of the "female assistants" for whom seats must be provided. The provisions of the act of 1892 did not apply to members of the same family living in a house of which the shop forms part, or to members of the employer's family, or to anyone wholly employed as a domestic servant. The Shop Hours Act 1893 provided for the salaries and expenses of the inspectors appointed by councils under by the Shop Hours Act 1892. The Shop Hours Act 1895 provided a penalty for failure of a shop to keep exhibited the notice of the provisions of the earlier acts, which in the absence of a penalty it had been impossible to enforce. Neither the term "employer " nor "shop assistant" (used in the title of the act of 1899) was defined; but other terms had the meaning assigned to them in the Factory and Workshop Act 1878. The "employer" had, in case of any contravention alleged, the same power as the "occupier" in the Factory Acts to exempt himself from fines on proof of due diligence and of the fact that some other person is the actual offender. In London, where the County Council appointed men and women inspectors to apply the acts of 1892 to 1899, there were, in 1900, 73,929 premises, and in 1905, 84,269, under inspection. In the latter year, there were 22,035 employing persons under eighteen years of age. In 1900, the number of young persons under the acts were: indoors, 10,239 boys and 4,428 girls; outdoors, 35,019 boys, 206 girls. In 1905, the ratio between boys and girls had decidedly altered: indoors, 6,602 boys, 4,668 girls; outdoors, 22,654 boys, 308 girls. The number of irregularities reported in 1900 was 9,204 and the prosecutions were 111; in 1905 the irregularities were 6966 and the prosecutions numbered 34. As regards the act of 1899, in only 1,088 of the 14,844 shops affected in London was there found in 1900 to be failure to provide seats for the women employed in retailing goods. The Shop Hours Act 1904 gave certain additional optional powers to local authorities, making a "closing order" fixing the hour (not earlier than 7 p.m., or on one day in the week 1 p.m.) at which shops in their area had to stop serving customers. Councils could decide the types of shops to which the order would apply. The consent of two-thirds of