In one instance a girl of nineteen, after no more than six weeks’ employment at pottery dipping, suffered “acute pains, with weakness and subsequent unconsciousness for several hours.” On the premises where she had worked, the inspector found 17 persons engaged in dangerous processes. “Notwithstanding, in the lavatory for their use, which was extremely dirty, there was neither towel nor nail brush, and not more than one tiny piece of soap. Eventually one small and very dirty towel was discovered; this, it was stated, had been taken away by the foreman to dry.... There was not a single clean towel in stock or in reserve on the premises, and when I questioned the workers it appeared that this condition of affairs was normal.”[15] Even where no risk of poison occurs, the provision of decent washing appliances would, to most of us, appear an essential part of a civilised factory. Many employers, however, hold a different opinion. The authors of “Women’s Work and Wages” write that “regulations against washing are still found in many factories where excellence of work does not depend upon cleanliness of handling. Painters and japanners are generally provided with turpentine, etc., but the rank and file are fortunate if they can get a bucket at the sink, and there do exist places where there is a fine of 6d. for washing.” I remember seeing girls, to the number of 50 or more, packing tea in a large room where an old and grubby sink with one wash bowl and one towel formed the sole provision for washing. Access to this room was gained by one wooden ladder-stair. Yet the manager who exhibited this place to a group of visitors was not only satisfied, but actually boastful. The personal attention of the head of the firm was called to these defects, and I am happy to say both of them have now been remedied. The discomfort formerly undergone in many work-rooms during winter was extreme. Until the law required the maintenance of “a reasonable temperature” (generally interpreted by inspectors as 60 degrees Fahrenheit), a very large proportion of women who worked for West End dressmakers did so in rooms absolutely unwarmed, or warmed only by the gas jets meant for lighting the room. I knew of a shirt factory in East London, which was a wooden edifice erected in a back yard and entirely unprovided with any means of warming, and have known women who worked there during the bitterest days of a particularly cold winter. On the other hand, some processes of manufacture are generally carried on in overheated workplaces. “The temperature in starch drying stoves,” says one inspector, “is the most consistently excessive I have found.... The manager of one starch works is of opinion that women stand the heat better than men do, but says those whom he employs are all hard drinkers; no temperate woman will stay.[16]