Chapter XXV: Millstone Building: French Buhrstone

In the Final Report of the Dangerous Trades Committee of the Home Office,[79] the subject of the building or making of millstones by a hard, flint-like stone known in the trade as French buhrstone, and which is imported into this country from Epernon in the Valley of the Seine, and from Fierté-sous-Jouarre, is fully discussed and the dangers exemplified. Buhrstone is one of the hardest stones in nature. It is a variety of quartz, and is so hard and destructive to the steel tools used by the workmen that in ten minutes a workman will knock off the points of as many chisels. The stone has to be shaped into wedges of varying size. These wedges are placed together in the form of a circle cemented together, and subsequently surrounded by one or more strong iron hoops. The millstones are used for grinding flour, cement, feeding stuffs, etc. The chiselling of the buhrstone is generally conducted in the open air or in a shed open at the sides, the rough stone resting meanwhile upon a tub filled with sand, or upon some other solid support. Fortunately French millstone building is a small industry, for it is one that is most destructive to human life. Millstone masons are a short-lived body of men. Their work is hard, most of it is done practically in the open, without adequate protection from cold, wind, and rain; the wages earned are good, often as much as fifty or sixty shillings a week, but as a class the workmen are intemperate and careless. No doubt alcoholism and indiscretion play their part in shortening the lives of the men. As the stone is very hard, and the point of the steel tools with which the men chisel is readily knocked off, the workmen are exposed to two dangers: (1) splinters of steel and stone striking the eye; and (2) inhalation of the dust given off with each stroke of the hammer. Considering the compactness and the great weight of the stone, it is astonishing that the dust evolved in chiselling ever reaches the lungs at all. In dealing with the question of dust generated in any trade, it is to be remembered that while the dust that is seen lying about in a factory may seem to be heavy and the particles large, yet there is a finer and more impalpable dust created at the time the particular work is being done, and it is very largely this which is inhaled and inflicts the damage. When a workman is chiselling a piece of buhrstone, two different kinds of particles are given off, mineral particles from the stone, and metallic from the chisels. These mingle together and form the dust that is inhaled. That steel particles are present in the dust rising from the stone was indicated to my colleagues on the Departmental Committee and myself by a workman who, having magnetised the blade of a pocket knife, placed the same in his waistcoat pocket, and “after moving it about a few moments withdrew it, when it was found to be covered along its edge with a fern-like coating consisting entirely of minute particles of steel.” It is to the presence of very small fragments of steel imbedded in the skin of the arms of the men, who frequently chisel with their sleeves rolled up, that is due the bluish-black mottling of the forearms of millstone builders.

The men, as already stated, are short-lived. Several whom I examined in the stoneyards on the banks of the Thames acknowledged the unhealthy character of their employment, and said that they and their comrades knew they might be able to follow their calling for only ten or fifteen years, seldom more, and that probably before the tenth year was reached, symptoms of pulmonary consumption would show themselves, attended by cough and blood-spitting. Hæmoptysis is a very common symptom, and in this respect, as also in the rapid course of the illness, the pulmonary consumption of millstone builders differs from the phthisis of potters in which hæmorrhage from the lung is rather infrequent. Once destructive changes have been started in the lungs of a buhrstone chiseller, the disease progresses quickly to a fatal termination. The Dangerous Trades Committee found that men who began this occupation when very young seldom lived beyond thirty-six to forty years of age.

_Prevention._--It is such a dangerous occupation that if the industry were swept out of existence altogether it would be no great loss either to the commercial world or to civilisation at large. The number of men employed in it is small, and as steel rollers have to a large extent replaced French millstones in the grinding of food and other stuffs, milling can be just as successfully accomplished without as with these stones. The trade will probably die a natural death, but so long as the industry continues, the men ought to wear respirators. If this were done much illness would probably disappear. The men complain of the irksomeness of respirators, and of the heat that they cause. The laborious nature of their employment creates a need for free, full, and easy respiration. The dust that is given off in chiselling the stones is very heavy, and is therefore capable of being readily carried downwards and away from the workmen by powerful suction, yet the conditions under which the work is carried on, viz., in open places and unprotected sheds, makes the use of fans difficult, if not impossible. The wearing of goggles or eye-guards should be insisted upon.

THOMAS OLIVER.