There is an extensive literature examining the changing executive role of the state, the chronology of social policy, and the reasons why successive governments favoured reform of particular institutions, hazards, occupations, and industries. This brief depiction is by no means definitive. Until the publication of ‘The nineteenth-century revolution in government: a reappraisal’ by Oliver MacDonagh in 1958,Footnote 1 the origins of early Victorian social reform had been depicted as a linear sequence of events,Footnote 2 or broadly interpreted as either ‘Tory’, motivated by an ‘ethic of social responsibility’, or ‘radical’, as A. V. Dicey first argued in 1905, essentially a Benthamite inspired response.Footnote 3
MacDonagh suggested that government intervened only when obliged to do so by events or circumstances that were intolerable to society, such as the condition of underground female and child labour. Once government had proposed a legislative remedy, endangered interests brought their political influence to bear and forced a compromise that culminated in an emasculated law, insufficient to remove the original abuse but with potential for widening state regulation.Footnote 4 This released a ‘runaway train’ of accumulative expansion, in which human agency and political and philosophical ideologies were ‘extraneous’ and often antagonistic to the process.Footnote 5 The key step was the appointment of executive officers, followed by additional statutory controls based upon their day-to-day practical experience of upholding an inefficient law and their burgeoning knowledge and authority. Finally, an awareness was reached that a ‘grand piece of legislation’ would not offer a satisfactory remedy, and regulation began to be perceived as a dynamic process of ‘closing the loopholes’, ‘tightening the screw ring by ring’ and steadily extending the jurisdiction of the law.Footnote 6 Other historians such as David Roberts and George Kitsen Clark followed a similar line of reasoning.Footnote 7 These assumptions sit comfortably with the current renaissance in the notion of the ‘the third way’, whereby the state is largely reflexive and pursues only the dominant economic and social interests of society.Footnote 8 During the 1960s and 1970s, however, pragmatism and the assumption of an historical process were vigorously questioned, most notably by Jennifer Hart and Henry Paris.Footnote 9
The study of health reforms and protective labour legislation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has followed a similar historiographical pattern. In 1948, Edward Merewether, a medical officer attached to the Factory Inspectorate, described what he termed the ‘British tradition in industrial health’: an ad hoc and piecemeal growth in hygiene and compensation policy. He drew parallels with falling incendiary bombs; ‘the fires had to be put out with the means at hand, without wasting time planning a national fire service’.Footnote 10 However, with the exception of Peter Bartrip, who briefly revisited MacDonagh's model in his study of the Home Office and the dangerous trades, protective labour legislation has largely been interpreted within an ideological and/or economic framework.Footnote 11
Barbara Harrison, Angela John, Sylvia Walby, and Jane Humphries, amongst others, have offered feminist perspectives particularly on the prohibition of underground female and child labour, and the regulation of the dangerous trades in 1878.Footnote 12 Caroline Malone in particular, has highlighted the maternalist argument.Footnote 13 Bentley Gilbert, Geoffrey Searle, and Bernard Semmel have all explained liberal welfare reforms in the early twentieth century within the context of national efficiency.Footnote 14 It has been similarly suggested that occupational health reform ‘fits neatly’ into this model.Footnote 15 Ian Mortimer and Joseph Melling have suggested that the recognition of anthrax as industrially generated and compensatable is in part explained by the public abhorrence and fear that the disease generated, but also within the context of the wool trade.Footnote 16 Gillian Burke and Peter Richardson also adopted a similar economic interpretation in their study of compensation initiatives for miners' phthisis, comparing Cornwall to the Transvaal. They argued that British government sacrificed the health of Cornish miners in return for the last vestiges of profit in a rapidly declining industry.Footnote 17 In ‘Disease, labour migration and technological change: the case of the Cornish miners’, Burke suggested that labour militancy in a vital industry generated government intervention.Footnote 18
Bartrip has also highlighted the role of the moral entrepreneur in both placing occupational health reform on the political agenda and mobilizing support, but also stressed the impact of the victim, medical expertise, the Factory Inspectorate, and the Labour Commission.Footnote 19 Historians such as Geoffrey Tweedale, Arthur McIvor, and Ronnie Johnston have highlighted countervailing forces of reform, emphasizing machismo working traditions, corporatism, effective trade unionism, race, and the extent of contemporary medical knowledge, particularly in relation to compensation policies in international non-ferrous mining, British coal mining, and the asbestos industry in the twentieth century.Footnote 20
It is difficult to locate the emergence of mine hygiene firmly within this historiography. Up until 1905 state regulation of working conditions in the British mining industries had prioritized the prevention of accidental injuries in the coal sector. Government made a solitary attempt, based upon spurious medical evidence, to stem the rising rate of mortality from miners' phthisis (now recognized as silicosis) amongst the non-ferrous metal miners in 1872. Interest in the unhealthy nature of underground labour began decisively some thirty years later in 1902 with ankylostomiasis (hookworm), a parasitic infection of the small intestines specifically amongst Cornish metal miners.Footnote 21 Certainly, comparisons can be drawn with the scheduling of anthrax as an industrial disease; hookworm was contagious and transmission via the skin resulted in open lesions. The outbreak, however, was largely confined to one mine in the far south-west, the infection had peaked earlier in 1898 with twenty-nine hospital admissions, and only one miner had died.Footnote 22 Miners' phthisis was much more widespread and generally fatal.
