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12
While quite a large number of inhabitants work in other boroughs,
we have in Deptford such occupations as Engineering: one thousand
men and fifty women are employed by one firm alone.
Sheet Iron Workers and Galvanisers. Close on six hundred men
and a handful of women are engaged by another firm.
A third firm has 440 employees, mostly women, engaged in tin box
manufacture. Electrical work of all kinds, sewing machines, skin
cleaning, belting manufacture, glass works, trunk making, steel girders,
machine works, medicated salts, colour printing, laundries, and a shirt
factory (which last has some 800 employees), all serve to give an idea
of occupations in the borough. I have described most of these in past
reports, so will now proceed to discuss those firms which I have
personally visited in 1927.
Chemical Works.
The work here is carried out in two departments : sugar refining
and chemical works proper.
Sugar Refining. In the top storey we found bags of rice meal.
The meal is emptied into cylindrical vacuum boilers, where the starch
is extracted from the rice meal, thus converting it into sugar. In this
form it is termed "caramel." It is used in beers, stouts, ales, sometimes
in the place of hops. "Caramel" is also sent to confectionery
works for use in the preparation of sweets ; it is also sent to gravy-salt
works for colouring.
Chemicals. Bisulphide of lime and calcium salts are manufactured
for different purposes; also, cakes of soda for washing out beer barrels.
Sodium hypochlorite solution is manufactured and is used for washing
out those tubes through which beer is passed from the barrels to the
engines in the public houses. Isinglass is made (for refining beer) in
the form of tablets along with potassium salts. A preparation is made
from bitumen for lining the inside of beer vats.
There are 24 male employees, for whom there are two pedestal
w.c.'s in separate compartments. Across the road, in that part of the
works near Gosterwood Street, there are two w.c.'s and four modern
stall urinals of glazed earthenware—modern and highly satisfactory.
The ventilation, heating and lighting, are all good. Owing to the
nature of the manufacturing process, the premises generally cannot be
kept clean and dry.