Page:How contagion and infection are spread, through the sweating system in the tailoring trade.djvu/31

25 believe that such a state of things not only tends to injure the public generally, but it also tends very much to lower the morality of a people; and we humbly suggest that if you can see your way to introduce any clause in that bill, you will take whatever steps in your wisdom seems best to place these homes and workshops under the inspection of Government officials.

Mr., of Manchester, said: Sir, I hold in my hand a tabulated statement and report of the committee which was appointed last year in Manchester to ascertain the facts relating to this sweating system. We visited over a thousand houses where this work is done, and the condition of the people and their dwellings was something horrible. The average size of the rooms was 9 by 12 feet, and in these four to five persons lived, making these garments in the midst of all the domestic arrangements, half-naked children, and surrounded by filth and wretchedness. I can assure you that, speaking from the facts and circumstances which came under our observation in the course of that inquiry, it seems quite within the scope of the Workshops Act that governmental interference should take place. We found somewhere near 1,300 people engaged in this kind of work, so that if any disease existed among them there was the liability if not certainty of its being spread from those homes among the enormous number of people in whose midst these clothes came. Moreover, we think that, in particular, attention should be called to the fact that all the circumstances surrounding the places in which the sweaters work are such as to foster and spread disease, the situation of the places likewise facilitating the spread of disease to a fearful extent.

Mr. D., of London, said: Sir, I shall speak more particularly of workshops in which this system of sweating is carried on, situated in Regent Street, or rather in streets lying immediately at the back of Regent Street, such as Carnaby Street, Cross Street, Broad Street, Edencourt, and others. These localities abound with places where the work from the principal West-end shops is executed; and these shops, I wish to give you to understand, are patronised by our aristocracy. In visiting these houses we found a man and his wife with male and female helps, all working together in one room, and in some cases there was a bed in the same room. In a place on the other side of Regent Street, in a court that abounds with tailors working in their own homes, I found in a top room, the roof of which was so low that the man had to stoop, a man and his wife both working at this trade in the direst misery. I may mention that the already existing appliances for the prevention of such evils as those we complain of are entirely inoperative as regards our workshops, and I may support that statement by citing a case that came under my personal knowledge, where a man, upon his return from the hospital, far from wholly recovered from smallpox, resumed his occupation of making up garments. I knew the man well. I shall never forget the sight he presented. A woman at the same time returned from the hospital to the same place. I am therefore able to say, from my own observation of this matter, that it is