Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-14T20:11:06.098Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE EMERGENCE OF STATUTORY HYGIENE PRECAUTIONS IN THE BRITISH MINING INDUSTRIES, 1890–1914*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2008

CATHERINE MILLS
CATHERINE MILLS*
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
*
Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJc.j.mills@exeter.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It will be fifty years in 2008 since Oliver MacDonagh suggested that the adoption of new responsibilities by the state in the early nineteenth century was an inevitable response to the social consequences of the industrial revolution, and impervious to ideological and philosophical influences. This article revisits MacDonagh's model by examining the emergence of occupational health reform in the British mining industry in the early twentieth century. Until the introduction of statutory measures in 1905 to protect miners against developing silicosis and basic sanitation provisions to prevent cross-contamination of disease, state regulation of working conditions prioritized the prevention of accidental injuries. It is argued that this decisive shift in the scope and nature of government intervention can be understood as part of a process of institutional expansion of mining regulations that broadly parallels MacDonagh's model. Yet the precise details of when, and how, health reform emerged and the nature of these specific regulatory controls were influenced by a variety of factors, including visibility of risk, human agency, economic performance of the industry, and contemporary thinking in political economy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 145 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 MacDonagh, O., ‘The nineteenth-century revolution in government: a reappraisal’, Historical Journal, 1 (1958), pp. 52–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 B. Hutchins and A. Harrison, A history of factory legislation (London, 1911).

3 Robert Gray, The factory question and industrial England, 1830–1860 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 7; A. V. Dicey, ‘The debt of collectivism to Benthamism’: lectures on the relation between law and public opinion in England during the nineteenth century (London, 1905); and Brebner, J. B., ‘Laissez faire and state intervention in nineteenth-century Britain’, Journal of Economic History, Supplement, 8 (1948), pp. 59–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Aydelotte, W., ‘Conservative and radical interpretations of early Victorian social legislation’, Victorian Studies, 11 (1967), pp. 223–36Google Scholar at p. 227.

4 MacDonagh, ‘Revolution’, p. 58.

5 Ibid., p. 67.

6 Ibid., p. 60.

7 Roberts, D., in ‘Tory paternalism and social reform in early Victorian England’, American Historical Review, 63 (1958), pp. 323–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Roberts, D., ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Victorian administrative state’, Victorian Studies, 2 (1959), pp. 193–210Google Scholar; and George Kitson Clark, The making of Victorian England (London, 1962).

8 A. Giddens, The third way, the renewal of social democracy (Oxford, 2002).

9 Hart, J., ‘Nineteenth-century social reform: a Tory interpretation of history’, Past and Present, 31 (1965), pp. 39–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Paris, H., ‘The nineteenth-century revolution in government: a reappraisal reappraised’, Historical Journal, 3 (1960), pp. 17–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a summary of the debate, also see V. Cromwell, Revolution or evolution: British government in the nineteenth century (London, 1977), pp. 245–55; see also B. Harris, The origins of the British welfare state: social welfare in England and Wales, 1800–1945 (Basingstoke and New York, 2004), pp. 32–7.

10 Merewether, E. R. A., ‘The British tradition in industrial health’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 5 (1948), pp. 175–9Google ScholarPubMed at p. 177.

11 P. Bartrip, The home office and the dangerous trades, regulating occupational disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain (Amsterdam, 2002), p. 286. Also see Heesom, A., ‘The Coal Mines Act of 1842: social reform and social control’, Historical Journal, 24, (1981), pp. 69–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 B. Harrison, Not only the dangerous trades: women's work and health in Britain, 1880–1914 (London, 1996); A. V. John, By the sweat of their brow: women workers at Victorian coal mines (London, 1984); S. Walby, Patriarchy at work (Oxford, 1986); and J. Humphries, ‘Protective legislation, the capitalist state and working-class men: the case of the 1842 Mines Regulation Act’, in R. E. Pahl, ed., On work: historical, comparative and theoretical approaches (Oxford, 1988), pp. 95–124.

13 C. Malone, Women's bodies and the dangerous trades in England, 1880–1914 (Woodbridge, 2003).

14 B. B. Gilbert, Evolution of national insurance in Great Britain: the origins of the welfare state (London, 1966); G. R. Searle, The quest for national efficiency (Oxford, 1971); and B. Semmel, Imperialism and social reform: English social imperial thought, 1895–1914 (London, 1960). In addition, see J. R. Hay, The origins of liberal welfare reforms, 1906–1914 (London, 1975), pp. 29–38; and Harris, Welfare state, pp. 23–5 and 156.

