Report addressed to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, relative to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers : with appendix of evidence / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty.

Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report addressed to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, relative to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers : with appendix of evidence / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    19/298 (page 19)
    xrx' to the condition of the joumej-men bakers. In that district' he had inspected very few bakehouses ; but those he had seen, with the exception of Mr. Nevill’s establishment, “ have been miserably defective in respect of cleanliness *5 and ventilation, and some in respect also of drainage.” He is of opinion “ that it would be highly desirable that “ they should be placed under sanitaiy supervision, and “ this both in the interests of the public and those of the “ workman.” (752.) Dr. Buchanan, the Medical Officer of Health for the St. Giles’s district, stated to me, in a letter dated 28th Feb. of this year, that a partial investigation had been made in 1860 into the condition of the bakehouses in his district; that these establishments were susceptible of much im- provement ; and that the extended inquiries which I was making would, in his opinion, bring to light the need for wider interference than had appeared on his own limited observation. In Dr. Buchanan’s Report to the Local Board of Works, for 1860-61, he states (p. 19) that “ the really “ deleterious part of the business [of a baker] appear to be “ the inhaling of gas-light vapours, and of the particles of “ flour. The bakeries generally are so hot that in any “ weather plenty of external air should be admitted by “ day and night, and if this were contrived judiciously ‘ it would be the best remedy for these injurious inhala- “ tions.” In the “London City Mission Magazine” for February of this year, there is a very circumstantial and interesting account of the proceedings of the missionary who was appointed in 1860 to visit the bakers. Among other things, he states, that of the 500 bakers’ shops in his district (all to the West of Farringdon Street, including the West-end suburbs) he “ got down” to 120 bakehouses (p. 35). “ Of “ these 120,” he says, “only about half a dozen are bad, “ two or three of them very bad; but the masters of those “ very bad ones said they were incapable of improvement, “ I am suspicious that a number of those bakehouses to “ which I have not had access cannot stand inspection; and I suspect that I am put off with a trifling excuse, such as ‘the men are very busy,’just to prevent the bake- “ house being seen.” This suspicion was founded on what he had been informed by the men themselves, who spoke of the bakehouses as “ underground cellars or dungeons,” “ that many of the sleeping places were bad,” and that “ many men died prematurely from diseases caught in the “ bad bakehouses.” (p. 34.) He adds, that “ many masters B 2