I

Between 1870 and 1914, the textile trades were the most powerful driving force behind the economy of Belfast and of the whole of Ulster. In 1829, there was a shift from cotton to wet-spun flax and linen, and subsequently the industry expanded at a phenomenal rate over the course of the next century. Belfast soon became known as ‘Linenopolis’, supplying its fine wares to the world.Footnote ¹¹ While it has been noted by some commentators, such as Maguire, that between 1870 and 1914 the significance of Belfast's linen trade declined as the city diversified and other manufacturing trades boomed, nonetheless by 1907 over half of the city's total workforce was employed in the linen or other textile industries.Footnote ¹² Belfast retained its position as the ‘largest linen-producing centre in the world’ until the outbreak of war in 1914.Footnote ¹³ In 1907, 81,704 workers earned their living in the linen trade, compared to 81,114 employed in other industrial sectors.Footnote ¹⁴ Women and children made up a significant portion of the industry's overall workforce and were ever-present in the region's scutching plants and spinning mills. A 1907 study showed that adult women made up 51 per cent of workers in the textile trades, with children and ‘young persons’ making up a further 25 per cent, meaning that less than a quarter of Irish textile workers in 1907 were adult males.Footnote ¹⁵ This preponderance of female and child workers in the city's textile trade, combined with the importance of linen and other textiles to Belfast's economy, made the protection of these workers of paramount importance to employers and legislators alike, and many of the legal steps taken aimed to guard the welfare of these ‘protected workers’.Footnote ¹⁶ The trades that these women and children worked in, however, remained fraught with great dangers and risks to livelihood, life and limb.

As the employment figures show, child workers and young employees under the age of eighteen played a key role in Belfast's manufacturing economy, and in particular in the linen industry.Footnote ¹⁷ By 1907 around one quarter of the workforce in the trade was under the age of eighteen; however, studies would suggest that this figure had been significantly higher in previous years. A review conducted between 1834 and 1835 showed that children under the age of thirteen made up 9 per cent of the total textile workforce across Ireland, with those aged between thirteen and eighteen making up a further 36 per cent, totalling at just under half of the overall workforce available to the textile trade. While the numbers reduced significantly through the course of the century, as the study earlier cited showed, the fact that such a significant portion of the textile workforce continued to be either children or young people shows the importance of child labour to the manufacturing industries and the country's economy throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.Footnote ¹⁸

There is a great deal of contention surrounding the question of child labour and exploitation in the textile industry, especially in Great Britain. David Nasaw notes that commentators such as Charles Dickens, Friedrich Engels and Benjamin Disraeli all spoke of the ‘brutally’ exploitative nature of child labour, and observed that the development of children working in factories was significantly stunted, and that many ‘did not survive to become adults’.Footnote ¹⁹ However, Nasaw goes on to note that others saw the potential moralising power that work and labour had, with observers from ‘across the Atlantic’ claiming that the ‘idle urchins, orphans, runaways and “ragged outcasts”’ that lined the streets of their cities could benefit from employment and education, which it was hoped could prevent mendicancy, criminality and immorality.Footnote ²⁰ Equally, in their recent overview of case studies of child labour across the globe, Hugh Cunningham and Pier Paolo Viazzo note that ‘although in industrializing economies there were some working conditions that no one would condone, children were not, in any formal economic sense, “exploited”’.Footnote ²¹ The authors argue that children were more often than not paid a proportionate salary for their work and could contribute significantly to the income of their family.Footnote ²² One young Belfast mill worker stated that he earned ‘4s per week’ at the age of thirteen, but had his pay doubled later, with the option of paid overtime.Footnote ²³

The imposition of the half-time system in 1844 and its development over the following decades (it ended in 1918) meant that child workers would spend half their day in the workplace, and the other half in schooling. While this system ensured that children had access to education, the days were long and hard, and it is well documented that the dual commitment of work and schooling had a negative impact on the physical development of children, who were often significantly smaller in stature and weaker than their exclusively school-going peers.Footnote ²⁴ School teachers across Britain noted the ‘great physical change’ that came over children once they entered the factories and mills, with some observing that once lively children very quickly became ‘dull’ upon starting employment.Footnote ²⁵ Despite the physical and mental impact that employment and the half-time system had on children, the ‘typical middle-class view’ remained that there was no ‘more healthy and reasonable mode of bringing up a child than in occupying him in some practical and useful work for one half of the day and engaging him for the other half in study’.Footnote ²⁶ It is clear that ‘the lot’ of a child worker in Belfast and Burnley alike, as Desmond Greer and James W. Nicolson argue, ‘was generally not a happy one’.Footnote ²⁷

