bakehouses was large. And these youngsters
worked, in most cases, just as many hours as
the men, stagnating their young blood at hours
when they ought to have enjoyed open-air
recreation. Worse than this, the bakehouses
were in very many instances disgracefully dirty
and unwholesome places, in which drains and
vermin had matters pretty much their own way,
and in which the weary men and boys threw
themselves down to sleep on the very kneading-boards
which had contained, and would
again contain, the dough for making into bread.
Happily for our tranquillity of mind, we did not
know all the circumstances, sudorific and
atmospheric, that accompanied the fabrication of the
loaves which were to grace our tables.

This state of things has been complained of
by the men for a very long period. They
petitioned parliament sixteen or eighteen years
ago. They formed unions and associations for
mutual protection and benefit. They obtained
the aid of Dr. Guy, who prepared a valuable
medical report on the manifold evils resulting
from the way in which bakehouses were managed.
They ascertained that the master bakers of
Edinburgh manage so to conduct their operations
as to render nightwork scarcely necessary;
and they were the means of inducing
those masters to make a friendly communication
on the subject to the London masters. They
pointed out how much advantage had followed
the adoption of improved processes in the
Carlisle bakeries, in the Nevill bakeries, and in
those employing the dough-mixing machines of
Mr. Stevens and Dr. Dauglish. They showed
that the joint-stock co-operative bakeries of the
north have nothing to do with long hours, nightwork,
or dirty bakehouses. And they adduced
only too much reason for believing that, under
the London system of bread-making, the moral
and social improvement of working bakers
is almost an impossibility. Moved by this
accumulated testimony, the late Sir George
Cornewall Lewis, when Home Secretary, about
four years ago, requested Mr. Seymour Tremenheere,
an experienced factory inspector, to
investigate the whole affair, and to report upon
it. Mr. Tremenheere did so; and in his report
of three hundred pages, he showed that nearly
all the statements were fully borne out by facts.
He concluded that legislation was desirable. He
felt that statute law cannot interfere with long
hours or nightwork for adults, but that we
could properly insist on a limitation in the hours
of labour for young persons, and on a sanitary
police to be observed in bakehouses. And so
an act was passed to carry out these
recommendations.

This statute, then, which declares under what
regulations bakehouses shall be placed, came into
force in eighteen hundred and sixty-three. In
any town containing a population of five thousand
persons or more, all bakehouses, with the passages
and staircases leading to them, are to be washed,
limewashed, or painted periodically. All, whether
in large or in small towns, are to be kept clean,
ventilated, and free from effluvia. No place on
the same level as the bakehouse is to be used as
a sleeping-room unless separated from it by a
partition, and provided with a glazed window
susceptible of being open and closed. No person
under the age of eighteen, whether receiving
wages or not, is to be employed in any
bakehouse between the hours of nine in the evening
and five in the morning. The local authority in
any town, municipal or of whatever other kind,
is to appoint inspectors, who are empowered to
enforce the provisions of the act; and the
enforcement is mostly by means of fine, varying
in amount from one pound to twenty pounds.
This is all: clean bakehouses, and a prohibition
against employing boys and youths in nightwork.
Nothing concerning the hours of labour
for adults, or the wages paid to journeymen.

There has just been made public a return
tending to show how bakers are getting
on under the protection of the new act. As
in many other cases of exceptional legislation,
those whom it was intended to benefit are
not exactly satisfied with the result. Last
summer Mr. Tremenheere made inquiries of the
various officers of health concerning the extent
to which the act had been put in operation.
About two thousand bakehouses in the metropolis
were reported on by the medical officers of the
various District Health Boards. It is curious
to look over the list of things which had not
been done, and which required the health officers
to stir up the master bakers a little. Not
cleaned nor whitewashed; drains out of repair;
no water supply to closets; closet separated
from bakehouse only by a thin partition, or by
nothing at all; no ventilation; "floor more
than one foot deep in rotten refuse;" drains
without traps; rabbits kept in the bakehouse;
ceilings and walls crumbling away; very dirty
in all respects; an uncovered dust-heap in a
bakehouse; open cesspools; too little light;
covered with cobwebs; fowls, ducks, and pigs
kept close to the bakehouse; no dust-bin; the
drying of dyed hair and the baking of bread
carried on alternately in the same bakehouse;
stable and stable refuse close to the bakehouse,
&c. Now, these are not very pleasant
accompaniments to "best wheaten bread," its making
and baking; but it must be remembered that
the instances were spread over an aggregate
of two thousand, that the act had not been long
in operation, and that the bakers promised to be
very good people indeed when the medical
officers pointed out to them what was necessary
to be done. Mr. Tremenheere gathered from
these several reports that the evils above named
were calculated to injure both the health of the
persons employed and the purity of the bread
made, but that they were in a fair way to be
gradually removed. As to the maintenance of
sleeping-places within the bakehouse, or to the
employment of youths and boys during the
night, the reports spoke of very few instances
indeed in the metropolis. In connexion with
the same inquiry, about fourteen hundred
bakehouses were reported upon in Manchester,
Birmingham, Bristol, York, Nottingham, and
Plymouth; and the general tenor of the whole
was, that the bakers were polishing up as fast as