15 Bartrip, Dangerous trades, pp. 286–7.

16 Mortimer, I. and Melling, J., ‘The contest between commerce and trade, on the one side, and human life on the other’, Textile History, 31 (2000), pp. 222–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Burke, G. and Richardson, P., ‘The profits of death: a comparative study of miners' phthisis in Cornwall and the Transvaal, 1876–1918’, Journal of South African Studies, 4 (1978), pp. 147–71CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed at p. 168.

18 G. Burke, ‘Disease, labour migration and technological change: the case of the Cornish miners’, in P. Weindling, ed., Social history of occupational health (London, 1985), pp. 78–88 at p. 87.

19 Bartrip, Dangerous trades.

20 Key studies include P. Bartrip, The way from dusty death: Turner and Newall and the regulation of occupational health in the British asbestos industry, 1890s–1970 (London, 2001); S. Marks, The silent scourge? Silicosis, respiratory disease and gold mining in South Africa, Journal of Ethnic Migration Studies, 32 (2006), pp. 569–89; Johnston, R. and McIvor, A., ‘Dangerous work, hard men and broken bodies: masculinity in the Clydeside heavy industries’, Labour History Review, 69 (2004), pp. 135–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; E. Katz, The white death: silicosis on the Witwatersrand gold mines, 1866–1910 (Johannesburg, 1994); and G. Tweedale, Magic mineral to killer dust: Turner and Newall and the asbestos hazard (Oxford, 2000).

21 Ankylostomiasis is known by a variety of names: brick maker's anaemia, chlorosis, Egyptian chlorosis, Gotthard tunnel disease/syndrome, Griesinger's disease, helminthiasis, miner's anaemia, necatoriasis, tunnel worker's anaemia, and uncinariasis.

22 Report to the secretary of state for the home department on an outbreak of ankylostomiasis in a Cornish mine, British Parliamentary Papers, 1902, Cd 1843 (hereafter BPP Ankylostomiasis), p. 6.

23 D. B. Barton, A history of tin mining in Cornwall (Truro, 1967); D. B. Barton, A history of copper mining in Cornwall and Devon (Truro, 1968); and Report of the departmental committee on the non-ferrous mining industry, British Parliamentary Papers, 1920, Cmd 652 (hereafter BPP Non-ferrous mining).

24 Data sourced from Annual reports of the inspectors of mines, British Parliamentary Papers, 1901, p. 12 (hereafter BPP Inspectors of mines).

25 For most recent discussion on Cornish quietism see Burt, R., ‘Industrial relations in the British non-ferrous mining industry in the nineteenth century’, Labour History Review, 71 (2006), pp. 57–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Catherine Mills, ‘Safety and health provisions in the British mining industry, with particular reference to non-ferrous metals, 1800–1914’ (Ph.D. thesis, Exeter, 2004), pp. 142–6.

27 Hansard, Third Series, Lords, 179, 11 May 1865, col. 626.

28 For example, see Preliminary report of Her Majesty's commissioners on accident in mines, and means of preventing their occurrence, or limiting their disastrous consequences, British Parliamentary Papers, 1881, C 3036 (hereafter BPP Accidents), pp. 128–36 paragraphs (4074 to 4300), evidence of C. Le Neve Foster.

29 BPP Ankylostomiasis; also see Report by the vice-consul on the outbreak of ankylostomiasis in the Westphalian colliery district in Germany, British Parliamentary Papers, 1903, Cd 1671; Report to the secretary of state for the home department on ankylostomiasis in Westphalian collieries, British Parliamentary Papers, 1904, Cd 1843 (hereafter BPP Westphalian collieries); Report on the diagnosis of ankylostoma infection, with special reference to the examination of the blood, British Parliamentary Papers, 1904, Cd 2066 (hereafter BPP Diagnosis); and Report to the secretary of state for the home department on the health of Cornish miners, British Parliamentary Papers, 1904, Cd 2091 (hereafter BPP Cornish miners).

30 Data sourced from Report of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the condition of all mines in Great Britain to which the provisions of the Act 23 & 24 Vict. c. 151 do not apply, British Parliamentary Papers, 1864 (3389) (hereafter BPP Kinnaird commission), Pt ii, Appendix B, iii, ‘Statistics and evidence’, pp. 154–6.

