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From fever to digestive disease : approaches to the problem of factory ill-health in Britain, 1784-1833

University of British Columbia

In the early decades of British industrialization, the ill-health of textile factory workers attracted considerable public interest and provoked discussion and debate among a growing number of medical men, operatives, manufacturers, and social and political commentators. Guided by previous studies of the “framing” of disease, this dissertation examines how such ill-health was conceived, designated and responded to in the period from 1784 to 1833. The dissertation reveals that workers themselves held a relatively constant view of their condition. In the early part of the nineteenth century, they drew attention to a variety of ailments and throughout the period they saw a clear link between their maladies and the conditions of their labour. By contrast, medical understanding shifted significantly, and as it traced a course more or less at odds with that of popular comprehension, the nature and causes of worker suffering were substantially redefined. In the 1780s and 1790s, doctors identified the illness of factory labourers as “low, nervous fever,” an acute contagious disorder generated by the crowding and confinement of human bodies. A generation later, in the period from 1815 to 1819, the ill-health of mill workers was conceptualized, by a portion of the medical community, as “debility,” a poorly-understood state of constitutional feebleness attributed to aspects of machine work. In the early 1830s, medical authorities regarded factory workers’ sickness primarily as “digestive disease” and located its source in habits and diet. The reconceptualization of worker ill-health yielded an ultimately optimistic assessment of the consequences of industrial growth, failing to offer strong support to demands for legislative restriction of factory operation. It also served to sanction changing social relations through providing evidence of the physical and moral distinctness of the manufacturing population. As medical theory altered, so, too, did practices of relief and assistance. While mill owners, and doctors, became increasingly unwilling to assume responsibility for the well-being of the industrial workforce, operatives engaged ever more extensively in practices of self-help. The expansion of the textile industry, however, ensured the continuation of their affliction and incapacity.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-04-24

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7536

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