Industry and autonomy in early occupational health nursing: The welfare officers of the Lancashire cotton mills in the mid-twentieth century

Nursing History Review

Volumn 14, Issue , 2006, Pages 89-109

  Hallett, Christine ^a   Abendstern, Michele ^a   Wade, Lesley ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; COTTON; FEMALE; HEALTH; HISTORY; HUMAN; NURSE ATTITUDE; OCCUPATIONAL ACCIDENT; OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH NURSING; PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE; TEXTILE INDUSTRY; UNITED KINGDOM; WOMEN'S HEALTH;

ACCIDENTS, OCCUPATIONAL; COTTON FIBER; ENGLAND; FEMALE; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; NURSE'S ROLE; OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH NURSING; PROFESSIONAL AUTONOMY; TEXTILE INDUSTRY; URBAN HEALTH; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN, WORKING;

EID: 33644869139     PISSN: 10628061     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1891/1062-8061.14.89     Document Type: Review

References (62)

1. Lesley Doyal, What Makes Women Sick: Gender and the Political Economy of Health (Houndsmills: Macmillan, 1995).
2. Hilary Graham, Hardship and Health in Women's Lives (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993);
3. Barbara Harrison, Not Only the "Dangerous Trades": Women's Work and Health in Britain, 1880-1914 (London: Taylor and Francis, 1996).
4. Mary B. Rose, ed., The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History Since 1700 (Preston: Lancashire County Books, 1996);
5. Edwin Hopwood, A History of the Lancashire Cotton Industry and the Amalgamated Weavers' Association: The Lancashire Weavers' Story (Manchester: Amalgamated Weavers' Association, 1969);
6. Anthony Howe, The Cotton Masters, 1830-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
7. Alan Fowler, Lancashire Cotton Operatives and Work, 1900-1950: A Social History of Lancashire During the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003);
8. Richard K. Fleischman, Jr., Conditions of Life Among the Cotton Workers of Southeast Lancashire, 1780-1850 (New York: Garland, 1985);
9. Arthur McIvor, "Employers Associations and Industrial Relations in Lancashire, 1890-1939: A Comparative Study of the Development, Organisation and Labour Relations Strategies of Employers' Combinations in the Cotton, Building and Engineering Industries" (Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 1983);
10. Norman Longmate, The Hungry Mills (London: Temple Smith, 1978).
11. Irene H. Charley, The Birth of Industrial Nursing: Its History and Development in Great Britain (London: Balliére, Tindall, and Cox, 1954).
12. Charley, The Birth of Industrial Nursing, 47-49.
13. Barbara Harrison, "Gender, the State and Occupational Ill-Health: Women Factory Inspectors and the Health of Women at Work, 1883-1914," Proceedings of the International Conference on Nursing, Women's History and the Politics of Welfare, Nursing Policy Studies (Nottingham: Nottingham University, 1995);
14. Harrison, Not Only the "Dangerous Trades";
15. Helen Jones, "Women Health Workers: The Case of the First Women Factory Inspectors," Social History of Medicine 1, 2 (1988): 165-182;
16. M. Omori, "British Factory Inspectorate as a Women's Profession, 1893-1921," Saga University Economic Review 19, 1 (1986): 41-64.
17. "Welfare Work in Factories," Cotton Factory Times, September 10, 1920, p. 1.
18. "First Aid in Mills," Cotton Factory Times, February 1, 1935, p. 4.
19. "Common Injuries and How to Deal With Them," Cotton Factory Times, May 10, 1935, p. 3;
20. "Industrial Welfare: Why Is It Not Adopted More Extensively?" Cotton Factory Times, September 20, 1935, p. 1.
21. Dardanella, "Welfare Work: How Cotton Trade Lags Behind," Cotton Factory Times, February 28, 1936, p. 6.
22. "Welfare for Cotton Workers," Cotton Factory Times, June 2, 1922, p. 1.
23. "Welfare Work and Trade Unions," Cotton Factory Times, June 30, 1922, p. 1.
24. "The Spirit of Welfare Work," Cotton Factory Times, October 8, 1920;
25. "Training for Welfare Workers," Cotton Factory Times, August 5, 1921, p. 1.
26. Charley, The Birth of Industrial Nursing, 148-157.
27. Charley, The Birth of Industrial Nursing, Ibid., 148.
28. Charley, The Birth of Industrial Nursing, Ibid., 152.
29. Charley, The Birth of Industrial Nursing, Ibid., 154-157.
30. Judy Barnes, an Oldham ring spinner (1950s and 1960s), described how "[t]hey didn't have a first aider as such. So the carder, what were over you. He had a first aid box and he'd put some stuff on. Terrible things when I think about it now. Do you wonder why I never put mine in the mill!"
