Chapter I: Introduction: How Women Inspectors Came, and What They Came to Do

This book aims at giving some account of an enterprise that is felt by the Women Officers who lived through it to have been a great experience and a great adventure in the service of the State and Nation—an account that must be somewhat less and yet more than a chronicle.

It is hoped, with the aid of outstanding facts and features recorded in many Blue-books and other documents issued during the time, to give a picture of the undertakings and experiences of these women, both at the outset and through the experimental development of their administration of Acts and regulations for women in industry, and to trace changes that have followed in conditions of factory life in a period of little over a quarter of a century.

Personality and the idealising powers of youth (our average age at the beginning was twenty-seven years), embarking on a calling that involved conduct of legal proceedings and much other technical knowledge of an entirely novel kind for women of that day, counted for much. We had also liberal, kindly direction and encouragements behind our efforts from the higher authorities responsible for sanctioning and carrying out the decision to appoint us. Yet the main impetus came from without, in the needs of the women workers who had persistently called—from 1878 onwards—for the personal aid and understanding of “Women Inspectors,” armed with authority and powers to enquire into and enforce remedies for wrong conditions, or to persuade sympathetic employers to provide amenities that the law could not enforce.

Much that seemed novel then has, through the publicity of our work and the spontaneous lively interest taken in Parliament and elsewhere in our published reports, become part of the natural order of things. Yet in those days the first appearance of a Woman Inspector in her proper field of work, whether inside a factory or workshop[1] or on the solicitors’ bench in the police courts, was liable to cause a sensation of surprise, sometimes very favourable to the new-comer.

“Are _you_ the lady inspector? Why, I expected to see a woman six feet high and a perfect virago;” or, “Girls, it is a lady this time, come and tell her everything she wants to know;” or (in Ireland), “We had a gentleman inspector here last month, and he said we must take dinner at the same hour every day: now a lady like you will know _that_ is impossible!” In police courts it was not unknown for waiting solicitors to enter with keen interest into the merits of our cases and even try to offer professional hints in support of our amateur efforts. Yet the following is a typical press comment of early years: “A small sensation was caused in K—— Police Court when for the first time a lady advocate appeared.... She made her statement with as much clearness and ease as any more accustomed advocate, and as the facts and laws were alike indisputable, conviction necessarily followed.”

When this story begins, in great industrial communities of Europe, and pre-eminently in Great Britain, women’s labour in industry had for more than a hundred years fundamentally depended, without control by women, on such organisation as was furnished by capitalist and middlemen employers, in a factory system that had been completely severed from domestic life. Trade union organisation for women was generally a small, young, and fragile plant where it existed at all. In textile factories for upwards of fifty years Factory Inspectors had applied certain outstanding statutory limits and requirements in matters of hours of labour, elementary sanitation, and safety; and for a much shorter time in many non-textile factories. Glamour had been lent to these questions of regulation by movements for reform led by such outstanding personalities as Robert Owen, Shaftesbury, Peel, Oastler, Sadler. The fact remained, however, as official witnesses assured the Royal Commission on Labour in 1891–92, that women workers themselves tendered practically none of the complaints that the Inspectors were there to remedy and to which they looked for clues in exercising their protective functions.[2]

Apart from the few industries where women had in some degree carried their traditional skill over from the domestic system of industry into certain factory processes—I have to write in few words of a many-sided, unevenly-moving change—the entry and ever-extending rule of the power- engine had brought “lower grade work and diminished industrial self- respect”[3] for women workers in a wide field. The loss also of leadership and supervision by fellow-women of better education in the “making of things” (such as soap, candles, and the many other articles formerly made at home) that obtained under the domestic system—that is, by women more habituated than workers to exercise of direction—brought a new social cleavage between them and working women. This meant an incalculable loss to both classes of women. Yet it meant still more for the whole community—the elimination, for a dark period, of the guiding ideas of women in regard to conditions essential for a good industrial life of both women and men.

