The Home Office and the dangerous trades : : regulating occupational disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain / / [by P. W. J. Bartrip.

• Superior document: Clio medica (Amsterdam, Netherlands) ; 68
• VerfasserIn: Bartrip, P. W. J.
• Place / Publishing House: [Place of publication not identified] : : [Brill],, [2002]
• Year of Publication: 2002
• Language: English
• Series: Clio medica (Amsterdam, Netherlands) ; 68.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (iv, 344 pages)

This book is the first in-depth study of occupational health in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Britain. As such it is an important contribution to the burgeoning literature on the history of health in the workplace. It focuses on the first four diseases to receive bureaucratic and legislative recognition: lead, arsenic and phosphorus poisoning and anthrax. As such it traces the emergence of medical knowledge and growth in public concern about the impact of these diseases in several major industries including pottery manufacture, matchmaking, wool-sorting and the multifarious trades in which arsenic was used as a raw material. It considers the process of state intervention taking due account of the influence of government inspectors, ‘moral entrepreneurs’ and various interest groups.

Table of Contents

Introduction -- Lead: The Road to Regulation -- The White Lead Trade -- Pottery and Earthenware -- A Kind of Dread: Arsenic and Occupational Health -- ‘The Poorest of the Poor and the Lowest of the Low’: Lucifer Matches and ‘Phossy Jaw’ -- A Huge Bacterial Bubble: Anthrax in Industry -- Conclusion.