Factory Acts are acts passed for the regulation of factories and similar establishments. In the 18th and 19th century it was considered that women and children were not qualified fully to protect themselves against the strain of competition, and asa result the British legislature passed a series of acts to regulate the conditions of their employment in factories.
The immediate occasion of the first act passed to regulate factory employment in England was the outbreak of an epidemic disease which committed great havoc among the younger persons employed in factories in the district round Manchester at the beginning of the 19th century.
An act was passed in 1802, The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, in which provision was made for the regular cleansing and ventilation of mills and factories, and also for limiting the hours of work to twelve daily and forbade night work for children, and made provisions for their proper accommodation.
In 1819 an act followed after Robert Owen, an important factory-owner in Scotland, demonstrated that it was possible to improve factory conditions and make profits at the same time, and later campaigned for State reform. This Act prescribed an hour and a half for meals in the course of a working day, and prohibited children under nine years of age being employed in factorywork at all.
Early Factory Acts were not enforced, and as such were impotent. In 1833 the first truly effective Factory Act was passed. This act applied to all textile factories, and stated that no child under the age of nine was to work in a mill; children under the age of 13 were restricted to working no more than nine hours in a day and children between the ages of 13 and 18 were restricted to working no more than 12 hours in a day. The vital feature of this Act was that it was successfully enforced by full-time inspectors, whose job was to see that it was obeyed in the factories.
Various acts were passed up to 1878, when a general factory and Workshop Act was passed, consolidating the previous series of statutes. Another general act was passed in 1901 and since then numerous regulations and acts have been introduced.
The original acts contained general provisions regarding drainage, sanitary conveniences, overcrowding, ventilation, fencing of dangerous machinery, etc. Addressing what we would now term health and safety.
Factories are distinguished from workshops as making use of, originally, steam or other mechanical power. In the 19th century British textile factories the hours of labour for women and young persons (the latter between 14 and 18 years of age) were restricted to 10, but only 6.5 on Saturday and 56 in the week. In 19th century British non-textile factories and workshops the hours permitted were 10.5 per day and 60 per week at most. Children (of 11 to 14 years) were still employed, but not allowed to be employed more than 6.5 hours on any one day. Provision was made for a certain number of annual holidays. Special provisions for particular kinds of factories were made by separate acts, and under these the employment of females and young persons was regulated in bleaching and dyeing works, lace-factories, manufactories of earthenware, Lucifer matches, percussion caps, cartridges, blast-furnaces, copper-mills, forges, foundries, manufactories of machinery, metal, India-rubber, gutta-percha, paper, glass, tobacco, letterpress printing, bookbinding, etc. The factory act of 1895 included laundries. Certain exceptions in regard to working overtime were provided for; thus women could sometimes work 14 hours a day. Before the start of the 20th century there was no direct interference in any of the factory acts with the labour of adult male persons but it was recognised that indirectly the position of the male-labourer was also affected by legislation of this sort, causing some consternation among the factory owners.
The factory acts were among the first employment laws formalised to protect workers, and while they originally sought to protect primarily women and children, during the 20th century they evolved into more general employment laws offering regulation and some protection to all employees, with the employment of children being stopped all together and later men being treated equally with women, an employee being considered a person irrespective of sex. Research Factory Acts
In their original sense the words 'witch' and 'wizard' denoted the possessors of knowledge, or wise people. Much of the witchcraft of Europe was derived from the science of the Magi, or the magicians of ancient Chaldaea and Persia. Original witchcraft was both a science and a religion, hence leading to its persecution. In early Hebrew enactments against witchcraft it is evident that a struggle existed between conflicting sets of ideas, and this struggle continued in Christian times resulting in the persecution of the science as well as the religion and to the perversions that exist today, for example much herbalism is the scientific aspect of ' witchcraft', but much has been forgotten. It is likely that the struggle was predominantly one for power over the people - an ignorant or unwise people are easier to exploit by priests than a people well educated in the ways of science and nature.