Thus, the factory system of the nineteenth century, “unsuited as we now know it to have been to men, was far more unsuited to women.”[4] For the worker it emptied more than half the meaning from the ancient symbol of a social order when _master_ meant _master of craft_, “As the eyes of servants look unto the hands of their masters and the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress.” It wholly removed into the realms of mythology classic pictures of the days when women’s industries were entirely home industries—of Nausicaa and her maiden laundresses on the seashore of Corcyra, or of Penelope weaving in the days when “Pallas taught the texture of the loom.”

While mechanical power mainly ruled, instead of serving, in the factory, the intervention of State regulation merely prevented the greatest abuses. Even constructive and efficient application of scientific standards to human conditions of manual work was almost unthought of, and the withdrawal of the poet from the arena of industry proclaimed the essential barbarity of its character.

And yet the official life that was lived by the Women Inspectors in those early days of infinite surprises and appeals was a most lovable and enthralling one, of great movement and happiness. We escaped all fear of “venturing the hand into the spinning cog-wheels of the huge, implacable machine.” How much we owed to the fact that—in a wonderful ignorance of ordinary official method and tradition—we were sent out into a wide world to find our tasks; sent with powers that could and did effect changes, having eyes and hearts ready and anxious to read the meaning of the system under which a million and a half of our fellow- country women made the things needed to clothe and feed the body and to furnish and equip the home! Understanding of the basis from which we set out can hardly be attained without a brief survey of the stages in the movement that led to our appointment.

On February 19, 1891, Miss Emily Faithful, after an interview with the Home Secretary, Lord Aberdare, about the working of the Factory Act, wrote a letter to _The Times_. She said that as long ago as 1872 the information she received from various sources strengthened her conviction that Women Inspectors were necessary if certain evils were to be redressed and rules enforced in places where women were employed. The first effectual advocacy of the appointment of women as Inspectors came, however, from a leader in Women’s Trade Union Organisation, Mrs. Emma Ann Paterson, wife of Thomas Paterson, “a man of genius and of remarkable range of knowledge belonging to the ranks of labour.” Working women owe to her, said Mr. Hodgson Pratt, in an obituary notice, “an eternal debt for her wise, practical, and incessant labours. She founded in 1874 and conducted the Women’s Protective and Provident League.[5] It was not easy to teach ill-paid, overworked women that by association among themselves they could raise their position ... and combine for a demand of fair treatment by employers. Women accustomed to think themselves too weak and dependent, too ‘inferior,’ women isolated and struggling for bare life ... how could they combine or do anything? Emma Paterson has taught hundreds of them—bookbinders, upholstresses, dressmakers, machinists, tailoresses, and others—that they can do all this. She has given them a new life, shown them the noble idea of mutual help and service ... and given them the power of organisation and self- government.”[6] Mrs. Paterson and another member of the league were deputed in 1875 to represent two of the London Women’s Unions at the Trade Union Congress in Glasgow, and there and in various other industrial centres of Great Britain, she extended her activities for trade union organisation of women.

In the year 1878—the year of the first great consolidation of numerous Factory Acts—at the Bristol Meeting of Trade Union Congress Mrs. Paterson moved to include “women” in a resolution urging upon the Government the appointment of “practical working men” as Inspectors under the Factory Act. This was carried, and in 1881 she arranged for a conference, at which Lord Shaftesbury presided, to advocate the appointment of women as Factory Inspectors. She did not live to see the reform, as she died in December, 1886.

Although Trade Union Congress never failed to pass the amendment in favour of appointment of working women as Inspectors, brought up year after year by successors to Mrs. Paterson, Parliamentary Committee was either unfavourable or lukewarm. “Oh, pass it,” one great person is reported to have said; “it don’t matter, they will never get it.” Fresh factors were needed to bring the administrative reform into being.

In 1899, when a doubt had been expressed by Mr. Matthews, Home Secretary, whether he had power to appoint a woman, and even whether there would be enough work for her to do if he had, the Fabian Society inserted a clause (eventually proved unnecessary) in an Eight Hours Bill, expressly declaring that women were eligible for the Inspectorate. Year after year the pressure grew stronger from various sides, and was in no way lessened by the appointment between 1881 and 1890 of a considerable number of “practical working men” as Inspectors.

