Chapter VI

THE LIFE OF THE INSPECTOR AND ITS INFLUENCE ON LEGISLATION; EXPERIENCES
IN COURTS

“I doubt very much whether the office of Factory Inspector is one
suitable for women.... It is seldom necessary to put a single question
to a female.... Possibly some details, here and there, might be
superintended by a female Inspector, but looking at what is required
at the hands of an Inspector, I fail to see advantages likely to arise
from her ministrations in a factory ... so opposite to the sphere of
her good work in the hospital, the school, or the home.”—_Chief
Inspector of Factories_, October 31, 1879.[183]

“The men’s and women’s sides of the Inspectorate ... will be
amalgamated into a single organisation. Women Inspectors will be
regarded as eligible for all posts. While the complete fusion, which
is the ultimate aim, can only be brought about gradually, the main
principles will be put into effect from the commencement.”—_Chief
Inspector of Factories_, June 8, 1921.[184]

While we await the development of the later of these two extremes in official views on the possibilities of employment of Women Factory Inspectors, there is ample material in the intervening Annual Reports of the Chief Inspector, and in comments and conclusions in Parliamentary Debates upon them, for grasping the realities in the life and activity of the Inspectors.

In the reports it is clear that they were engaged all the time on work that really mattered in its immediate effect on the life and conditions of women as workers in the factory and workshop, as outworkers, as mothers, and as industrial inmates of charitable institutions; and that the Inspectors brought new light, health, and safety into working conditions for adolescent girls and children. Their work was not formal, nor simply a question of detail, but constructive for the nation in the things that most needed new thought and perception. The fact that they never instructed occupiers of factories about “fencing” of dangerous machinery[185] that was operated solely by men did not lighten their work. It simply set them free to concentrate on immense human problems needing their special attention. Women workers had also to be drawn to confide in the Inspectorate, and to co-operate intelligently in transforming factory conditions from within. Growth of the spirit of self-help in the women was noticeable in details of Annual Reports from 1896. I was able expressly to point to its growth in 1901 and onwards.

As regards “a great many provisions” in the Factory Act of 1895, Mr. Asquith, speaking in the House of Commons on July 31, 1896, said he was “quite satisfied from recent experience, that these provisions could not be satisfactorily enforced except by female inspection.” And Sir Matthew White Ridley, then Home Secretary in succession to Mr. Asquith, replied that “much good had been done in the interest of female workers of the country by the appointment of these Lady Inspectors.”

In 1904 Mr. Asquith, in pressing on another Home Secretary, Mr. Akers- Douglas, the need of really sufficient additions to the number of Women Inspectors (then numbering twelve), did so for the reason “that the girls and women of the country might be more efficiently protected.” This had followed many annually repeated pleas in the House by various members, foremost Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. H. J. Tennant, for more liberal development of the work of the Women Inspectorate, and suggestions were made for placing them in district charge in centres of many women’s industries—_e.g._, in potteries, in Ireland—and commendation was expressed of an experiment of this kind in the West London Special District.

Mr. Theodore Taylor, speaking as a factory owner in the debate on Home Office Estimates on August 4, 1904, desired “to acknowledge the very great debt of gratitude which employers generally were under to the Women Inspectors. There were very many abuses which employers were not aware of until they were brought to light by the Women Inspectors ... he joined in the strong request that the number should be largely increased ... the adoption of this course would tend to the efficiency of factory labour.” Mr. John Burns held that “their work had to do with matters which no average man could understand,” echoing a point made in earlier debates by Mr. Asquith, that the Women Inspectors could “bring themselves into close contact with the workers and obtain from them with greater spontaneity actual facts of the real duties of their lives and work,” and that this freedom of communication resulted in much better administration of the law.[186] Mr. Akers-Douglas, replying in 1904 to the demand for increase in the Women’s Branch of the Inspectorate, “had been very much struck by the unanimous opinion expressed that day,” as he had been also, he said, by “reading the very valuable report” of that year on the work of the Women Inspectors.

Members of Parliament, indeed, showed throughout that they were entirely convinced that efficiency and economy followed on the spontaneous character of the work of the Women Inspectors’ Branch, and that the confidence reposed in them by the workers, for whose aid they were appointed, was appreciated. As Mr. McKenna said on March 8, 1898: “We know the very high favour with which they are looked upon by the working classes.” The only definite exception that I can find to this general commendation is in a complaint by Mr. Jesse Collings on June 29, 1903, that they went beyond their province of seeing that the laws were obeyed by doing “missionary work.” This complaint seems to refer to their steady endeavours to encourage employers to go beyond the law in promotion of welfare conditions—an aim which came into wider public consideration during the Great War.

