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61
Public Health
Act (London)
Sec. 27.
These instructions are repeated in the Public Health (London
Act almost word for word.
Child means a person under the age of fourteen years.
Young person means a person (male or female) over fourteen and
under eighteen years of age.
Woman means a woman over eighteen years of age.
OVERCROWDING
Public Health
(London) Act,
Sec 2 (giii)
Amended by
Factory Act
1395, Sec. 1.
The new Factory Act defines overcrowding, and requires a minimum
of 250 cubic feet of air space to be given to each of the persons
employed in any workroom ; during any period of overtime this
minimum is raised to 400 cubic feet for each worker. The Home
Secretary may, if he thinks fit, still further increase this allowance of
air space as regards any particular manufacturing process or handicraft,
and also may increase the allowance for any period during
which artificial light (other than electric light) is employed for
illuminating purposes ; probably cellar and basement workshops,
where artificial light is used all day, will be required to conform to
some special regulation in this direction.
OVERTIME.
Means an extra two hours over the ordinary ten-and-a-half hours'
day, and may be worked by women, three days a week for thirty
days in any one year, in certained specified trades; it may not be
worked on Saturdays; children and young persons are forbidden to
work overtime.
NOTICE.
Number of
workers in
proportion to
cubic capacity
Factory Act
1878, Act 1878,
Sec 78, amened
by Factory
Act 1895, Sec.
1 (3)
It is further required in the same section, that there shall be
affixed in every workshop (except workplaces and domestic workshops)
a notice specifying the number of persons who may be
employed in each workroom (in proportion to the air space contained
therein) in accordance with the provisions of the principal Act.
This notice is required to be in such form and to be affixed in such
parts of the workshops, &c., as the Factory Inspector directs, under
a penalty of forty shillings.
It will thus become the duty of every manufacturer who employs
women or young persons, to carefully measure and cube his work
rooms, and prepare and post the above notice wherever directed by
the Factory Inspector, and less of the time of your Inspectors will be
taken up in measuring workshops, though they will still be required to
perform this duty where legal proceedings to abate overcrowding
are contemplated.