In the USA, the early New Englanders believed that human beings could, by compact with evil spirits, obtain power to suspend the laws of nature and thus injure their fellows. In 1671 Samuel Willard, a minister of Massachusetts, proclaimed that a woman of his congregation, Knapp by name, was bewitched, though her insanity was clearly proven. Between 1684 and 1693 more than 100 persons were tried and convicted of witchcraft in the United States, and many of them were hanged. Special courts were appointed by Governor Phipps for the trial of witches. Witnesses were frequently guilty of open perjury, for the charge of witchcraft soon came to be used as a means of striking a private enemy. The witchcraft epidemic was especially prevalent at Salem, where a number of persons professed themselves bewitched and singled out those who had bewitched them. Educated men like Increase Mather firmly believed in it. In 1693 the superstition in the USA began to weaken chiefly through the writings and protests of Thomas Brattle and Robert Calef, of Boston. The same belief prevailed elsewhere at that time. Research Witchcraft
The cushat or wood-pigeon or ring dove (Columba palumbus) is a common British bird. Their numbers exploded around 1900 to the present day epidemic in towns and cities due to the destruction of their natural enemies, the birds of prey. Research Cushat
Entophyte was originally a term first applied in the 19th century to minute plant-like organisms growing on or in living animals, or in the tissues of plants. They were believed to all belong to the orders Algae or Fungi. In many cases the growth of the plant appears to be a consequence of the diseased state of the structure, which, in this condition, presents the circumstances favourable for the development of the germ or spore into the plant. The broad term entophyte originally encompassed the then unknown bacteria and viruses (though it was correctly suspected that these organisms could be air-borne and some were responsible for epidemic diseases), by the late 20th century the term entophyte was restricted to a plant living within another plant, bacteria, viruses and the like being removed from the classification. Research Entophyte
Goat pox is an epidemic disease of goats caused by a virus infection and characterized by fever and a papulovesicular eruption of the skin and mucous membranes. Research Goat Pox
Benjamin Rush was an American physician. He was born in 1745 near Philadelphia and died in 1813. He was elected a member of Congress to support the American Declaration of Independence, which he signed, and in 1777 was appointed physician- general of the army. This appointment he resigned for a private practice in Philadelphia, where he distinguished himself by his successful treatment of an epidemic of yellow fever in 1793. From 1799 until his death he was treasurer of the United States mint. Research Benjamin Rush
Sir Edward Jenner was a British physician. He was born in 1749 at Berkeley and died in 1823. After graduating in 1792 Jenner started experimenting with possible cures for smallpox, and in 1796 removed some blister fluid from a milkmaid suffering from cowpox and injected it into a boy. Two months later the boy was injected with smallpox, but didn't develop the disease. Jenner repeated the experiment and in 1798 published his work coining the term vaccination (substance derived from a cow). Jenner subsequently spent the rest of his life promoting vaccination, despite its dangers and the lack of evidence as to its effectiveness. Indeed subsequent events - not least the smallpoxepidemic of 1871 in which more people who have been vaccinated against the disease contracted smallpox than those who had not - have shown that far from being a medical genius, Jenner was a brilliant self-publicist and charlatan who exploited the basic human fears for his own financial means. Research Edward Jenner
Stephen Girard was a French-born American financier and philanthropist. He was born in 1750 at Bordeaux, France and died in 1831. At the age of fourteen he went to sea as a cabin boy and at the age of twenty-four was a ship's captain working in the American coastal trade. In 1776 he settled in Philadelphia and worked in foreign trade, before in 1793 with the yellow fever plague he volunteered to act as manager of the hospital and in the 1797 epidemic again took the lead in caring for the sick. During the War of 1812 he greatly aided the American Government by a loan of $5,000,000. Upon his death he bequeathed most of his estate to the city of Philadelphia to be used to construct a school or college for 'poor, white, male orphans' and for municipal improvements - thus was founded Girard College for orphans at Philadelphia. Research Stephen Girard
Bird Flu (avian influenza) is a common viral infection widespread in wild birds the world over where it rarely manifests itself as a dangerous disease. Around 2005 widespread international panic ensued following irresponsible reporting by a few scientists - presumably sponsored by drug companies eager to reap valuable governmental contracts developing vaccines of dubious worth - that bird flu would cause millions of human deaths world wide. In reality about 100 people in parts of Asia who had died over a period of several years had been found to have been infected with a strain of avian influenza - an insignificantly small number compared with the millions who had died from diseases and who were not infected with bird flu in the same area over the same period. Some reports in 2006 even sought to draw parallels with the great fluepidemic of 1918 which coincided with 20 million deaths world wide mainly from pneumonia blamed on immune deficiency caused by the influenza infection. Research Bird Flu
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
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