Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History

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Dear Lady they have been trying to get the poor girls to say that it is all lies that has been printed and trying to make us sign papers that it is all lies; dear Lady nobody knows what it is we have put up with and we will not sign them. We thank you very much for the kindness you have shown to us. My dear Lady we hope you will not get into any trouble on our behalf as what you have spoken is quite true. (3) Interview with Bartholomew Bryant in The Star newspaper (July, 1888) The Bryant and May strike has remained ghettoised within labour history and, in particular, denied connection to new unionism. Even feminist historians failed the match women; they were reluctant, according to Raw, to compromise their own credibility as serious scholars working on muscular subjects, albeit with a gendered perspective, by association with such a tired old saw as the Bryant and May strike. The match women have not been hidden from history but hidden by history. According to Finnish folklore, "fire-steels contained magical powers. They were used in spells with which e.g. evil supernatural powers and lightnings were held away" (Raisio Archaeology Archive. Fire-Steel - TYA 619:273). Forgetting the bizarre Mrs Annie Besant, Louise Raw’s study of the family and community relationships of the matchgirl strikers is an interesting development in Labour history, which has tended to ignore this form of research (called prosopography), pioneered in a different context by Sir Lewis Namier. [ 9]Photomechanical reproduction of 'Matchgirl Strikes' in front of Bryant and May's factory, showing strikers campaigning for better working conditions, c. 1900 Tinder box made from the shells of two half gourds, containing flint, steel, and tinder in form of the pithy flower stem of an agave plant. Collected by R. Kislingbury on Saint Lucia, West Indies, Caribbean Sea, in 1910. It may be worth making plain that denying Mrs Annie Besant the deciding role conventional history has given her does not make the Bryant and May strike ‘spontaneous’. However, while Louise Raw identifies the strike leaders, she has not traced (perhaps she could not) the full internal details of the strike. If you like what you're reading online, why not take advantage of our subscription and get unlimited access to all of Times Higher Education's content? Yet - and this is Louise Raw's starting point - accounts of the strike have been deeply and systematically flawed. The "match girls" were not only exploited by their employers and patronised by middle-class sympathisers but more recently have been underestimated and infantilised by historians. Even those historians who famously sought to rescue workers' struggles from "the enormous condescension of posterity" failed to rehabilitate the match workers' action.

The standard myth about the matchgirls’ strike is that, inspired by Mrs Annie Besant’s discovery of their plight, some 1,400 matchgirls went on strike and, with the help of a ‘strike fund’ set up by the Fabians and with Mrs Annie Besant as their strike leader, the matchgirls marched after a three-week strike to total victory.Engels did indeed mention Annie Besant, but never with any praise. In fact, she was total persona non grata to both Eleanor Marx and Engels, and it was not long before both the SDF and the Fabians made it clear to her that, while she could speak and write for them, she would never be admitted into their inner circles. The light of a burning torch leading the way through the dark, a hearty meal stewing on a hearth, stories told around glowing embers and flying sparks – fire is one of the bases of human life. Used by almost every human on Earth, it has throughout time provided a source of warmth, the means to cook food, protection from predators, a way of making new tools and weapons, played a role in various religions, rituals, and ceremonies, and been a crucial component of energy production. Without fire, human evolution would not have been possible in the way we know it. Raw, Louise: ‘Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History’, Continuum, 2011

FREE training and production course // 8 weeks: Wednesdays, 4 October-22 November // JOLT Studios GL1 1RP It is unknown whether the touchwood belt described here was intended for use in firemaking, or possibly uncharred and kept as a medicinal (the material is an excellent styptic, used to staunch bleeding), or whether this is another fantastic element in the costume of the prophetess, for touchwood will sometimes glow with luminescence when decaying. I am most grateful to Louise Raw, whose outstanding work first published in 2009 documents in fine detail the strike and the events leading up to it. Cast about as it may, there is no way for Israel now to free itself from a hook that it baited itself.Other substances may also be charred and used as the spark-catching platform, including small pieces of "punky" or slightly rotten wood. In the Viking Age, apparently the preferred substance was called hnjóskr or fnjóskr, which is usually translated as "touchwood". Touchwood has a wide variety of names, but is technically a fungus of the Polyporus or Boletus family, especially Fomes fomentarius, Polyporus fomentarius or Boletus chirurgorum. Other terms used for this substance are amadou, punk, surgeon's agaric or oak agaric.

Döbereiner Lamps were some of the first ever lighters to be invented. Developed by German chemist Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (1780 – 1849) in 1823 That is not to say it is perfect, but its defects are peripheral, while its core analysis of the 1888 Bryant and May’s matchgirls’ strike demolishes the standard myths of the strike with a precision that a US drone can only dream of. [ 1] The second major type of fire-steel found in the Viking Age is one influenced by Eastern Baltic art. Some have been found in West Scandinavia, where they represent imports. The eastern type of firesteel has an ornate handle, usually of bronze, with a flat plate of steel attached at the bottom edge. The bronze handle many times represents two mounted figures, facing away from one another, although when less-skilled metalworkers copied this fashion the copies often became much less distinguishable. These fire-steels are used along with a long, narrow striking stone, and stones found with these often show a pronounced groove down which the steel was slid to create sparks.

A box of ‘Rupee Taendstiikker’ matches, sulphur-dipped and made with yellow, phosphorus. The box is decorated with Indian rupee coins, produced for export to India; made at Christiania Taendstikfabrik, Heggedal, Norway, 1874-1895.