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.

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    man, Committee of 1824.) Doubtless among the most intelligent this is so; the maxim is acted upon by them provided they are able to buy their bread with l'eady money. But with that very large proportion of the labour- ing class, especially in the towns, who only pay for the week's supply to the family at the week’s end, and fre- quently not then, it is a matter of necessity to take, from their bakei’, or from the chandler’s shop, whatever bread may be offered to them ; and it is notorious that bread composed of these mixtures is made expressly for sale in this manner. (437.) This, therefore, is a subject worth the attention of the more respectable masters in the baking trade, of the journeymen, and the public ; for if the production and sale of bi’ead adul- terated with alum and mixtures of meal, as above described, could be effectually put an end to, one great means would be suppressed by which the severe competition in the baking trade is maintained; as the severe competition is the prin- cipal cause of the long hours of work in the bakehouse in the large “ underselling ” branch of the baking trade, the journeymen would be immediate gainers ; a large portion of the public, principally of the labouring class, would be relieved from the frauds now practised upon them in selling them adulterated instead of pxu’e bread ; and one half the popxilation of the metropolis, according to the experiments recently made, would be exempted from the injuries to health now inflicted upon them by the use of alum in bread. Origin of The sale of adulterated bread, accompanied with long aiuUon^iourK ^10UrS wol‘k> is only another step in the process which of day°vork. began towards the latter end of the last century when the high allowance to bakers under the assize regulations led to the establishmeixt of shops (at first a very few) in which bi’ead was sold below the rates published by the Lord Mayor (Report of 1824, p. 5). The sale of “ cheap bread” had made some progi’ess at the close of the century, and was in 1815 declared to be considerable (Report of 1815, p. 92; see also 472 and 784). The long hours appear to have commenced and progressed pari passu. What had been the precise hours of woi’k previously to the introduction of the system of selling “cheap bread” in competition with those masters who adhered to the prices fixed by the assize I have not been able to ascertain. As far as I have been able to find among the records of the Bakers’ Company, at their hall, which I was coui’teously permitted to refer to by their clerk, Henley Grose Smith, Esq., with the assistance of their beadle, Mr. Rice