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179
[1904
tion being given. In the fur trade, homeworkers are as a rule only employed in the autumn
months, and I have received their names and addresses on visiting the workshops during the
season.
The names and addresses of 652 female homeworkers on these lists have been forwarded
to the Medical Officers of Health of the 38 districts in which they live. In the course of the
year I have registered all female homeworkers, notified as living in Islington, on a "card"
register. These cards record the names and addresses of workers and their employers, the dates
of notification and inspection, and the conditions under which the work was being done. The
number of names on this register at the end of the year was 803.
The total number of homeworkers notified as living in Islington was 1,728; 875 of these
were notified by the Medical Officers of Health for other districts, most of them from those of
the City of London and the Boroughs of Finsbury and Hackney.
The discrepancy between the number notified and the number registered is explained by
the following facts:—
(1) Many persons notified as homeworkers are employers of labour and their premises
are registered on the "Workshop Register."
(2) As the lists are sent in twice a year all homeworkers who are regularly employed are
notified twice by the same employer.
(3) A homeworker is frequently notified by two or more employers (one workshop occupier
was notified 18 times in 1904).
(4) A certain number of the addresses given are incorrect.
The 434 homeworkers, whom I visited in the course of the year, were those who were notified
for the first time or whose homes were not satisfactory when previously visited. As usual,
they comprised all sorts of workers, the comparatively well-to-do and the very poor, the good
manager and the shiftless. Most of the homes were satisfactory as regards cleanliness. I find
that in some trades—such as millinery—the standard of the homes is high, in others—such as
infants' shoe making and cheap mantle making—the conditions are not, as a rule, good, though
much depends on the individual employers, some of whom are very careful as to the kind of
person they employ, while others seem to consider that they have no responsibility in the
matter.
The introduction of the use of mechanical power to drive ordinary sewing machines, and
the elaborate and expensive machines which are being more and more used in factories and
large workshops, are likely to diminish the amount of homework. There is no doubt that this
system is responsible to a certain extent for the excessively low prices paid for the making of
wearing apparel, as it is impossible for the workers to unite to resist the lowering of the prices
paid, but the system is a convenience to a number of women who are unable to go to work
every day, and their homes—in Islington, at any rate—are not the "dens" which out-and-out
objectors to the system represent them to be.
Home work has been discovered to be carried on in twelve homes where there were cases
of notifiable infectious disease, during the year. All goods likely to be infected have been
disinfected before being returned to the warehouses. The diseases of which, it seems to me,
the infection is most likely to be carried by home-work are the non-notifiable infectious
diseases, such as measles and chicken-pox, about which many people seem to think there is no
need to exercise any care.
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