To fully understand the Matchgirl Strike, we must look at the history of the match-making trade. A strike-anywhere match with a white phosphorous-coated head, known as the lucifer match, gained popularity in the 1830s. The rise of usage came from the relatively cheap cost to manufacture and the convenience of being to strike the match anywhere.
Until the mid-1960s, the working conditions in the match factories were generally unfavorable, lacking adequate ventilation and with the high percentage of child laborers, many illnesses in the workforce became prevalent. “By far the worst ailment associated with the trade was the dreadful ‘phossy jaw’, and illness involving terrible pain, swelling of the gums, the loss of teeth, decay and disintegration of the jaw bone, disfiguration of the face, and occasionally death” (Satre 9). With all these issues running rampant, it inevitably led to a change of the status quo.
The primary cause of the strike came from the poor working conditions in the factories. In June of 1888, Clementina Black gave a speech on Female Labor during a Fabian Society meeting in London, which in turn, spurred Annie Besant to go out and interview some of the workers at Bryant & May (a prolific match manufacturer). She found that the women worked fourteen hours a day, at a pay of less than five shillings a week, which was often kept in part from them due to a system of fines ranging from three pence to a whole shilling. If workers were late, they were fined a half-day’s pay.
In addition to the terrible wages, Besant discovered that the women working in these factories were also being affected by the phosphorus that was being used to make the matches.”This caused the yellowing of the skin and hair loss and phossy jaw” (Simkin). Despite the United States and Sweden having bans on the use of phosphorus, the British refused such a ban, stating it would put a restraint on free trade.
Upon Besant releasing her article in The Link, Bryant & May attempted to force their workers to sign statements that they were happy with their working conditions. A group of women were fired after refusing to sign the statements, and the response from the remaining workers was immediate. 1400 women under the employ of Bryant & May went on strike.
In addition to the support that the Matchgirls received from Besant’s own paper The Link, William Stead’s Pall Mall Gazette and Henry Hyde Champion’s Labour Elector sided with their cause, as well as Catharine Booth of the Salvation Army. With the boycott from these three newspapers, combined with the formation of the Matchgirls’ Union, Bryant & May caved and after three weeks, announced it was willing to re-employ the dismissed women and bring an end to the fine system.
The Matchgirls Strike was the first strike by non-unionized workers that gained national publicity and inspired the formation of unions all over Great Britain. “The trade union leader, Henry Snell wrote several years later: These courageous girls had neither funds, organizations, nor leaders, and they appealed to Mrs. Besant to advise and lead them. It was a wise and most excellent inspiration…”
WORKS CITED
(Simkin)Satre, Lowell J. “After the Match Girls’ Strike: Bryant and May in the 1890s.” Victorian Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, 1982, pp. 7–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3827491.
Simkin, John. Spartacus Educational, Spartacus Educational, https://www.spartacus-educational.com/TUmatchgirls.htm.