There are many passages in the Debates to show that it was not only the direct work of applying the Acts and Orders, but even more the faculty of acting both as an intelligence branch and as a missionary arm of the Department that was valued by the country in the work of the Women Inspectorate. Not only was the extension of localised administration, by women for women, in great centres of women’s industry urged over and over again from 1899 onwards; Sir Charles Dilke also led many members, particularly in 1906, in emphasising the value of their special enquiries and reports on such questions as employment of women after childbirth; the need of after-care of young persons rejected for physical unfitness in the factory and thereupon employed in less regulated occupations and workshops; industrial disease and poisoning among women and girls; observance of special regulations peculiarly affecting women and girls; fines and deductions from wages; sanitary arrangements; and other matters in which the needs of women workers necessarily vary from those of men. “The great organised trades,” he said, “are to some extent able to protect themselves, but women workers depend,” to a great extent, on legislation and enforcement of the law, and “on the Women Inspectors especially falls the duty of enforcing the law,” “where the inspection is most necessary.”

In July, 1908, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, speaking as Home Secretary, and alluding to a 40 per cent. increase in numbers of the Women’s Branch (which brought them to eighteen), said: “The time has come when the demands of the country for more Lady Inspectors cannot be resisted,” and he declared that the “increase would be gradual in the future,” and that there would be “no change in the character of the excellent work” done by them. At this figure, eighteen, the numbers remained for several years. Then in 1911 we find Lord Henry Cavendish Bentinck asking for more, and expressing disappointment in finding that the numbers “remain the same”; in 1912 he and Mr. Alfred Lyttelton referred again to the subject, and the former pointed to the valuable concentrated “experiment in the way of fencing machinery” that was going on in laundries in the special West London district, under a Woman Inspector, with resultant decline in number of accidents. He referred also appreciatively to their work throughout the country under the Truck Act.

The lively interest that members took in reading the published reports of the Women’s Branch, with their “vivid and humane representation of the facts of our factory system,” was emphasised by Mr. Morrell and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald in July, 1913, and Mr. Hills and Lord Henry Cavendish Bentinck returned to the old charge, that, for the sides of the work affecting women and young workers, efficient administration could be secured only by setting the Women Inspectorate to do it. “It is quite true that it is the duty of the male Inspectors as well as of the female Inspectors to look after those women and children,” but for these Mr. Morrell urged “the work cannot be effectively done except by women.”

This, then, was the Parliamentary mirror of the toils and adventures of the Women Inspectorate. There is, however, a word to be said on an aspect that appears to be neglected. Undoubtedly it was helpful to the Women Inspectors on the one side to know, during so many years of difficult and heavy work, that Parliament grasped the extent of their task and the nature of the work that they were reaching out to achieve in response to the appeal made to them by the industrial womanhood of the nation. Yet, on another larger side, there was much pain also in the feeling that this repeated emphasis tended to obscure any general perception of the highly urgent need that required strong support, for Men Inspectors in dealing with preventable accident and injury, and far too rough and unhygienic conditions for the manhood of industry, in places where women were little employed or not employed at all.

As far back as 1898 my own belief was that effective reorganisation of staff involved not only concentration of experienced Women Inspectors on the main conditions affecting women workers, but, even more, a lightening of the cares of Men Inspectors on this side to allow of their greater concentration on prevention of accidents and on very dangerous trades where women may not enter as workers. In 1920 accidents affecting male workers numbered 124,580, of which 1,363 were fatal, as compared with 14,122 affecting female workers, of which 41 were fatal.[187] Examples of the great accident producing industries are extraction and conversion of metals, shipbuilding, docks, construction of buildings, foundries, locomotive, and other large engineering works. In Parliament the conclusion has invariably been reached that, in health and safety problems for women and girl workers, Women Inspectors are primâ faciê the more competent. Is it not in the great safety problems for men and boys that a field of specialisation lies for Men Inspectors of a nature as absorbing as that which enthralled the Women Inspectorate during the last twenty-five years? The fusion of the men’s and women’s sides of the Inspectorate, while avoiding some old problems of administration, raises up new ones, not less large. A solution appears clearly within reach, but discussion of it is outside the scope of this survey.

On neither side—men’s safety problems nor women’s health problems—is skilled enquiry by the Inspectorate or experimental development of regulation finished. The difference of potential or actual maternity alone (without consideration of claims on girls and women as the homemakers of the nation), according to Dr. Janet Campbell in her memorandum to the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry,[188] absolutely prevents equal competition of women with men in industry. She lays stress on the need of further investigation into the physical effects of employment in industry upon adolescent girls as well as adult women, and this view supports the considerable enquiry made in the past by Women Inspectors into heavy work done by girls. The persistent call of Women Inspectors during many years for welfare conditions saw both its justification and its fruit in the industrial warwork of women. The extensive employment by the Ministry of Munitions of Women Dilution Officers, to strengthen and promote employment of women dilutees in engineering trades, ran also in harmony with the idea of specialisation rather than fusion of function. Dr. Josefa Joteyko, in her “Science of Labour,”[189] deals with experiments she had made showing the differing modes of expenditure of energy in industry by man and woman. She says: “Each represents a distinct function,” although each form of energy is equally necessary to industry for its own purposes. While her experiments established endurance as a characteristic in the feminine sex requiring a slow and gradual expenditure of energy to avoid fatigue, muscular force or strength with a power to act instantaneously under a stimulating impulse are shown to be characteristic of the masculine sex, and to be accompanied by ability to recover rapidly from fatigue. “Most careful selection of working women with regard to their muscular powers,” she considers, is necessary for successful industrial labour.

