Lady Inspectors: The Campaign for a Better Workplace, 1893-1921

In Victorian Britain, unskilled women workers, in factories and workshops or at home, were at the mercy of their employers. With neither time nor energy to organize, they had little other than the Factory Acts to protect them from unfair pay, endless work, and dangerous conditions. In "Lady Inspectors: The Campaign for a Better Workplace, 1893-1921", Mary Drake McFeely begins with the government's appointment in 1893 of two women as factory inspectors to oversee the enforcement of laws regulating hours, methods of payment, and conditions in the workplace. She goes on to trace their influence in the restructuring of essential industries several years later. Not surprisingly, the female inspectors met with overwhelming resistance. The experiment of sending women into factories, workshops and courtrooms was viewed with alarm and hostility even by the male factory inspectors. These women were pioneers, McFeely explains: they traveled alone in London slums and remote rural areas to contront factory managers, shop owners and their male colleagues; they appeared in the role of prosecutor in the male-dominated world of the British courtroom; they gathered and interpreted information to support new legislation. Originally published in Britain in 1988, McFeely's study makes careful use of diaries, memoirs, letters, Home Office papers, legal records, interviews, and contemporary press accounts to trace the occupational history of these women and their acccomplishments.