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15
inspected as to their cleanliness and the removal of refuse,
and are lime-whited when necessary.
Workshops' Regulation Act.
This Act is so framed as often to cause confusion when
proceedings are taken at the Police Court. For example,
the 4th clause of 6th section enacts that "No child, young
person, or woman shall be employed in any handicraft on
Sunday, or after two o'clock on Saturday afternoon," &c.;
hut the 2nd clause of the 9th section, under the head of
"Permanent exceptions," directs—"That, in any workshop
in which it is satisfactorily proved that work does not commence
before the hours of seven or eight in the morning,
children, young persons, and women may be employed on
Saturday, or any other day on which the weekly half holiday
is given, from the hours of seven in the morning to three in
the afternoon." Hence, one clause is an ambush for the
other. Again, the 4th clause, already quoted in part, after
the words "Saturday afternoon," thus proceeds,—"except in
cases where not more than five persons are employed in the
same establishment," &c., &c. This exception, of course,
applies only to Saturday afternoon. Now it may be contended
that such limitation leads to an evasion of the Act.
Suppose a complaint is made against A for employing young
women beyond the legal hours, I visit the premises and find
ten young women there, five in the show room, and five in
the work room, working beyond the proper time, and some of
the five in the show or sale rooms are evidently sewing, and
although I ascertain that four more are employed in a work
room "over the way," I cannot exclude A from the benefit
of the exception; but the Factory Act provides against
such evasion by combining the workshops situate in different
places—a provision which it would be well to insert in an
amended Workshops' Regulation Act.