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1906]
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FACTORY AND WORKSHOP ADMINISTRATION.
The Act under which it became incumbent on Sanitary Authorities to
inspect workshops and places where people are employed is known as the
Factory and Workshops Act, 1901. As these duties are very important, and
as the Council to which this report is addressed consists for the most part of
members new to the work, it is most essential that they should clearly understand
the obligations which rest on them under the Act; and, therefore, the
Medical Officer of Health feels it his duty to reprint from his Annual Report
for 1903 the digest which he there gave.
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,