31. Josie continues: "One time, I did slip and me arm went up this strap. And it burnt me arm from here to here [wrist to elbow] and there were no nurses. You went to the roller coverer who was supposed to be the first aid man. So he saw to it but by the Sunday morning it was er going red all round. So I went up to the infirmary. And me father took me." Q. What did the roller coverer do? He just cleaned it and put a bandage on it. Q. What did he clean it with? I think he just wiped round it with cotton wool with something on it I think. . . . At the hospital they scraped all the badness out of it. . . . I think people in them days they were tougher than what they are now. I think they put up with a lot more than what people put up with now. . . . They were hard days weren't they? Yes they were. . . . At the [mill name], which I worked in during the war, they started getting a nurse in and she had a like a surgery and . . . that was alright. But up to be leaving the [mill name] in the 60s there were never a nurse, no there weren't. We used to go to the roller coverer, and I don't think he had a clue what he were doing!
32. "Oh yeh we had a Welfare officer, we had a nurse. And that was on number 4; that was the floor above us. And that had been made. And in that room, there were seats outside. . . . [A]nd when you went in, she had a big light and a chair, like a dentist's chair, with the arms on, what you sat in so she could examine you. Like if you'd got anything in your eye. Cos sometimes you used to get cotton and fly in your eye you know. Like . . . it looked like little bits of wood that'd come off cotton, when it was coarse cotton and sometimes it'd flip in your eye and you couldn't get it out . . . and she'd put you some stuff in your eye. Or er, like when you were going getting your bobbins out of your thing you'd get spells down your fingers and she'd things to get them out, you know they'd go down your finger nail. And if you'd period pains or anything she had it up there. She had sanitary towels, there was bandages and everything. . . . If you'd sprained something you know, even if you'd done it at home, you know or going to work, gone over on your ankle or something. She'd strap it up for you. They were there for the workers. If there was anything wrong. And she'd come down round, everyday, "is everything alright, everybody alright?" Q. What do you remember seeing her for? [S]ore throat or cold. If you'd got a sore throat or a cold. She'd give you a paracetamol. There were, like I say, she had gargles, she'd cough medicines. [S]he'd pain killers . . . for when you had period pains. They weren't paracetamol. I don't know what the heck they were but oh they were good. And she'd just give you one of these. You know, you didn't have to suffer. Nobody need suffer. If you had a pain, say sometimes your shoulders ached, you know, she'd do your shoulders. Q. What, she'd massage them? Massage your shoulders for you. Because sometimes you're leaning over and you think, Oh God me shoulders, I think I'll go and see her, she'll put me someat on and she'd put you some deep heat or something on. And there was also, there was a room where there was a curtain across. It were a room but instead of having a door it had a curtain across and there was a bed in there and you could have a lie down. If you weren't feeling well you could go and have a lie down. . . . You know there was everything. . . . But it did make your legs ache especially in summer time. And another thing you used to do. You used to get hard skin on your heels and it used to split and that used to hurt and the nurse oh used to put you some right lovely soothing, I don't know what it was called, like a sodium jelly. It looked like that vaseline but it wasn't. It was much stronger than that I think. And it was a thicker . . . it was nice. And she used to put these plasters on. She used to make them like a heel case and stick it on and oh it used to feel nice when this oily stuff started getting into your thing."
