View report page

162
section is not in force until such time as the Home Secretary
issues an order for its application by reason "of the number and
distribution of the population or the conditions under which work
is carried on, there are special risks of injury or danger to the
health of the persons employed and of the district."
This section appears to have been framed to deal with the
"sweating dens" in densely crowded districts. The inspector to
act under such conditions would be the inspector of factories.
Section 6.—This is one of the most important provisions in
the Act. It is as follows:—
If any occupier of a factory, or workshop, or laundry, or of any place
from which any work is given out, or any contractor employed by any
such occupier, causes or allows wearing apparel to be made cleaned or
repaired in any dwelling-house or building occupied therewith, whilst
an inmate of the dwelling-house is suffering from scarlet fever or smallpox,
then, unless he proves he was not aware of the existence of the
illness in the dwelling-house, and could not reasonably have been
expected to become aware of it, he shall be liable to a fine not exceeding
ten pounds.
Two new principles are embodied in this section, one that of
preventing work which may spread disease, being done in the
same house as that occupied by a patient sick with an infectious
disease, and the other the introduction of the words "could not
reasonably have been expected to become aware of." It is to be
noted that there is no proviso covering the case of a patient the
member of another family who is kept at home in isolation. The
section says that no work shall be done in the same house or
building. The burden of proof that the defendant did not know
or could not be expected to become aware of any case would lie
with the defendant himself, and the latter clause would be very
difficult to substantiate in the two diseases mentioned. When
the Bill was before the House of Commons, endeavours were made
to have the principle extended to other diseases, but it was on
the whole, better to wait and to learn how the clause as it now
stands will operate. There is no provision for any compensation,
although the stoppage of work may act very hardly in certain
instances, notably when in a tenement house, there is a case of
either disease in a family of which the worker is not a member,