The Home Office and the Dangerous Trades

Reviewed by: The Home Office and the Dangerous Trades: Regulating Occupational Disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Vol. 68 of Clio Medica Allison L. Hepler P. W. J. Bartrip . The Home Office and the Dangerous Trades: Regulating Occupational Disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Vol. 68 of Clio Medica. Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2002. iv + 344 pp. Tables. $75.00, €75.00 (cloth, 90-420-1228-5); $35.00, €35.00 (paperbound, 90-420-1218-8). Given the recent anthrax threats in the United States as well as those in recent wars, P. W. J. Bartrip's examination of anthrax as a workplace hazard nearly one hundred years ago reminds us of the important connection between public health and worker health. Similarly, his discussions of arsenic, lead, and (to a lesser extent) phosphorus generate thoughtful consideration of the intricate ways that the lives of workers and consumers have been intertwined since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Bartrip, author of a number of works on occupational health in Great Britain, brings to light in this text a close examination of the first four occupational diseases to be regulated by Britain's Home Office in the 1890s—namely, poisoning from lead, arsenic, phosphorus, and anthrax. Specifically, he wants to understand why these were the first diseases to be targeted, especially given their differing levels of morbidity and mortality. He also wants to know why they began to be regulated relatively "late," in some cases fifty years after the disease had first been noticed in industry. Finally, why did the government focus on particular diseases rather than the workplace environment, particularly in light of widespread consensus that dust was the most significant hazard in the industrial workplace? The answers to these questions resonate in today's regulatory debates, both domestically and in the global economy. The answers that Bartrip suggests also go well beyond the conventional economic explanations—fears about foreign competition or employment security, or a strong belief in laissez-faire capitalism, for instance—and the scientific/medical ones, such as disagreement over disease causation, over what constituted poisoning, and over whether industrial diseases could be "cured" or merely managed. To gain an in-depth understanding of the relationship between these industrial diseases and the government, Bartrip traces the trajectory of each disease in turn, finding different rationales, alternatives, economic considerations, and responses of the Home Office, which coordinated government regulation over "domestic affairs," eventually including the factory inspectorate. For instance, the white lead trade and pottery manufacturers (which used lead glazes) were regulated only after pressure from journalists and consumers, later supplemented by scientific evidence; nevertheless, regulation in both industries was hampered by rules that allowed employers to object to specific workplace regulations, particularly in the more economically powerful pottery trade. Bartrip also shows how arguments over workers' responsibility for their own health and the belief in laissez-faire capitalism, which granted employers a lot of control over the workplace, served to reduce workplace regulation and enforcement. He supplements this analysis with detailed explanations of possible solutions that did not come to fruition. While this methodology can be tedious, Bartrip argues that [End Page 724] history is a process, and that since we cannot grant historical actors the power of foresight even while we have hindsight, the least we can do is to look at the paths not taken and the possible reasons for those decisions. Finally, he closely sifts through the statistics acquired on these occupational diseases to determine whether the stated explanations for the decline of lead poisoning, for example, matched the evidence available to the researchers and policymakers. He does this while recognizing the limits of the information available to researchers and industrialists at the time. In addressing the development of regulations over lead, arsenic, phosphorus, and anthrax, Bartrip takes into account the various economic considerations—including the power of individual companies, the availability of acceptable substitutes, and foreign competition—as well as Britain's relationship to the rest of Europe in developing prohibitory legislation, especially in the case of phosphorus. Market forces also played a role in the reduction of industrial arsenic poisoning, according to Bartrip: the wide use of

Disease · Economic history · Environmental health · Hazard · Health hazard · Occupational safety and health · Pathology · Political science · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History · Law · Medicine · Gerontology