Whatever the issue of these various considerations, Parliamentary and medical, on women’s work, it is well for the general community to understand the ways in which the Women Factory Inspectors actually worked during the past quarter of a century. During this period, says a writer in the _Women’s Industrial News_ of January, 1915, the “direct influence” of Women Inspectors on “enactments affecting women and young people is very great, and they also helped to raise the standard of legal regulation in the British Isles by study of foreign industrial legislation.”[190] She traced out the questions in which their work had affected development of the Acts and Orders from 1895 to 1907, and mentioned among others the following: overcrowding, insufficient or unsuitable means of heating workrooms, defective and unsuitable sanitary accommodation for women, dangers from locked doors in fire or panic, excessive overtime, need of power to qualify certificates of fitness for young workers by specification of the class of work to be done, insufficient general ventilation, need of inspection of institutional laundries, regulation of fines and deductions, etc. “The social progress of recent years,” she said, “has been the result of an unprecedented attention to matters of detail. Investigation and administration have begun to go hand in hand, and the scientific spirit which has been so long in coming to its own in matters social may now be said to have arrived ... the great advance which the Women Inspectors have been able to bring about in factory legislation has been largely due to the sympathetic insight which has made them virtually representative of the people.”[191]

During the whole period 1893–1921 these Inspectors were, by official instructions, directed especially to enquire, report, and take action in behalf of women and girls; a task to which they addressed themselves with hearty loyalty and intense interest.[192] They had Inspectors’ full powers of action, and worked under their own women officers from 1896 to 1921. It was from 1902 onwards that they directly instructed occupiers on fencing and prevention of accidents in the clothing and laundry industries, of which they had made special study. Earlier in the same year full authority was entrusted to me, as head of the branch, for the sanctioning of their prosecutions, a power hitherto exercised subject to approval by the Chief Inspector. Except for slight variations in the early stages, co-ordination of their special work with the general work of the male District Inspectors followed a steadfast prescribed course from 1898 to 1921.

The very boundaries set to the work of the women officers led, as things were, to what may be called their “higher education” in the nature of the representative and judicial administration of their country. The thorough general knowledge they acquired, all over the British Isles, of conditions in every productive or manufacturing industry employing women and girls, sprang also from their concentration as a branch on this aspect of industrial employment. They made close acquaintance with local as well as central methods of administration by daily dealings with health and education authorities and their officers, as well as with magistrates, sheriffs, and their clerks. They had to act for themselves— most fortunately, for “power to do comes of doing”—in courts of summary jurisdiction, learning procedure and something of the “law of evidence” as they went along, and gaining an understanding of the details and principles of the Truck Acts and Factory Acts, that could only be acquired by personally testing them in the courts.

Probably in nothing did we owe so much to the first tentative efforts of Miss May Abraham and Miss Mary Paterson as in their adventurous readiness from the outset to try their powers in police and sheriff court proceedings. I may confess that my own first feelings were chiefly of consternation on learning that I had, a few weeks after entering the Department, personally to prosecute an occupier for illegal employment of girls—never having previously entered a police court. I suggested to the District Inspector that he might conduct the first one, just “to show how it was done,” but fortunately and wisely he declined. It was not very long before I found a new interest in methods of administration, through my discovery of a clause in the Factory Act under which I might ask the magistrates to “make an order in addition to imposing a penalty on an occupier for failure to keep his factory in conformity with the Act”[193]—the magistrates actually complying with the request, on condition that the terms of the order were drawn up by the local medical officer of health and myself. This discovery was indeed crowned when, in a great mill employing about a thousand workers, it resulted in the closing of ancient and insanitary conveniences pouring effluvia into heated spinning rooms, to the erection of passable temporary sanitary conveniences, and, finally, to completed construction of a modernised water-carriage system of conveniences.

It was not only in courts of summary jurisdiction that our education was carried on. Between 1894 and 1916 we had sixteen appeals on points of law to the High Courts of England, Scotland, and Ireland issuing from cases taken by Women Inspectors in the Courts of first instance. Through these we learned something about interpretation and the bearing of “decided cases,” as well as the thoroughness with which trained lawyers prepared a case; we also came in contact with legal advisers, law officers, Queen’s and King’s Counsel, Treasury solicitors, Procurators Fiscal, Sessional Crown solicitors, and so forth. Appeals to Quarter Sessions on matters of fact occasionally gave us further enlightenment, and, after a while, subpœnas served on Inspectors to give evidence in civil claims of workers against their employers opened up for us new chapters in the law of the land.

