The Employment of Children Act 1903, while primarily providing for industries outside the scope of the Factory Act, incidentally secured that children employed as half-timers should not also be employed in other occupations. The Notice of Accidents Act 1906 amended Acts of 1903, 1906, 1907. the whole system of notification of accidents, simultaneously in mines, quarries, factories and workshops, and will be set out in following paragraphs. The Factory and Workshop Act of 1907 amended the law in respect of laundries by generally applying the provisions of 1901 to trade laundries while granting them choice of new exceptional periods, and by extending the provisions of the act (with certain powers to the Home Office by Orders laid before parliament to allow variations) to institution laundries carried on for charitable or reformatory purposes. The Employment of Women Act 1907 repealed an exemption in the act of 1901 (and earlier acts) relating to employment of women in flax scutch mills, thus bringing this employment under the ordinary provisions as to period of employment.
The following paragraphs aim at presenting an idea of the scope of the modified and amended law, as a whole, adding where clearly necessary reference to the effect of acts, which ceased to apply after the 31st of December 1901:—
The workplaces to which the act applies are, first, “factories” and “workshops”; secondly, laundries, docks, wharves, &c., enumerated above as introduced and regulated partially only by the act of 1895 and subsequent acts. Apart from Definitions. this secondary list, and having regard to workplaces which remain undefined by the law, the act may broadly be said to apply to premises, rooms or places in which manual labour, with or without the aid of mechanical power, is exercised for gain in or incidental to the making, altering, repairing, ornamenting, washing, cleaning or finishing or adapting for sale of any article or part of any article. If steam, water or other mechanical power is used in aid of the manufacturing process, the workplace is a factory; if not, it is a workshop. There is, however, a list of eighteen classes of works (brought under the factory law for reasons of safety, &c., before workshops generally were regulated) which are defined as factories whether power is used in them or not. Factories are, again, subdivided into textile and non-textile: they are textile if the machinery is employed in preparing, manufacturing or finishing cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute, tow, China grass, cocoanut fibre or other like material either separately or mixed together, or mixed with any other material, or any fabric made thereof; all other factories are non-textile. The distinction turns on the historical origin of factory regulation and the regulations in textile factories remain in some respects slightly more stringent than in the non-textile factories and workshops, though the general provisions are almost the same. Three special classes of workshops have for certain purposes to be distinguished from ordinary workshops, which include tenement workshops: (a) Domestic workshops, i.e. any private house, room or place, which, though used as a dwelling, is by reason of the work carried on there a workshop, and in which the only persons employed are members of the same family, dwelling there alone—in these women’s hours are unrestricted; (b) Women’s workshops, in which neither children nor young persons are employed—in these a more elastic arrangement of hours is permissible than in ordinary workshops; (c) Workshops in which men only are employed—these come under the same general regulations in regard to sanitation as other workshops, also under the provisions of the Factory Act as regards security, and, if certified by the secretary of state, may be brought under special regulations. They are otherwise outside the scope of the act of 1901.
The person to whom the regulations apply in the above-defined workplaces are children, i.e. persons between the ages of twelve and fourteen, young persons, i.e. boys or girls between the ages of fourteen (or if an educational certificate has been obtained, thirteen) and eighteen years of age, and women, i.e. females above the age of eighteen; these are all “protected” persons to whom the general provisions of the act, inclusive of the regulation of hours and times of employment, apply. To adult men generally those provisions broadly only apply which are aimed at securing sanitation and safety in the conduct of the manufacturing process.
The person generally responsible for observance of the provisions of the law, whether these relate to health, safety, limitation of the hours of labour or other matters, is the occupier (a term undefined in the act) of the factory, workshop or laundry. There are, however, limits to his responsibility: (a) generally, where the occupier has used due diligence to enforce the execution of the act, and can show that another person, whether agent, servant, workman or other person, is the real offender; (b) specially in a factory the sections relating to employment of protected persons, where the owner or hirer of a machine or implement driven by mechanical power is some person other than the occupier of the factory, the owner or hirer, so far as respects any offence against the act committed in relation to a person who is employed in connexion with the machine or implement, and is in the employment or pay of the owner or hirer, shall be deemed to be the occupier of the factory; (c) for the one purpose of reporting accidents, the actual employer of the person injured in any factory or workshop is bound under penalty immediately to report the same to the occupier; (d) so far as relates to sanitary conditions, fencing of machinery, affixing of notices in tenement factories, the owner (as defined by the Public Health Act 1875), generally speaking, takes the place of the occupier.
