How times have changed! A look at accidents in the workplace

Workplace regulations have changed enormously since Victorian days when a typical workplace accident was a child losing their hand in mills or a small boy getting stuck up a chimney while cleaning soot from it. As a result, the number of personal injuries caused by accidents in the workplace have been dramatically reduced.

The horror stories about the situations small children had to endure in this country since the Medieval period in order to eat on a daily basis have been widely documented and some still go on today in the developing world.

In the Middle Ages, when castle building, cathedral construction and fabric production were important industries, one famous job was making cloth less itchy by trampling it underfoot in a vat of urine. The amonia produced by the urine caused nausea and made the eyes water of anybody standing nearby. The only positive side effect was strong calves from the aerobic exercise given to the person doing the trampling, who would also end up with extremely clean toenails.

The Channel 4 series 'Worst Jobs in History' talked about these terrible jobs in more detail. Being paid was the best you could expect for any job you undertook, and any threat to your physical health was at your own risk. In many cases, the more chance you had of receiving a personal injury, the better you were paid. If you experienced a workplace accident, then it was all in a day's work.

Amongst the extremely uncool and unglamorous jobs given to young people at that time were the arming squire (running unprotected into battle to replace broken armour on the knight you served) and the leech collector (collecting leeches barefoot in rivers by waiting for the leeches to attach themselves to your legs).

Other jobs included being an artist's model (often tied up in ropes to maintain the right position for the painter) or a link boy - somebody who would take rich people home late at night through unlit streets while all the time trying to avoid murderers, rapists and muggers.

During the Tudor and Stuart period, some slightly more interesting jobs had appeared including the upwardly mobile role of being a spitboy (roasting meat for your masters and getting fed the tasty leftovers) but low-end production jobs like being a violin-string maker still involved unpleasant tasks such as pulling warm intestines from a dead sheep.

By the Victorian period, things had only mildly improved. Crawling under factory equipment to collect stray threads was another job young children were assigned to, as they were the only people small enough to disappear underneath the machinery.

The fact that the machinery was moving and could cut them or chop off a limb at any moment was immaterial.

This type of hazard was not considered to constitute a workplace accident at all - the thread could be used again and needed to be collected and that was all that mattered. Hand injuries and missing fingers were extremely common and today's personal injury solicitors would have a field day pursuing these cases as work accident claims.

A navvy was a less tricky but equally labour-intensive role: digging and building the thousands of miles of railway track due to cross Britain. If you had a workplace accident, slipping over while wheeling a barrow of mud up a slope for example, nobody would be helping you get to a chiropractor in this role! You'd be out on your ear and stuck in the middle of nowhere without any money to buy your bread and cheese.

Today, employers must comply with health and safety regulations in order to prevent accidents in the workplace. Jobs are still risky, employers often fail to inform their employers about their rights, and workplace accidents still occur but at least there is legislation in place to protect workers and enough unions across the country to support workers' rights and fight on their behalf.

Current workplace health and safety standards that are the employer's responsibility relate to maintaining the workplace and any other equipment required to do the company's work.

They include keeping workplaces clean, allowing enough space to move around workstations and making sure floors and traffic routes don't have holes and aren't uneven or slippery. Access points and equipment including doors, gates, lifts and stairs also have to be properly maintained with clear emergency points indicated.

Maintaining the correct standards are for the benefit of both employer and employee in terms of reducing sickness and workplace accidents and so increasing productivity. Ensuring that employees enjoy a healthy working environment and don't suffer from stress is another major consideration as it's a common cause of illness.

Other areas of emotional health requiring constant monitoring include bullying and harassment, drug use (including alcohol and smoking), insufficient breaks or excessively long working hours.

For full information about the UK's workplace health and safety regulations, visit the Health and Safety Executive website at www.hse.gov.uk
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