Without warning an Inspector would find herself when in a police court arguing her case not merely with an experienced solicitor acting for the defendant, but sometimes with a well known Q.C. (or K.C.). Our armour on such occasions was a thorough acquaintance with the facts and circumstances, and with the scope of the Acts which we were trying to enforce. Much of the professional point of view and technique had rapidly to be caught up not only on these occasions, but also during the hazards of passing cases over to the Treasury, or to the Sessional Crown solicitor in preparation for an appeal. The range of subjects that we sent up was sufficient to introduce us to not a little of the lighter and more humorous sides of legal proceedings, as well as to the tedium of delays. In our record year for participation in appeals on points of law—the year 1901, when Miss Squire was concerned in three appeals and Miss Deane in one—there was some entertainment in spite of more serious elements. Three of these appeals seem to deserve rescue from oblivion for other than purely legal reasons. In _Deane_ v. _Hulbert Beach_ we learned that the section (of which we had hoped much in the way of remedy for workrooms either cruelly cold or stuffy because unprovided with any proper heating apparatus), providing that “adequate measures shall be taken for securing and maintaining a reasonable temperature in each room in which any person is employed,” secured nothing whatever but a reasonable altitude of mercury in the thermometer, however improper the “measures.” In this instance these measures were described in the Court of Appeal by counsel as “stuffing the room with a number of women, heating with gas jets, stuffing up chimneys, and so on.” He argued, first, that the “legislature must have meant that it shall be reasonable having regard to the object in view—namely, the health of the person employed,” but when asked by one of the Judges, “When you say ‘it,’ what do you mean by ‘it’?” his reply was, “The warmth or temperature.” A moment or two later he admitted, “It is a slip in the Act,” and the Judge replied, “They ought to have used the word ‘ventilation’—adequate ventilation.” On which counsel remarked, “Yes, that is the short point. It has been brought up with a view to amending the Act this session.”[194] In _Fullers, Ltd._ v. _Squire_ there was an appeal by a defendant employer against a conviction and penalty for employing young women through the night, on Saturday afternoons, and on Sundays in packing and decorating wicker hampers and ornamental boxes, and filling them with bonbons and sweetmeats in fancy patterns, tying up with bows of ribbon and the like. The argument for appeal was, substantially, that the work was incidental to sale, not production, and that the place was a shop, not a workshop. No legal argument was verbally attempted by counsel for the respondent (the same counsel as in the previous case), but sample boxes, as packed and decorated with bright ribbon bows by the young women, were shown to the Judges and made a fine splash of colour in court. The appeal was dismissed, the Judges declining to interfere with the discretion of the magistrate in deciding the individual case on the facts before him. In _Squire_ v. _Bayer & Co._ there was, from an Inspectors’ point of view, more tragedy than entertainment in the decision, but the whole case is a very good measure of the distance that has been travelled in our industrial and social standards since the year 1901. A case had been brought before the magistrates in order to test the legality, under the Truck Act, of a rule posted up in the defendant’s factory, that “all workers shall observe good order and decorum while in the factory, and shall not do anything which may interfere with the proper and orderly conduct of the business thereof, or of any department thereof ... a fine of 6d. (or less at the discretion of the manager) shall be paid by each worker who shall be guilty of any infringement of this rule.” Under this rule numerous fines had been imposed upon young girls for speaking, laughing, sneezing, etc., and they could not know beforehand what “acts or omissions” on their part would render them liable. The intention of the Act had apparently been to secure such knowledge to the workers before they were liable to a fine. The Inspector selected for her test case two girls who, among others, had been fined for amusing themselves in the dinner hour by singing and dancing to a small harp in the workroom where they were allowed to remain, no mealroom being provided on the premises. The High Court held that the case was not free from difficulty, but that they could not say that the justices had come to a wrong conclusion in finding that the fines were imposed under a lawful contract. “It would be going too far to say that the language prescribing a fine for breach of good order and decorum is necessarily too general.” The appeal was dismissed. In these later days, since the War, the girls would not only have a legal claim to take home their minimum wage clear of all deductions, but employers very often think it natural and proper to provide a messroom, and sometimes even a recreation room and a piano; dancing in the dinner hour is occasionally not only encouraged, but teaching also given at the employer’s expense.

In the year 1900 a case was decided in the High Court (_Tracey_ v. _Pretty_) which brought us an experience extending over nearly two years, that can have fallen to but few, if any, other litigants. It arose in our endeavour to test the powers of the Factory Department to act in default of a sanitary authority for securing conformity to some standard of sufficiency and suitability in the provision of sanitary conveniences. The case had been heard three times, first by two Judges who differed, then by three Judges, one being the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Russell of Killowen, who reserved judgment, but died before giving the decision. It was heard for the third time by his successor, Lord Alverstone, and the decision defined for the first time what was meant by the “proceedings” open in England and Wales (outside London) to an Inspector whose duty it was to act in default of the local authority. The Inspector assumed all the powers of the authority, acting on the advice of their surveyor, and could serve a notice under the Public Health Acts on the occupier of the factory, the magistrate having no authority or duty except to enquire whether the notice was properly served and, if so, to convict. Appeal on the reasonableness of the notice could be made to Quarter Sessions.[195]

