_Miss Tracey._--In one factory I visited to see an escape recently put up at the instance of the local authority, and I found quite a good iron staircase and platform. This was reached by a window which had been made to open in such a way that it completely blocked the staircase and gave but a tiny space even on the platform, and the aid of the local officer was again invoked. Miss Stevenson reports that in the newer cotton mills a proper outside iron staircase with a handrail is to be found, but the construction of the older fire escapes shows a great lack of common sense. In the first place, the narrow, almost perpendicular ladder without a handrail is peculiarly unsuited for the use of women. The openings from the platform to the ladders are exceedingly small, and the exit window is generally 3 to 4 feet above the floor level, no steps or footholds being provided. To increase the difficulty the exit window is sometimes made to swing out across the platform, cutting off access to the downward ladder. In two cases the ladder, and in one case a horizontal iron pipe also, ran right across the window, rendering egress impossible except to the slender. In both cases the next window was free from obstruction. _Miss Taylor._--Sometimes as many as 100 persons are employed on each floor of a high building, so that if the outside staircase had to be used those in the upper floors would, as they descended, meet the occupants of the lower floors crowding on to the landings. I have never been to a factory where they had such a fire drill as might obviate the possibility of overcrowding on these escapes. The women flatly, and I think, rightly, decline to attempt the descent, on the plea that they do not wish to incur the danger of it until it is absolutely necessary. I have sometimes been told by the managers of the factories that they themselves would never reach the bottom safely if they attempted to go down. Such escapes are to be found on quite 50 per cent of the cotton mills in Lancashire, and as they were put up on the authority of the sanitary authority it is difficult to get rid of them, but one cannot help thinking that there may be very serious loss of life if the circumstances of a fire should be such that the workers were obliged to resort to these outside escapes. 6. _Lead Poisoning._