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Laundries.
Speaking generally it may be said that from a health
point of view the laundries are the most unsatisfactory of
the Battersea workshops. In no other class of workshops
were so many defects found and in none are there so many
unhealthy conditions which the Sanitary Authority is powerless
to remove. It is not sufficiently realised that as at
present carried on, even under conditions which would be
described as fairly good for the trade, laundry work is a
distinctly unhealthy industry. The atmosphere in the washing
rooms is hot and laden with impurities, the floor is constantly
wet, and in the hand laundries the workers spend their day
bending over a hot steaming wash-tub ; the temperature in
the ironing rooms is often exceedingly high, and the drying
rooms where the wet clothes are often thrown over lines
stretched across the room over the workers' heads, are hot
and damp. These conditions would be difficult to deal with
even in buildings specially constructed for the work, but in
the ordinary laundry consisting of a dwelling house with a
back-yard hastily covered in and converted into a washing
room the difficulties are intensified. These conditions predispose
to rheumatism, respiratory diseases and consumption,
but in the sorting and marking rooms another danger appears,
that of direct infection from the dirty clothing. Tuberculous
infection is most to be feared, for while the habit of
expectorating into pocket handkerchiefs is so prevalent
amongst consumptives the work of sorting and marking these
articles must expose the workers to considerable risk of
infection by the tubercle bacilli contained in the dried sputum,
especially as the sorting room is often one of the worst
ventilated rooms in the laundry, and the sorters young women,
at a time of life when anaemia is particularly common. It must
also be remembered that the laundress lacks the protection
against excessive hours of labour which the Factory Act
affords other women workers. Not only may she work 60
hours a week, exclusive of overtime, but as the period of
legal employment may vary from day to day, and may even
vary for each individual worker, the working of illegal over-