This thesis explores the impact that early to mid-nineteenth century cotton manufacturing had on the health of workers and their employers in the 'factory colony' of the Quarry Bank Mill, Styal. The thesis seeks to explore the actions taken by Quarry Bank's mill owners and the workers themselves to manage, maintain and protect their health in a period before national regulations were in place. The historiography on occupational health in Britain focuses on health and safety legislation, enforced regulations and compensation schemes of the later nineteenth and early twentieth century. This thesis, however, seeks to contribute to the largely neglected area of early nineteenth century health and medicine in mills and factories. It aims to illuminate the significance of health approaches and attitudes, and medical practices among the Greg family. It considers their impact as employers of a worker and apprentice community and the role of paternalistic management strategies around health. It examines how the Greg family understood health in both the industrial workplace of the mill and the domestic spaces of their own private homes, as well as the dwellings and public spaces of their workforce and argues that the Greg family employed several different strategies to maintain the physical and emotional health of both themselves and their workforce. The thesis will focus on nutrition, communal and individual hygiene and sanitation, and the housing conditions of the workers' village in Styal and how this affected living standards amongst the Quarry Bank workforce. It will also consider how the Greg family, the paid workers, and the indentured apprentices attained and interacted with medical provisions, such as those offered by the mill's medical men. This thesis aims to bring to light the multiplicity of different medical provisions within Mill community, which was shaped by the relationship of each group within the community with the Greg family. It will argue that the Greg family cultivated the landscape, managed the occupational and domestic places, and provided health and medical care in order to maintain, monitor, and regulate their workforce. Finally, the thesis examines how the public history of health and medicine was presented to contemporary audiences in the National Trust exhibition A Healthy Profit informed by my research as part of my collaborative doctoral programme. It argues that the early history of health and medical becomes can be made relevant to modern visitors via what I will call an 'empathetic bridge' between their own experiences with ill-health and healthcare and the personal historic health narratives of both the Greg family and workers.
- Paternalism
- Medicine
- Health
- Cotton Industry
- Industrial
- Nineteenth-Century
Health, Medicine and Heritage at the 'Factory-Colony' of Quarry Bank Mill, 1800-1850.
Farrington, J. (Author). 31 Dec 2023
Student thesis: Phd