factory act

A young girl working in a brickyard in Victorian England, 1871. Factory owners exploited children, sometimes just five or six years of age, to work long, hard hours in poor conditions. In 1878 the first significant legislation against child labour banned the employment of children under 10 years of age and restricted the hours of those aged between 10 and 14.

In Britain, an act of Parliament which governs conditions of work, hours of labour, safety, and sanitary provision in factories and workshops.

In the 19th century legislation was progressively introduced to regulate conditions of work. The first legislation was the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802. Much early legislation regulated conditions for women and children, but men were also gradually brought within the protection of the law.

In 1833 the first factory inspectors were appointed. Legislation was extended to offices, shops, and railway premises in 1963. All employees are now covered by the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, which is enforced by the Health and Safety Executive.

Conditions in the early factories In the middle of the 18th century social status and traditional ties to the land still influenced relations between employers and workers. The rise of the towns slowly broke down the ties of inborn status, and the Industrial Revolution completed the ‘movement from status to contract’, with contracts between employer and worker made freely for each job. The domestic workshop was replaced by the factory. Long hours, poor conditions, child labour, and other evils had been common in the domestic system. But when workers were brought together in large numbers in cotton mills and factories, public attention was drawn to these conditions. The workers were expected to work long hours; 12–14-hour days were common, even for children, with even longer hours during the ‘brisk’ times, when there were many orders to fill. Conditions were unhealthy; the cotton mills were damp and hot, dust and fluff caused diseases of the lungs, and the noise damaged the workers' hearing. The children, undernourished and standing too long, grew up with twisted spines, bow legs, and knock-knees. Accidents were caused by unguarded machinery. Discipline was harsh, and routinely involved flogging and fines, and there was low pay and insecurity of employment. Child employment was usual, with some factories employing children from the age of five. Some were ‘apprentices’ – orphans, sent by the local poor law guardians to live and work for the mill-owners, whose position amounted to little better than slaves. For the first time it was thought necessary to bring the factories under control by act of Parliament.

The early factory acts The first factory act was the Health and Morals Act 1802, which provided for the ventilation and cleaning of cotton mills and factories, and for the clothing, working hours, and religious education of apprentices. Once steam power began to be used in factories, the employment of children that went with it called for the Cotton Mills Act 1819. This act, which was passed partly thanks to Robert Owen, limited the age at which children could work in factories, and working hours to 72 hours per week. However, these early acts provided no way to enforce the law. The Royal Commission of Parliament, set up in 1832 to investigate conditions in the factories, returned a horrifying picture of brutality and exploitation, although some of its evidence was undoubtedly exaggerated. Its findings coincided with a campaign for reform led by Richard Oastler, John Fielden, and Lord Ashley (who later became Lord Shaftesbury). The result was the Factory Act 1833. It forbade employment of children under the age of 9, limited the working hours of children aged 9–13 to 9 hours a day, and that of young people aged 13–18 to 12 hours a day. More particularly, it appointed inspectors to ensure that factory owners obeyed the provisions of the act.

Further agitation secured the Factory Act 1844, limiting the labour of children to six and a half hours a day and requiring machinery to be guarded, and then the Ten Hours Act 1847 (also known as Lord Ashley's Act), limiting the hours of women, and children under the age of 18, to 58 hours a week.

At first legislation only affected the textile and related industries. In 1842 and 1850 legislation improved conditions in the mines. From 1860 to 1864 acts were passed to include a number of nontextile industries in the law. The Act of 1864 was the first to give protection to men as well as women and children, providing for better ventilation to remove unhealthy gases, dust, or other impurities. Between them, the Sanitary Act 1866 and the Workshops Regulation Act 1867 gave local authorities powers to ensure that factories and workshops were clean and healthy.

Consolidation Until 1878 the law was unsystematic, and acts of Parliament were passed to deal with one problem at a time. In 1878, however, the Factory and Workshop Act appeared. As well as consolidating earlier legislation, this act made some changes. It increased the minimum age of child labour in textile factories to ten and provided for holidays and for breaks in the working day. Further acts came in 1883, 1889, 1891, 1895, and 1897, and soon led to a second consolidating act in 1901.

The acts from 1878 to 1895 were mainly to develop specialized hygiene in factory life; widen the effect of the ordinary Public Health Acts to factories and workshops by transferring powers from the factory inspectors to local sanitary authorities; improve accident safety, for example by the adequate fencing of machinery in factories; restrict employment of women shortly after childbirth; control overtime work; and reduce working hours for children.

The first appointments of women inspectors were made in 1893. Up to 1937 the only parts of the Factory and Workshop Act which applied to men were those on sanitation and safety, such as cleanliness and ventilation, means of escape in case of an outbreak of fire, the fencing of machinery, and regulations for dangerous trades. Greater stringency in these latter respects came in the Factory and Workshop Act 1895, and still more in the Act of 1901.

The Act of 1895 for the first time regulated the sanitary condition of premises in which outworkers were employed, temperature in workplaces of great humidity, annual listing of persons employed, the investigation of accidents, and the details of wages due to pieceworkers.

The 20th century The 1901 Act repealed and re-enacted with new features all the pre-existing acts. Notable additions were made in policing sanitation, and for ensuring safety in dangerous trades. The minimum age of child employees was raised to 12. Subsequent acts of 1937, 1948, and 1959 added some new provisions, and all the existing legislation was consolidated in the Factories Act 1961.

Other workers In 1842 a royal commission investigated the employment of children in mines. The result was an act in the same year forbidding the employment of women and children underground. From this, a very comprehensive system of legislation on mine safety was built up. Agricultural workers were not covered by legislation until 1952. Working hours of shop employees were first regulated in 1886. Subsequent legislation affecting various types of retail establishment was consolidated in 1950. The largest remaining gap was filled when office workers were covered by the Offices, Shops, and Railway Premises Act 1963.

Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (which came into force on 1 April 1975) was a new departure. For the first time it recognized that general protection was necessary. Previously, legislation had been passed piecemeal to deal with dangers affecting specific groups of workers. The objective of the 1974 Act was much broader: it called for ‘every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and welfare at work of all his employees’. The act set up a single inspectorate, the Health and Safety Executive, to take over the functions of all previous inspectorates.