Moreover, the Cornish sector faced fierce foreign competition and was in the throes of terminal industrial decline.Footnote 23 There was little economic interest left for the state to protect. Although the Cornish sector continued to be Britain's largest producer of non-ferrous metals, no women and only 5,396 men remained employed underground (female labour had been traditionally confined to surface operations).Footnote 24 The workforce was fiercely independent, self sufficient, and unorganized.Footnote 25 It was generally accepted that the mine was a dangerous and unhealthy place. Safe and hygienic working practices were considered individual rather than company or state responsibilities.Footnote 26
George Fox, ninth Baron Kinnaird, had championed the regulation of metalliferous mining in line with colliery reform during the 1860s and 1870s, but had been publicly threatened with violence should he return to the Duchy.Footnote 27 What little welfare interest the sector attracted was sporadic and localized. Since his appointment in 1872, the inspector for North Wales (previously south-western mining district) Clement Le Neve Foster, had persistently drawn the attention of successive home secretaries to both deteriorating respiratory health amongst the non-ferrous men, and to the burgeoning evidence suggesting a causal link to dust suspended in mine air.Footnote 28 Although MacDonagh's model predicted that ineffective intervention prompted expansion of the law, the government largely ignored Foster's recommendations for investigation and additional intervention.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Foster retired from active service, and the Home Office eventually responded to an isolated request from Inspector Joseph Martin (south-western mining district) for an investigation into mine ventilation in 1902. Why government responded to this request forms a key question that this article seeks to explain. The discovery that men were infected with hookworm resulted from the preliminary investigations. A series of departmental inquiries followed, culminating in an extensive report published in 1904 on the health of the Cornish miners that resolved much of the controversy surrounding the aetiology and natural history of miners' phthisis.Footnote 29 The extension of current metalliferous and coal mining regulation to improve basic sanitation and protect miners against developing silicosis followed in 1905, and marked the first significant occupational health initiatives specific to the underground environment.
Industrial decline and lack of labour militancy offer possible explanations as to why there was little attention paid to Foster's health concerns in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but still leaves the questions unanswered of precisely how, when, and why hygiene initiatives emerged in the way they did. Explanations for this decisive shift in the scope and nature of government intervention can be found only by locating health reforms within both the historical development of mining regulation, and the national socio-economic and political context.
I
By the mid-nineteenth century, the estimated life expectancy of a British coal miner was thirty-six years, and for a metalliferous miner roughly twenty-nine years. These figures compared unfavourably to the agricultural labourer who lived for approximately sixty-two years.Footnote 30 Differing working methods and local geological factors produced variations in the scale, frequency, and nature of hazards between the two sectors. Methane posed a grave danger to colliers and to miners working iron in conjunction with coal. The gas burns readily in air and is explosive in certain critical mixtures.Footnote 31 Many lives were lost often across several generations, mine and machinery were destroyed, and production brought to a standstill without warning from repeated explosions.
The non-ferrous men laboured in hard stable rock that was generally free from methane, but often rich in silica. Over time, the daily inhalation of dust particles less than ten microns in diameter resulted in a deadly fibrotic scarring of the lungs. This effectively sealed cellular tissue, prevented full aeration of the blood to produce chronic shortness of breath, commonly known as miners' asthma (now recognized as silicosis), and predisposed to secondary infection, particularly pulmonary tuberculosis. This mixed fibrotic and infective process gave rise to the term miners' phthisis.
For a problem to be remedied it has to be first noticed. Occupational medicine was in its infancy, there was no systematic collection of data, and no comprehensive understanding of risk.Footnote 32 Consequently, contemporaries looked to what was visible, and explosion, as one commentator described, ‘forced itself on publicity’.Footnote 33 In contrast, although prognosis of miners' phthisis was poor, the onset of disease was slow and uncertain. Moreover, the death rate was only high amongst the older age groups. Between thirty-six to forty-five years of age, mortality was roughly 9·0 per 1,000 men employed per annum, and this rose to 34·0 between the ages forty-six to fifty-five years and to 63·0 between the years fifty-six to sixty-five.Footnote 34
Single deaths, aptly described by historian John Benson as a steady ‘drip drip’, not just from miners' phthisis, but human falls, entombment, drowning, suffocation, and entanglement with machinery in both sectors of the industry were largely obscured by immediate impact and visibility of a pit explosion.Footnote 35 Consequently, the deteriorating respiratory health of the non-ferrous men attracted nominal concern, whereas each colliery explosion provoked a furore of public protest, one of the key factors of intervention identified by Bartrip, from a wide variety of interests, including concerned individuals, safety societies, civil and mining engineers, politicians, organized labour, colliery owners, and their managers.Footnote 36
The arousal of public concern clearly paralleled the first phase of MacDonagh's model. It was a direct response to the exposure of a ‘social evil’ and despite the unified objective of the reforming interests to prevent further explosions, there was no consistent ideology motivating their campaigns for remedial action. However, their initial responses were not to demand immediate intervention, as MacDonagh suggested, but to promote wider public awareness of explosion hazard, encourage the voluntary introduction of technological solutions, such as the safety lamp, and to improve technical training.Footnote 37 Appeals for state intervention emerged in strength following a simultaneous but separate campaign to regulate underground female and child labour in the early 1840s that owed it origins to factory reform.Footnote 38