In 1901, our interest having been thoroughly aroused as to the possibility of increasing capacity for the legal side of the work and of improving methods in conducting prosecutions, an invitation was given by the Women Inspectors, through Mrs. H. J. Tennant, to Mr. R. B. Haldane, K.C., M.P., since Lord Haldane, to address us on the “Conduct of Cases under the Factory Acts.” To this he made a generous response, and both Men and Women Inspectors had the great advantage of listening to a distinguished advocate on the subject, at a gathering at Mrs. Tennant’s house on April 18, 1901. Starting from the standpoint, familiar to a Factory Inspector, that the Crown does not fight a case unless it believes itself in the right, nor until satisfied of the truth of the matter in question, he gave new meaning to some of our experience in preparing and prosecuting a case, and need of readiness to meet unforeseen contingencies; he also gave us new points for handling evidence and witnesses. We were cheered by the stress he laid on “the assurance, which is a very real one, that every case you lose brings with it fresh experience, perhaps more than the case you gain,” and that it is “only continual practice and dogged perseverance that makes people grow in this as in other respects.” This same assurance was given me personally by my own early experience, but yet more by watching the growth in power, in this field, of colleagues working under my direction. Of one of them I had the gratification of once reading the opinion of a lawyer well qualified to judge, who was in court at the time she was conducting a difficult Truck case, that it “could not have been better done.” Sometimes words of praise for prosecuting Inspectors would appear in a local paper. A single instance may suffice; in 1905, when a presiding magistrate was reported to have said of two Women Inspectors, concerned in a lively case of obstruction (of the Inspector) and illegal employment (of women) before him, that “His Majesty was to be congratulated on the possession of two Inspectors who did their duty so conscientiously and well.” The one, he said, had “very ably and properly conducted her own case”; the other (who had pursued retreating workers in the factory down a trap-door into a dark cellar) “seemed to have behaved with great pluck and activity.”

On this side of their work, in patience, resourcefulness, and persistence, and in the high percentage of success in results, the record does appear somewhat remarkable. Taking only the years from 1898 to 1914, the Women Inspectors brought 4,962 cases into court against 1,974 occupiers, and secured convictions in 4,715 cases. And the average penalty imposed by magistrates rose, on the whole. The years of greatest activity in the courts were between 1901 and 1911. Though many interesting cases came in earlier and in later years, the tendency increased, after 1911, to place more reliance on conference with or persuasion of occupiers. The nature of infringements of the law has largely appeared in preceding chapters, and the proportion of cases was (as in complaints): first, illegal employment; secondly, defects in sanitation and infraction of health regulations; thirdly, irregularity in payment of wages.

It seems very natural that a high proportion of our younger Women Inspectors have been impelled to read for the Bar in 1920–21 so soon as such a step was open to them. Long after some of them have been called to and are successfully practising at the Bar, it may touch them to read of early experiences of Women Factory Inspectors during the arduous battles they fought on behalf of many extremely poor and hard-driven women workers. The life they led can only be given by fragments.

Here is a little extract from a diary, the flotsam of time:

“_Midnight ... December 31_ ... we are at L——, cold, miserable. Came
here to see ... Sessional Crown Solicitor about case to be stated _re_
order of D—— magistrates in the case of X——.

“_January 1._—We listened to the clock striking the new year while
making copies of draft-stated case which we had drawn up ourselves and
which ... Sessional Crown Solicitor had approved (we are very proud of
this draft). At 8.30 a.m. we started in a wagonette with two horses,
one of which had no shoe, with snow on the ground.... Arrived D—— 6.30
p.m., found Sessional Crown Solicitor and two resident magistrates,
had long conference, read them our stated case, which they adopted _in
toto_.

“_January 2._—Conference all day long and attendance in court, when J.
P. signed stated case with exception of.... Sat up till 2 a.m. copying
stated case ready for service next day. Atmosphere very damp, also
cold.... Slept under nine thicknesses of blankets and two
counterpanes.

“_January 3._—All day trying to get stated case signed by outstanding
magistrate, who flatly refused, saying, ‘I know X—— was in the wrong,
but it’s making too much of it to take the case to Dublin.’

“_January 4._—At 4 a.m. we started for our fifteen-mile drive to
nearest railway-station, bright starlight, lovely sunrise, nearly
choked with clothing and hot bottles, and sat nursing our best hats on
our knees.”