31 The explosive range falls roughly between 5 and 15 per cent of methane in air.

32 Hair, P. E. H., ‘Mortality from violence in British coal mines, 1800–1850’, Economic History Review, 21 (1968), pp. 545–61Google Scholar.

33 R. Nelson-Boyd, Coal mines inspection: its history and results (London, 1897), p. 28.

34 BPP Kinnaird commission, Pt ii, Appendix B, iii, ‘Statistics and evidence’, p. 154.

35 J. Benson, British coal miners in the nineteenth century: a social history (Dublin, 1980), p. 39.

36 Bartrip, Dangerous trades, p. 285.

37 Mills, ‘Safety and health’, pp. 44–7.

38 A. Bryan, The evolution of health and safety in mines (London, 1975), pp. 28–9.

39 R. Challinor and B. Ripley, The miner's association – a trade union in the age of Chartists (Worcester, 1990), p. 45.

40 See G. Henwood, ‘Bal boy’, in R. Burt, ed., Cornish mines and miners (Truro, 1972), p. 96.

41 Bryan, Evolution, p. 50.

42 Burke, ‘Disease’, p. 87.

43 See M. W. Flinn with the assistance of David Stoker, The history of the British coal industry, ii: 1780–1830: the industrial revolution (Oxford, 1984), table 1·2 p. 26, and p. 365.

44 O. MacDonagh, ‘Coal mining regulation: the first decade, 1842–1852’, in E. Robson, ed., Ideas and institutions of Victorian Britain: essays in honour of George Kitson Clark (London, 1967), pp. 58–86 at p. 70.

45 Mills, ‘Safety and health’, pp. 40–4.

46 An Act for Inspection of Coal Mines in Great Britain, 14 Aug. 1850, 14 & 14 Vict. c. 100.

47 Third report of select committee on accidents in coal mines, British Parliamentary Papers, 1852/3, 820, paragraphs (1553–7), pp. 113–14, evidence of Inspector F. H. Mackworth.

48 Bartrip, P. W. J., ‘British government inspection, 1832–1875: some observations’, Historical Journal, 25 (1982), pp. 605–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 622.

49 Mills, ‘Safety and health’, pp. 73–91.

50 BPP Kinnaird commission, Pt ii, Appendix B, iii, ‘Statistics and evidence’, p. 156.

51 Ibid., Pt i, ‘Resolutions’, pp. xlii–xliii.

52 An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Law relating to Metalliferous Mines, 10 Aug. 1872, 35 & 36 Vict. c. 77, Part ii 23. (1), (15), and (16).

53 Williams, R. A., ‘The high mortality of British metal and slate miners and beliefs about causes, 1556–1904’, British Mining, 4 (1987), pp. 18–33Google Scholar at p. 26.

54 For example see BPP Inspectors of mines, 1884, District of North Wales, C. Le Neve Foster, p. 213.

55 Burke and Richardson, ‘Profits’, pp. 156–7.

56 BPP Accidents, pp. 128–36 paragraphs (4074–300), evidence of C. Le Neve Foster.

57 Williams, ‘High mortality’, pp. 18–33 at p. 27.

58 Mills, ‘Safety and health’, pp. 169–72.

59 Ibid., pp. 199–203.

60 R. Church, A. Hall, and J. Kanefsky, The history of the British coal industry, iii: 1830–1913 Victorian pre-eminence (Oxford, 1986), p. 584. The data does not include non-fatal injuries.

61 Bryan, Evolution, pp. 107–8.

62 Boycott, A. E. and Haldane, J. S., ‘An outbreak of ankylostomiasis in England I’, Journal of Hygiene, 3 (1903), p. 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Ibid., p. 93.

64 K. F. Kipple, ed., The Cambridge world history of human disease (Cambridge, 2003), ‘Hookworm infection’, J. Ettling, pp. 165–8.

65 D. Hunter, The diseases of occupations (London, 1964), p. 726.

66 Boycott and Haldane, ‘Ankylostomiasis’, pp. 95–141.

67 See Hunter, Diseases, p. 725; G. Rosen, The history of miners' diseases: a medical and social interpretation (New York, 1943), p. 36; G. Agricola, De re metallica, translated from the first edition of 1556 by Herbert Clerk Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (New York, 1950), pp. 214–15; and B. Ramazzini, De Morbis Artificum Bernardini Ramazzini Diatriba [1713] Diseases of workers, the Latin text of 1713, revised, with translation and notes by Wilmer Cave Wright (Chicago, 1940), p. 31.

