ABSTRACT
Within the period covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Acts the accident victim had, as the extract above indicates, to elect between a common law action for damages and a claim for income maintenance under these Acts. The original legislation was amended from time to time, and later amendments brought prescribed industrial diseases within the scheme. A prescribed industrial disease being a disease identified as a risk in certain types of employment. In order to make a successful claim, the victim had to have contracted the disease and have worked in a type of employment for which the disease was recognised. The victim did not have to establish that the injury was caused by the fault of the employer in order to qualify for payments, so although payments were relatively small the lower burden of proof on the victim and relatively cheap claims procedures made it more attractive to the victim to claim compensation under the scheme than to sue for damages at common law. In some ways the scheme was more favourable to the worker than the State industrial injuries scheme which succeeded it in 1948, for the worker did not have to contribute to it. On the other hand, there was, for most employers, no requirement to insure against accident claims and so workers could not be confident that the funds would be available to provide payments to which the scheme entitled them.
