Reports of special assistant poor law commissioners on the employment of women and children in agriculture.

  • Board of guardians
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports of special assistant poor law commissioners on the employment of women and children in agriculture. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    31/404 (page 11)
    practitioner, and attending the poor of a very largo agricultural district, says—that, women are not so much exposed to weather altogether as men; their work is not so various, and it requires finer weather. He has observed no ill effects from any of the kinds of labour he mentioned, either to girls or grown-up women ; no ill effects to young women at the critical age of 15 or 16. He does not think that rheumatism is produced more by such work than by other occupations; he has seen quite as much of that complaint in women who never leave their cottages. Washer- women are much more exposed to rheumatism than women work- ing out of doors. Pregnant women work as well as others, and the work is not injurious to them. Sometimes an accident may happen to a woman in that state during her work, such as slip- ping or falling down, perhaps. He has known four or five such cases, which were followed by pains about the sides until labour took place, but without further ill consequences. He has also known women during certain critical periods going out to work in bad weather, insufficiently clad, who have been hurt more than if their work had been in-doors; but generally out-door employment is ex- tremely conducive to regular habits of body in women; and from the want of such regularity, women in the same class of life in towns, or at service, and who do not work out of doors, suffer a great deal, He has not observed that women employed in out-door labour are at all more subject to colds, and in general he should say that such labour is healthy than otherwise. Mr. Cutliffe, of Southmolton, Devonshire, surgeon and apothe- cary, and who has attended the poor of an extensive agricultural district for thirty years, says—that women are seldom employed in agricultural labour so as to injure their health; on the con- trary, they are, generally speaking, the most robust and healthy females we meet with. Mr. Tanner, of the same place, surgeon and apothecary, says that women do not suffer in their health from the employment in question. Mr. Poole, of Bridgwater, surgeon and apothecary, has had no reason to suppose that the employment of women is injurious to their health. And Mr. Tilsey, of North Petherton, a village near Bridgwater, a surgeon and one of the medical officers of that Union, says—that on referring to his books he cannot find that there is any disease peculiar to (boys or) women engaged in agri- culture, but on the contrary they (both) seem to be remarkably exempt from illness ; for the most part they possess a ruddiness of countenance and a firmness of fibre which he believes to be wholly attributable to the exercise and the exposure consequent to their occupation. But from the age of ]4 or 15, that of puberty in women, to 18 or M when they are full grown, the employment out of doors would perhaps appear to be objectionable. Mr. Kin^, of Calnc