Printing as Poison, Printing as Cure: Work and Health in the Nineteenth-Century Printing Office and Asylum

In the nineteenth century, printing transformed from a handicraft into what Patrick Duffy describes as "a capital-intensive industry catering for the needs of the developing industrialized society."¹ This shift inevitably affected the lives of those involved in the production of print, reshaping their professional identity and relationship with work. In this article, I will explore nineteenth-century printers' changing experience of work using the concept of health and its relation to printing. Highlighting the stories of those involved in print production, preserved in their own words or the words of contemporary observers, I will show that industrial capitalism transformed the printing office into a high-pressure, fast-paced work environment that commentators in the press and printers themselves perceived as "unhealthy." At the same time, contemporary mental healthcare offered those who struggled to function in the new contexts opportunities to exercise their trade therapeutically. By mid-century many British and American asylums had acquired printing presses, and printing was increasingly incorporated into their therapeutic regimes as part of the popular moral treatment movement. The case of Alexander Smart, a Scottish printer and poet who was repeatedly institutionalised and who benefited from practising his trade in the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, will allow me to explore nineteenth-century printers' complex relationship with their work, as well as broader shifts in the meaning of work in Victorian society and its functions and uses.

Undertaking this kind of discussion demands several clarifications. Firstly, "printer" as an occupational label unifies an otherwise diverse and multilayered professional group, within which circumstances and social standing could vary significantly between individuals and employments and change over time.² As my central interests are printers' relationship with their work and the effects of the changes in the trade on their bodies and minds, I will use the term to refer to workers identifying as printers and primarily employed in printing offices. Furthermore, the health hazards observed here were present in varying degrees, since work arrangements differed widely, depending on factors such as the type of printing press employed and the materials that were published. The experiences of workers in smaller workshops that continued to operate hand presses were markedly different from those of printers employed in larger establishments equipped with steam machinery. Far from universalising work conditions, I am interested in tracing how those employed in printing offices perceived, experienced, and were affected by their work environment.

Furthermore, the reference to health in a historical analysis begs caution. Retrospective diagnosis is a highly problematic endeavour that is the subject of ongoing debates.³ Critics of the practice insist that the ways health and illness are understood and experienced are determined by the specific cultural and historical contexts within which they occur. Thus, Peter Palmer argues, the application of current understandings of disease to bodies and minds from the past is "a little more than a game, with ill-defined rules and little academic credibility."⁴ However, Osamu Muramoto's thoughtful philosophical assessment of the disputes concludes that retro-diagnosis can be a valuable undertaking, if it is informed by several ethical, ontological, and epistemological considerations. Among these is the question of purpose, and while Muramoto discusses it last, I would like to suggest it as the starting point of any inquiry into dead people's medical histories. For my own purposes, I need not put medical labels on printers' experiences of discomfort and illness; nor am I qualified to do so. It is sufficient to rely on contemporary medical and social interpretations of these phenomena, as well as sufferers' own understandings of their minds and bodies. Ultimately, this article is interested in the ways in which printers themselves made sense of their work and its relation to their health at a time of great change, hope, and uncertainty.

Printing as "Unhealthy"

In his analysis of the occupational health hazards in 1860s London printing workshops, Michael Harris has shown that the proliferation of print in the nineteenth century had a high price—"a price exacted from the bodies of the men, women and children who...