Nowhere was this more the case than in the mills and factories themselves. The roles that these children undertook in their jobs were generally quite specific, and were determined by age, size and gender. However, it is clear that the majority of jobs undertaken by children were among the most dangerous in the industry, and children were among the most at risk of illness and injury as a result of their work. Many of the more perilous tasks such as card cleaning and machine repair, relied heavily on the ‘nimble fingers of the boys and girls’, with the smallest children often working around and even under the machinery, in some cases while the looms and shuttles were in motion.Footnote ²⁸ Viazzo and Cunningham note that children's roles were often ancillary to those of the adult workers, and tasks that could not be completed by the adults, such as ‘scavenging waste materials that fell under the looms’, which were often the most dangerous tasks.Footnote ²⁹ Marjorie Cruickshank, in her exploration of child labour in the north-west of England, noted that child labour in the textile industry was ‘more intensive’ than in other trades and other positions within the same factories, and notes some of the myriad of dangers that young boys in particular faced in their daily work. Child workers were at risk of ‘falling into the boiling liquid in the keirs’, having limbs caught in exposed gears and being struck on the head by moving machinery, much more so than their adult counterparts, as a combined result of their inexperience and the dangerous positions they were in.Footnote ³⁰

Cruickshank notes that the cleaning and repairing of machinery in particular, a task almost exclusively completed by the younger male employees, presented serious risk to life and limb, and resulting in the hospitalisation or death of many children as a result of being ‘so badly mangled by machinery’ which had been in motion as they attempted to clean it.Footnote ³¹ This is an experience echoed by William Topping, a textile worker in Belfast who began his working life at age thirteen. Topping wrote his memoirs in 1956, having worked continuously in the textile trade from 1903, working in a number of different mills across Belfast.Footnote ³² Topping's earlier memoirs detail his experiences of working in various positions in textile mills during his teenage years, and he describes graphically the dangers and adverse conditions that he and other young workers faced. On one occasion Topping noted that he was working ‘beneath a loom’ repairing an element of the machine when the operative returned and resumed working, not realising that Topping was underneath. Topping was ‘struck on the head’ by a moving element of the loom, and he notes that the encounter almost killed him. Left with a large cut on his head, Topping was told that ‘there was no first aid’ available, and once the wound was cleaned he was ‘sent immediately back to work’ in less than thirty minutes.Footnote ³³ Topping's account of the working conditions make for grim reading, and it is clear that the mills were perilous and unhealthy environments for children, who were often put to work in ‘the black hole’, a spinning room at the back of the mill which he described as ‘a dark recess of a room with no natural light’, using only a ‘jet of gas’ to illuminate their work. The four gas jets in the room ‘burned constantly for ten hours a day, and there was no ventilation’, presumably meaning that the room was filled with noxious fumes. Compounding the toxic environment and straining conditions, Topping noted that the children working in ‘the black hole’ ‘usually had bare feet and the minimum of clothing’.Footnote ³⁴ His account of working in the mills not only demonstrates the terrible conditions that child workers faced, but also the hopelessness and lack of agency with which they faced them. He later recalled working as a repair boy, fixing broken harness cards and oiling machines for between ten and fourteen hours a day ‘sometimes without time to go to parliament [to the toilet]’, working in dangerous conditions with no natural light. The mills in which he worked were also extremely ‘hot and humid, even in winter’, as the 500 plus oil lamps lighting the room created a stifling heat of their own, in addition to the hot and moist conditions required for weaving. He finished this account by stating that ‘this was accepted, with other hardships, as an unavoidable way of life, with no redress’.Footnote ³⁵

