Famous places within 5 minutes walk of my house Number 1 - the Bryant and May match factory
Back in Victorian times everybody needed matches, and there was a very good chance that those matches would have been made just down the road from me in Bow. The famous Bryant and May match factory on Fairfield Road was opened in 1861 (in a building previously used for making candles and, before that, crinolines). It wasn't a pleasant place to work, and the tinderbox conditions were to be the spark for a social revolution.
The match factory's 1400 workers were mostly young women, many under the age of 15. They worked in appalling conditions for up to 12 hours a day and for a wage of less than five shillings a week. A system of heavy fines was in place for offences such as talking, lateness, dropping matches or going to the toilet without permission. (Sounds much like working in a modern call centre). Many of the women suffered from 'phossy jaw', a particularly nasty form of bone cancer caused by handling the yellow phosphorous used in match production. First your skin turned yellow, then your hair fell out, then the whole side of your face turned green and then black, discharging foul-smelling pus, and finally you died. Workers rights were certainly not top of the management's list of priorities.
In 1888 a journalist called Annie Besant visisted the factory to see conditions for herself. She was appalled by what she saw. She wrote an damning article in her newspaper, The Link, exposing the dreadful conditions in the factory and contrasting these with huge payouts to shareholders. Bryant & May refuted her claims but, when a group of women at the factory refused to back the company, the rebels were immediately sacked. The fiery-tempered matchgirls walked out on strike, and the dispute was aflame.
Strike action was almost unheard of in those days, but Annie and the matchgirls were not to be intimidated. They formed a union, held rallies in Bow and the West End, set up a system of strike pay and slowly gained the support of the British public through the national press. Influential people such as the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army and George Bernard Shaw lent their support. Within a fortnight the company had relented and agreed major improvements to conditions of service and the removal of unfair practices. They also (eventually) agreed to move over to using the much-safer red phosphorus in match production. A few well-organised working class girls had fought back against their bosses and had won, and this victory ignited the trade union movement.
The Bryant & May match factory in Fairfield Road was rebuilt in 1911 - an enormous building that still stands today. Production of matches finally ceased in 1979. The building then lay derelict for a few years before property developers moved in and transformed the site into a hugely successful housing development called Bow Quarter. There's now a swimming pool, a sauna, a shop, a restaurant, even an estate agent, but many of the apartments are tiny and overpriced. The new inhabitants of the old match factory live in relatively opulent conditions, safely protected behind high fences and electronic gates. I wonder how many of them are aware that their property was once home to sick phossy-jawed girls working in extreme poverty. And don't mention socialist revolution, it might bring the property prices down.
Famous places within 5 minutes walk of my house
Back in Victorian times everybody needed matches, and there was a very good chance that those matches would have been made just down the road from me in Bow. The famous Bryant and May match factory on Fairfield Road was opened in 1861 (in a building previously used for making candles and, before that, crinolines). It wasn't a pleasant place to work, and the tinderbox conditions were to be the spark for a social revolution.
Strike action was almost unheard of in those days, but Annie and the matchgirls were not to be intimidated. They formed a union, held rallies in Bow and the West End, set up a system of strike pay and slowly gained the support of the British public through the national press. Influential people such as the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army and George Bernard Shaw lent their support. Within a fortnight the company had relented and agreed major improvements to conditions of service and the removal of unfair practices. They also (eventually) agreed to move over to using the much-safer red phosphorus in match production. A few well-organised working class girls had fought back against their bosses and had won, and this victory ignited the trade union movement.