As the agitation grew, the burden on women of ever severer speeding-up of machinery and the so-called “driving system” in cotton mills, of excessively long hours and overtime in the dress and clothing trades, of “sweated” wages in various low-grade industries and outwork, and of the increasingly-felt evils of bad sanitation, fines, and deductions from uncertain wages, all gave point and urgency to this claim. While wages for men were rising, for women, on the whole, they were stationary or falling. Enquiries into the sweating system had shown its worst features to be low wages, long hours, and insanitary surroundings. In spite of the long years since Hood wrote his “Song of the Shirt,” these adverse conditions continued to affect women. Middle and upper class women’s political organisations began to move energetically. The Women’s Liberal Association and Women’s Liberal Federation had this question, annually on their agenda, discussed, and resolutions passed from 1890 onwards.

As Miss I. O. Ford wrote in 1896: “The idea that it was not right, that it was unjust and sometimes even cruel, for women to have no one but men to whom they could appeal against any sort of abuse, had been steadily growing in people’s minds. It was an idea that appealed to everyone, both rich and poor.” Miss Ford had already spoken repeatedly in this sense, notably in 1892 at the Bristol meeting of the National Council of Women Workers.

At last, between 1891 and 1893, the turning-point in the movement came, with the appointment and work of the Royal Commission on Labour. Four Women Assistant Commissioners were appointed at an early stage in the proceedings. One, Miss May Abraham, Secretary to Lady Dilke (better known as Mrs. H. J. Tennant, C.H.), became in the spring of 1893 one of the two first Women Factory Inspectors under the Home Office, the other being Miss Mary Paterson, with valuable experience of Labour questions in Scotland. Another Assistant Commissioner, Miss Clara Collett, became special correspondent for women’s industrial conditions to the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade. The report of the Women Assistant Commissioners, the first official women investigators of industrial conditions, received high praise and conclusively supported the demand for appointment of Women Inspectors. One of the two Secretaries of the Commission, Mr. Geoffrey Drage, furthered the movement by employing University women and giving them opportunity and training as clerks to the Commission. After the appointment of Miss Lucy Deane in April, 1894, two of his staff were added to the Inspectorate, Miss A. M. Anderson (July, 1894), and Miss A. Tracey (1897), bringing additional experience in précis-writing and knowledge of foreign reports, especially of French, German, and Austrian industrial codes. Miss R. E. Squire, appointed in December, 1895, brought, like Miss Deane, fresh and good experience as a Sanitary Inspector. These first five Inspectors have all, in time, passed to other tasks and responsibilities.

The comparative survey of international Labour questions in the chief industrial countries that was undertaken by the Royal Commission on Labour followed soon after the work of the International Conference on regulation of conditions of work in factories and mines, held in Berlin in March, 1890, at the invitation of the German Emperor. That conference was followed in England by the passing of the Factory Act of 1891. This limited the employment of women after childbirth, raised the age of admission and employment of a child, and provided for regulation of dangerous and injurious trades. It is now of peculiar interest that that “forerunner” of the Labour Convention under the Peace Treaty of 1919 should be in a manner linked with the first effectual employment of women as Factory Inspectors.

At a political meeting of the National Liberal Federation in January, 1893, Mr. Asquith spoke as Home Secretary, among other subjects, on Administration of Factory Laws, promising extension of the Inspectorate, and adding: “I hope I may be able at the same time to do something—it will not be much—to gratify the desires of our lady friends for female inspection.” He did far more; he gave them their liberal starting-point and wide field of activity. Opportunities were maintained and extended by Sir Matthew White Ridley and a long succession of Home Secretaries. Permanent Under-Secretaries, too, furthered the work in its earliest stages by carefully planned instructions; Sir Godfrey Lushington was the first, and Sir Kenelm Digby succeeded him in January, 1895, and largely guided our legal work through nine eventful years. Sir Mackenzie Chalmers followed him, until he in turn was succeeded, in 1908, by Sir Edward Troup. It was the last who gave evidence to the Royal Commission on the Civil Service in 1913 that the work of the Women Inspectors, expressly organised as it was on parallel lines with the men’s, was comparable with and as good as theirs.

