Since the First Industrial Revolution, an important percentage of British population, specially on the urban areas, start working at factories in which all kind of commodities were produced in mass. This however, despite some benefits, came with many abuses and difficulties for the workers of the factories (which included men, women and children). In response to this, a series of laws, known collectively as the "Factories Acts", were approved through the years on attempts to improve the labor conditions on British factories, starting with the Althorp's Act of 1833. A little later, already in Victorian Era, there were even more advances.

Starting with the Factory Act of 1844, which is considered the first health and safety act in Britain, it made mandatory that all dangerous machine should be securely fenced off, that no child should clean mill machinery while it was in motion, as well as establishing a limit of 6.5 hours of work for children (plus 3 hours of schooling) and a maximum of 12 hour day for women and everyone between 13 and 18 years old. This time would later be reduced to 10 hours on Anthony Ashley-Cooper's Factory Act of 1847.

On 1867, a new Act passed that extended the existing legislation to more kind of factories and brought regulation to other industries like blast furnaces, tobacco, steel and iron, glass, mills, bookbinding and paper. This act have issues on it enforcement, since it considerably increased the number of places liable to official inspection.

Further Factory Acts were passed on 1878, 1891 and 1895, which considerably extended earlier safety regulations and put additional limits to women and children employment on factories. The most relevant of this changes came with the 1891 Act, which raised the minimum age of factory's employment to 11.

The history of these regulations acts, help us to appreciate how the value given to people, particularly the factory workers changed with the years. From giving them very few importance on the early Industrial Revolurtion, particularly from the factories owners, to having more consideration by the government before the start of Victorian Era, and then a progressive increase of concerns for their safety and well being as this period advances, getting a relatively humanitarian approach, closer to modern legislations as they were getting close to the 20th century.

Sources:

UK Parliament Living Heritage. (20225). Later factory legislation. UK Parliament, website: Later factory legislation - UK Parliament

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