The New Factory Inspector.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 5906, 30 March 1894, Page 3

The New Factory Inspector.

A WOMAN APPOINTED. BY TELEGRAPH. (Daily Times' Own Correspondent.) Wellington, March 29. Mrs Grace Neill, who has been appointed Inspector of Factories for the districts of the North Island from Wellington to Wanganui, It a lady of attainments as well as of practical experience amongst the workers of England, Germany, and Australia. She has high recommendations from the Queensland Government, where she was a prominent member of the Royal Commission of Factories in 1892, and later has been specially employed to ascertain the extent and nature of the distress among the wives and children of the necessitous of the city of Brisbane and suburbs. After her arrival in New Zealand she was employed as a typewriter in the Labor Bureau, and later took up the translation and conduct of the French and German correspondence of that department. Mrs Neill has had large experience in hospital management, and was for some years superintendent of one of the principal hospitals of Manchester, while her London hospital experiences brought her into dose contact with the grimmest aspects of the question as developed by the squalor and poverty of the London poor. Her work in this direction is amply attested by men of the highest professional reputation in London, and it is not unlikely that her experience and ability may be turned to good account in connection with the hospitals and asylumnsof this colony. A long residence in Germany familiarised her with modern Socialism in its home, and for some time she successfully conducted and edited an English journal in Dresden. As a journalist I can speak with knowledce of her work that she can write a political article, review a new book, criticise an opera or an oratorio, with facility, judgment, and ability. I speak with knowledge of the lady's career and am familiar with her literary work, and, as, in addition to her very high attainments and practical business qualifications, she has profound sympathy for the cause of all honest workers —the result of a wide knowledge of the labor problem—the Government may be congratulated upon an excellent appointment.