The quality of the earliest Women Inspectors did much to decide the official status of women in the Inspectorate. Between some of the official witnesses to the Labour Commission, who urged that the appointments—admitted to be inevitable—should be solely as subordinate assistants, “never to be called on to discharge the higher duties of the office,” and outside claimants, who pressed for their full appointment to _all_ the powers and duties of an Inspector, there stood a middle party with moderating views. From them, led by Lady Dilke, came the advice that women should enter as a special class of officers to serve in trades in which women were employed. Somewhere between the extreme limits proposed the higher official decision was made. It was there, in women’s trades, the field at that time of women’s greatest need, that the new Inspectors found their practically limitless work. And by the decision they were saved, first, from a hampering necessity of working entirely under conditions and according to standards already prescribed before they entered with their new instinctive understanding of complaints made to them by working women. Secondly, they were saved from losing themselves in an overpowering mass of technical requirements, such as elaborate fencing of machinery[7] primarily affecting men, where—presumably—Men Inspectors were sufficient without women’s aid. At the beginning their instructions allowed them to take up any questions affecting women and girls, including fencing. For a time, and at their own instance, they referred all fencing to the Men Inspectors, while they turned almost exclusively to questions of general hygiene (cleanliness, ventilation, temperature, sanitary conveniences, etc.), hours, excessive overtime, fines and deductions from wages, payment in kind in various parts of the United Kingdom, dangerous and injurious processes, industrial poisoning, employment of young workers, and of women after childbirth; and to the encouragement of employers making voluntary welfare arrangements in the factories. Later, from 1901 onwards, they took up special questions of fencing affecting women in laundries and clothing factories, and there they succeeded in standardising methods.

The Women Inspectors were, in fact, free under the early official instructions to devote the concentrated energy of heart and mind, in enthusiastic “team-work,” to enquiry and action on these most urgent problems. Happily they entered just when public opinion, as distinct from specialised knowledge, was awakening to the immense extent of injury and loss and to the great need for constructive reforms in industrial life. Their first Chief (under the Home Secretary, who had initiated this addition to the Inspectorate), was Mr. R. E. Sprague Oram, C.B. During his administration the important new provisions of the Factory Act of 1891 were applied and the preparatory enquiries for the yet more important Act of 1895 were begun. This Act furnished new starting-points and made provision for more exact knowledge, in requiring regular returns of persons employed in a factory or workshop with particulars as to age and sex, and notification by medical practitioners and employers of cases of industrial poisoning, together with other provisions for regulation of dangerous trades. These were carried to far greater developments under our second Chief, Sir Arthur Whitelegge, K.C.B., M.D., in what may be considered the culminating period of Factory Act administration.

Before the retirement of Mr. Oram in 1896, the five Women Inspectors were, in harmony with their own wish, formally constituted a branch of the Factory Department, under immediate superintendence of Miss May Abraham, subject of course, as all branches were, to control by the Chief Inspector. Miss Abraham retired from the Inspectorate in May, 1897, a year after marriage, and the branch continued from that year until August 1, 1921, under direction of the writer of this book. From 1896 the reports of the women were, until 1914 inclusive, issued over the signature of this head of the branch, as a separate section in the Annual Report of the Chief Inspector, thus giving a clear history of the progress of their work. Staff Committees to enquire into and make recommendations on organisation came and went at intervals of a few years, but the only important changes affecting organisation of the Women Inspectors’ work that came before 1921 were in 1899 and in 1908. In 1899 came the useful devolution, never extended beyond two districts, of special district charge of certain women’s industries into the Women Inspectors’ hands. In the later year came the creating of new group centres in the chief industrial cities (Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, etc.), where the Women Inspectors, under charge of a senior woman, carried on their routine general inspection and enquiries into complaints in factories employing women and girls, but with newly defined duties, investigating notified cases of industrial poisoning, accidents, and other matters specially affecting women. All this work, however, was subject to the central direction at the Home Office through the Principal Woman Inspector, and was carried on in definitely regulated co-operation with their colleagues, the Men Inspectors in charge of Districts, as well as the Medical and Engineering Inspectors.

