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Giving life and limb for empire: gender and occupational health in industrial Belfast, 1870–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2019

Simon Purdue
Simon Purdue*
Affiliation:
Northeastern University
*
*Department of History, Northeastern University, purdue.s@husky.neu.edu
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Abstract

This article explores the myriad of health hazards and dangers faced by industrial workers in Belfast between 1870 and 1914, as well as the efforts made by reformers and legislators to protect them. The article uses a variety of official sources to demonstrate the varying and distinctly gendered experience of men, women, and children working in the factories, mills, and shipyards of the city, as well as the gendered nature of the legislation put in place in this period. The article argues that the societal norms and expectations that informed legislation contributed to the gender gap that emerged in protective legislation. Female workers were seen in the same category as children and were protected paternalistically by a state still grappling with the changing position of women in an industrialising society, while men were expected to face ‘bravely’ the dangers of industrial work with little or no state intervention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 164 , November 2019 , pp. 220 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2019

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References

1 Matheson, R. E., ‘Prosperous Belfast’ in Belfast Health Journal, iii, no. 4 (Mar. 1905), p. 5Google Scholar (copy available in P.R.O.N.I., Blake papers, D2682/2/19).

2 Gillespie, Raymond, ‘Making Belfast, 1600–1750’ in Connolly, S. J. (ed.) Belfast 400: people, place and history (Liverpool, 2002), pp 123–98Google Scholar.

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4 Clear, Caitriona, Social change and everyday life in Ireland, 1850–1922 (Manchester, 2007), p. 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Matheson, ‘Prosperous Belfast’, p. 7.

6 Stephen A. Royle, ‘Workshop of the empire, 1850–1914’ in Connolly (ed.), Belfast 400, pp 199–211; Thomas, Morgan D., ‘Manufacturing industry in Belfast, Northern Ireland’ in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, xlvi, no. 2 (June 1956), p. 184Google Scholar.

7 Maguire, W. A., Belfast (Keele, 1993), p. 78Google Scholar.

8 Inspection report of Springfield Road Mill, Belfast, 15 Jan. 1912 (P.R.O.N.I., Factory inspection reports of John Geary, Belfast, D/4192/1); ‘Influence of the work in mills on the health of female workers’ in Belfast Health Journal, iv, no. 1 (May 1909), p. 114Google Scholar (copy available in P.R.O.N.I., Baird papers, D/3330/D/2).

9 Royle, ‘Workshop of the Empire’, pp 199–211.

10 For further information on the pre-1870 reform impulse, see Malcolm, Andrew G., The history of the General Hospital, Belfast, and the other medical institutions of the town (Belfast, 1851)Google Scholar (reprinted in Calwell, H. G., Andrew Malcolm of Belfast 1818–1856, physician and historian (Belfast, 1977)Google Scholar); Malcolm, Andrew G., The sanitary state of Belfast with suggestions for its improvement: a paper read before the statistical section of the British Association at Belfast, September 7 1852 (Belfast, 1852)Google Scholar; idem, ‘The influence of factory life on the health of the operative as founded upon the medical statistics of this class at Belfast’ in Journal of the Statistical Society of London, xix, no. 2 (1856), p. 170Google Scholar; John Moore, ‘On the influence of flax spinning on the health of the mill workers of Belfast’ in Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1867), pp 508–12.

11 Royle, ‘Workshop of the empire’, pp 199–211; Armstrong, D. L., ‘Social and economic conditions in the Belfast linen industry, 1850–1900’ in I.H.S, vii, no. 28 (Sept. 1951), p. 235Google Scholar.

12 Maguire, Belfast, pp 59–62.

13 Ibid.

14 Greer, Desmond and Nicolson, James W., The factory acts in Ireland, 1802–1914 (Dublin, 2003), p. 89Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 84.

16 Ibid.

17 For more information on Belfast's child workers, see Buckley, Sarah-Anne and Riordan, Susannah, ‘Childhood since 1740’ in Biagini, Eugenio and Daly, Mary (eds), The Cambridge social history of modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2017), pp 327–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Mary, ‘Working lives’ in Saothar: Journal of the Irish Labour History Society, xxxix (2014), pp 63–73Google Scholar. For a discussion of child labour in the inter-war period, see Laragy, Georgina, ‘“For whose benefit these burdens must be taken”: children, employment, and training in Northern Ireland, 1921–1939’ in Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, ix, no. 2 (Spring 2016), pp 277–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, pp 19–20.

19 Nasaw, David, Children of the city: at work and at play (New York, 1985), p. 42Google Scholar.

20 Ibid.

21 Cunningham, Hugh and Viazzo, Pier Paolo, ‘Some issues in the historical study of child labour’ in idem (eds), Child labour in historical perspective, 1800–1985: case studies from Europe, Japan and Colombia (Florence, 1996), pp 11–12Google Scholar.

22 Ibid.

23 ‘Memoirs of the working life of William Topping’ (P.R.O.N.I., D3134).

24 Hugh Cunningham, ‘Combating child labour: the British experience’ in Cunningham & Viazzo (eds), Child labour in historical perspective, p. 49.

25 Cruickshank, Marjorie, Children and industry: child health and welfare in north-west textile towns during the nineteenth century (Manchester, 1981), pp 98–100Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 96

27 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 3.

28 Ibid., p. 6.

29 Cunningham, ‘Combating child labour’, p. 44.

30 Cruickshank, Children and industry, p. 97.

31 Ibid.

32 It should be noted here that Topping's memoirs were published in 1992, and can be found in A life in Linenopolis: the memoirs of William Topping, Belfast damask weaver, 1903–1956, eds O'Connor, Emmet and Parkhill, Trevor (Belfast, 1992)Google Scholar. This article cites the original manuscript, held at P.R.O.N.I.

