The Lady Inspectors: Women at work 1893-1921
'Woman's work is never done...' - a small team of women inspectors strove energetically in turn-of-the-century Britain to reduce excess hours and abuses in factory and home work.
'Meet me at Aldgate East midnight for overtime inspection', the telegram read. Irene Whitworth, a young factory inspector, had just come home from a long day's work, but she was far from dismayed to find this message from her senior inspector. 'This was thrilling', she remembered later, 'the Junior Inspector is always ready for an expedition of that kind'.
She went eagerly to her rendezvous in London's East End. 'We then walked to a tailor's house', she recorded, 'in a street full of these workshops, having a borrowed lamp'. The two women inspectors searched the house. 'I went to the basement with my lamp, and my Senior went upstairs to an empty dark workroom, then we met together in the sitting- room, where there was a mass of unfinished coats and trousers evidently thrown down in a hurry'. Finally they entered a bedroom, where they found 'in bed, fully dressed, a little girl of fourteen I had seen before'. The law prohibited keeping young girls at work at such a late hour, and the two women inspectors had found the evidence they needed to prosecute the tailor.
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