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Overcrowding is either wilful or the result of ignorance of the
number of persons who may legally occupy workrooms. In the latter
case, either rooms have not been measured, or have been measured
incorrectly, sometimes coal cellars, kitchens, and lavatories being
included in the measurements. Some owners contend that as long as
the ventilation seems all right, it does not really matter how many
work in a room; but the law does not take this view, probably on
account of the fact that the difficulties in securing efficient ventilation
are numerous.
Employers at first resented the visits of the women Inspectors, but
that feeling has speedily subsided, and now they are frequently asked
for. The large number of dressmaking, millinery, tailoring, laundry
and other businesses in which women (at least 20,000 living in the
City) are employed, afford ample scope for work, as the circumstances
are continually varying.
Sanitary Accommodation.—The law requires that separate sanitary
accommodation shall be provided for men and women, and it is sometimes
extremely difficult to arrange for this, particularly in tenement
houses, or in connection with small workshops, in which women may be
employed only during certain parts of the year. To provide extra
accommodation of this kind in such cases may press hardly on small
owners, or from the construction of the house it may be practically
impossible. In such cases it may lead to the workshop being moved
elsewhere, or to women not being employed; in some cases where
several families are living in a house. part of which is used as a workshop,
discretion may fairly be exercised in enforcing this section of
the Act.
Workshops where women are employed are visited systematically
by the women Inspectors, but some employers seem to be under the
impression that one or other of their employees has been making
complaint, and in one instance two suspected girls were discharged.
This was in a court milliner's workshop, where 12 women and girls were