33 ‘Memoirs of the working life of William Topping’ (P.R.O.N.I., D3134).

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, pp 28–33.

37 Ibid., p. 69.

38 Inspection reports of Newtownards Road Flax Spinning Mill, 9 Feb. 1912 and Bedford Street Factory, 10 Feb. 1912 (P.R.O.N.I., Inspection reports of John Geary, D/4192/4).

39 Ibid.

40 Inspection report of Royal Avenue Shirt Manufacturers, 6 Apr. 1912 (P.R.O.N.I., Inspection reports of John Geary, D/4192/7).

41 Inspection report of Shankill Road Flax Spinning and Weaving Factory, 19 Apr. 1912 (ibid.).

42 ‘Influence of the work in mills on the health of female workers’, p. 114; Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 161.

43 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 161.

44 ‘Influence of the work in mills on the health of female workers’, p. 114.

45 Inspection report of Royal Avenue Shirt Manufacturers, 6 Apr. 1912 (P.R.O.N.I., Inspection reports of John Geary, D/4192/7).

46 Ibid.

47 Inspection Report of Crumlin Road Mill, 22 Jan. 1912 (P.R.O.N.I., Inspection reports of John Geary, D/4192/2).

48 Ibid.

49 ‘Influence of the work in mills on the health of female workers’, p. 114.

50 ‘Memoirs of the working life of William Topping’ (P.R.O.N.I., D3134).

51 Indoor relief register, 1903 (P.R.O.N.I., Belfast Board of Guardians papers, BG/7/G/60).

52 Huss, Marie Monique, ‘Pronatalism in the inter-war period in France’ in Journal of Contemporary History, xxv, no. 1 (Jan. 1990), pp 39–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jenson, Jane, ‘Representations of gender: policies to “protect” women workers and infants in France and the United States before 1914’ in Gordon, Linda (ed.), Women, the state and welfare (Madison, WI, 1990), pp 152–77Google Scholar.

53 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 13.

54 Employment Rights Act, 1996 (44 Eliz. II, c. 18); Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations, 1999 (1999 no. 3312) (10 Dec. 1999).

55 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 227.

56 Ibid.

57 Lynch, J. P., An unlikely success story: the Belfast shipbuilding industry, 1880–1935 (Belfast, 2001), p. 10Google Scholar.

58 In 398 pages of discussion on the factory acts and occupational health in Ireland, Greer & Nicolson (The factory acts) reserve only twenty-eight pages for men's employment, demonstrating the focus that both the contemporary legislation and modern scholarship has placed on the case of women and children, and the subsequent neglect of study of male workers. Greer and Nicolson's work remains, however, the most valuable narrative of factory act legislation in Ireland.

59 Minutes of the meeting of the managing directors of Harland and Wolff, 17 Jan. 1911 (P.R.O.N.I., Harland and Wolff papers, D2805/MIN/A).

60 Lynch, An unlikely success story, pp 26–7.

61 Maguire, Belfast, p. 61.

62 Lynch, An unlikely success story, pp 26–7.

63 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, pp 227–9.

64 Belfast Evening Telegraph, 14 Jan. 1899, quoted in Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 231.

65 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 231.

66 Chief Inspector's annual report, 1884, p. 39, quoted in Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 231.

67 Coroner's report on the death of Henry White, 29 Aug. 1893 (P.R.O.N.I., Coroner's reports, Antrim, County, Crown and Peace papers, ANT/6/1/1/3/174).

68 Belfast Harbour Police, ‘Register of accidents reported under the Factory Act of 1901’, 23 Jan. 1904 (P.R.O.N.I., Belfast Harbour Commissioners’ papers, HAR/1/A/5/9). (hereafter ‘Register of accidents reported under the Factory Act’)

69 ‘Memorandum as to protection of Belfast Harbour arising out of death of Joseph Connolly and John Murray’ (draft copy), 12 Mar. 1898 (ibid.).

70 Minutes of the meeting of the managing directors of Harland and Wolff, 17 Jan. 1911 (P.R.O.N.I., Harland and Wolff papers, D2805/MIN/A).

71 Ibid.

72 ‘Register of accidents reported under the Factory Act’.

73 Inspection report of Donegal Steamship Co. Ltd. Wharf, 1 Feb. 1912 (P.R.O.N.I., Factory inspection reports of John Geary, Belfast, D/4192/3); ‘Register of accidents reported under the Factory Act’.

74 ‘Register of accidents reported under the Factory Act’.

75 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, p. 239.

76 Minutes of the meeting of the managing directors of Harland and Wolff, 17 Jan. 1911 (P.R.O.N.I., D2805/MIN/A).

77 Inspection report of Donegal Steamship Co. Ltd. Wharf, 1 Feb. 1912 (P.R.O.N.I., Factory inspection reports of John Geary, Belfast, D/4192/3).

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

81 Minutes of the meeting of the managing directors of Harland and Wolff, 17 Jan. 1911 (P.R.O.N.I., D2805/MIN/A).

82 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, pp 242–54.

83 Report from the select committee on steam boiler explosions, p. 3, H.C., 1871 (201) xii, 760.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid.

86 Factory and Workshop Act, 1878 (41 & 42 Vict. c. 16); Factory and Workshop Act, 1901 (1 Edw. VII, c. 22).

87 ‘Influence of the work in mills on the health of female workers’, p. 114.

88 Greer & Nicolson, The factory acts, pp 373–5. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Catherine Cox at University College Dublin who supervised the work on which this article is based and helped bring it to fruition. The project was supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant number 109040/Z/15/Z).