particularly shocking in this, their wives will perhaps admit that it is a piece of cruelty, an infamous act of barbarism, indirectly to force a pregnant woman to work twelve or thirteen hours daily (formerly still longer), up to the day of her delivery, in a standing position, with frequent stoopings.  But this is not all.  If these women are not obliged to resume work within two weeks, they are thankful, and count themselves fortunate.  Many come back to the factory after eight, and even after three to four days, to resume full work.  I once heard a manufacturer ask an overlooker:  “Is so and so not back yet?” “No.”  “How long since she was confined?” “A week.”  “She might surely have been back long ago.  That one over there only stays three days.”  Naturally, fear of being discharged, dread of starvation drives her to the factory in spite of her weakness, in defiance of her pain.  The interest of the manufacturer will not brook that his employees stay at home by reason of illness; they must not be ill, they must not venture to lie still through a long confinement, or he must stop his machinery or trouble his supreme head with a temporary change of arrangements, and rather than do this, he discharges his people when they begin to be ill.  Listen:  {162a}

   “A girl feels very ill, can scarcely do her work.  Why does she not
   ask permission to go home?  Ah! the master is very particular, and if
   we are away half a day, we risk being sent away altogether.”

Or Sir D. Barry:  {162b}

   “Thomas McDurt, workman, has slight fever.  Cannot stay at home longer
   than four days, because he would fear of losing his place.”

And so it goes on in almost all the factories.  The employment of young girls produces all sorts of irregularities during the period of development.  In some, especially those who are better fed, the heat of the factories hastens this process, so that in single cases, girls of thirteen and fourteen are wholly mature.  Robertson, whom I have already cited (mentioned in the Factories’ Inquiry Commission’s Report as the “eminent” gynaecologist of Manchester), relates in the North of England Medical and Surgical Journal, that he had seen a girl of eleven years who was not only a wholly developed woman, but pregnant, and that it was by no means rare in Manchester for women to be confined at fifteen years of age.  In such cases, the influence of the warmth of the factories is the same as that of a tropical climate, and, as in such climates, the abnormally early development revenges itself by correspondingly premature age and debility.  On the other hand, retarded development of the female constitution occurs, the breasts mature late or not at all. {162c} Menstruation first appears in the seventeenth or Eighteenth, sometimes in the twentieth year, and is often wholly wanting. {163a} Irregular menstruation, coupled with great pain and numerous affections, especially with anaemia, is very frequent, as the medical reports unanimously state.