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21
SANITARY LEGISLATION, 1901.
The only sanitary legislation affecting the Borough passed
during 1901 was the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901
(I., Edward VII., Ch. 23).
This Act practically repeals the whole of the legislative
muddle known as the Factory and Workshop Acts from 1878
to 1895, as well as the Cotton Cloth Factories Act, and re-enacts
their various provisions with occasional additions and amendments.
The defects of the Consolidated Act, as it now stands,
are the duplication of authorities, with, as a consequence, the
duplication of expense, the obscurity of definition and the ambiguity
of phraseology. There is no sufficient reason for the
cumbrous machinery of factory inspectors attempting to supervise
huge districts under the immediate direction of the Home
Secretary. The Local Sanitary Authorities could do all the
work and would not have the slightest difficulty in obtaining
qualified persons with a sufficient knowledge of engineering and
of sanitation to be efficient officers. The law places the duty
of inspecting factories under the inspectors attached to the Home
Office, of workshops under the local authority. A place may be
one day a factory, another a workshop. For example, if a
milliner drives a single one of twenty sewing machines by any
kind of power—say, for example, electricity, the workshop becomes
a factory; if, for some reason, the single power driven
machine is disused and personal effort substituted, it becomes
a workshop. It has before now happened that the local inspector
after taking great pains to inspect an establishment, has found
in some obscure corner a small motor of some kind or other,
and only then discovered that the inspection by him was unnecessary,
the whole establishment, by means of the little power
driven machine, coming primarily under the supervision of the
Home Secretary.
The most important alteration of the 1901 Factory Act is
the sections relating to bakehouses.
No new bakehouse can be constructed or used if underground,
and after January 1, 1904, no underground bakehouse
is to be used as such unless certified by the district council to
be suitable for that purpose. That is to say each of the 102