Despite the perilous conditions Topping and other children experienced working in Belfast's mills, the emphasis of the legislation aimed towards child labour, and thus the emphasis of the factory inspectors enacting the law, was very much centred on working hours and the balance of work and education, while working conditions were largely neglected. From as early as 1833 the factory acts attempted primarily to reduce the hours that children would work. Even in 1844 – when the Factory Act directly dealt with the ‘health and safety’ of workers – in relation to children, the legislation was concerned with ‘hours of employment’ and keeping the minimum age of a factory worker at nine, not the conditions in which children worked.Footnote ³⁶ It would not be until 1901, when the ‘preservation of life and limb’ had become the key focus of factory act legislation, that the health and working conditions of young people would be addressed more directly.Footnote ³⁷ For factory inspectors such as John Geary, working conditions were also seemingly secondary to the age of child workers and the hours they worked. In his inspection of the Newtownards Road Flax Spinning Mill which took place in February 1912, Geary ‘examined some of the children as to their days of employment’, noting that two children had ‘been employed for three successive weeks on the same days’ and as such had been absent from school ‘on the same days for three successive weeks’. Geary's inspection report suggests that he was concerned about this ‘very prevelant [sic]’ practice, and sought to take appropriate action to end this form of ‘illegal employment’.Footnote ³⁸ Similarly, when he inspected Bedford Street Mill the following day, Geary discovered that five girls of school-going age were ‘working overtime during press of work’, in contravention of factory act requirements.Footnote ³⁹ In contrast to his inspections of factories and workplaces that mainly employed adults, such as the Royal Avenue Shirt Manufacturers which Geary noted was in ‘a very unsanitary state’, in the case of the Bedford Street and Newtownards Road premises Geary did not even mention the conditions in which the children worked.Footnote ⁴⁰

In larger mills, such as the Shankill Road Flax Spinning and Weaving Factory, there was admittedly more of an emphasis on the hazards of machinery and the conditions of the factory itself. The mill, which Geary noted employed thirty-two children, 220 ‘female young persons’ and 210 ‘male young persons’, had recently introduced ‘many new classes of textile machines’ and therefore required Geary's careful attention to ensure that the machines were safe for use and adequately maintained. His greatest concern was the inadequate fencing of machine gearing in the factory, which he noted ‘might be very easily displaced’, leading ‘a careless worker’ to have a severe accident. However again, in his inspection report, his only direct reference to the children and young people was in relation to their half-time status and hours of work, noting that ‘the system of employing them was on alternate days’.Footnote ⁴¹ It seems that the primary concern for inspectors such as Geary was the balance between labour and education that factory act legislation attempted to achieve. In contrast, the experiences of William Topping show that the work and working conditions of child labourers were at best unhealthy and, in some cases, presented a real threat to their lives and development.

For adult female workers, the factory acts, while still concerned with reducing the hours that women could work, did serve to better protect them from accident, injury and illness. Greer and Nicolson argue that this was borne out of necessity, due to the ‘far more aggravated degree’ of women's suffering in factories and mills. They note that, for women, the greatest threat was illness rather than injury, with many women contracting a variety of lung diseases such as pthisis, bronchitis and byssinosis as a result of their particular positions in ‘the preparing and carding departments’ of the factories. This is a point that is echoed in an article published in the Belfast Health Journal in 1909, which claimed that ‘female workers in flax mills are liable to suffer from chest diseases, including pthisis’.Footnote ⁴² The statistics for women workers made for frightening reading for legislators, with women who started work at the age of eighteen ‘very rarely … [living] beyond 30 years’. Greer and Nicolson go on to note that spinners and weavers also had a startlingly high mortality rate, due to the constant inhalation of damp, hot air combined with the shock of going into the cold evening air wearing clothes ‘saturated by the spray from the spindles’.Footnote ⁴³

The heat and damp air of mills was something that caused great concern among reformers, and received a significant amount of attention from medical professionals and industrial activists alike. The same article in the Belfast Health Journal, which was specifically concerned with the health of female mill workers, adamantly emphasised the importance of efficient and effective fans to reduce the burden of the heavy and often toxic atmosphere of the mills, noting:

