Table Of ContentFatigue, the Science of Work, and
the Making of the Working-Class Body
HEALTH & EFFICIENCY
STEFFAN BLAYNEY
This page intentionally left blank
Health & Efficiency
A Volume in the Series
Activist studies of science & technology
Edited by
sigrid schmalzer
Health & Efficiency
Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the
Making of the Working- Class Body
Steffan Blayney
university of MAssAchusetts Press
Amherst and Boston
copyright © 2022 by university of Massachusetts Press
this electronic version has been made freely available under a creative commons (cc- By- nc-
nd) license, thanks to the support of the Wellcome trust, which permits non- commercial use,
distribution and reproduction provided the author and university of Massachusetts Press are
fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the license can be viewed
at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
All rights reserved
Printed in the united states of America
ISBN 978- 1- 62534- 649- 0 (paper); 650- 6 (hardcover)
designed by deste roosa
set in Big noodle titling and georgia
Printed and bound by Books International, Inc.
cover design by frank gutbrod
cover photo by frank gilbreth, Motion Efficiency Study, c. 1914. From the Frank and Lillian
Gilbreth Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of History, Smithsonian Institution.
library of congress cataloging- in-P ublication data
Names: Blayney, Steffan, author.
Title: Health and efficiency : fatigue, the science of work, and the making
of the working-class body / Steffan Blayney.
description: Amherst : university of Massachusetts Press, [2022] | series:
Activist studies of science and technology | revised version of author’s
thesis (doctoral)—university of london, 2017, titled health &
efficiency : fatigue, the science of work and the working body in
Britain, c.1870–1939. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021054325 (print) | LCCN 2021054326 (ebook) | ISBN
9781625346506 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781625346490 (paperback) | ISBN
9781613769270 (ebook) | isBn 9781613769287 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Fatigue—Great Britain—History. | Labor
productivity—Great Britain—History. | Industrial hygiene—Great
Britain—History. | Work—Physiological aspects. | Work—Psychological
aspects.
Classification: LCC T59.72 .B53 2022 (print) | LCC T59.72 (ebook) | DDC
658.5/40941—dc23/eng/20220201
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054325
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054326
British library cataloguing-i n- Publication data
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
An earlier version of some of the material in chapter 2 was published as “industrial fatigue and
the Productive Body: The Science of Work in Britain, c. 1900– 1918,” Social History of Medicine
32, no. 2 (May 2019): 310–2 8.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
IntroduCtIon 1
Chapter 1 the discovery of Fatigue 13
Chapter 2 Industrial Physiology and the Productive Body 45
Chapter 3 Industrial Psychology and the Human Factor 75
Chapter 4 the Market in Efficiency 107
Chapter 5 the Worker’s Voice 138
Conclusion 179
Notes 187
Index 233
v
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
this book has taken shape over a number of years, beginning life in
2014 as a PhD project at Birkbeck, University of London, and being
completed in Sheffield during the COVID-1 9 pandemic. Researching
and writing it has been a long process—o ften fatiguing, rarely efficient—
and over the past few years i have accumulated more debts of gratitude
than it would be practical to list individually. The ideas and arguments
contained here have been influenced not only by the work of other
historians and theorists, or by documents i’ve studied in archives,
but also by countless conversations and exchanges with friends and
comrades in London, Sheffield, and elsewhere.
no one person is more responsible for enabling this book to develop
from an initial set of vague and poorly formed ideas into its final form
than my doctoral supervisor at Birkbeck, Joanna Bourke. Her enthu-
siasm for the project from the outset, and her encouragement both
during and after the Phd, has been a constant source of motivation,
and her comments and advice on numerous early drafts have shaped
and improved the book’s argument beyond measure. The same is true
of my PhD examiners, Rhodri Hayward and Richard Hornsey, whose
incisive questions during the viva and careful readings of the thesis were
crucial in the process of transforming that piece of work into this book.
committing to undertake the research that forms the basis of this
book would have been impossible without a Wellcome trust Medical
humanities studentship, which enabled me to return to full-t ime study as
a Phd student as well as to travel to archives and conferences in the united
Kingdom and abroad. A further grant in 2018, jointly funded by Wellcome
and Birkbeck, then allowed me to pursue the work of transforming the
PhD thesis into a monograph. It is also thanks to the generosity of the
Wellcome trust that this book has been published open access, enabling
anyone who wants to read it to do so online free of charge.
My research has taken me to a number of libraries and archives,
and I am enormously grateful to the staff of Birkbeck Library, the
Bodleian libraries, the British library, the British library of Political
and economic science at lse, Brunel library, the Modern records
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Centre at Warwick, the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, the
national Archives, the royal society library, senate house library, the
University of Sheffield Library, the University College London Library,
and the Wellcome Library. I am also grateful to the many, mostly anon-
ymous, custodians of the various online archives and repositories used
every day by scholars around the world, without whom an enormous
amount of important material would remain forever lost or inaccessible.
Audience members and panelists at conferences and seminars
in Austin, Birmingham, Exeter, London, Manchester, Nottingham,
Oxford, and Sosnowiec offered comments, recommendations, and
advice on various early versions of the arguments contained here, while
Melissa dickson, emilie taylor- Brown, and an anonymous reviewer
at Social History of Medicine provided valuable feedback on drafts of
work related to the project that has been published elsewhere. Thanks
to lesley steinitz and Jack Windle, who were both kind enough to share
unpublished work; to Marjorie Levine- Clark, who sacrificed precious
hours of a transatlantic research trip to discuss my research at an early
stage; and to Ed Penington, who helped source an impossible- to- find
article at the last minute.
As a student at Birkbeck i was lucky to be welcomed into an intel-
lectual community that provided opportunities to discuss and develop
thoughts in collaboration with other scholars and to be part of an
institution that valued education as a lifelong process. I am thankful to
have been able to discuss ideas with my fellow research students, with
the first groups of undergraduate students I was allowed to teach, and
with academic and administrative staff members across the college.
Particular thanks are due to Jana comfort and siân green, for guiding
me and countless other students through our research programs in
history, classics, and archaeology. I am glad to have participated in
the theory reading group run by simon Jarrett and danae Karydaki in
the history department and in the Capital reading group organized
by David Thomas and Natalia Delgado. I am especially grateful to Guy
Beckett, and to everyone who has participated in our history Acts
workshops, for helping me always to think and rethink the relationship
between our historical work and our political movements, and more
recently to Phe Amis, Kate Bruce- lockhart, holly firmin, and flore
Janssen for their work in continuing and expanding the project beyond
Birkbeck and beyond the United Kingdom. The conference “The Body
