Overcrowding and insanitation of almost every conceivable kind pursued large numbers of the unfortunate workers from their overcrowded and insanitary tenements to their overcrowded and insanitary workplaces, and with the same disastrous results. And as regarded domestic workshops the conditions were even worse, workers spending their days and nights often in the one room—sometimes with extra workers brought in.
Want of light and air and overcrowding in workshops and factories are quite as serious matters as they are in inhabited houses.
The Select Committee, in their conclusions and recommendations, said:—
“The sanitary conditions under which the work is conducted are not only injurious to the health of the persons employed, but are dangerous to the public, especially in the case of the trades concerned in making clothes, as infectious diseases are spread by the sale of garments made in rooms inhabited by persons suffering from smallpox and other diseases. Three or four gas jets may be flaring in the room, a coke fire burning in the wretched fireplace, sinks untrapped, closets without water, and altogether the sanitary condition abominable.”
“A witness told us that in a double room, perhaps nine by fifteen feet, a man, his wife, and six children slept, and in the same room ten men were usually employed, so that at night eighteen persons would be in that one room.”
“In nine cases out of ten the windows are broken and filled up with canvas; ventilation is impossible and light insufficient—the workshops are miserable dens. We are of opinion that all workplaces included in the above description should be required to be kept in a cleanly state, to be lime-washed or washed throughout at stated intervals, to be kept free from noxious effluvia, and not to be overcrowded—in other words, to be treated for sanitary purposes as factories are treated under the factory law.”
Lord Kenry, Chairman of the Committee, in his draft report, said:—
“It has been shown that the dwellings or shops in which the sweated class live and work are too often places in which all the conditions of health, comfort, and decency are violated or ignored…. Sanitary inspection is totally inadequate, and the local bodies have seldom done their duty effectually. At the East End of London generally the sanitary state of homes and shops could not possibly be much worse than it is.”
And Mr. Lakeman (Government Inspector under the Factories and Workshops Act) said, in reference to workshops: “I think that the evidence given your Lordships upon the insanitary state of those places is not at all too black.”