Many of the reforms suggested by activists, such as those writing in the Belfast Health Journal, were effected and written into law in the following years, and it fell on individuals such as John Geary to ensure that changes were made in specific factories and mills. The requirement for factories and mills to have adequate ventilation was one which Geary specifically noted and sought to remedy on a number of inspections, most notably on his visit to the Shankill mill, where he observed that ‘the lids of the troughs [were] fitted so badly as to allow the vapour from the water in the troughs to escape and be inhaled by the workers’.Footnote ⁴⁵ This would have caused the atmosphere in the mill to be excessively humid and undoubtedly contributed to, or caused some of, the health issues observed in the Belfast Health Journal.Footnote ⁴⁶ Although mills had a naturally damp environment owing to the nature of flax work, Geary sought to reduce the humidity in the factory by any feasible action possible and, by requiring that the trough lids were re-sealed, he could ensure that the vapour would not contribute to the humidity on the factory floor. In a further inspection of a mill on the Crumlin Road in Belfast, Geary observed: ‘In the sewing room I found the temperature excessive due to the fan – which was in use before the alterations (factory enlarged and modernised) were executed – not being suitable to cope with the enlarged room and increased temperature which is caused by a greater number of irons being in use.’Footnote ⁴⁷ Later, he also observed that ‘some of the irons in use are gas heated and give off noxious fumes’.Footnote ⁴⁸ The build-up of heat, fumes and fibres likely occurred as a result of the lack of an efficient fan and posed serious health risks to all of the workers operating the sewing machines in the factory. Geary's recognition of this danger meant that the mill owner would be required to amend the situation to provide a healthier environment for his employees, and if it were not for factory inspectors such as Geary, many more women may have developed long term illnesses of the lungs as a result of their work in such conditions. The legislation put in place sought to improve this area in particular, and the impact of the reforms made between 1870 and 1914 for women at work cannot be underestimated. In a 1909 article entitled ‘Influence of the work in mills on the health of the female workers’, published in the Belfast Health Journal, the writer noted that in relation to occupational health and hazards, ‘at the present time mill workers are [not any] worse off in this respect than are the workers in many other industries’. The piece goes on to add, ‘We do not think we would have expressed this opinion so decidedly some years ago’, demonstrating the clear progress that the textile trades had made to reach a more acceptable standard of health and working conditions in the course of only a few years.Footnote ⁴⁹

In the case of female workers, maternity presented a problem for employers and employees alike, and was not easily protected by legislation or by these early efforts at reforms. William Topping noted in his memoirs that ‘there was no maternity or sickness benefit’ for the female workers, who could only ‘depend on kindly neighbours’ and often worked until the last possible moment, returning to work almost immediately once their baby was born.Footnote ⁵⁰ In many cases pregnancy was the straw that broke female workers’ already strained backs, forcing many working women into workhouses and institutions which could offer some form of protection to both mother and child.Footnote ⁵¹ Unlike in France, where pronatalist efforts in this era were making motherhood and work more compatible through the introduction of on-site factory crèches and wet-nursing schemes, in Ireland and Britain no such gains were made, leaving poorer pregnant women, whether married or not, to fend for themselves, often without the support that full-time work offered.Footnote ⁵² Belfast employers actively discouraged women from ‘breeding’, barring married women from working in their mills and often dismissing pregnant employees. The owner of Mulholland's mill in Belfast is cited by Greer and Nicolson as saying ‘Married or breeding women are not employed or retained in this mill’.Footnote ⁵³ Maternity, then, was among the most perilous conditions for a working woman in Belfast and pregnancy, far from being supported or encouraged, often signalled the end of a woman's career in industry. The rights of pregnant workers continued to be a key battleground throughout the twentieth century, and would not be adequately protected by law in the United Kingdom until the late 1990s, when the Employment Rights Act, and maternal and parental leave regulations were written into law.Footnote ⁵⁴

II

The preponderance of female and child workers in Belfast's booming textile industries and the specialist attention that these ‘protected classes’ of workers received in the factory act legislation would suggest that occupational health was considered to be something of a female issue. However, men continued to make up the bulk of the workforce in the city's other major manufacturing industries, as well as finding employment in all sectors of the textile trade.Footnote ⁵⁵ Rope making, tobacco processing, dock work and, in particular, shipbuilding, all remained male-dominated industries, and through their employment in these sectors Belfast's working men were exposed to a multitude of industry-related injuries and illnesses.Footnote ⁵⁶ Much like the women and children working in the linen industry, these men faced many threats to life and limb in their daily work, and were initially offered little or no protection from even the most evident of perils. As J. P. Lynch claims, in the early days of Belfast's boom, ‘safety was not the major consideration’, particularly for men.Footnote ⁵⁷ Despite the difficult, dangerous and often unique conditions that men working in Belfast faced, their case has largely been neglected in the historiography of industry and health in Ireland, which has tended to explore the cases of women and children or has failed to deal with occupational health altogether.Footnote ⁵⁸ However, the figures warrant serious investigation; between 1911 and 1913 a total of 1,600 separate accidents occurred in the Harland & Wolff shipyard alone, a startlingly high proportion of which were severe or fatal.Footnote ⁵⁹

