The Gendering of Dangerous Trades: Government Regulation of Women's Work in the White Lead Trade in England, 1892-1898

The Gendering of Dangerous Trades.· Government Regulation of Women's Work in the White Lead Trade in England, 1892-1898 Carolyn Malone / / /Concern for a woman's existing or potential offspring historically V^ has been the excuse for denying women equal employment opportunities," Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in March of 1991.1 He was one of five judges whose votes overturned a "fetal protection" policy enacted by Johnson Controls, Inc., the nation's largest manufacturer of automobile batteries, thereby reversing the historical trend.2 This important case raised fundamental questions about gender, work, sex discrimination, reproductive rights, and intervention in women's lives. It also bore a striking resemblance to the regulation of women's work in another hazardous trade—the white lead trade—which is the subject of this article. In June of 1898, the English government banned women from working in the most dangerous but also the highest paying portions of the white lead trade as a means of protecting their potential offspring. This monumental step in protective labor legislation followed a heated public and governmental debate about women's work in the trade. The debate was fueled by sensational newspaper accounts of death and infant mortality and the medical opinion that women were more susceptible to lead poisoning than men. Together, the press and medical men created a powerful discourse of danger which claimed that certain work was especially dangerous to women and their offspring. This discourse served to initiate and justify radical government intervention. This article examines the politics of state intervention in women's work in the white lead trade to illustrate that the politics of gender was the decisive factor in the making of social policy. Disturbed with women's work outside the home and possessing deeply embedded ideas about sexual difference, Home Office officials, medical men, manufacturers, and various reform groups participated in the creation of dangerous trade regulations. Their opinions and predisposition towards state action were buttressed by medical knowledge and pressing social concerns and fears. The regulation of women's work became directly tied to the national, or rather, imperial concern over motherhood, infant mortality, and the fitness of women for certain jobs. Apart from making protection an almost prede- © 1996 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. ι (Spring) 16 Journal of Women's History Spring termined goal, these factors led to women's unemployment in the white lead trade and maintained their secondary status in the labor market.3 Women's Work in the White Lead Trade Contemporary investigations reveal that more women than men were employed and that they worked in its most dangerous areas.4 In Newcastle -Upon-Tyne, where the five major white lead firms in England were located, 565 females and 328 males were employed in 1896, 571 females and 329 males in 1897.5 White lead was made by combining lead cakes with acetic acid in pots. After three months the pots were placed in an oven to dry for a fortnight. White lead was then extracted from the lead cake, ground in a mill, run through a series of tanks called washbecks, and placed once again in an oven to dry. Women, working in what were caUed the "white beds," removed the white lead. Removal of the dry lead was the most dangerous part of the process because lead dust flew around and, if it entered their system through their noses and mouths, lead poisoning could result. Women earned high wages for their work in this hazardous trade. According to the factory inspector for Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, the average wage for women was 2s to 2s 6d per shift. If women worked two shifts a day, and many did, they could earn £1 or more per week.6 Compared to women working in factories in London where the average wage was between about 8s to 16s per week, those were good earnings.7 The Government and the White Lead Trade Although factory acts were passed to safeguard the health of workers, occupational diseases occupied little attention before the 1890s. Afflictions like lead poisoning were common but, as Anthony Wohl has written, they "were simply an accepted part of working life, as...