1837 Slave Compensation Act (1 & 2 Vict. c. 3). Following the legislative abolition of the British slave trade in 1833 (3 & 4 Will. 4 c. 73), this act authorised the financial compensation of former slave owners in the Caribbean, Mauritius and Cape of Good Hope but afforded no reparations or material relief to the recently liberated populations.

1840 Act to Extend the Practice of Vaccination (3 & 4 Vict. c. 29). Enacted in a period in which smallpox posed a serious threat to public health, this legislation permitted Poor Law guardians to appoint medical officers to administer vaccination at public expense. The act also outlawed the common medical practice of variolation – the administration of infected matter from a sick individual to a healthy one as a prophylactic gesture.

1840 Chimney Sweepers and Chimneys Regulation Act (3 & 4 Vict. c. 85). The first of several acts which attempted to regulate the use of child labour in an industry in which the narrowness of chimney apertures and the presence of carcinogenic soot were everyday hazards for the so-called ‘climbing boys’. The act prohibited individuals of both sexes under the age of twenty-one from climbing chimneys, though its provisions were frequently ignored by both employers and householders. Further legislation was necessarily enacted in 1864 (27 & 28 Vict. c. 37), 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 70) and 1894 (57 & 58 Vict. c. 51).

1842 Mines and Collieries Act (5 & 6 Vict. c. 99). A further piece of legislation driven by an increasing awareness of the presence of child labour in the national economy, this act banned the underground employment of boys under the age of ten in the mining industry. Women and girls were, further, completely prohibited from working underground by the act, and individuals under fifteen were no longer allowed to operate machinery.

1844 Factories Act (7 & 8 Vict. c. 15). This act limited the daily working hours of women and all young persons under the age of eighteen to twelve hours on weekdays and nine on Saturdays: Sundays were culturally regarded as a day of spiritual contemplation, and this convention implicitly permitted physical rest also. Employees under the age of thirteen worked a maximum of six-and-a-half hours on weekdays and six on Saturdays, receiving in addition three hours of formal education on those days.