Although the 1842 Mines and Collieries Act brought some indirect safety provisions to the collieries (it removed the very young from tasks that might endanger life), the primary aim of the law was to protect women and children by simply removing them from the hazardous and unwholesome working environment. The campaign and subsequent intervention, however, facilitated wider public awareness of the brutal realities of pit labour, and established a precedent of government interference in the coal sector. Moreover, it provoked thoughts of national as opposed to local unionism, and created a strong political interest amongst the colliers by demonstrating that it was possible for them to better their lot in the workplace by parliamentary means.Footnote 39
In the non-ferrous mines very few young boys and no females were employed underground. Consequently, the sector attracted a relatively positive image during the 1842 campaign, and although theoretically regulated under the Act, in practice the law was never enforced.Footnote 40 This served to increase the invisibility of conditions in the non-ferrous metal mines compared to collieries, and the limited reforming interest in the men's health continued to emphasize the voluntary amelioration of unhealthy working conditions rather than petition the state. This line of action arguably appealed to the unorganized, fiercely individualistic, and self-sufficient workforce who claimed responsibility for their own welfare in the working environment. Whilst the non-ferrous men remained silent to their conditions, the colliers became increasingly militant in their demands for government intervention as the 1840s progressed.Footnote 41
Clearly, ‘public intolerability’, MacDonagh's ‘master card’ of reform, had not automatically followed on from an exposure of social evil; instead it was influenced by a legal precedent. Neither did government immediately respond with a legislative remedy as the model suggested. Gillian Burke had argued that militant labour in a vital industry generated government intervention.Footnote 42 Coal was central to the economic wealth and commercial power of the nation; it fuelled the factories and workshops, propelled the steamships and the railways, and provided domestic fuel. Although the non-ferrous sectors occupied a sound and stable market position in the first half of the nineteenth century, the coal trade overshadowed their economic status. In 1800, coal production stood at an estimated fifteen million tons per annum and the sector employed roughly 58,000 hands. By 1830, output had reached thirty million tons and the workforce had risen to an estimated 121,500.Footnote 43
These two key characteristics of the coal sector coupled with the strength and extent of the reforming interest placed the safety of the collier high on the political agenda; conversely the health of the non-ferrous men was consigned to a position of secondary importance and largely ignored. Government also steered a fine line between protecting their strategic interests in coal, placating protest; and rigidly adhering to laissez faire principles. By appointing eminent and prestigious scientists, such as Michael Faraday and Henry De La Beche, to investigate the causes of explosions, government successfully defended themselves against criticism and resisted intervention.Footnote 44 Although MacDonagh dismissed the role of human agency, it took sustained and relentless pressure, particularly from organized colliery labour, to crack this defensive shield.Footnote 45
II
The bill to regulate coal mining, introduced in 1850, attracted very little discussion in either House. This contrasts with MacDonagh's model, because the ‘mobilization of endangered interests’ and subsequent ‘emasculation of the law’ had taken place earlier, in 1849. Government had appointed a select committee to examine the feasibility of introducing safety inspection. The committee had brought together all interested parties and a mild non-coercive system of inspection was agreed upon. The coal owners, like government, had an interest in preventing explosions, and it was organized labour that was forced to compromise over their desire for more punitive measures. Nonetheless, as the model predicted, it was a weak and limited law that entered on to the statue book in August 1850. The Coal Mines Act simply made provision for the appointment of inspectors and defined their duties. These were limited to an authority to inspect, draw attention to dangerous practices, and suggest remedial measures only.Footnote 46
The newly formed Inspectorate responded enthusiastically to their task. Their day-to-day experiences revealed the difficulties of their office, the limitations and weakness of the law, and the true extent and nature of underground hazards. Their systematic collection and critical analysis of mortality data revealed that colliery explosions, despite the continued occurrence and the heavy death toll, were not the major cause of death in the underground environment. Colliers also suffered frequent fatal injuries from a wide variety of causes, and questions were raised regarding the effects of underground labour on respiratory health. Much more than the provision of effective ventilation to prevent accumulations of methane would be required to improve occupational mortality.Footnote 47
The failure of the law to meet more optimistic expectations provoked demands, particularly from organized colliery labour, for additional and strengthened legislative provisions. These appeals were legitimized and supported by the developing experience and authority of the Inspectorate. Bartrip, in particular, attributes to them a strong role in influencing legislative amendments.Footnote 48 In 1855, although emphasis remained on ventilation, the Home Office increased the numbers, salary, and authority of inspectors and introduced a limited code of working practice, largely based upon their recommendations, with penalties for non-compliance.
There was no cohesive plan or blueprint for reform; as weaknesses and deficiencies in the law were exposed, government responded by nominally ‘plugging the gaps’. This usually consisted of information gathering, particularly from scientific and technological experts, and there was no guarantee that amendment of the law would follow, even if it was recommended. Until every occupational hazard, legal loophole, and administrative difficulty were recognized and remedied, tragedies continued to occur and were followed by demands for expansion and extension of the law, and so the process was repeated.Footnote 49
There is no perfect fit with MacDonagh's assumptions. The appointment of inspectors was an intrinsic part of the original 1850 Act, and not a response to its failures as predicted. Yet the continued development of regulations in an accumulative ad hoc progression correlates strongly with the final stages of his model. Although there was a degree of inevitable expansion and extension of the law, certainty, and precisely how and when, was often determined by extraneous influences, suggesting that the model required much more flexibility than MacDonagh originally envisaged.
