T he main purpose of my original article was to refute what I had interpreted from a number of texts, one published as recently as i982, to be a long-established and widely accepted view.' This view is that the law and the new government factory inspectors were frustrated by a wilfully obstructive magistracy, either in sympathy with or drawn from the ranks of the textile manufacturers; this allegedly being evidenced in the problem of obtaining convictions in the courts of Petty Sessions. It was to be expected that this interpretation would give rise to further debate. It is somewhat remarkable, therefore, that in the preceding critiques there should be, though sometimes latent, so many areas of agreement, particularly in relation to the role of the magistracy. The routes to such conclusions however, may be less common and may retain the source of some disagreement. In terms of methodology Bartrip's concern is whether it is valid to construe cases withdrawn on payment of costs as de facto convictions.2 As originally stated, this category is concerned only with cases withdrawn on payment of costs by the defendant, such costs being in effect a mitigated penalty. It does not include cases withdrawn by the prosecution or those few where costs were awarded against the inspectorate. But the real authority for treating these cases as convictions is the inspectors themselves. In their statistical returns they regularly grossed such instances into total convictions, thereby indicating their own perception of the verdict.3 Fortunately, the issue of accepting or rejecting this method of categorization does not have to bring the debate to a sterile close. Having questioned the validity of -the methodology and suggested that by the standards of other regulatory crime Factory Act conviction rates might be viewed as moderate, even low, Bartrip goes on to demonstrate that, in accordance with my own claims for factory prosecutions, regulatory offences in fact often did yield high conviction rates of 90 per cent and more. The explanation of how this is accomplished, he quite properly claims, is relevant to Victorian factory regulation.4 As Bartrip states, inspectorial resources were undoubtedly very limited. Whether he is equally correct in saying that prosecutions brought before unpaid magistrates in local courts were costly is rather more doubtful, given that with very few exceptions the inspector or his superintendent was