The
Matchstick
Girls' Strike
The True Story
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Enola Holmes and the
Shocking Case of the
Matchstick Girl Strike
2 July, 1888. Bow, the East End, where London’s most impoverished lived.
On this day in history a factory worker is dismissed from her job at the
matchmaker factory Bryant & May. The terms of the dismissal are unfair,
a knee-jerk reaction from the management against the slew of recent bad
publicity. The dismissal leaves the remaining workers enraged. Already
demoralised after enduring years of abuse and hazardous conditions,
the women of the factory take drastic action: they down their tools and
step away from their workbenches. By the end of the day, 1,400 women
and girls have ceased to work, starting one of history’s most famous
industrial actions. The strike of the matchstick girls has begun.
This pivotal moment of industrial history was the inspiration for some of
the events in Enola Holmes 2. Uncover the staggering facts behind the
story to discover the bravery and grit of the real matchstick girls.
Phossy Jaw
Before the strike, the matchstick women and girls were considered to be
the bottom of London society. Management described them as a ‘rough
sort’. Bryant & May employed over 5,000 women and teenage girls by
the 1880s, but a job at the matchstick factory had few benefits. Women
would work gruelling 14-hour days to earn as little as five shillings a
week. To understand this ‘starvation wage’, 20 shillings is worth about
£1 in today’s money. This pitiful wage was reduced further by ‘fines’
levied by the foremen. Reasons for docking the girls’ wages included
going to the toilet, speaking or having an untidy workstation. Another
was for having dirty feet, when most of the matchstick girls were too
poor to afford shoes!
The factory ran under the ‘sweating system’, which allowed
overcrowding, poor lighting and poor ventilation. Workers operated
extremely dangerous machinery, such as the cutter which separated
the matchsticks. The phrase ‘never mind your fingers’ was often heard
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Enola Holmes and the Shocking Case of the Matchstick Girl Strike
Match factory worker with phossy jaw
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Enola Holmes and the Shocking Case of the Matchstick Girl Strike
around it! Phossy jaw, a terrible bone cancer that affected the lower part
of the face, was rife. This was caused by inhaling the fumes from the
cheap white phosphorus used to create the matchstick head. The whole
side of the face turned green, then black as the cancer developed. Foulsmelling pus oozed from abscesses in the jawbone. Sufferers lost their
teeth and were left in terrible agony. Girls with advanced cases of the
cancer usually died. Bryant & May were not ignorant of phossy jaw; if a
matchstick girl complained of toothache (one of the first symptoms), they
were ordered to have the tooth removed or were immediately sacked.
Annie Besant
In early June, Annie Besant, a social and political activist, attended a
speech on female labour at a social reform meeting hosted by the
Fabian Society. She was horrified to hear about the treatment of the
women and the sweatshop conditions at the Bryant & May factory. She
visited the factory gates to interview a group of women and discovered
how they were severely affected by the work, with hair loss and injuries
from operating the heavy machinery common. Most shocking for
Besant was the use of white phosphorus. Charles Dickens had written
about phossy jaw as early as the 1850s, so the disease was well known,
as was its cause.
On 23 June, Besant wrote a damning article in her weekly paper, The
Link. The article was titled ‘White Slavery in London’. She described the
long hours, low pay and the inherent dangers of white phosphorus. The
article caused a tremendous public outcry. Management were furious.
They threatened to sue Annie Besant for libel if she did not retract the
article. When that didn’t succeed, they tried to coerce the workers by
making them sign a paper saying the women were happy to work at the
factory. A group of women refused, resulting in one of its leaders being
sacked. The response was immediate: 1,400 women and girls went
on strike.
The Matchstick Girl Union
Despite their low position and crippling poverty, these women and girls
were able to orchestrate one of the largest industrial actions in history.
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Enola Holmes and the Shocking Case of the Matchstick Girl Strike
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Enola Holmes and the Shocking Case of the Matchstick Girl Strike
Public opinion was overwhelmingly supportive of the matchstick girls,
with Besant and other newspapers calling for a boycott of Bryant & May
matches due to the use of white phosphorus. Suffragette Emmeline
Pankhurst also got behind the cause.
The women at the factory formed a Matchstick Girl Union and asked
Annie Besant to be their leader. She agreed, concerned for the vulnerable
women and teenage girls who were now left without work or money.
With Besant’s shrewd leadership, the Union successfully negotiated for
the unfair fines to be abolished, plus an increase in wages. Perhaps most
importantly of all, meals were to be taken in a separate room to avoid
the toxic fumes, reducing cases of phossy jaw. The women accepted
these terms and returned to work triumphant.
The Legacy of the Matchstick Girls
The Bryant & May dispute was the first strike by unorganised workers
to gain national publicity. The Matchstick Girls’ Strike was therefore
influential in encouraging other workers to form trade unions across
the country. Years later, trade union leader Henry Snell described the
women at the Bryant & May factory as ‘courageous girls’ and said the
strike was one of the ‘most important events in the history of labour
organisation of any country’.
Annie Besant, among others, continued to campaign against the use of
white phosphorus in matches. In 1891, the Salvation Army opened its
own matchstick factory using the much safer red phosphorus. Conditions
in the Salvation Army factory were significantly better and the pay was
double. This forced the Bryant & May management to rethink their
overall policies. By 1901, Bryant & May had abolished the use of white
phosphorus.
In 2022, English Heritage announced that it would commemorate the
former site of the Bryant & May factory with a blue plaque. Later that year
the actress Anita Dobson unveiled the plaque alongside Sam Johnson,
the great-granddaughter of strike committee leader Sarah Chapman
and trustee of the Matchstick Girls Memorial.
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Enola Holmes and the Shocking Case of the Matchstick Girl Strike
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