Reform of the metalliferous mining sectors was part of this process of ongoing institutional expansion. The jurisdiction of the colliery regulation was extended in 1860 to ironstone worked in conjunction with coal, and between 1862 and 1864, all mining industries excluded under the current law were the subject of a royal commission chaired by George Kinnaird. The inquiry established ‘excessive mortality’, particularly amongst non-ferrous metal miners, from ‘consumption and respiratory disease’, rather than from fatal injuries as in coal mining and ironstone mining.Footnote 50
The commission struggled to identify the pathology, aetiology, and natural history of the men's condition, and attributed the high incidence of respiratory disease amongst underground labour to the inhalation of bad or ‘impure air’. This was essentially ‘an excess of carbonic acid gas’ from human respiration, and a chemical cocktail of spent gunpowder. The effects of inhalation, contemporaries argued, were exacerbated by exposure to extremes of temperature, the wearing of wet clothes, and the exertion of lengthy ladder climbs. The inhalation of ‘gritty particles’ was relegated to a minor contributory factor only.Footnote 51
The commission recommended the introduction of a general code of working practice as was operational in the collieries. This would protect the men against the risk of fatal injuries and ensure the provision of adequate ventilation, with additional stipulations of a specific ladder inclination and the erection of buildings to remove and dry damp working clothes to combat respiratory disease. These measures were introduced in 1872 under the Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, and although they undoubtedly improved conditions, they were unlikely to reduce the incidence of miners' phthisis.Footnote 52 Moreover, ventilation in isolation without the use of water was likely to increase risk. An efficient flow of air dried out the underground environment, produced higher concentrations of dust, and facilitated its spread into uncontaminated areas of the mine.Footnote 53
By the late 1870s, inspectors had already begun to comment in their annual reports upon the deteriorating respiratory health of the non-ferrous men.Footnote 54 Mechanized rock drilling and dynamite, introduced from the mid-1870s, had significantly increased the amount of fine dust suspended in mine air.Footnote 55 Inspector Clement Le Neve Foster in particular had been an ardent campaigner for both safer and healthier working conditions. When called as an expert witness before a royal commission in 1879 investigating mining accidents, he took opportunity to highlight the rising rate of mortality amongst the non-ferrous men compared to colliers. In his opinion, the greatest danger to their health was the inhalation of ‘solid matter’ suspended in mine air, and not carbonic acid gas.Footnote 56 The commissioners, however, remained preoccupied with the ongoing and highly visible consequences of accidental ignitions of methane in the vital coal sector. Consequently, the Home Office dismissed Foster's astute observations and ignored his continued demands for investigation and additional legislative controls.Footnote 57
Failure to remove the original abuse, according to the model, should lead to expansion of the law. Although the metalliferous mining regulation was a separate Act of Parliament it was not perceived as such by the legislature. Government had originally proposed to simply extend the jurisdiction of colliery regulation to the non-ferrous sectors, as they had done previously with ironstone, rather than enact fresh legislation. However, the Cornish mineral lords, in particular, argued that colliers, due to the presence of methane, required much more stringent regulation than was necessary for the protection of non-ferrous metal miners. They vigorously opposed a single code of practice applicable to all underground operations.Footnote 58
Government conceded this point in theory only. In practice the 1872 Act resembled current colliery regulation in all but stringency, ventilation, and the use of safety lamps. With the exception of two appointments to cope with the additional workload, ‘Coal Inspectors’ also enforced the code of practice at the non-ferrous metal mines, and the nominal amendments to the 1872 Act were non-specific to the sector, largely administrative, and originated from research into, and the adoption of, safer working practices in coal mining.Footnote 59 The protection of the collier continued to dominate mining reform and health initiatives were not perceived to be a priority.
Since the introduction of regulation in 1850, occupational mortality had steadily improved amongst colliers. By the early 1890s, they enjoyed a rate of 12·5 deaths per annum per 1,000 men employed, which was significantly below the average rate of 16·0 per 1,000 occupied males.Footnote 60 Improvements in ventilation, and the introduction in the late nineteenth century of water sprays to minimize the magnitude of explosion from the accidental firing of coal dust, afforded the men some indirect protection against inhaling the dust.Footnote 61 Whilst the colliers' health appeared robust and not under threat, the sector generated very little interest in mine hygiene, until the Cornish hookworm epidemic exposed the vulnerability of the collier to cross infection and the role of occupational disease in reducing the human body's capacity to labour efficiently.
III
In 1893, a patient with severe anaemia was admitted to the West Cornwall Miner's Hospital in Redruth.Footnote 62 The clinical picture was complex, with both alternating constipation and diarrhoea and a distinctive skin eruption on the forearms, recognizable from the early twentieth century as a classical presentation of hookworm. Symptoms often resembled those of iron deficiency anaemia. Sufferers presented with pallor, listlessness, dizziness, shortness of breath, severe fatigue, oedema, and circulatory changes, and were not dissimilar to miners' phthisis. Even with medical training, the two conditions were often confused.Footnote 63 Gastro-intestinal symptoms were commonly constipation with intermittent diarrhoea and abdominal discomfort. In cases of skin transmission, there was intense itching and papular vesicular eruptions. Infection was often extremely debilitating, but rarely fatal.Footnote 64
Transmission of the parasite to its human host can take place by ingestion of the ova, and/or through skin contact with infected earth or water, typically via the feet. The larvae enter through hair follicles, travel in the blood stream to the small capillaries of the lungs, via the bronchial tubes into the oesophagus, and down into the gut. The adult worm, roughly one centimetre in length, attaches itself to the mucous membranes of the gut causing small haemorrhages. The adult female produces thousands of ova per day, which are passed out of the body in faeces and develop into filariform larvae in warm and moist soil conditions. The ova will not hatch below 60°F, and the optimum temperature for development is 75°F.Footnote 65