The number of Women Inspectors grew, from five in 1897, to twenty-one just before the Great War in 1914, increasing by temporary additions during the War to a maximum of thirty. From this point, further and adequate extension in numbers of the women’s branch was admittedly impracticable without reorganisation of a fundamental character. To prevent cumbrous dual inspection of factories largely employing women it was necessary to have either well-defined sharing and division of the whole work of inspection as between men and women, with interchange of Inspectors as regards any factories not employing men or women exclusively; or a fusion more or less complete of men and women for _all_ duties and responsibilities. This assumes that broadly they are alike effective, whether for enforcing safety of men and boys in shipbuilding, docks, blast furnaces, foundries, engineering works, etc., or for securing health and safety of women and girls in fruit preserving and confectionery works, laundries, corset factories, millinery, mantle and shirt and collar factories, textile factories.

Fusion was the line of development chosen by the Home Office, under a scheme that allowed in 1921 for 42 Women and 195 Men Inspectors; this could not then be fully carried out as to numbers.

It is impossible to state exactly the present proportionate number of men and women in factories and workshops for purposes of comparison with the earliest systematic figures, which were published by the Factory Department in 1896. At that time there were in the United Kingdom 144,000 factories and workshops in which 1,403,568 women and girls and 2,699,917 men and boys were employed. These figures had risen by 1907 to 1,852,241 women and girls and 3,274,868 men and boys. When the War broke out there were nearly 2,000,000 women and girls employed in factories and workshops. By the end of the War there were 3,000,000 women and girls industrially employed, and in 1919 the women and girls still numbered over 2,000,000 in a total of over 6,000,000 male and female. The rise and fall of “substitution” during the War and of unemployment in 1920 to 1921, makes more recent exact comparison difficult. At the outside the ratio of female to all workers can hardly exceed 35 per cent.

While the reorganisation of the Inspectorate that began in August, 1921, rounds off a well-marked epoch in Factory Act administration, giving point to the choice of period covered by this book, it is well to remember that in industry itself there remains, for the present, small change in the division of occupations between men and women workers.

The hopes of a substantial widening of women workers’ activities, to follow after the great work of their substitution for men in factories during the War, have not been fulfilled, and in some processes women have been excluded by the unions with increased stringency since the War. The ratio of men and women in industry probably remains somewhere near that in 1907. Thus the greater numbers of men with their immense problems of safety and accident prevention provide the largest call on the time of the whole Inspectorate. And Women Inspectors are now bound to take a considerable share of this work.

A great gain may be achieved by developing fuller mutual interchange of special knowledge and special experience between Men and Women Inspectors as regards hygiene, safety, and welfare of all the workers at a time when Inspectors are becoming less and less corrective, and more and more constructive, in their functions. It was a matter of common regret among the earlier Women Inspectors that they could do so little, even indirectly, to further much-needed reform in conditions of health and welfare for men and boy workers. “Let the Women Inspectors come into our shops,” said a bold and advanced male trade union worker at a meeting, early in the twentieth century, at which the writer explained dangerous trades regulations; “they seem to be able to frighten employers into doing things!”

Any change of organisation can, however, in the long run, be weighed and judged only by the result in increased effectiveness and fineness of inspection, not by greater official convenience, nor by a theory of equality of men and women. We have yet to learn whether in face of the actualities of industrial life complete fusion of the functions and activities of Men and Women Inspectors can serve the many distinct needs of men and women in factories and workshops better than some degree of specialisation and co-ordination.

In order to secure permanent, equal eligibility of men and women for future appointments and promotions in the department, some equivalence in numbers is necessary. A minority which is no more than approximately a fifth of the whole has small chance of putting up as many able candidates for promotion as the larger majority. As a general rule the minority has, further, the extra handicap of compulsory retirement on marriage. Thus some approximation of the number of Women Inspectors to at least the relative proportion of women in industry is a necessary corollary of “fusion” of the Inspectorate. The value of the special contribution brought by Women Factory Inspectors to the regulation of factory life for women and girls is too well and authoritatively established to be, as it were, accidentally lost.

