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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health,—1894. 65
This observation is readily accounted for by the fact that the baker has to lift heavy
sacks weighing 280 pounds. Another common affection of bakers is flat-foot, a
deformity that produces a peculiar gait, and it is also due to long standing, and the
habitual lifting of heavy weights.
"As to the hours of work, from personal enquiries among the journeymen I find
that seventy-two hours' work weekly is a fair average in the better class trade, with
Saturday evening and Sunday free. Nor is it easy to see how, with the present
system of making bread by hand, this time could be materially shortened. In the
poorer neighbourhoods, where what is known as a " cutting" business is conducted,
the baker works from eighty-four to a hundred hours weekly, and, in addition, frequently
bakes dinners up till half-past one o'clock on Sunday.
"Perhaps the best way to form an idea of the realities of a cellar bakehouse will
be to draw a picture of such a place, sketching in the details from facts which have
come under my own observation.
"First of all we enter a baker's shop from the street, and descending a trap door,
climb down a steep ladder into the bakehouse. We then find ourselves in a cellar some
twenty or thirty feet in length, and ten or twelve feet in breadth. It is, in fact, an
ordinary basement cellar, six or seven feet high, and is lighted by gas jets. Its roof
is unceiled, and between the boards covering the warped rafters are many cracks,
which open directly into the shop above. A portion of its floor-space is occupied by
a slightly raised wooden platform, on which are ranged a number of sacks of floor.
Along one of its sides are placed the kneading troughs, large wooden boxes which are
fixed immoveably against the damp and whitewashed wall. The oven stands at one
end of the bakehouse, away from the sacks of flour, and consists of a long, deep
chamber built of unglazed bricks. Its furnace is fed with coal, a supply of which lies
in a loose heap close by. In the darkest corner of this underground bakery stands a
kind of open cupboard, in which a water-closet is placed.
"In the cellar thus fitted up are carried on all the operations of mixing, kneading
and baking the dough, in addition to which it often serves for storing the loaves of
bread.
"On descending the stairs, the visitor finds himself plunged into a hot and stifling
atmosphere. Pursuing his investigations, he will find that the air is vitiated from
many sources, for instance, there is the active contamination of the flaring gas-jets,
while the furnace fills the place with sulphurous fumes, more especially when the
journeyman economises fuel by closing the damper. The air is further charged with
moisture and with other products derived directly from the baking of the bread.
Sewer gas may enter through the drain openings in the floor, the more so as the
grating traps are often worthless. It may enter, moreover, through a defective
closet soil-pipe. Further pollution is caused by the ground air and damp which are
sucked up into the heated cellar through the faulty flooring. But this is not all, for
in low-lying districts there is the danger that in times of heavy rainfall the sewage
may force its way through the drain-pipes into the bakehouse. It is easy to see that
the introduction of a flood of sewage in this way may bring the germs of typhoid and
other filth diseases into direct contact with the loaves of baked bread.
"Ventilation, in any real sense of the term, is absent, and, indeed under the
circumstances we have pictured, is impossible. An inlet grating usually exists at the
level of the street, but as a rule it is kept carefully closed by the journeyman, who
is morbidly susceptible to draughts. In most cases, again, there is another small
inlet at the back of the cellar, but the second ventilator is almost invariably covered
up by means of a sack. It will be seen, therefore, that not only is the air
systematically poisoned from within, but also, that no provision is made for that
constant renewal from without which is essential to health. We may safely assert
that no man could habitually work in an atmosphere even approaching that which
has been portrayed without sooner or later sustaining serious injury to his health.