The wet, warm, muddy, and unsanitary conditions of a mine provided an ideal environment for the development of ova, and the transmission of infection. In poor illumination, infected faeces were easily spread underfoot throughout the working environment.Footnote 66 Miners often laboured naked to the waist in close contact with infected material, and soiled ladder rungs specifically contaminated lower arms and hands. Despite the identification of the worm in 1838 and acceptance of its pathogenic importance in 1853, there was no recognition of hookworm as a hazard to underground labour until 1882, when Edoardo Perroncito studied men labouring on the construction of the Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland.Footnote 67
The hospitalized patient was a miner who worked at Dolcoath, a local tin mine. Dolcoath was large, technologically advanced, employed roughly 1,250 men, and raised an estimated 725,189 tons of tin, copper, zinc, arsenic, arsenic pyrite, and bismuth per annum during the period 1878 to 1913.Footnote 68 Conditions at Dolcoath were ideal for development of ova. By the early 1890s, workings had reached 3,000 feet, and underground temperatures in excess of 90°F were not unusual. There were no underground toilets to prevent pollution from infected excrement, and the men either made use of ‘any dark corner’, or the open cisterns that stored underground water before it was pumped to the surface.Footnote 69
By 1897, the number of cases at Dolcoath had reached what contemporaries described as ‘epidemic proportions’, and most of the labour force and mine management presented with symptoms of varying severity. The number of cases admitted to hospital peaked at twenty-nine in 1898. Although most sufferers did not require hospitalization, some men were sent for convalescence, and some were transferred to surface labour.Footnote 70
The emergence of a tropical parasite in Cornwall can be explained within the context of a culture of migration. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Cornish provided ‘a highly mobile and highly skilled workforce whose expertise made a significant contribution to the world development of metalliferous mining’. Although three main areas of migration have been identified, namely North America from the 1830s, Australia in the 1850s, and South Africa in the 1880s, movement was often more diffused. In the 1820s, Cornish labour and equipment were exported to Central and Southern America, and labour to India and Central and West Africa in the 1890s.Footnote 71
Although it is impossible to determine accurately when and how the parasite was first introduced into Cornwall, a Penzance general practitioner observed symptoms of anaemia amongst miners recently returned from Chile in 1858, and again in the St Just mining district in the early 1860s.Footnote 72 In his study of emergent occupational health medicine in the mid-nineteenth century, W. R. Lee draws attention to clinical descriptions resembling hookworm reported by the Kinnaird Commission. However, Lee questions the possibility of an earlier Cornish outbreak largely due to the absence of skin lesions, which were a marked feature of the outbreak at Dolcoath.Footnote 73 Certainly the recorded mine temperatures at the time of the commission were sufficient for the development of ova, and it is possible that earlier infections were solely via the oro-faecal route. The most likely source of the later infection at Dolcoath was from infected men recently returned from labour in the gold mines of Mysore in India.Footnote 74
With the exception of Dolcoath's manager, R. Arthur Thomas, neither the skin lesions, known locally as ‘bunches’, nor anaemic symptoms aroused any suspicion of hookworm.Footnote 75 Thomas was, however, sufficiently concerned both to inform Inspector Martin of his suspicions, and to initiate voluntary measures to control the infection. Suspected polluted areas of the mine were disinfected with chloride of lime and permanganate of potash, and four centrifugal fans were installed to reduce the ambient temperature of the mine.Footnote 76
Martin appeared sceptical of an additional disease process and the efficacy of Thomas's preventative measures. In his defence, pallor and respiratory distress were commonplace amongst Cornish underground labour. Moreover, Martin had received anonymous complaints from the men regarding ventilation during the outbreak.Footnote 77 He was an ardent supporter of the theory that exposure to ‘bad air’ was responsible for the men's deteriorating health. Despite burgeoning evidence suggesting a causal association between miners' phthisis and dust revealed by Foster, this erroneous theory persisted amongst the Cornish mining communities and their local physicians.Footnote 78 Cornish mines relied upon the natural movement of warm to cold air. It was an inefficient method of ventilation and subject to the vagaries of the British weather. Without a defined standard of air purity under the 1872 Act, the common benchmark for ‘adequate ventilation’ was either a burning candle or the men's continued ability to perform hard physical labour.Footnote 79
Improvement of ventilation was Martin's universal health panacea. In his opinion, however, the cost of enhancing natural airflow (often only achieved by sinking an additional shaft) was not economically viable and would force most mines to abandon operations.Footnote 80 Burke and Richardson have interpreted Martin's actions as evidence that government intentionally neglected health in order to extract what little profit remained in the declining Cornish sector.Footnote 81 Although, the overall trend in tin prices from the 1870s was one of decline, there were two periods of revival, one in the early 1880s and again from 1898. During this latter period of prosperity, which lasted until 1913, Martin believed that the industry was now in a position to afford costly improvements.Footnote 82
Health anxieties at Dolcoath provided Martin with the opportunity to seek evidence in support of improving ventilation. In August 1902, he applied to the Home Office for a formal investigation conducted by J. S. Haldane FRS, an expert in mine gases and their effects on the human body.Footnote 83 Although the home secretary had ignored Foster's earlier concerns about the men's poor health, he immediately agreed to Martin's request, and in mid-October, Haldane accompanied Martin to Dolcoath.Footnote 84
IV
The home secretary was certainly aware of the possibility of an outbreak of hookworm at Dolcoath. In 1898, Inspector Foster had alerted the Home Office and the British mining communities to outbreaks of hookworm in the coalfields of Germany, France, Belgium, and Hungary.Footnote 85 This is the likely origin of Thomas's knowledge and his recognition of the infection. In 1899, and again in 1900, Foster warned that the spread of this debilitating infection amongst British colliers might be disruptive to national production.Footnote 86 Despite Martin's scepticism, he had reported Thomas's suspicions to the home secretary in 1901, who immediately sought information on the German epidemic from the British consul-general, and vice consul, based in Düsseldorf.