The quickest growing and perhaps most widely known of Belfast's major industries during this era was the city's burgeoning shipbuilding trade, out of which would emerge the Olympic, Britannic and the infamous R.M.S. Titanic. According to Lynch, the industry saw its ‘golden age’ fall between 1880 and 1914, catapulting Belfast from a place of relative industrial obscurity to worldwide recognition as a hub of production.Footnote ⁶⁰ Shipbuilding, as Maguire argues, soon ‘shared the throne’ of industry with the previously dominant linen trade.Footnote ⁶¹ The city became a trailblazer at the forefront of technology and innovation, pioneering the steel-hulled vessel and defining the future of shipbuilding. The coming of this golden age brought with it the promise of employment and relative prosperity for the men of the city, and saw an influx of labourers from the former powerhouse docks of Liverpool and Clydeside.Footnote ⁶²

At any one time the three major shipyards in the Queen's Island area of the city, Harland and Wolff, Workman Clark and MacIlwaine and MacColl, had in their collective employment upwards of 20,000 skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers in a variety of positions, all of whom ‘faced a considerably higher risk of accidental death or injury’ than those employed in the textile trades.Footnote ⁶³ As one journalist noted on his visit to a Belfast shipyard:

As the extract would suggest, the docks and shipyards were notoriously dangerous, hectic places, rife with dangers for workers and visitors alike. For dockworkers and those involved in all aspects of the shipbuilding trade, the most common and pressing threats to life and limb were often associated with the scale and size of the ships and shipyards in which the men worked. Reports of accidents show a preponderance of injuries and deaths related to falling, with many also occurring as a result of tools or other heavy items being dropped from great heights.Footnote ⁶⁵ An 1884 report by one inspector noted that ‘the greater proportion of accidents which occur[ed] in shipbuilding yards [were] caused by men falling from the stages upon which they are at work or down the holds of the vessels’.Footnote ⁶⁶ One occurrence of a worker falling to his death in a shipyard is detailed in a coroner's report of 29 August 1893. The cause of death of a worker named Henry White was found to have been ‘drowning, with the predisposing influence being concussion, due to his head coming in contact with some obstacle in his descent’, after falling from the deck of the ship on which he was working. Vance Stewart, a ship's carpenter who was ‘working with the deceased’, said in his deposition to the inquest: ‘We were caulking the deck of the ship Gothic. I saw him falling over the side of the ship, there were no bulwarks on the vessel as it was not yet completed. He was sitting about 4 feet from the side. I then looked over the side and saw his feet, and he sank directly afterwards. I saw him being pulled up by a hook after that … I do not think he was ill … I did not see any appearance of drink on him.’Footnote ⁶⁷

Henry White's case was just one of many instances of men being severely injured or killed as a result of falling in the shipyard, and it is ascertainable that this was among the most common and often most lethal cause of accident among men working in the industry. The Belfast Harbour Commissioners’ register of accidents for the five-year period between 1899 and 1903 supports this assumption, recording a total of 421 accidents related to falling into docks, falling down hatchways or falling on gangways. This represented a startlingly high 94 per cent of all the accidents recorded in the harbour in that five-year period that were listed under the factory act legislation. While a further 352 incidents were recorded as ‘not coming under Draft Regulations – Miscellaneous non-preventable accidents’, the statistics nonetheless show a staggeringly high preponderance of fall-related accidents, and it is clear that falling presented the single greatest risk to workers in the docks and harbours of Belfast.Footnote ⁶⁸ The harbour authorities recognised the dangers that workers faced in regards to falling, and in a draft memorandum from the commissioners’ office it was stated that the harbour should be surrounded ‘by a strong and durable wall or railing’ in an attempt to mitigate the risk. The memorandum went on to note that previous attempts to fence off the harbour with ‘chains and posts’ had led to a ‘false idea of security’ and resulted in an increase in fall-related accidents, suggesting that the push to reduce these incidents was an ongoing struggle for the commissioners.Footnote ⁶⁹ The renewed effort on the part of the authorities to protect their workers from falling demonstrated the extent to which the issue was prioritised, but also revealed the extent of the struggle to increase safety in the workplace, and its apparent futility.

