#OnThisDay in #history - Germaine de Staël died in 1817 at age 51. A native of #France Germaine was the daughter of Jacques Necker. A budding intellectual from an early age, Germaine sat in on salons run by her mother and refused to marry someone who wasn't intellectually stimulating to her.
As an adult, she ran her own salons and published political treatises (seen as proton-feminist) and novels (which caused Napoleon to exile her from Paris). #histodons#OTD@histodons#writer#author
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.”