68 Figures calculated from R. Burt, P. Waite, and R. Burnley, Cornish mines: metalliferous and associated minerals, 1845–1913 (Exeter, 1987), pp. 162–6.

69 BPP Ankylostomiasis, p. 6; and Boycott and Haldane, ‘Ankylostomiasis’, p. 103.

70 Boycott and Haldane, ‘Ankylostomiasis’, pp. 104–5.

71 G. Burke, ‘The Cornish diaspora of the nineteenth century’, in S. Marks and P. Richardson, eds., International labour migration: historical perspectives (Hounslow, 1984), pp. 57–73 at p. 58.

72 Burke, ‘Disease’, p. 84.

73 W. R. Lee, ‘Occupational medicine’, in F. N. L. Poynter, ed., Medicine and science in the 1860s, proceedings of the 6th British congress on the history of medicine (London, 1968), pp. 151–81 at pp. 161–2.

74 Burke, ‘Disease’, p. 85.

75 BPP Ankylostomiasis, p. 33.

76 Ibid., p. 7.

77 BPP Inspector of Mines, 1898, C 2964, p. 49, evidence of J. Martin.

78 See Mills, Catherine, ‘The Kinnaird commission: siliceous dust, the pitfalls of cause and effect correlations and the case of the Cornish miners in the mid-nineteenth century’, Scottish Labour History Review, 40 (2005), pp. 13–30Google Scholar.

79 BPP Accidents, p. 134 paragraph (4250), evidence of C. Le Neve Foster. Also see BPP Inspector of mines, 1884, p. 213, report of C. Le Neve Foster; and D. B. Barton, ‘The Cornish miner in fact and fancy’, in D. B. Barton, Essays in Cornish mining history, i (Truro, 1968), pp. 13–66 at pp. 25–6.

80 BPP Inspectors of mines, 1898, p. 49, J. Martin.

81 Burke and Richardson, ‘Profits’, p. 168.

82 BPP Inspectors of Mines, 1898, p. 49, J. Martin.

83 Ibid., 1897, p, 49, J. Martin.

84 Ibid., 1902, p. 33, J. Martin.

85 Ibid., 1898, p. 274, C. Le Neve Foster.

86 Ibid., 1899, p. 352, and 1900, p. 21, C. Le Neve Foster.

87 BPP Westphalian collieries, pp. 6–9.

88 BPP Inspector of mines, 1902, ‘Conference of miners at Dortmund on ankylostomiasis’, Enclosure 2, p. 20, attached to report of J. Martin.

89 Burke, ‘Disease’, p. 87.

90 See E. Alexander, Chief whip, the political life and times of Aretas Akers-Douglas (London, 1961).

91 Church et al., British coal, p. 758. Figures for 1911.

92 Ibid., table 8·1, pp. 690–1. The data is for 1911.

93 Ibid., p. 758.

94 BPP Ankylostomiasis, p. 3.

95 Ibid., pp. 3–4.

96 BPP Diagnosis, pp. 8–9; and BPP Westphalian collieries, p. 13.

97 BPP Ankylostomiasis, p. 5. Also, see BPP Westphalian collieries, p. 11.

98 BPP Ankylostomiasis, p. 7.

99 BPP Westphalian collieries, p. 11.

100 Second report of the royal commission on metalliferous mines and quarries, British Parliamentary Papers, 1914, Cd 7478 (hereafter BPP Metalliferous mines), evidence with appendices and index, volume iii, Cd 7478, paragraphs (21, 140–1), pp. 75–6, testimony of Dr A. E. Boycott.

101 BPP Inspectors of mines, 1902, ‘Conference of miners at Dortmund on ankylostomiasis’, Enclosure 2, p. 16, attached to report of J. Martin.

102 Church et al., British coal, p. 487.

103 Hansard, Third Series, Commons, 93, 6 May 1901, col. 795.

104 See First report of the royal commission on coal supplies, British Parliamentary Papers, 1903, Cd 1724; and Final report of the royal commission on coal supplies, British Parliamentary Papers, 1905, Cd 2353.