For “peripatetic” Inspectors the difficulty was a real one; the fitting in of visits of special enquiry, general routine visits of inspection, visits on extremely varied kinds of complaints, with the successful prosecution of prolonged legal activities in widely scattered places. Yet I know of no case where action failed through omission by an Inspector to serve a notice or complete any legal formality or be at the necessary spot at the prescribed time. There was a flame burning within that seemed to consume obstacles by the way, and rendered innocuous even very adverse climatic and other conditions. Long cross-country drives in Ireland (undertaken at times simply to carry out a formal act) would sometimes last all day in an open car in pouring rain, or a day in a tiny, stuffy police court might have to be preceded by a drive beginning before daylight on a stormy winter morning to fetch intimidated witnesses for the case. In Lancashire a start might have to be made at 4.30 a.m. from a hotel (with the aid of knocking-up by the night porter), to reach a distant country mill, unobserved, by a new route, in order to detect time-cribbing before 6 a.m. Tussles with manageresses to obtain the luxury of clean sheets on the hotel beds, and struggles to secure amendments in conditions of uncleanliness (about which “Lord X—— Y——, here last week, had not complained”), were much more against the grain. Yet all seemed small in comparison with such conclusions as that of the _X—— Sentinel_ that the Lady Factory Inspector had “emerged triumphant” from her case; that the “Truck Act has a living force for the protection of a worker as far away as Altnagapple”; and that “the publicity given to these prosecutions is likely to have a beneficial effect throughout the county.” Or, again, the comments of the _Daily C—— _ on the prosecution of a firm employing a number of young girls in processes scheduled as “dangerous” was enlivening. A certain town which was “famous for its magistrates in Shakespeare’s time yesterday let off notable offenders lightly. For employing four young girls without the certificate of the doctor which the law requires a fine of 10s. in each case was enforced—this being positively the first offence of the sort; and for an incredibly mean breach of the Truck Act, by means of which a girl had her wages stopped for two whole years to pay her father’s rent, the firm had to pay three guineas. Grinding the faces of the poor is cheap down in ——, and but for the Woman Inspector who found out what was going on it would cost nothing at all.”

Consolation sometimes came swiftly to the Inspector on a refusal of magistrates to convict in a closely contested case for, for instance, heavy deductions from the girls’ small wages, or for waste in production. In such a case, the firm, before leaving court, offered to meet the Inspector’s views by lowering the scale of deductions for the future to figures that, if yielded at an earlier stage, would have obviated the need for prosecution. Publicity in such things was ever our most potent helper. Something of the “setting” of this case, in the court, may be brought up from the past by means of a stray leaf of a letter, come back to me from the colleague to whom I wrote it in 1899:

“The firm had arranged quite a dramatic scene for us—no less than
three barristers, with wigs and all. Mr. Y——, Q.C., defended, with the
help of his friend, Mr. S——, and another friend of theirs who came in
from the Assize Court to enjoy himself. All the four partners were
there, and their solicitor. It would take too long to tell the whole
story now, but ... it was worth while fighting, and we were in court
until 3 p.m. I had breakfasted at 6.30 a.m. in London, so you will
believe that I was glad when lunch-time came. The stipendiary and the
magistrate’s clerk listened with the greatest interest to Miss
Squire’s clear exposition ... but, alas! our witnesses were not nearly
good enough. One of them was like wax in the hands of Mr. Y——, who, as
one of the sergeants of the court confided to me, ‘was not one of your
bullying sort, but quite gentlemanly.’ The stipendiary could not make
up his mind, however, and is going to think it over and give his
decision on Tuesday.”

His decision then was to dismiss the case on the evidence before him, but not as a precedent to govern other cases. The deductions had been so large, in relation to the wages of the girls, that they could only be levied by small weekly instalments, extending over months.[196]

Two Inspectors in the same year had an almost incredible series of experiences in Donegal (details of which can be seen in the Blue-books) when trying to limit very long hours of employment of women in “kippering” processes on an island, and to secure payment in coin for outworkers on the mainland engaged in knitting. A study of legal procedure was involved that proved enlightening to the Inspectors, while one of them most deeply engaged in the latter of these cases lived for the most part practically under police protection. She was “much cheered by the sympathy and gratitude of the peasants,” on whose behalf she doggedly prosecuted the case against local agents giving out the work. In the “kippering” case there were two hearings. At the first, there was equal division of the magistrates, ending in its being “dismissed without prejudice.” At the second, there were five magistrates, and the case was dismissed by a majority of three on the ground of exemption of the processes from the Act. The hearing was largely “occupied by the elaborate speech of the solicitor for the defence.... The climax of his oration was reached when he appealed to the magistrates not to allow” the Inspector “to hie herself back to the Home Office bedecked with the plumes of victory.” The case which was stated for appeal “never reached a hearing, owing to a failure to observe a legal requirement” on the part of the legal agent, to whom it was entrusted when it passed out of the hands of the Inspectors.[197]

It would require a separate book of some size to tell of many more of our memorable experiences in the courts, and of the wonderful, varied play of human circumstances and character there. It may be, as one of the Women Inspectors once observed to me, the most difficult thing in the world to tell—or to secure the telling of—“the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Yet the first business in a Court of Justice, however summary, is to secure the presentation or unfolding of truth, and truth being always near the mainspring of life, this is perhaps the reason why so much entertainment, interest, and strange attractiveness is to be found there. Possibly we had far too many cases in which the size of penalty for serious contraventions seemed not at all deterrent. And yet all the time a process was going on—of which we saw glimpses now and again—in the recognition by employers of the thing that really mattered, their moral, as distinct from their legal, responsibility in matters affecting health and well-being of the workers in the factories and workshops. And memory lingers on a case in which deterrent penalties were obtained in circumstances where every interest of the locality appeared to be against an impartial hearing:

