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13
METEOROLOGY.
The mean reading of the Barometer for the year has been 29.983. Mean
Temperature 50.3. Mean Humidity 80. (Saturation 100.) Mean amount of
Ozone 25. Mean Cloud 7. The total amount of Rain has been 21.225 inches
which has fallen on 167 days.
The shock of an earthquake was distinctly felt by several inhabitants between
three and four o'clock in the morning of October 6th.
As the
BAKEHOUSE REGULATION ACT
Has only recently come into operation, I deem it right to call your attention to
its objects and provisions.
The condition of the journeyman baker has for many years been a subject of
inquiry both by the government and the people at large. The object of the investigation
has been of a threefold character:—1st. Into the social and
physical condition of a class of workmen, who from the nature of their occupation
and the custom of the trade, have been exposed to an extraordinary amount of
continuous labour. 2ndly. Into the effect of such labour, combined with
exposure to an impure atmosphere in close, heated, illventilated bakehouses, for
several hours during the night, and also into the class of diseases which are
most frequently engendered thereby. 3rdly. Into the character and position of
the buildings in which this labour is performed.
There can be no doubt that the journeymen bakers, as a rule, are a sickly,
short-lived body of men,- and it is with a view to an improvement in their
condition that the Bakehouse Regulation Act has been recently passed.
The provisions of this statute apply more directly in their operation to the
bakehouses, rather than to the men, and in order to trace their connection with
the latter, it will be necessary briefly to refer to the special diseases to which
these operatives are liable, and how they are associated in their development
with the character of the places in which their labour is performed.
A pale and bloodless skin, a sunken eye, a cheerless tone of countenance
attracts the eye of the observer: a weak and feeble pulse, too frequently a hectic
cough, and a general want of vigour, with a dry and scaly skin, give further indications
of impaired health in the journeyman baker.
Dr. Guy who has paid most special attention to this subject has given a fearful
though truthful history of the prevailing ailments of this class of operatives.
The causes of these maladies he gives, are:—The large amount of work in
underground apartments, more or less shut out from light of day. Defective
drainage and imperfect ventilation. The suffocating gusts of heated air encountered
at the oven's mouth. Vapours of coal gas most generally used for
lighting purposes. The irritating action of the dust of flour on the larynx and
air tubes. The long hours of work, extending through the night and greater
part ot the day, with severe muscular exertion, a labour carried on not in a
pure but in a heated and contaminated atmosphere. The short and irregular
hours appropriated to rest and sleep.
The same authority, whilst speaking of the liability of the journeymen bakers
to severe attacks of general illness, asserts, that whiist he found 10 in the hundred
among the scavengers, 11 iu the hundred amongst the bricklayers'
labourers, and 12 in the hundred among the silk printers who had had severe
attacks of illness, 48 in the hundred, or very nearly half the entire number of