The other major cause for concern for both the directors of the shipyards and the factory act inspectors alike was the danger presented by the large cranes and other machinery that were in constant motion in the shipyards. In their annual reports of 1907 to 1912, the managing directors of Harland and Wolff made numerous references to accidents arising as a result of work on these cranes, and noted the importance of addressing the dangers that they presented. In the minutes of a meeting that took place on 2 January 1912, it was noted that ‘Mr. Cuming drew attention to an accident on one of the cranes in the Erecting Shop, and it was agreed that with a view to prevent the possibility of such an accident in future steps should be taken wherever considered advisable to provide safer access to the cranes by fitting additional gangways’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Only two years earlier it was divulged in another meeting that a foreman at the company was ‘injured on the floating crane on the 18 November 1910 and totally disabled for life’.Footnote ⁷¹ The Belfast Harbour Commissioners also reported a number of injuries relating to the use of cranes, most notably Wm. McMullan whose hand was ‘injured by Crane Bucket’ and T. Flack, who lost ‘some fingers off [his] left hand’ while working with a tipping crane, signalling the danger presented by this large machinery.Footnote ⁷² The need to fence moving parts in cranes and other machinery alike was a constant refrain in the reports of factory inspectors and harbour authorities, and was an issue equally prevalent in the docks and harbours as it was in the textile mills.Footnote ⁷³ The danger of clothing or limbs getting caught in the working parts of machines was ever present, and many of the major injuries associated with work in the docks, such as crushed hands and the loss of limbs, can be linked to unfenced machinery. Of the twenty-five accidents that the Harbour Commissioners reported that were not related to falling, all but three could be linked to insufficient fencing on machinery, with six such incidents proving to be fatal over the course of the five years.Footnote ⁷⁴ The use of this kind of heavy machinery in the docks and shipyards clearly presented a major danger to workers and a major problem for the owners and directors of these businesses, in whose interests it lay to protect their workforce, who were their most valuable assets.

These two causes of death and injury alone contributed significantly to the shipyard's consistently high rates of accidents in comparison with the two other major areas in ship building: the engine works and the electric works.Footnote ⁷⁵ A breakdown of the accidents that occurred in each of these three sectors between 1907 and 1912 at the Harland and Wolff yard can be found in the minutes of the managing directors. The minutes recorded that in the course of building the ships Olympic and Titanic, of a total of 483 accidents, 341 or just over 70 per cent, occurred in the shipyard, rising to 88 per cent in fatal cases.Footnote ⁷⁶ Working on the exterior and structure of ships and loading ships in the docks were seemingly by far the most dangerous positions for ship or dock worker, and it became increasingly clear that action was necessary to mitigate the risk and bring the worryingly high rates of injury and death to a more acceptable level.

Factory inspectors such as John Geary noted the importance of making improvements in these areas, and used the powers invested in them by the factory acts to ensure that the law was obeyed and that the safety of workers was prioritised and protected. Geary visited the Donegal Steamship Company Wharf on 1 February 1912, and made a number of suggestions to mitigate both the risk of falling and of accidents related to the use of cranes. On his visit he noticed that ‘a steam crane the property of the Belfast Harbour Commissioners, situated in the cargo shed, had not the safe load marked on the jib’. Noting the danger that an overloaded crane could present to those working on it, Geary took action, saying in his report, ‘I have notified the Harbour Commissioners to have the required notice placed on the crane at once’.Footnote ⁷⁷ While the onus would remain on the workers to ensure that the notice was not contravened, Geary had done what he could to give the workers the knowledge required to complete their jobs safely. When surveying the other cranes in the wharf he noted that ‘The fencing of the gear wheels on the winches and cranes is in a bad state of repair. I made a list of the parts required to be fenced and sent it to the manager of the Steamship Co., saying it was necessary to have the fencing put in order without delay’.Footnote ⁷⁸ Again Geary had identified the serious danger that the exposed gears of the cranes presented to the dock workers and sought to protect them as best he could by requiring that the gears be covered and fenced. Both of these seemingly minor issues demonstrate the real danger that cranes and machinery presented to dock workers. By ensuring that the notice was placed on the steam crane and that the gears were covered in all the machinery at the docks, Geary may have prevented a serious accident from occurring and, as the incidents referred to by the directors of Harland and Wolff have shown, may have saved the lives and limbs of many of the labourers at the Steamship Company's wharf.

