Once more the necessity of inspection was insisted upon. “On no point,” wrote the Chairman, “was the unanimity of witnesses more emphatic than with reference to the necessity of more efficient sanitary inspection, not only of workshops, but of the dwellings of the poor.”
And just as it was as regarded tenement-houses, inspection here was lamentably deficient, if not absolutely non-existent.
“The inspection at present carried on is totally inadequate, and nothing was more clearly proved before us than the fact that satisfactory results cannot be looked for from the system as it now stands.”[178]
“Even when an unmistakable cause of unhealthiness is discovered, and steps are taken to remove it, the process of applying the remedy is slow and uncertain. The Local Board meets once a week or fortnight … the landlord is allowed a fortnight to carry out the work; three weeks may elapse before the inspector can go and see it, then perhaps nothing has been done; the summons, &c., takes time. In any case much valuable time is lost, and smallpox or fever is allowed to pursue its ravages with the source of the disease daily aggravated in intensity.
“At present the inspectors under the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878 have no power to deal with any nuisance which lies within the district over which the local authorities preside. On the other hand, the local inspector cannot interfere should he discover any breach of the Factory Act.”
The Home Secretary, in moving the second reading of the Bill, explained its scope. He said:—
“The design and object of this Bill is to bring all workshops and all factories up to the same sanitary level, and to require the same conditions as to ventilation, overcrowding, lime-washing, and cleanliness to be applied to all kinds of workshops in which men alone, or women, children, and young persons are employed. The Bill does not deal with ‘domestic workshops.’ The President of the Local Government Board will introduce a Bill dealing with the public health, and the House may rest content with leaving what is called ‘the domestic workshop’—that is to say, the working-man’s home in which he works with the members of his family—subject to the provisions of the law of public health alone. It is obvious that in the domestic workshop you have not got the presence of the employer and the employé. You have the members of the same family … and it seems to me that we may allow him and his family to work in a place which is sufficiently good so far as sanitary conditions are concerned for him and his family to live in. Now that we are extending the sanitary provisions of the Factory Act to all workshops throughout the country, of whatever kind they may be except the domestic workshop, so that every cobbler’s shop, every blacksmith’s shop, every tailor’s shop, will come under the provisions of the sanitary law, it seems to me foolish not to take advantage of the existing machinery provided by the local authorities, and the enforcement of the sanitary provisions, so far as workshops are concerned, is by this Bill given to the local authorities.”
The passing of the Factory and Workshops Act (1891) and of the Public Health (London) Act of 1891 made the sanitary authorities primarily responsible for enforcing many new provisions. Those authorities were charged with the duty of securing the maintenance of the “workshops” in a sanitary condition, of preventing overcrowding in them, and of enforcing cleanliness, ventilation, lime-washing, and freedom from effluvia, and securing the provision of sufficient sanitary accommodation.
Added to this was the sanitary supervision of the places of “outworkers.”[179]