Note 15 — III.—CIRCUMSTANCES CHIEFLY IN THE INTERNAL ECONOMY AND BAD VENTILATION OF PLACES OF WORK; WORKMEN’S LODGING-HOUSES, DWELLINGS, AND THE DOMESTIC HABITS AFFECTING THE HEALTH OF THE LABOURING CLASSES.

The following were the terms of our instructions to the district medical commissioners of inquiry:—“A given amount of evil is experienced by a class placed under peculiar circumstances; a large portion of that evil is shared by other classes not under these peculiar circumstances; to attribute the whole of the evil experienced by the first class to those peculiar circumstances is obviously fallacious. It is conceived that it is only by investigating the subject with this precaution constantly in the mind that it is possible to arrive at a just conclusion. While you carefully observe the effects of labour on the children and the adult workpeople, and report every case in which you conceive it to be excessive, and state the reasons on which you ground that opinion, you are requested to investigate minutely the concurrent causes of ill health. With this view you are requested in every case to examine and report the state of the drains in and about the factory: the state of the neighbourhood of the factory as to dryness or dampness, cleanliness or filthiness: the state of the houses and neighbourhood in which the children and adult workpeople take their meals and exercise (if they leave the factory), and where they sleep: the state of the air within the factory, and which the workpeople usually respire, whether it be fresh or whether it be not fresh, owing to deficient ventilation,—whether it be pure, or whether it be rendered impure by effluvia floating in it, and if so, what the effluvia are: what organs of the body are likely to be injured, and what, from careful examination, you find to be actually injured: the temperature of the air, the highest, the lowest, and the average temperature, and the condition of the air as to dryness or moisture.”