Focusing on occupational ill-health in relation to women, this book examines the relationships between gender, work and illness from 1880 to 1914. It looks at the part played by feminist activists in debates about health and industrial work and shows how they went beyond the concerns of suffrage.

Using original research and focusing on occupational ill-health in relation to women workers, this book presents a perspective for the analysis of both gender and work and work and ill-health. The author gives a critique of traditional theoretical accounts of gender relations, state intervention and industrial ill-health. The chapters examine the extent to which feminist activists got involved in debates about health and industrial work, and show how activists went beyond the concerns of suffrage.; The book presents a historical period which was marked by a change in the role of the state with respect to intervention in industrial conditions, and analyses the coincidence of this with three other significant developments: the growth of expertise in industrial disease; the employment of women in the factory to take on responsibilities in relation to other women; and changes in the direction of feminist activism. In light of this analysis, the author suggests that some theoretical approaches to both gender relations and health and safety requirements require modification.

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.

EXPLORIMKimE DANGEROUS TRADES c y n y ALICE HAMILTON, M. D. Illustrations by Norah Hamilton AN ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOOK UTTLK, BROWN AND COMPANY BOSTON To My Three Sisters And My Brother The author is indebted to the Atlantic, Harpers, the American Mercury, and Survey Graphic for per mission to use certain material which appeared originally in the pages of those magazines. e, ontents I Introduction 3 II The Old House 18 III I Chose Medicine 38 IV Hull-House Within 57 V Hull-House Without 76 VI Lawyers and Doctors 95 VII The Illinois Survey 114 VIII The Federal Survey 127 IX Smelting, Enameling, and Painting 138 X Europe in 1915 161 XI War Industries 183 XII Dead Fingers 200 XIII Arizona Copper 208 XIV Europe in 1919 223 XV Boston 252 XVI Social Trends 290 XVII The League of Nations 299 XVIII Russia in 1924 318 XIX The Lawrence Strike 353 XX Germany, 1933 360 Contents XXI Viscose Rayon 387 XXII Germany in 1938 395 XXIII Hadlyme 405 Index 429 Alice Hamilton Frontispiece Old Hamilton Homestead in Fort Wayne 22 Jane Addanis 64 Working Women at a Union Meeting 82 Lead Smelter in Utah 122 Concentrating Mill and Heaps of Tailings in Tri-State Region 146 Canaries in a Picric-Acid Plant 186 Steel Mill on the River 258