The European epidemic had begun in the mid-1890s in Westphalia and resulted in acrimonious labour disputes. The basis of this friction was the compulsory examination of all miners who had visible signs of infection, their removal from the collieries, and their compulsory treatment in barrack hospitals funded by the Knappschafts-Verein. The Knappschafts-Verein originated in the eighteenth century, and provided compulsory insurance for medical attendance and allowances in the case of sickness or injury, pensions in cases of incapacity, and, following death, funeral expenses and family welfare. The organization was funded by wage deductions and company profits and was supervised by the state. Under the scheme, however, infected men removed from their labours and incarcerated in hospital received only half pay, and those who had no dependants received no benefits.Footnote 87
Notwithstanding the militant action benefit grievances had provoked, underground labour in Westphalia had also become scarce as ‘many thousand hands’ were ‘laid up in hospitals and barracks, or are working overground under medical supervision’. In addition, it was claimed that treatment ‘takes weeks and months’, legislation prohibited underground employment of infected men, and those free of the parasite refused to labour in known polluted areas for fear of contracting the infection.Footnote 88 Loss of production was significant.Footnote 89
The home secretary, Aretas Akers-Douglas, was newly appointed in 1902 following Balfour's succession as prime minister. It is difficult to understand the motives of Akers-Douglas, or piece together the main influences determining his positive response to Martin's request. There is no record in the parliamentary debates and neither is the incident mentioned in his biography.Footnote 90 It is possible that he may have simply wished to make his mark by reversing previous indifference to the health of the non-ferrous metal miners. There were also inquiries into the respiratory health of miners, many of whom were migrant Cornish, underway in South Africa (see below). However, it is more likely that Home Office support of Martin's request was not about alleviating or preventing disease amongst the Cornish miners but to confirm the presence of the parasite and prevent the potential spread of infection to the coal mines, thereby pre-empting any potential disruption similar to the Westphalian experience. British colliers numbered in excess of one million and constituted the largest group of male industrial workers.Footnote 91 An estimated 728,900 held trade union membership.Footnote 92 Roughly, two-thirds of coal entering the world market originated in Britain, making it ‘difficult to exaggerate’ the importance of the sector to the economy.Footnote 93 Arguably, Akers-Douglas made a pragmatic response to the threat hookworm posed to the vital collier, and continued the established pattern of piecemeal intervention that had begun in 1850 and prioritized their welfare.
It is unclear as to whether or not Haldane was alerted by the Home Office to the possibility and the potential consequences of an infection amongst the Cornish miners. Haldane's report indicates that it was high underground temperatures together with clinical, employment, and migration histories of the Cornish men that immediately suggested the possibility of hookworm infection.Footnote 94 To confirm his suspicions, Haldane sought assistance from Dr A. E. Boycott, an Oxford scholar with an interest in parasitology. Boycott's examination of blood and faecal samples firmly established the diagnosis, and early in November Haldane published a preliminary report to this effect.Footnote 95
Mindful of the need to proceed with caution and to avoid the potential consequences of scaremongering, particularly if the colliers were infected and required diagnosis and treatment, the home secretary disregarded both Boycott's recommendations for mass screening, and Haldane's draconian suggestions of compulsory exclusion from work and enforced medication.Footnote 96 Instead, infected Cornish men were treated successfully at home on a voluntarily basis, usually on a Sunday morning if they were in work, with either thymol or extract of male fern.Footnote 97 In consultation with Haldane and Martin, Thomas introduced underground sanitary pails, ‘privy accommodation’ on the surface, and supplied accompanying disinfectants. He instructed the men accordingly. Haldane was of the opinion that the reduction in underground temperature following the introduction of fans by Thomas in 1900 had already begun to check the development of ova, and the active treatment of the men and rigorous use of sanitary measures, he claimed, would ‘soon stamp out the disease’.Footnote 98
Despite his optimism, Haldane was concerned that infected Cornish miners may have harboured the parasite for at least ten years, often without visible symptoms.Footnote 99 During this period, a number of these potentially infected men had found employment in ironstone mines and collieries in various parts of the country. British coal mines were in reality too cool and dry for development of ova, and, unlike the non-ferrous men, colliers were also more circumspect in their toilet habits and used areas of the pit that would be subsequently collapsed.Footnote 100 At the time, however, Haldane believed that the Welsh collieries in particular were of sufficient depth and temperature to provide an ideal breeding ground. There was, Haldane claimed, a real ‘danger of the disease spreading to the British coal mines, which has to be looked in the face’.Footnote 101 Government could ill afford further disruption, the coal sector had already witnessed high strike activity in the 1890s, and output per man-year was in decline.Footnote 102 The introduction of an export tax in 1900 had brought further threats of industrial action,Footnote 103 and the longevity of coal supplies was under question.Footnote 104 Moreover, Welsh steam coal was the power source of the Royal Navy, and any risk to production was a military as well as an economic threat.
The Home Office swung into action and ordered the Mining Inspectorate to make discreet observations amongst the colliers for signs of infection, and to collaborate with the relevant county councils with ‘a view to their taking advantage of such opportunities as might present themselves locally’, such as the use of council laboratory facilities.Footnote 105 The Cornish inquiry was interrupted, and Haldane was dispatched to Westphalia in September 1903 to report upon preventative measures in Europe.Footnote 106 Boycott was directed to consider methods of diagnosis ‘applicable to a considerable body of men rather than individual cases’.Footnote 107 This is particularly revealing when it is considered that over one million hands were employed above and below ground in the collieries in 1902, compared to 1,270 at Dolcoath.Footnote 108 A special Home Office memorandum was prepared, chiefly for distribution amongst general practitioners and medical officers of health.Footnote 109
The Inspectorate asked to meet with representatives of the colliers' trade unions. Together they reached an agreement that meetings to discuss the introduction of suitable measures to combat the spread of infection would be held in each mining inspection district, with colliery owners and their workforce in attendance. In October 1903, a paper entitled ‘Miners' Worm’ was presented at the annual conference of the Miners' Federation in which symptoms were detailed and the need for scrupulous personal hygiene stressed.Footnote 110 The Colliery Guardian published an ‘Illustrated Supplement’ in November 1903, and extracts from Haldane's Westphalian report were published in the Times.Footnote 111
Although representatives of colliery owners and employees expressed widespread anxiety, their responses were sporadic.Footnote 112 In Staffordshire, a conference was held involving representatives of the North Staffordshire colliery owners and the miners' unions.Footnote 113 Boycott was permitted to take ‘pin prick’ blood samples from men at two local collieries, Talk o' th' Hill and Birchenwood. He also examined in excess of ninety faecal samples from underground deposits across the Midland pits.Footnote 114 It is unclear from the record if these samples were obtained covertly. The medical officer of health for Shropshire and Worcestershire published and distributed information leaflets amongst colliers in the two counties.Footnote 115
V
Once Haldane had finished his inquiry in Westphalia, the Home Office returned him to Cornwall to resume the investigation with the assistance of Martin and Thomas. A comparative analysis of air composition at the Cornish mines revealed that there was on average less oxygen and a much higher level of carbonic acid gas in ironstone and colliery workings than at Dolcoath. Yet in contrast to colliers and iron miners, respiratory health was poor amongst the Cornish.Footnote 116
Haldane and his team, having dismissed both hookworm and ‘bad air’ as causal theories, turned their attention to particulate matter suspended in mine air. This strand of their investigation eventually resulted in the identification both of the relationship between dust and fibroid changes in lung tissue and the predisposition to secondary tubercular infection and the recommendation that ‘dry mining should as far as possible, be converted into wet mining’. Although Haldane acknowledged that the use of water to combat dust hazard rendered the underground environment more favourable to the development of hookworm ova, inhaling dust, he argued, ‘was by far the greater evil’.Footnote 117
The final report, published in 1904, proposed the introduction of ‘special rules’ under current legislation that would both prohibit boring in hard rock without the use of water, and ensure safe disposal of faeces in the underground environment. ‘Special rules’ were formulated at the request of the inspector in consultation with mining management, and required only the authorization of the home secretary. They provided the law in both coal and metalliferous mining with a degree of flexibility and immediacy to address changes in working practices or the adoption of new technologies without resorting to an amending Act of Parliament. Authorization in January 1905 marked the introduction of the first significant health reforms specific to the underground environment.