105 BPP Inspectors of mines, 1902, p. 33, and 1903, p. 115, J. Martin.

106 BPP Westphalian collieries, p. 3.

107 BPP Diagnosis, p. 3.

108 Coal data calculated from BPP Inspection of mines, 1902, and for Dolcoath, see Burt, ed., Cornish mines, p. 165.

109 BPP Inspectors of mines, 1903, Cd 2119, p. 115, J. Martin; also see BPP Inspectors of mines, 1903, Staffordshire district, W. N. Atkinson, p. 29.

110 ‘Miners' worm’, Times, 13 Oct. 1903, p. 7 col. E.

111 ‘Report on the Westphalian collieries’, Times, 10 Nov. 1903, p. 13, col. F.

112 BPP Westphalian collieries, p. 13.

113 BPP Inspectors of mines, 1904, Cd 2506, Staffordshire district, p. 27, W. N. Atkinson.

114 BPP Diagnosis, p. 7.

115 BPP Inspectors of mines, 1904, Staffordshire district, p. 27, W. N. Atkinson.

116 BPP Cornish miners, p. 11.

117 Ibid., pp. 19–21 and 32.

118 Ibid., p. 31.

119 BPP Diagnosis, p. 7.

120 Meiklejohn, A., ‘A history of lung diseases of coal miners in Great Britain: part II, 1875–1920’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 9 (1952), pp. 93–8Google ScholarPubMed at p. 94.

121 Mills, ‘Safety and health’, pp. 279–86.

122 BPP Accidents, p. i.

123 MacDonagh, ‘Revolution’, p. 61.

124 BPP Inspectors of mines, 1904, ‘General remarks – hygiene of the mines’, p. 116, report of C. Le Neve Foster.

125 For a brief but comprehensive overview see A. Wohl, Endangered lives: public health in Victorian Britain (London, 1984), ‘The canker of industrial disease’, pp. 257–403.

126 BPP Metalliferous mines, p. 139.

127 J. T. Arlidge, The hygiene, diseases and mortality of occupations (London, 1892); and O. Thomas, ed., Dangerous trades: the historical, social and legal aspects of industrial occupations as affecting health, by a number of experts (London, 1902).

128 Mills, ‘Kinnaird commission’, p. 24.

129 BPP Annual report of the chief inspector of factories 1900, Cd 668, pp. 487–94.

130 BPP Cornish miners, tables 1 and 2, pp. 5, 6, and 8.

131 Ibid., pp. 8–9.

132 Burke, ‘Disease’, p. 80.

133 Article originally published in the Lancet and reproduced in the Mining Journal, cited in Williams, ‘High mortality’, p. 29.

134 Mills, ‘Safety and health’, pp. 277–8.

135 BPP Cornish miners, pp. 22–5.

136 BPP Metalliferous mines, report, p. 139.

137 Some examples include, Burke and Richardson, ‘Profits’; Burke, ‘Diseases’; Katz, White death; Katz, E., ‘Underground route to mining: Afrikaners and the Witwatersrand gold mining industry from 1902 to the 1907 miners’ strike', Journal of African History, 36 (1995), pp. 467–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marks, ‘Silent scourge’; and Meiklejohn, A., ‘The development of compensation for occupational diseases of the lungs in Great Britain’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 11 (1954), pp. 198–212Google ScholarPubMed at p. 200. Also see Foster, J. C., ‘Western miners and silicosis: “the scourge of the underground toiler”, 1890–1943’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 37 (1984), pp. 371–85Google ScholarPubMed; and D. Rosner and G. Markowitz, Deadly dust: silicosis and the politics of occupational disease in twentieth century America (Chichester, 1991), pp. 31–3.

138 Cornish Post and Mining News, 5 Oct. 1889.

139 Bartrip, Dangerous trades, p. 249; Searle, National efficiency, p. 60: and Hay, Liberal welfare reforms, pp. 29–32.

140 Bryan, Evolution, p. 110.

141 See BPP Non-ferrous mining.

142 Coal Mines Act, 1911, 1 & 2 Geo. 5, ch. 50, Pt iii, Provisions to health, rule 78.

143 BPP Metalliferous mines, pp. 133–55; and Bryan, Evolution, p. 77.

144 MacDonagh, ‘Revolution’, pp. 52–67 at pp. 61 and 67.

145 Paris, ‘Reappraisal’, pp. 35–6.