Employment in a factory or workshop includes work whether for wages or not: (a) in a manufacturing process or handicraft, (b) in cleaning any place used for the same, (c) in cleaning or oiling any part of the machinery, (d) any work whatsoever incidental to the process or handicraft, or connected with the article made. Persons found in any part of the factory or workshop, where machinery is used or manufacture carried on, except at meal-times, or when machinery is stopped, are deemed to be employed until the contrary is proved. The act, however, does not apply to employment for the sole purpose of repairing the premises or machinery, nor to the process of preserving and curing fish immediately upon its arrival in the fishing boats in order to prevent the fish from being destroyed or spoiled, nor to the process of cleaning and preparing fruit so far as is necessary to prevent it from spoiling during the months of June, July, August and September. Certain light handicrafts carried on by a family only in a private house or room at irregular intervals are also outside the scope of the act.
The foremost provisions are those relating to the sanitary condition of the workplaces and the general security of every class of worker. Every factory must be kept in a cleanly condition, free from noxious effluvia, ventilated in such a manner as to render harmless, so far as practicable, gases, Sanitation. vapours, dust or other impurities generated in the manufacture; must be provided with sufficient and suitable sanitary conveniences separate for the sexes; must not be overcrowded (not less than 250 cubic ft. during the day, 400 during overtime, for each worker). In these matters the law of public health takes in workshops the place of the Factory Act, the requirements being substantially the same. Although, however, primarily the officers of the district council enforce the sanitary provisions in workshops, the government factory inspectors may give notice of any defect in them to the district council in whose district they are situate; and if proceedings are not taken within one month by the latter, the factory inspector may act in default and recover expenses from the district council. This power does not extend to domestic workshops which are under the law relating to public health so far as general sanitation is concerned. General powers are reserved to the secretary of state, where he is satisfied that the Factory Act or law relating to public health as regards workplaces has not been carried out by any district council, to authorize a factory inspector during a period named in his order to act instead of the district council. Other general sanitary provisions administered by the government inspectors are the requirement in factories and workshops of washing conveniences where poisonous substances are used; adequate measures for securing and maintaining a reasonable temperature of such a kind as will not interfere with the purity of the air in each room in which any person is employed; maintenance of sufficient means of ventilation in every room in a factory or workshop (in conformity with such standard as may be prescribed by order of the secretary of state); provision of a fan to carry off injurious dust, gas or other impurity, and prevent their inhalation in any factory or workshop; drainage of floors where wet processes are carried on. For laundries and bakehouses there are further sanitary regulations; e.g. in laundries all stoves for heating irons shall be sufficiently separated from any ironing-room or ironing-table, and the floors shall be “drained in such a manner as will allow the water to flow off freely”; and in bakehouses a cistern supplying water to a bakehouse must be quite separate from that supplying water to a water-closet, and the latter may not communicate directly with the bakehouse. Use of underground bakehouses (i.e. a baking room with floor more than 3 ft. below the ground adjoining) is prohibited, except where already used at the passing of the act; further, in these cases, after 1st January 1904, a certificate as to suitability in light, ventilation, &c., must be obtained from the district council. In other trades certified by the secretary of state further sanitary regulations may be made to increase security for health by special rules to be presently touched on. The secretary of state may also make sanitary requirements a condition of granting such exceptions to the general law as he is empowered to grant. In factories, as distinct from workshops, a periodical lime washing (or washing with hot water and soap where paint and varnish have been used) of all inside walls and ceilings once at least in every fourteen months is generally required (in bakehouses once in six months). As regards sufficiency and suitability of sanitary accommodation, the standards determined by order of the secretary of state shall be observed in the districts to which it is made applicable. An order was made called the Sanitary Accommodation Order, on the 4th of February 1903, the definitions and standards in which have also been widely adopted by local sanitary authorities in districts where the Order itself has no legal force, the local authority having parallel power under the Public Health Act of 1890.