If the initial response to hookworm was part of the ongoing process of government intervention that prioritized the protection of the collier, why did government continue the Cornish inquiry? The infection at Dolcoath appeared to be largely under control, and numbers of infected men had remained constant.Footnote 118 The discreet inquires by the Inspectorate revealed no visible evidence of a spread of infection either amongst metalliferous miners working the remaining British ore fields or amongst the colliers.Footnote 119 Moreover, Haldane had actually established that poor health amongst the Cornish miners was ‘due entirely to lung disease’ before his departure to Westphalia. Yet, incidence of miners' phthisis was localized amongst colliers and not yet recognized as posing a significant risk to their health.Footnote 120 There was also very little strategic interest left in non-ferrous metals for the government to protect, and the Cornish miners had remained unorganized and continued to shun state interference.Footnote 121
The ad hoc process of expansion and extension of mining reform had become much more sophisticated as the nineteenth century had progressed. It was no longer passive but dynamic and proactive. Rather than pressing for legislative amendment following exposure of weakness and deficiencies in the law, the Inspectorate began to identify potential hazards, by undertaking experimental research and fieldwork, and actively looking to the ‘resources of science’ to ‘furnish practical expedients’.Footnote 122 This era of evidence-based intervention resonates strongly with the final phase of the model, in which MacDonagh suggested that executive officers undertook experimental investigations, kept in touch with new techniques, and foreign practice, and often ‘called directly upon medicine and engineering’.Footnote 123
The Cornish hookworm infection had taught both the Home Office and the Inspectorate a valuable lesson. The underground environment was a potentially unhealthy workplace, and in the words of Inspector Foster, ‘it was really more serious for a worker to contract a disease as loathsome and wasting as ankylostomiasis or as practically incurable as phthisis than to be temporarily incapacitated by a broken limb’.Footnote 124 Contributing to this increasing visibility was a burgeoning interest in occupational health, particularly in relation to manufacturing, but also a dramatic rise in mortality from phthisis amongst the Cornish miners in the younger age groups.
The 1878 Factory and Workshop Act had introduced some general measures to protect against dust hazard. Anthrax, and phosphorus, arsenic, and lead poisoning, had also attracted regulation and control.Footnote 125 Between 1896 and 1899, government had carried out further investigations into a variety of specific dusty industries and regulated metal grinding from 1901.Footnote 126 The turn of the century also witnessed the publication of two important studies by Dr J. T. Arlidge and Thomas Oliver, an international authority on industrial diseases.Footnote 127 During this period the medical officer of health for Stocksbridge reported high mortality from respiratory disease amongst men mining ganister to the Factory Inspectorate. Ganister is a fine grained hard siliceous stone found in the coal measures and chiefly used in furnace lining.
There had been very little previous exchange of knowledge and ideas between the Factory and Mining Inspectorates, despite medical advisers often having a ‘foot in both camps’. Edward Greenhow, for example, accurately identified dust particles in lung tissue in the 1860s, yet he initially failed to make the connection between the factory floor and the dusty mining environment during his appointment as part-time medical adviser to the Kinnaird Commission.Footnote 128 The pattern of independent inquiry changed decisively when Thomas Legge, the first medical inspector of factories, undertook a pathological and chemical analysis of deceased ganister miners' lung tissue, and began to expose the complex relationship between fibroid changes and predisposition to tubercular infection.Footnote 129 Haldane and his team were able both to draw and to expand upon this developing body of knowledge.
