Most contemporaries agreed that the first factory act – the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802 – was poorly enforced. In 1819 a House of Lords committee documented this. Though in many counties J.P.s had followed the directions of the act and appointed visitors, appointments had tailed off; such visitors as there were rarely reported. Owners of eligible factories increasingly failed to register with magistrates. Sir Robert Peel was one of the few who continued to do so – but then, he had been the chief promoter of the act.

Recent historians of the factory acts have generally chosen to begin their studies with the act of 1833, the first to provide for salaried inspectors: if the acts ever acquired teeth, it was then. The 1802 act nonetheless deserves our attention. It does so because of its impact by way of idea. Subsequent attempts to secure factory legislation took it as a starting point: proponents of regulation argued that Parliament had conceded the principle that factory conditions required its attention; all that remained to be settled was how far regulation should be extended, and how best to give it effect. British factory acts, moreover, provided models for regulation in other parts of the world.