascribed to one; and in respect to several classes of workmen the real cause, the invariable antecedent, such as defective ventilation, is unnoticed. No persons were frequently more surprised than the intelligent workmen, by the frequent exaggerated accounts of the operations of particular causes upon them, and the erroneous association of effects to causes with which they were known to have no real connexion. For example, in the work of M. Patissier, one which is the chief work, and of European authority, on the diseases of artisans, he adverts to the diseases of tailors. His description was read to Mr. Brownlow, the tailor, examined upon the subject of the overcrowding of places of work, and the observations of that witness on the statement of M. Patissier are given in answer:—