Haldane's analysis of the Cornish mortality data suggested that the death rate from miners' phthisis had risen by roughly 110 per cent between the ages twenty-five to thirty-five and 175 per cent between thirty-five to forty-five years.Footnote 130 He estimated that roughly one third of the total number of deaths were due to the effects of underground labour in South African gold mines.Footnote 131 Large numbers of British miners in the 1860s, particularly the Cornish, had responded to the discovery of rich gold seams on the Witwatersrand in the South African Republic (later Transvaal). The connection between Cornwall and South Africa was particularly strong, not only in terms of labour, but also in the export of plant and machinery. Before taking up his position at Dolcoath, Thomas, like many other Cornish mine managers, had also worked on the Rand.Footnote 132
The widespread use of mechanized drills in the hard siliceous gold bearing rock and the practice of ‘cut and round’ in the same shift (returning to the working face before the dust from the blast had settled) exposed the men to greater concentrations of fine dust. Following the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, many miners, having already contracted the disease, returned home to work locally, and found that their condition deteriorated rapidly in the cold damp British climate. Oliver Thomas had also observed a similar effect in returning migrant colliers.Footnote 133
Such an aggressive form of the disease began both to provoke unrest amongst the gold miners and to attract international humanitarian interest and the attention of the medical and mining press.Footnote 134 The end of the Boer War paved the way for investigation instituted by the Transvaal Mines Department in May 1902 and shortly after Akers-Douglas agreed to Martin's request, Viscount Milner, the South African high commissioner, also appointed a Miners' Phthisis Commission. These early inquiries certainly informed Haldane's research.Footnote 135 Moreover, the Royal Commission on Metalliferous Mines and Quarries that reported in 1914, and was instrumental in establishing the differential effects of a wide variety of dusty materials, also made reference to this body of knowledge, and to the investigations underway in Australia and New Zealand.Footnote 136 In spite of the strong connection between South Africa and Cornwall, there remains a gap in the historiography. With the exception of comparative studies of compensation policy initiatives, labour relations, and emerging medical knowledge, historians have noted, but largely missed, the opportunity to explore fully how this linkage may have influenced government regulation of the hazardous underground environment in Britain and internationally in this early period.Footnote 137
Arguably Akers-Douglas must have been swayed by the South African context particularly when he returned Haldane to complete the Cornish inquiry. The men's rapid deterioration was attracting widespread concern in much the same way colliery explosions had in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although the response of labour to their plight remained muted, men were being urged to claim as ‘a duty and a right’ that as much as possible be done to prevent labour in ‘bad air’.Footnote 138 The rapid deterioration in the Cornish miners' health, however, coincided with rising tin prices on the world market. Effective health interventions would potentially protect worker productivity, and ensure the sector was in a better position to compete in the international arena. This was an important consideration when the growth of the British economy was slowing down, and production relative to Germany and the United States was in decline. Recruitment for the Boer War and empirical studies by Booth, Rowntree, and others exposed the poor physical health of the nation, and many contemporary commentators argued that a healthy population was necessary for defending the empire and preventing relative decline becoming absolute.Footnote 139
VI
At first glance, government interest in the health of the Cornish miners is hard to place within existing historiography. However, by locating the emergence of hygiene initiatives within the historical development of mining reform a distinctive pattern of institutional expansion emerges that broadly parallels MacDonagh's model. The loss of mine, machinery, and manpower in colliery explosions released a ‘runaway train’ of social progress. Government interventions slowly snowballed from the regulation of methane in coal mining into a more generalized concern for safer working practices in all underground extractive industries and eventually into mine hygiene.
As earlier critics have pointed out, the model clearly does not provide a perfect fit with the realities of mining reform, particularly in relation to its predicted order. Moreover, the notion of progress was much more malleable than MacDonagh originally envisaged. Visibility of occupational risk, economic performance of individual mining sectors, the extent and strength of labour organization and reforming interests, and dominant concerns in the wider economic and political arenas all influenced the timing, nature, and development of the law. These critical factors resulted in coal mining and accident safety taking priority. Conversely their absence effectively reduced the occupational diseases of individualistic Cornish miners labouring in a declining industry to a position of secondary importance relative to coal.
The unhealthy nature of underground labour would have become increasingly visible as the twentieth century progressed. The field of industrial medicine was developing, and some dusty and ‘dangerous trades’ had received legislative attention. Moreover, by the end of the First World War the mechanization of coal cutting would expose the vital and militant collier to increasingly high levels of coal dust.Footnote 140 Arguably, expansion of mining regulation into hygiene would have been an inevitable result. However, the outbreak of hookworm at Dolcoath exposed the vulnerability of the collier to occupational diseases. This pushed MacDonagh's ‘runaway train’ in the direction of health reform much earlier than would have occurred had the historical process run its natural course, and the national quest for national efficiency essentially ‘oiled the wheels’. Set against a backdrop of economic and imperial competition, the Home Office widened its research parameters and the scope of intervention to protect both safety and health in the underground environment. The revival of the tin trade guaranteed the inclusion of the Cornish miner.
As the twentieth century advanced, the price of tin on the world market slumped below the economic threshold at which protecting the Cornish miners' health was perceived viable.Footnote 141 The early indifference to the welfare of the non-ferrous men comparative to colliers re-emerged. Although the introduction of special rules regulating hygiene may have been an appropriate response by government in 1905, they were not ideal in the long term. There was no wider application across the metalliferous sectors outside of Cornwall. Moreover, responsibility for enforcement lay with the mining company rather than the state. Amendment and consolidation of colliery regulation in 1911 both extended and incorporated the special rules into the main body of law.Footnote 142 By 1914, the Home Office was preoccupied, not just with the outbreak of war, but also with the implementation of the newly strengthened and extended Coal Mines Act and similar recommendations both to strengthen and to ensure universal application of hygiene precautions in the metalliferous mining sectors was overlooked.Footnote 143
MacDonagh acknowledged the limitations of his model and argued for a ‘description in convenient general terms’ that provided perspective, stimulated thought, and furthered understanding of the process.Footnote 144 In this sense, the model has value, particularly when it is considered that after nearly fifty years it has continued to attract debate. Moreover, the emphasis that MacDonagh placed on the significance of the exposure of intolerable circumstances, and the importance of inspection in preparing the ground for subsequent interventions, is particularly pertinent to the history of mining reform. However, as the story behind the early development of mining regulation and the subsequent emergence of hygiene initiatives reveals, the model lacks the flexibility to provide the basis of a detailed analysis of when and how specific extensions and expansions of the law emerged. In much the same way as Paris first argued in 1960, to make the model a more useful analytical tool it needs adaptation to allow for recognition of the potential influence of a wide variety of extraneous factors that determined the direction, speed, and ultimate destination of social progress.Footnote 145
