Today in Labor History July 5, 1888: Three women were fired from the Bryant & May factory in East London for exposing the appalling working conditions there. Women typically had to work 14-hour days at very low wages and they often suffered debilitating diseases, like Phossy Jaw, from exposure to white phosphorus. The other 1400 women and girl laborers come out in solidarity leading to the “Match Girls' Strike” which was unsuccessful as a strike, but highly effective at generating solidarity and galvanizing the working-class movement. In 1966, Bill Owen and Tony Russell produced a musical about the strike called “The Matchgirls.” Welsh writer Lynette Rees wrote about it in her novel, “The Matchgirl.”
#PhossyJaw Note: Recent tvseries #EnolaHolmes 2 ends on the triumphant visual of the matchgirls marching toward Parliament, BUT the 1888 strike didn’t definitively eliminate the use of #whitephosphorus.
That took another 20 years; Bryant & May didn’t stop using white phosphorus until 1901, and it took the 1906 Berne Convention prohibiting the use of white phosphorus to compel the House of Commons to finally prohibit its usage in the UK after 1910.
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