33. "It was great difficulty getting money out of them: 'What do you want plasters for?' 'No, there's scissors somewhere.' 'I've got some here.' 'I've got some tweezers.' And the first casualty I was presented with, with a splinter, that we wouldn't call splinters. It was an eight-inch piece of wood in his hand. 'Can you just get this out for me, love? I usually pull them out with me teeth, but I can't quite get it this time.' So, eventually, I persuaded them to let me go to the chemist and buy some equipment. And I brought some sheets in from home. Despite there being Egyptian cotton sheeting, I wasn't allowed that. I brought some sheets from home and a blanket and a pillow, to cover people up with. And I started cleaning it from top to bottom. That took me about 3 weeks and then I started on the office, washing it from top to bottom. And they nearly had a fit when they got the bill with the equipment that I'd got, and it was basically, basic first aid things. There was nothing fancy. But it was basic first aid things. Q: And who had a fit? The manager, the owner, his father came down and he was what you would call the typical mill owner. 'What the hell do you think you're doing running up bills like this? We can't have this.' . . . Eventually he did give in. . . . I got me own way."
34. Val Jones continues: "Fingers trapped in machinery. They had a beaming room where the cotton was beamed around large rollers, huge rollers that stood about 4 foot high and it was quite frequent for somebody to get fastened up in the beam. And there was one particular incident. And we used to say, 'Don't wear a full skirt,' but if wasn't done for women to wear trousers in the 60s, and I remember one lady. And they said, 'Can you come quickly with your blanket," and I ran down expecting blood everything all over. But I walked into the beaming room and Irene, she was called. . . . [H]er skirt had caught in the beam as it had turned around and of course it had whipped it off. It had taken her with it, but she was a big girl and she'd managed to stand her ground, but her skirt went round with the beam. And there she was, stood in her bloomers for all to see. The blanket was needed basically to wrap her up in. I think the worst that I saw was one man who was leaning over machinery and he got his scrotum caught in the machinery. And the men stopped me going anywhere near."
35. Val Jones recounted: "They had a lot of problems with period pains. They had a lot of problems with lower back pains. Because they were bent at a funny angle over machinery all the time. And shoulder pains. But period pains. They'd often collapse over the machinery. And they'd come down and say, 'Can you give me something?' . . . [T]hey'd be as white as a sheet sometimes. And you'd say, 'Come on, lie here for a bit and I'll go and find the hot water bottle and paracetamol.' You could guarantee that the ring room manager'd be down in about ten minutes: 'There's a frame down. Where is she?' And they'd get sworn at. So I had a habit of locking the door so they couldn't get in and swearing blind I hadn't seen them."
36. Val Jones's interview continued: "Q: Earlier you said that initially the workers saw you as another authority figure. Did that change? I should say about 50%. Certainly not 100%; I mean I was only 22-24. No, I was seen as perhaps in the managers' pocket. And it was only when you were dealing with people on an individual basis that they realised that: no, you weren't. But you see, when you were eating a meal, and you went down to the canteen, you weren't allowed to sit with the other workers. They had one table for the company secretary, the mill manager, the ring manager [and the welfare officer]. So you were segregated. What reason had they to trust me? I was part and parcel of this. It was only that I had access to better quality first aid and compassion than they had come across before. And basic things like getting the loos cleaned, which were horrendous."
37. Monica E. Baly, Nursing and Social Change, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 1995);
38. English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting, Occupational Health Nursing: Contributing to Healthier Workplaces (London: English National Board, 1998);
39. Royal College of Nursing Society of Occupational Health Nursing, A Guide to an Occupational Health Nursing Service: A Handbook for Employers, 2nd ed. (London: Scutari Press, 1991);
40. J.M. Radford, ed., Occupational Health Nursing (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1990);
41. B.M. Harrison,. Essentials of Occupational Health Nursing (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984);
42. Katie Oakley, ed., Occupational Health Nursing (London: Whurr, 2002).
43. Jean Brimm Cahall, "The History of Occupational Health Nursing," Journal of Occupational Health Nursing 29, no. 10 (1981): 11-13;
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59. R. Robson, The Cotton Industry in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1957);
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61. McFeeley, Lady Inspectors.
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