While the cranes in the wharf presented a risk which Geary did his best to mitigate, it was the risk of falling that seems to have most commanded his attention. The inspector identified three areas in particular which posed threats to the well-being of the company's employees, and suggested that action be taken on each of them. He first noted that ‘The gangway planks used for wheeling the trucks from the ship into the shed were at such an angle as to be dangerous to the men engaged in discharging the cargo’, clearly recognising that the steep slope of the planks presented a tripping hazard and could cause accident or injury. He went on to mention that he ‘made the stevedore replace the gangway planks with others of greater length to make the slope more gradual’.Footnote ⁷⁹ He then noted a second falling risk, reporting that ‘the ladder used for reaching the bottom of the main hold was out of repair, and not safe to anyone using it. [He] included this in [his] list and pointed out that it would be necessary to have a suitable ladder provided as soon as possible’. Finally, he identified a major flaw in the gangways which boarded the ship, noting that: ‘Two gangways giving access to the ship were provided, one forward and the other one at the after end of the ship. The after gangway was quite suitable and fitted with the necessary handrails, but the forward one was composed of hatch covers, and was not a suitable gangway. I had this removed and gave orders that it was not to be used again, the one proper gangway being sufficient.’Footnote ⁸⁰ The makeshift nature of the forward gangplank was seen to pose a serious falling risk to workers using it, and if left untouched could have resulted in serious injury or death had a worker fallen from it. Crucially, in this instance Geary took immediate action, personally seeing that the second gangplank was removed and giving ‘orders’ that it was not used again, having recognised the immediate risk that the makeshift gangway posed. Geary's actions and recommendations not only demonstrate the multitude of dangers that were omnipresent in these industries, but also show the level of concern for a worker's well-being that was beginning to emerge in this period. Factory act inspectors were intended to act as checks both on the employer and employee, ensuring that all necessary precautions were taken to protect the life and well-being of all men, women and children working in such environments. Yet the effectiveness and coverage of the inspectorate was limited, and much of the onus remained on the employer. By taking actions such as ‘stopping all night shifts … entirely’ and identifying and rectifying risks independently, as Harland and Wolff attempted between 1907 and 1912, firms played their part in protecting their workers and their human capital.Footnote ⁸¹ However there was only so much that could realistically be achieved in such a dangerous line of work, and accidents continued to occur at a worryingly high rate.

For men working in Belfast's other major trades and industries, work could be equally dangerous, if not on the same scale as that of the docks and shipyards. In all sectors of industry in Ulster, men tended to be involved in the more manual and mechanical aspects of their trades, and consequently were often exposed to unique dangers that female and child workers in the same workplaces were not. In the linen industry, for instance, men were often tasked with the most dangerous jobs such as maintaining the looms and repairing the cards, often while other machinery was continuing to function in close proximity. As they did not fall into the category of ‘protected workers’, adult men were exposed to the most dangerous aspects of work in the city's factories, and initially had little legal protection. Greer and Nicolson single out steam boiler operatives as a case study on this point. From 1870 onwards, steam boilers became an increasingly common means of powering the machinery found in factories and workshops of all sizes and trades, and found particular traction in Ulster and in Belfast. However, despite their revolutionary efficiency and growing preponderance in the city's industries, they were notoriously dangerous to maintain and work with, and the operatives who were responsible for them were perpetually at risk or serious injury or death.Footnote ⁸² The majority of incidents involving these boilers were associated with explosions, often occurring as a result of defective valves or misuse, and had devastating consequences, on average killing seventy-five people annually in the United Kingdom in the second half of the nineteenth century.Footnote ⁸³ It was noted by the select committee on steam boiler explosions in 1871, which was set up in order to investigate and reduce the high rate of injury and death from steam boiler accidents, that the boilers were generally operated by ‘men who [were] ignorant of almost everything connected with a steam boiler beyond the mere act of keeping up a fire’, and that it was these men who were at the greatest risk of accident and injury as a result.Footnote ⁸⁴ The committee found that effective action would be difficult to implement, and that aside from ensuring that boiler sales were properly policed and operatives properly trained, little could be done to mitigate the risk. The committee recommended that in cases of boiler explosion the owner would be found guilty of ‘culpable negligence’, unless he could satisfactorily prove that the boiler was faulty at the time of purchase.Footnote ⁸⁵ This proposed legislation would have had the effect of ensuring that factory owners properly trained their boiler operatives and in turn would have reduced accidents occurring as a result of human factors. However, the resulting bill was met with stern opposition from factory owners and was withdrawn in 1873; as a result, the risk remained for the many steam boiler operatives working in Belfast's factories and workshops.

