Report of the Committee on Night Baking.

  • Great Britain. Ministry of Labour and National Service. Committee on Night Baking
Date:
1951
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee on Night Baking. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/96 page 3
    PART I: THE HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM EVENTS UP TO 1914 5. It is no new problem into which we have been asked to inquire. We are the third committee to be set up since the end of the First World War to examine the question of night baking and the problem is very much older than the date of the first of these committees, which was 1919. Indeed, in the course of our inquiries we heard it said that the sufferings of the bakers go back to the days of Pharaoh, for when Pharaoh was wrathful against his chief butler and his chief baker, he eventually restored the butler to his butlership, but he hanged the chief baker. So far as our inquiry is concerned, we have thought it unnecessary to pursue the problem further back than 1848 when a Bill to prohibit night baking was introduced in the House of Commons. It seems fair to infer from this that the practice was then prevalent, at least in some parts of the country. But in general, so long as bakeries were small and bread was manufactured by hand, night baking was probably carried on to a limited extent only. In the later years of the last century and the early ones of this, however, with the growing use of machinery in bakeries, night work was gradually becoming more prevalent and Bills to abolish it were introduced repeatedly between 1898 and 1911 but failed to pass through Parliament. By the outbreak of war in 1914, night baking was fairly general in England and Wales, but not in Scotland, Where it remained rare up to 1922. Night work is confined to men as night employment of women and young persons is prohibited by the Factories Acts. THE BREAD ORDER, 1917 6. During the First World War there was a development of some importance to which from time to time references were made by the witnesses appearing before us. This was the Bread Order made in 1917 under Defence of the Realm Regulations. The Order provided among other things that “no bread which has not been made at least 12 hours shall be sold or offered or exposed for sale”. The object of the Order was to limit the consumption of bread in view of the apprehended scarcity of flour, but an indirect result was greatly to modify night baking throughout the United Kingdom. The 12-hour limit being imposed on the sale of bread, it was generally found that bread could be sold fresher if it were baked during the day. Some night baking still went on but in many bakeries where, before the Order, the ovens were used for the baking of bread by night and of confectionery by day, during the continuance of the Order the process was reversed and confectionery was baked by night and bread by day. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JOINT INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL, 1918 7. In September, 1918, there was set up what proved to be a short-lived Joint Industrial Council for the Bread Baking and Flour Confectionery Industry, embracing England, Wales and Scotland. The question of the abolition of night baking was one of the first matters to receive its atten- tion but no general agreement proved possible and the Council soon broke down as far as England and Wales were concerned, although in Scotland it continued to function until 1922. With a threat of a serious dispute in the Industry over the question of night baking the Government set up a Committee under the Chairmanship of Sir William Mackenzie “to inquire into the practice of night work in the Bread Baking and Flour Confectionery Trade and to report whether it is desirable in the interests of those engaged in the Trade and of the community that the practice should be abolished or modified ”’.
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