“The employment of the women from 8.30 a.m. of one day until 5 a.m. on
the next was on a mourning order for the magistrate’s clerk. The
magistrate, before whom the informations were brought, at first
refused to sign them, and only did so on the recommendation of the
magistrate’s clerk. The active partner in the business is a
magistrate. The Mayor (in the chair) is the other workshop employer,
who was cautioned for illegal employment of a child. At the hearing of
the case a strong opinion was expressed by some of the Bench that the
offence was merely technical, and that the Factory Acts were hardly
intended to apply to such country towns. Under these circumstances ...
all concerned are to be congratulated ... on the fact that sufficient
penalties were imposed to mark the offence as more than merely
technical.”[198]

In this chapter I have, so far, mainly considered the side of the Inspectors’ work that followed from the need of enforcing observance of the standards in the Acts, a need which was greatest in the earlier years. Routine daily inspection of factories and workshops at all times took a large place and increasingly so, until it was far the largest part of the life of the Woman Inspector. It was, of course, vital that she should visit as many as possible of the tens of thousands of places where female workers were employed, to give both employers and workers all that can be given and that they desired from such routine inspection. It has already been seen how new light was thrown on many questions of health, safety, and welfare, how fresh attention was aroused to the importance of many sections in the various Acts, and how the Women Inspectors, by special concentration of attention on these in the workplace, amassed fresh material for advance in legislation and administration. In an ordinary year, let us take 1913, they would effectively inspect between 6,000 and 7,000 factories, between 3,000 and 4,000 workshops, visit many outworkers, factory workers at their homes, besides hospitals, local authorities, and the courts. They would investigate many reported cases of industrial poisoning, between 600 and 700 accidents to women and girls in laundries and wearing apparel industries. Contravention notices to occupiers would number 9,000 or more; prosecutions in 1913 numbered 373 against 142 occupiers. It is evident that the direct action of the Woman Inspector stretched far beyond the investigation of specific complaints (of which 2,014 were received in 1913), or the following up of contraventions serious enough for prosecution.

Seeing that over 10,000 workplaces could be inspected by the women officers in the year, and that in each one the name and address of the local Senior Lady Inspector was affixed on the abstract of the Acts, a great deal was gradually done to give the women workers that access to a Woman Inspector that they so earnestly desire. Much more than is generally realised was added by the fact that these officers of the Department systematically sent a letter of advice, instruction, or caution—as the case required—to the occupier after an inspection, and that this had incomparably more attention from him than a merely formal notice of contravention ever had. A large part of the effect of an inspection is missed when a necessary instruction is given on a form instead of in a written letter. The latter not only secured, for example, better fencing and better ventilation, heating, and welfare, but it also stimulated reflection and aroused a new sympathy for the aims and objects of the Acts which bore sometimes surprising fruit. Replies of thanks from the employers asking for more help came in increasing numbers, and it was very pleasing during the war period to be told how heads of firms sometimes specially appreciated visits from married Women Inspectors, who were employed at that time by the Department in a temporary capacity. The influx, then, of many women employees, as dilutees or otherwise, into many factories, which had never previously employed a woman or girl in process work, awakened a good many employers to the special problems of supervision and welfare that arise in organising joint industrial employment of men and women, boys and girls.

As soon as the number of Women Inspectors grew beyond the small figure necessary to cope with the appeals and complaints of the women workers themselves, my own endeavour was to allot their services, as far as practicable, to the various main women’s industries over the whole country, in a scale proportioned to the numbers of girls and women employed. When the statistics of those employed in each trade became available, one could find the necessary clue. Textiles absorbed over 43 per cent. of the women and girls, clothing trades over 26·5 per cent., laundries 5·4 per cent., food preserving 4·6 per cent., warehouses, calendering, and finishing 2·2 per cent., earthenware and china works nearly 2 per cent. Other determining factors of course came in, such as special risks, questions of Truck or piecework wages, excessive seasonal overtime employment, and so on, but where these, or the women’s own complaints, did not compel our concentrated attention, relative allotment of routine inspection was more or less governed by the proportional extent of women’s employment.[199]

“While we can see,” I said in 1913, “a great number and variety of
deplorable contraventions of the actual requirements and spirit of the
law and ... apparently preventible suffering and overstrain and injury
to life, limb, and health that is grievous to dwell upon (except for
action in the way of removal), we can see also most clearly signs of
improvement and the promise of much more. The promise lies in the fact
that the movement to secure better conditions is not confined to any
one class or group. The women and girls at last begin to press their
claims for a better life ... not only by increasing appeals to
Inspectors ... but also by criticism of the limitations of the law and
by fresh courage in organising and voicing their needs to the
employers. Employers are initiating reforms not only as outstanding
individuals and firms, but are beginning to do so, at last, by
associated action and effort.”[200]

Mrs. Drury (Miss Whitworth), formerly an Inspector of Factories working under a Senior in a division, sends me the following memory sketch of a characteristic special day—any day that had to be withdrawn from routine work in order to cope with a variety of miscellaneous claims needing prompt attention. It might have happened in 1912 or 1913:

