Regulating Work-Related Death - A History

The regulation of workplace safety was not really a legal issue before 1800. While civil law allowed members of the public injured by the actions of employees or tradesmen to obtain damages under the tort 

This is the basis of the maxim volenti non fit injuria, which defined the employer-employee relationship. Not only did this approach assume that employers and employees shared the requisite knowledge to allow free contracting (Banks 2009 131), it also ignored the pressures to enter into work that resulted from the Poor Laws, which offered very little support to unwaged paupers. As a result, risk was a commodity to be priced and distributed between contracting parties rather than a social evil to be controlled. 

The backdrop to much of the legislation passed in this period was the extension of the franchise by the Reform Act of 1832, the rationalisation of poverty relief and the workhouse system by the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1844, and continued opposition to legislation restricting free trade, notably the Corn laws, repealed in 1847 (Ward 1962 302). These trends all contextualise the Factory Acts that were passed in this period they slowly extended protective rights to a wider class of people, gradually systematised the infrastructure of an interventionist state, but 

The late second wave Regulation and the public interest 

The Factory Acts (Extension) Act 1864 expanded the scope of the legislation passed in relation to the textile industry, extending it to other industries including earthenware production, match-making, and explosives manufacture. In 1867, the legislation was again extended to 

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