t, towards the fortieth year, the spinners can
no longer prepare the required quantity of yarn, and are therefore
"sometimes" discharged; he calls operatives forty years of age "old
people!" Commissioner Mackintosh expresses himself in the same way in
the report of 1833:

"Although I was prepared for it from the way the children are
employed, I still found it difficult to believe the statements of the
older hands as to their ages; they age so very early."

Surgeon Smellie, of Glasgow, who treated operatives chiefly, says that
forty years is old age for them. {160a} And similar evidence may be
found elsewhere. {160b} In Manchester, this premature old age among the
operatives is so universal that almost every man of forty would be taken
for ten to fifteen years older, while the prosperous classes, men as well
as women, preserve their appearance exceedingly well if they do not drink
too heavily.

The influence of factory-work upon the female physique also is marked and
peculiar. The deformities entailed by long hours of work are much more
serious among women. Protracted work frequently causes deformities of
the pelvis, partly in the shape of abnormal position and development of
the hip bones, partly of malformation of the lower portion of the spinal
column.

"Although," says Dr. Loudon, in his report, "no example of
malformation of the pelvis and of some other affections came under my
notice, these things are nevertheless so common, that every physician
must regard them as probable consequences of such working-hours, and
as vouched for besides by men of the highest medical credibility."

That factory operatives undergo more difficult confinement than other
women is testified to by several midwives and accoucheurs, and also that
they are more liable to miscarriage. {161} Moreover, they suffer from
the general enfeeblement common to all operatives, and, when pregnant,
continue to work in the factory up to the hour of delivery, because
otherwise they lose their wages and are made to fear that they may be
replaced if they stop away too soon. It frequently happens that women
are at work one evening and delivered the next morning, and the case is
none too rare of their being delivered in the factory among the
machinery. And if the gentlemen of the bourgeoisie find nothing
particularly shocking in this, their wives will perhaps admit that it is
a piece of cruelty, an infamous act of barbarism,