While some minor attempts were made to protect Belfast's male workforce, the docks, factories and shipyards in which they worked remained places fraught with danger. Between 1870 and 1914, rates of accident and injury remained high and, in many cases, grew as the industrial output of the city increased. Legislation tended to focus on the women and children who worked predominantly in the mills, leaving the factory inspectors as the only form of protection for men working in the city's heavier industries. The danger of falling and the associated risks remained the greatest threat to male workers, particularly on the docks and shipyards, while moving machinery and cranes added to the perils of work. Inspectors such as John Geary did their part to mitigate the risk and employers sought to preserve their human capital, but only with a more comprehensive system of legislation could any real progress be made in protecting the male workforce effectively.

III

As the preceding sections have shown, significant dangers were associated with working in Belfast's major industries. As was the case in all industrial cities in Britain, the trades that drove Belfast's booming economy between 1870 and 1914 presented a myriad of potential injuries and illnesses for the people that operated the machinery of the factories, hammered rivets on the docks and cleaned the looms of the city's mills. The workload of an industrial worker was punishing and the long hours of hard labour in the most adverse of conditions undoubtedly took their toll on the health of many. Longer term conditions such as bronchitis and pthisis caused by flax spores and humidity affected many of the city's mill girls, while the danger of mutilation by unfenced machinery was omnipresent for workers across all trades. Left unchecked and dictated only by the needs of the laissez-faire capitalism that drove industrialisation, Belfast's textile mills, shipyards and factories could have claimed thousands more lives and damaged many more. The move for reform, however, driven by legislation and policing through inspection, did go some way to improving the lot of workers and protecting against industrial injury and illness. The safeguards that the factory acts put in place helped to regulate the workplace and provided a safer environment in which to work. While some of the earlier legislation was criticised as being ineffective and poorly focused, the acts of 1878 and 1901 in particular set out clear legal measures to ensure the safety of the workplace and improve the effectiveness of the factory inspectorate that policed it.Footnote ⁸⁶

This article has shown, however, that it was difficult to legislate for such a wide and varied problem as occupational health in such a rapidly industrialising and constantly evolving manufacturing economy. The continued mechanisation and modernisation of the mills of Belfast, combined with the ever-changing methods and demands of the city's shipbuilders, meant that the parameters of legislation were very quickly outdated and irrelevant, and new dangers faced the workers who drove these trades. The article has also found that the effectiveness of the legislation was very much dictated and affected by the gender and age of the individual worker. Reformist politicians – and thus the legislation that followed – often neglected male workers, for whom death and injury were viewed as a reality of everyday life. It fell primarily on factory inspectors such as John Geary to make recommendations and, in turn, to protect the male workers of the city. Societal constructions of masculinity dictated that men should fend for themselves and required little state intervention to protect their health and well-being in the workplace. In contrast, the protection offered by law to women was significantly more comprehensive and effective in its nature. The ‘delicate’ female mill workers of the linen trade were specifically targeted and the reforms were seen as paternalistic.Footnote ⁸⁷ For the many children and young people employed in the city's industries, the emphasis of both legislation and inspection was on the hours that they worked and the enforcement of schooling through the half-time system. The system led to further hardship for these workers, as the crippling double-load of education and labour stunted physical development and took a noticeable physical toll. The impact of the Workmen's Compensation Acts of the late nineteenth century were markedly less positive across all demographics of workers, and attracted significant controversy. Wholly ineffective and open to abuse, although they offered some financial protection in theory, it would be decades before workers would truly benefit from financial compensation in the case of accidents, and the acts served to promote further litigation that often benefited the employer.Footnote ⁸⁸

The impact of reform legislation was ultimately mixed and determined on age and gender, protecting some while neglecting the needs of others. In general, the work of the factory inspectorate, as well as factory inspectors such as John Geary in Belfast, was the most effective form of protection that the state could offer, and had a degree of malleability and adaptability that concrete legislation did not. Inspectors were able to identify and rectify risks on a rolling basis, protecting the men, women and children of Belfast from accident, injury and death. With a larger, more cohesive inspectorate that could visit more worksites on a more regular basis across the north-east of Ireland, more accidents could have been prevented and Belfast's factories and docks would more than likely have been safer workplaces. The ambit of inspection was widened significantly at the beginning of the twentieth century, but was still left wanting for more funding and more development if it was to be a truly effective tool in the fight for occupational health.