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Without hesitation, it may be said that there is no more important work in
the future welfare of the nation than the supervision of the sanitary construction
and hygienic arrangements of those schools in which such matters are either
neglected or performed only in a perfunctory manner.
Workshops.—By the Factory and Workshops Act, 1891, Section 3 (2) " For the
purpose of these duties with respect to workshops (not being workshops to which
the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, applies), a sanitary authority and their
officers, shall, without prejudice to their other powers, have all such powers of
entry, inspection, taking legal proceedings or otherwise, as an inspector under the
principal Act."
The powers of an inspector of factories and workshops under the principal
Act, viz, the Factory and Workshops Act, 1878, are contained in Section 68, and
are as follows:—
Factory and Workshop Act, 1878, Sec. 68.
An inspector under this Act shall, for the purpose of the execution of this
Act, have power to do all or any of the following things, namely: —
(1) To enter, inspect, and examine at all reasonable times by day and night
a factory and a workshop and every part thereof when he has reasonable cause to
believe that any person is employed therein, and to enter by day any place which
he has reasonable cause to believe to be a factory or workshop; and
(2) To take with him in either case a constable into a factory (or workshop)
in which he has reasonable cause to apprehend any serious obstruction in the
execution of his duty; and
(3) To require the production of the registers, certificates, notices, and
documents kept in pursuance of this Act, and to inspect, examine, and copy the
same; and
(4) To make such examination and inquiry as may be necessary to ascertain
whether the enactments for the time being in force relating to the public health
and the enactments of this Act are complied with, so far as respects the factory
or workshop and the persons employed therein ; and
(5) To enter any school in which he has reasonable cause to believe that
children employed in a factory or workshop are for the time being educated; and
(6) To examine either alone or in the presence of any other person, as he
thinks fit, with rcspect to matters under this Act, every person whom he finds in
a factory or workshop, or such a school as aforesaid, or whom he has reasonable
cause to believe to be or to have been within the preceding two months employed
in a factory or workshop, and to require such person to be so examined and to
sign a declaration of the truth of the matters respecting which he is so examined;
and
(7) To exercise such other powers as may be necessary for carrying this Act
into effect.