The United Kingdom mines and quarries regulation in 1910 was a specialised topic in UK labour law, given the complexity of the legislation and seriousness of injuries that people suffered.
This was strikingly seen in the evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour in 1892-1894, where the repeated expression of satisfaction on the part of the miners with the provisions as distinct from the administration of the code (" with a few trifling exceptions ") is in marked contrast with the long and varied series of claims and contentions put forward for amendment of the Factory Acts.
extended the powers to propose, amend and modify special rules, provided for representation of workmen on arbitration under the principal act on any matter in difference, modified the provision for plans of mines in working and abandoned mines, amended three of the general rules (inspection before commencing work, use of safety lamps and non-inflammable substances for stemming), and empowered the secretary of state by order to prohibit or regulate the use of any explosive likely to become dangerous.
With reference to the last-cited rule, during 1898 a Prussian mining commission visited Great Britain, France and Belgium, to study and compare the various methods of inspection by working miners established in these three countries.
They found that, so far as the method had been applied, it was most satisfactory in Great Britain, where the whole cost is borne by the workers' own organisations, and they attributed part of the decrease in number of accidents per thousand employed since 1872 to the inauguration of this system.
In the latter Special it is not until an industry or process has been scheduled p as dangerous or injurious by the secretary of state's order that occasion arises for the formation of special rules, and then the initiative rests with the Factory Department whereas in mines it is incumbent in every case on the owner, agent or manager to propose within three months of the commencement of any working, for the approval of the secretary of state, special rules best calculated to prevent dangerous accidents, and to provide for the safety, convenience and proper discipline of the persons employed in or about the mine.
Of the sections touching on wages questions, the prohibition of the payment of wages in public-houses remains unaltered, being re-enacted in 1887; the sections relating to payment by weight for amount of mineral gotten by persons employed, and for checkweighing the amount by a "checkweigher" stationed by the majority of workers at each place appointed for the weighing of the material, were revised, particularly as to the determination of deductions by the act of 1887, with a view to meeting some problems raised by decisions on cases under the act of 1872.
The attempt seems not to have been wholly successful, the highest legal authorities having expressed conflicting opinions on the precise meaning of the terms "mineral contracted to be gotten."
As regards legal proceedings, the chief amendments of the act of 1872 are: the extension of the provision that the "owner, agent, Adminis- or manager" charged in respect of any contravention.
The result of the proceedings against workmen by the owner, agent or manager in respect of an offence under the act is to be reported within twenty-one days to the inspector of the district.
In the case of a fireman, examiner, deputy, onsetter, pump minder, fanman or furnace man, the maximum period for which he may be below ground is nine hours and a half.
The act came into force on 1 July 1909 except for the counties of Northumberland and Durham where its operation was postponed until 1 January 1910.
c. 16), that "any premises or place shall not be excluded from the definition of a factory or workshop by reason only that such premises, &c., are or is in the open air," thereby overruling the decision in Kent v. Astley that quarries in which the work, as a whole, was carried on in the open air were not factories; in a schedule to the same act quarries were defined as "any place not being a mine in which persons work in getting slate, stone, coprolites or other minerals."
At the same time currency was given, by the published reports of the evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, to the wish of large numbers of quarrymen that open as well as underground quarries should come under more specialised government inspection.
c. 19) deemed a nuisance liable to be dealt with summarily in the manner provided by the Public Health Act 1875.
Fatal accidents resulted in 1900 in 127 deaths; compared with 1899 there was an increase of 10 in the number of deaths, and, as Professor Le Neve Foster pointed out, this exceeded the average death-rate of underground workers at mines under the Coal Mines Acts during the previous ten years, in spite of the quarrier "having nothing to fear from explosions of gas, underground fires or inundations."
He attributed the difference to a lax observance of precautions which might in time be remedied by stringent administration of the law.
extended to all "workmen" who are manual labourers other than miners, with the exception of domestic or menial servants, the prohibition of payment of wages in public-houses, beer-shops and other places for the sale of spirituous or fermented liquor, laid down in the Coal.