HEALTH AND safety at work has become the butt of jokes and even derision at times because of the lengths to which it is sometimes taken, but the other extreme is evident from the editorial comment in The Irish Timesof today's date in 1876. Reporting the comments of a surgeon in Cookstown, Co Tyrone about the flax industry there, it paints a horrific picture of the conditions in which people worked in one of the North's best-known industries.
Mr DJ Hamilton, “for more than 30 years a certifying surgeon”, draws a sad picture of the social conditions of the workers in the scutch mills of the Cookstown district. There are 30 of these mills there within a radius of five or six miles. The mills are of a very primitive kind, being small houses thatched by the straw from the flax after it has been scutched. The places are badly ventilated and with low roofs. The dust and spiculae driven off the flax are quite thick in the atmosphere which the workers have to breathe at all times, and which produce irritation of the air passages, and an almost constant cough and spitting of blood. Ophthalmia is also caused by this dust. The habits of the workers are very careless and intemperate. It is a common saying “as thirsty as a scutcher”.
The rollers at which the flax is broken are attended by one person, frequently a woman, who breathes this vitiated atmosphere. The worker is liable to serious injury from being drawn into the rollers by the flax straw catching round her hand, or by some portion of her dress dragging her limbs under the rollers. The limb is invariably torn and comminuted in a dreadful manner.
Sometimes, the arm is pulled out of the elbow joint. In several instances, life has been lost. A strap passed over the shoulders, and fastened by a chain or hook behind the roller, would prevent the workers from being suddenly drawn forward, and save many a poor worker’s life. Whiskey drinking is carried on to a great extent in these places, the farmers often bringing drink in their pockets to encourage the scutchers to expedite their work. Surgeon Hamilton states that “in the mountainous districts, people have of late years become addicted to ether drinking as a rapid and cheap stimulant”. This ether can be procured in every country town. “I attribute,” says Surgeon Hamilton, “the growing taste for ether to the difficulty of procuring whiskey in country districts remote from a town, and its much greater cheapness than whiskey or brandy in the North of Ireland”. Sunday is spent by the parents and grown-up children in drinking bad whiskey. High wages and shorter hours of work only made the workers worse, by giving them greater facilities for debauchery. It is not to be wondered at that the children in this district are more delicate and of smaller growth than formerly.
Such is the picture drawn of the Cookstown district by one who has resided there for 30 years. He recommends that steam power should be used and larger rooms be constructed. But who will take the initiative in doing so?
Other reports in the newspaper on this day in 1876 included an account of the suicide of Lord Lyttelton, a Tory politician and father-in-law of Lord Frederick Cavendish who was later stabbed to death in the Phoenix Park murders on his first day in Dublin as chief secretary of Ireland. Lyttelton was said to suffer from melancholia, defined as a depression without delusions, and threw himself over the balustrade of his London house.
To read these reports and all other on this day in 1876, go to www.irishtimes.com/150