The Home Office and the Dangerous Trades: Regulating Occupational Disease in Victorian and Edwardian Britain

Peter W. J. Bartrip

Jan 2002 · Clio Medica S. /Wellcome Institute Series in the History of Medicine Series Book 68 · Rodopi

About this eBook

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

About the author

Peter Bartrip is Reader in History at University College Northampton and Research Associate at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford. Previous books include Mirror of Medicine: A History of the BMJ (1990) and The Way from Dusty Death: Turner & Newall and the Regulation of the British Asbestos Industry, 1890s-1970 (2001).