Laura Newman's Germs in the English Workplace, c.1880–1945 is a highly accomplished first monograph. Taking a broad definition of germ sciences to include bacteria, yeasts, and molds, Newman explores a diverse selection of nonmedical workplaces in England from the late Victorian period to 1945. Newman aims to recapture everyday germ-mitigation practices, asking how workplaces were transformed by a greater awareness of germs and how workers responded.
Newman structures the book's chapters around different workplaces. Chapters 1 and 2 center on the post office. The first of these two chapters examines the Post Office Sanatorium Society, a friendly society that provided support to sufferers of tuberculosis and oversaw Benenden Sanatorium. Newman demonstrates the unsanitary conditions of postal workplaces, and describes the pedagogical techniques used by the Post Office Sanatorium Society to educate postal workers about tuberculosis germs in a manner specific to them and through the use of metaphors and object lessons. Of particular interest here is the discussion of the graduated labor technique—graded exercises for patients that emphasize the therapeutic effects of manual labor. This technique saw treatment for tuberculosis reflect the concept of morally enriching labor for the working classes. In the second chapter, Newman builds on the first by analyzing the handling and packaging of pathological materials through the post, and the subsequent risks perceived by postal workers. This chapter will be of particular interest to historians of empire, as Newman weaves together imperial history and the history of germs by describing the practices of microbial exchange. She offers the interesting example of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which established a network of cancer specimen exchanges through the post, raising questions about what was safe and unsafe for workers to handle.
In the third and fourth chapters Newman moves the discussion to the dairy farm, examining agricultural schemes. The discussion of the Midland Agricultural and Dairy College in chapter 4 illustrates the pedagogy of scientific dairying. The aim of colleges like the Midland Agricultural and Dairy College was to incorporate knowledge of germs into workplace practices of dairying. This was not, as Newman demonstrates, a straightforward process, and it involved a combination of formal and informal educational practices. In chapter 3 Newman explores the material objects and technological processes of dairying to assess how these processes did (and did not) influence workers to become more germ-conscious. Focusing on the example of the milk pail and lactic acid bacteria starter cultures, Newman is especially effective in depicting the complexities of the multifaceted relationship between germ scientists and dairy workers, highlighting the different methods and technologies that were prioritized by each group.
The food factory—or specifically meat preservation factories—are the focus of discussion in chapter 5. Here Newman chooses the case study of Shippam's of Chichester and its potted meat pastes and considers how workplace germ practices were communicated to a broader public. Shippam's employed a corporate strategy to communicate an image of modern hygiene through factory visits by the public and staged photographs. But, as Newman highlights, earlier germ-mitigation practices continued through traditional sensory methods of testing food.
The final chapter is not just a great case study for historians of science but an excellent contribution to the history of women, gender, and the everyday. In chapter 6, Newman takes the domestic kitchen as a workspace through an examination of the germ practices employed by the housewife in the process of making jam preserves. Newman establishes that housewives were not excluded from germ-mitigation practices and were dealing with invisible life in their own kitchens. As Newman explains, women had long been dealing with germs in making preserves and, by the twentieth century, the gap between the jam factory and the domestic kitchen was narrowing.
In a post-COVID-19 world, the book's themes—of invisible life and health and safety in the workplace—resonate beyond academia. The diversity of the workplaces covered make this an incredibly enjoyable read. Individual chapters could make excellent seminar readings for undergraduates studying history of science modules as introductions into models of how scientific knowledge is circulated and produced.
The major strength of this monograph is the remarkable number of subdisciplines to which it speaks. As the book is primarily pitched as a history of science, it will of course be of interest to historians of science and medicine. And, naturally, it should be considered essential reading to labor historians for its insights into workers’ everyday lives. But this is only the tip of the iceberg of subdisciplines from which scholars should be eager to get hold of this book. Germs in the English Workplace offers content of interest for historians of education, women and gender, material culture and empire, and many more, and it has a rich potential to attract readers from outside academia.
