The sleeping places were of the worst description,[87] some of the men sleeping in the bakehouse itself. Many bakehouses were infested with rats, beetles, cockroaches, and noxious smells. The smells from the drains were very offensive—the air of the small bakehouses was generally overloaded with foul gases from the drains, from the ovens, and from the fermentations of the bread, and with the emanations from the men’s bodies; the air thus contaminated was necessarily incorporated with the dough in the process of kneading.
Half of the bakehouses in London would, it was stated, require the application to them of the Nuisances Removal Act.
Another inquiry related to the tailoring trade in the metropolis.[88] The places in which work was done were reported as varying much in their sanitary conditions, but almost universally were overcrowded and ill-ventilated, and in a high degree unfavourable to health. Some were underground, either in the basement of a house, or built like a large kennel in a small enclosed yard, and were such that no domestic servant would inhabit. In exceedingly few shops had there been any attempts at ventilation. The ventilation through the windows was practically inefficient, and instances were given of what had been found in sixteen of the most important West-end shops. In one an average of 156 cubic feet space was allowed to each operative, in another 150 cubic feet, in another 112 cubic feet. Deficient ventilation, heat, and draughts, were the causes of diseases.
A paper read by Dr. E. Symes Thompson (Assistant Physician to King’s College Hospital) at the Social Science Association Meeting in London, 1862, described the condition under which printers did their work.
“Printers often work sixteen to eighteen hours a day in a confined and heated atmosphere; perhaps thirty men and as many gaslights in a low room without ventilation or chimney, where air only enters when the door is opened….
“Printing is only one of the many trades which entail the sacrifice of every hygienic necessity, and the cause of the unhealthy looks of the workpeople cannot fail to strike any observant person who may visit their workshops. The rooms are mostly low, the windows fixed, and there is often no chimney or other ventilation.
“This is the case in large and small factories as well as in workshops—in the workroom of the milliner, the sempstress, or the bookbinder.
“In many occupations, besides the evils alluded to, the air is charged with foreign matters, which are drawn into the lungs at each inspiration; e.g., the sorting and tearing up of dirty rags in paper manufactories. The dust and fluff arising in flax, woollen, and cotton factories, and in furworks, produce similar results—and brass finishers.”