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166
1903]
FACTORY AND WORKSHOPS ACT, 1901.
This Act, which consolidated and amended all previous Acts relating to
factories and workshops, made considerable alterations and additions to the
duties of Sanitary Authorities in regard to factories, workshops and such
places, and under these circumstances it has been deemed advisable to set
before you those features which affect local authorities in London.
Definitions.—Factories are classed in two categories—
(1) All places in which mechanical power is used in aid of the
manufacturing processes; and
(2) All places, whether mechanical power is used or not, in which
certain specified industries are carried on, that is to say, print works,
bleaching and dyeing works, earthenware works, lucifer match works,
percussion cap works, cartridge works, paper staining works, fustian
cutting works, blast furnaces, copper mills, iron mills, foundries, metal
and india rubber works, paper mills, glass works, tobacco factories,
letterpress printing works, bookbinding works, flax scutch mills, electrical
stations.
Workshops are defined to be any premises or places named in Part Two
of the Sixth Schedule of the Act, which are not a factory. They include—
(1) Hat works, rope works, bakehouses, lace warehouses, shipbuilding
yards, quarries, pit banks of metalliferous mines, dry cleaning
works and bottle washing works, unless mechanical power is used.
(2) Any other premises (not being factories) in which manual labour
is exercised by way of trade, or for purposes of gain, in, or incidental to,
the making, altering, repairing, or ornamenting, finishing or adapting for
sale of any article, and to or over which the employer of the persons
working there has the right of access or control.
(3) Any workplace (termed in the Act " tenement workshop") in
which, " with the permission of or under agreement with the owner or
occupier, two or more persons carry on any work which would constitute
the workplace or workshop of the persons working therein, were in the
employment of the owner or occupier."
Laundries do not come within the definition of "factory" or "workshop;"
but under sect. 103 are, so far as sanitation and means of escape from
fire are concerned, to be treated as factories, if mechanical power is used, and
as workshops if mechanical is not used.