I was researching some razors to put up for sale and was reminded of a sad story I saw on James Bingham’s Hawley entry:
He was interviewed by a government commission on child labour, when he stated that when he was ‘first in the trade the average age of razor grinders at death was 34’. He said that exhaust fans had improved matters, so that ‘we have some men of good age. The effect of the work depends very much on the temperance of the workers’
…we really don’t fully appreciate the labour standards we have, wow.
Wow. I wonder what made it so unhealthy. This is brutal 😞
@walden@sub.wetshaving.social had a good guess with the metal dust. Maybe lead if they’re making wedges there as well or who knows what randomly toxic stuff they were using at that point to dress the leather in stropping wheels and whatever other process they had. Seems lung related somehow though since fans made the difference. I did actually try searching archive.org for that “Fourth Report of the Children’s Employment Commission” back before it got hacked but wasn’t able to find anything.
That was my thought as well. Metal dust doesn’t get into the lungs easily since it’s heavy. I wonder if they were actually running combustion engines (presumably steam engines given the time) indoors?
Oof ya I bet there was a lot of CO poisoning before we understood that. Maybe from forges for hardening?
Probably that too 😬