combined with almost total exclusion
from fresh air, entail the saddest consequences for the health of the
girls. Enervation, exhaustion, debility, loss of appetite, pains in the
shoulders, back, and hips, but especially headache, begin very soon; then
follow curvatures of the spine, high, deformed shoulders, leanness,
swelled, weeping, and smarting eyes, which soon become short-sighted;
coughs, narrow chests, and shortness of breath, and all manner of
disorders in the development of the female organism. In many cases the
eyes suffer, so severely that incurable blindness follows; but if the
sight remains strong enough to make continued work possible, consumption
usually soon ends the sad life of these milliners and dressmakers. Even
those who leave this work at an early age retain permanently injured
health, a broken constitution; and, when married, bring feeble and sickly
children into the world. All the medical men interrogated by the
commissioner agreed that no method of life could be invented better
calculated to destroy health and induce early death.

With the same cruelty, though somewhat more indirectly, the rest of the
needle-women of London are exploited. The girls employed in stay-making
have a hard, wearing occupation, trying to the eyes. And what wages do
they get? I do not know; but this I know, that the middle-man who has to
give security for the material delivered, and who distributes the work
among the needle-women, receives 1.5d. per piece. From this he deducts
his own pay, at least .5d., so that 1d. at most reaches the pocket of the
girl. The girls who sew neckties must bind themselves to work sixteen
hours a day, and receive 4.5s. a week. {210} But the shirtmakers' lot is
the worst. They receive for an ordinary shirt 1.5d., formerly 2d.-3d.;
but since the workhouse of St. Pancras, which is administered by a
Radical board of guardians, began to undertake work at 1.5d., the poor
women outside have been compelled to do the same. For fine, fancy
shirts, which can be made in one day of eighteen hours, 6d. is paid. The
weekly wage of these sewing-women according to this and according to
testimony from many sides, including both needle-women and employers, is
2s. 6d. to 3s. for most strained work continued far into the night. And
what crowns this shameful barbarism is the fact that the women must give
a money deposit for a part of the materials entrusted to them, which they
naturally cannot do