The testimony of the Women’s Employment Committee under the Ministry of Reconstruction, in 1919, as to the great “administrative success” of the work of the Women Inspectors is strong.[8] It can be tried and tested by a careful study of the range of subjects the Women Inspectors covered, and of the records of their actions, in the Annual Reports of the Chief Inspector issued by the Home Office from 1894 to 1914; by the testimony of working women; by the official reports of Parliamentary Debates on Home Office Administration, and on amending Factory Acts embodying recommendations which they had been emboldened to make. More arresting and convincing, however, for the general reader may be observations from a distinguished onlooker outside official ranks.

Listen to the voice of Canon Scott Holland, speaking in July, 1896, in the Editorial Notes of the _Commonwealth_, on the new light that was appearing in the dark places of factory industry:

“What used to be one of the most depressing and uninforming of Annual
Blue-books is now (issue for 1895) one of the most interesting and
valuable.... I take from my shelf the starved-looking report of the
‘eighties’ and early ‘nineties’ and lay it out by the side of the two
stout volumes just issued, and wish that the people who are losing
heart ... all the wise people who have seen so many things in their
time that they can never believe in an upright and vigilant
officialdom, would come and turn over the leaves with me.... It is the
report of crusaders; it brims with suggestions of reform.... You feel
that to be a Factory Inspector is to be something splendid and
stirring and effective; that these men and women are the missionaries
of order and health, and that they bring hope with them where they go.

“The state of things is in many ways disgracefully bad, but it is
something to see the State itself exposing the evil and casting about
for a cure. Since 1892 the staff has been increased by 50 per cent....

“The joint report (of the Women Inspectors) is a record of tremendous
work, accomplished with courage and judgment.

“The work of levelling up as to safety and health goes on apace.... It
is cheering to see that many manufacturers are becoming alive to the
effects of industry on health....

“The report has a special interest on account of its being the
valedictory message of Mr. Sprague Oram, H.M. Chief Inspector, who
retires after half a century of public service.... It is no secret
that much of the go-ahead work of the last few years has been due to
his enthusiasm, initiative, and devotion.... He hands over his duties
to Dr. Whitelegge, a distinguished authority on public health, who
should be a tower of strength ... in the work of making every factory
and workshop fit for human beings to work in.”

The entering of a breath of new life, obvious as it becomes in the Annual Reports of 1895, 1896, and onwards, is not, and must not be, attributed disproportionately to the entry and work of the small band of Women Inspectors—for that itself sprang from a wider movement affecting the whole department. None the less, it was a powerful new factor that gained in effectiveness as time went on. And it preceded in time even the highly significant and essential addition of Medical Inspectors considered in Chapter IV. If we do not speak here in detail of the fine work done by Men Inspectors, it is because that lies outside the scope of this brief survey. They have had great pioneering days in the early battles for Factory Act regulation. Their service when Women Inspectors entered with a new task before them had yet to be fully developed in the light of scientific knowledge and method.

If these pages in any true measure picture, for twentieth-century workers and employers, certain conditions in industry during the twenty- eight years under review; if they can put any clues into the hands of legislators and administrators regarding women’s share and needs in industry, they will fulfil their aim. They are designed to serve as a finger-post to the original documents. By imaginative study of them alone can the growth and change of this profoundly interesting period be seen. During its course, after about ninety years of tentative, experimental Factory Acts, something like civilisation began to dawn inside industry. Out of it there emerges, from about the year 1918, glimpses of the possibility of a new order, when—instead of intervention by the State between diverging interests of workers and employers— regulation can partly spring from within industry itself, by Joint Councils and Works’ Committees, as well as by representative Trade Boards. Factory Inspectors may then become mainly technical and expert advisers and counsellors in factories that are developing a life of co- operation between manual workers and employers as co-organisers of production.

NOTE.—The terms “factory” and “workshop” are defined in Section 149 of
the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901.

Broadly they apply to any workplace where the manufacture of any
article is carried on by way of trade or for purpose of gain and any
person is working under a contract of employment. If mechanical power
is used in aid of the process, the place is a factory; if not, as a
rule it is a workshop; but certain workplaces—_e.g._, tobacco works
and potteries—are factories, even if there be no power applied.