“Many days were very full, all were interesting.... Let me suppose I
was first off to investigate an accident in a laundry. With the
prescribed report from employer and certifying surgeon in my hand, I
knew that a girl of fourteen had had her arm drawn in between the hot
rollers of a collar polishing machine. There was first the examination
of the machinery to see if a proper guard was provided and maintained,
then the examining of workers to find out the usual way in which the
rollers were cleaned, and whether sufficient instruction had been
given by those in authority about use of this dangerous machine; in
short, why the accident had happened and how similar ones could be
prevented. If a serious breach was found it was necessary to take
sufficient evidence in support of possible legal proceedings—a general
inspection of the whole laundry followed and notes would be carefully
made as one went along. Finally, one would see the manager and discuss
each point and instruct as necessary. A visit to the patient followed,
probably in hospital, and her story would be heard. Light was then
thrown on what it is difficult to realise without quietly seeing the
workers alone. Help as to how to set about getting compensation was
often asked for, and the worker could then be referred to the Working
Women’s Legal Advice Bureau. If there was any defect in the machine,
so that risk of accident in cleaning it was high, a visit to the
makers of the machine or their agents might be made, then or later, to
try to persuade them to do their part—an educative proceeding even if
fruit was slow in showing.

“It would by now be lunch-time, and one learnt to sometimes take the
meal in odd places: it is not to be wondered at that when ‘on leave’
an Inspector enjoys a nice comfortable meal at home and is not a lover
of picnics. The meal was usually soon over, and timed, perhaps, so as
to be at the police court at 2 p.m. to lay informations against a
firm, before the magistrate, a formal ceremony soon over. The next
thing might be a visit to a large biscuit factory to investigate a
complaint that a certain workroom was hot and unventilated. After
taking the outside temperature I remember going to the manager’s
office, handing in my official card saying I was going at once to the
factory. The representative knew his obligation, and I went straight
to the block complained of.... Before it was time to send in my report
two letters reached the Chief Inspector, one from the employer to say
I had hurried into the factory, without even waiting to announce who I
was, the other from a trade union official to say I had been quite
half an hour talking to the manager in his office, so that, of course,
the workroom was well ventilated by the time I arrived, and my visit
useless. An Inspector has all eyes on her; she may well go about her
work warily and keep her eye on the ball.

“After such a day’s work I once found a wire waiting for me at home
from my Senior, ‘Meet me Aldgate East Station midnight for overtime
inspection.’ This was thrilling, the Junior Inspector is always ready
for an expedition of that kind ... and I went to the appointed spot.
We then walked to a tailor’s house in a street full of these
workshops, having a borrowed lamp.... I went to the basement with my
lamp, and my Senior went upstairs to an empty dark workroom, then we
met together in the sitting-room, where there was a mass of unfinished
coats and trousers evidently thrown down in a hurry; then in the
bedroom we found, in bed, fully dressed, a little girl of fourteen I
had seen before.... Proceedings followed, but these entailed more
days’ work, for the employer disappeared, and was traced with much
difficulty.... It was 2.30 a.m. before we reached home that night, but
what play could give more insight into some of the ways of man than a
good day’s inspection?”

Such days and nights of work of a Junior Woman Inspector, working in a division as part of a well-organised staff under a Senior, show the unity that lived on in the branch from its earliest years. The chief difference that came with the years was in getting to closer, more detailed, grips with the mass of work to be done. Perhaps pioneering risks became less evident, but initiative in devising methods remained a strong need, and variety and human interest continued equally present.

The thoroughness that persisted in investigation of complaints and in special enquiries is roughly but picturesquely expressed by the remark of a trade union secretary to a Woman Inspector: “I know you; you belong to the same lot as Miss ——. I remember when she came down to our place, long ago, like a ferret in a rat ‘ole, she were.” It was of the same Inspector that a girl in a factory once said to the deaconess of the parish, “I am glad when she comes to our factory, she makes me feel so safe.”

To another Inspector, a Senior in her office, once came seventy or more mill girls, in shawls, straight from their mill, bent on redress of a complaint; twelve came into her room, the rest were on the stairs and extended down into the street. It was not often so many arrived at once, but peace of some degree in the factory generally followed on deputations of this kind.

When it became known that my work was nearly finished, and retirement imminent, a trade union organiser came to see me at the Home Office. It was to bring farewell messages from the workers, and I said how very much I was touched by such messages when I had personally seen so far less of them in recent years in the factories than I could have wished. “They knew you from the Women Inspectors whom they did see,” was the instant reply.

“There is nothing you cannot ask and expect of the British worker, man or woman—they have ability for anything,” an employer said to me in the year following the War when I talked with him about the women’s wartime work during his convalescence from severe illness due to overwork on munitions in his foundry.

Ability, loyalty, and an understanding heart—what a foundation this country has, in its workers, led by such employers, on which to build up beautiful industries in the future!