In the 1800’s, life for working class women was turbulent and demanding. The century saw many revolutions in women’s rights, but gender inequality was deeply entrenched and despite some movement in the right direction, life for women was still fundamentally defined by their gender.
Seeming wins for female independence were seen in increased education opportunities; the ability for women to earn a salary; and changes to laws on property ownership. Yet despite being literate, with money in the bank and stocks in their own names, throughout most of the 19th century women remained unable to vote, leave an abusive husband, nor attend university.
Over the 1800s, a series of innovations increased the yields from the agriculture industry in Britain, including transport infrastructure, crop rotation, and new innovations in equipment. This had the effect of freeing up working class women from agriculture, which was handy, since simultaneously the demand for factory workers had risen. However, skilled work in factories and industry remained almost exclusively open to men. Jobs that allowed workers to develop new skills and progress up the salary ladder, such as supervision and management roles, and work that utilised advances in technology, were mostly out of reach for women in the 1800s.
In the present day, studies consistently show that women in Britain still take on significantly more unpaid domestic labour than men. Today, a wife and mother might expect to do around 33% more than her partner, but for her 1800’s counterpart, this was likely to be 100%. Although it was a financial necessity for many working class women in the 1800s to bring money into the household, entrenched social expectations meant that cooking, cleaning, and raising children often remained the sole responsibility of women.
A woman employed in the Bryant and May match factory in Bow in the 1880s would have earned between 4 - 12 shillings per week, which was far lower even than bricklayers, carpenters, or even farm workers.
The work days were gruelling, lasting between 10 - 12 hours, for which workers were exposed to dangerous chemicals, and heavy fines were inflicted for the smallest of mistakes. Factory management considered the physical health of the workers to be worth nothing - if it was considered at all - and so injury, such as loss of fingers, was commonplace. Just as commonplace, but even more disturbing, was the prevalence of ‘phossy jaw’, a form of bone cancer caused by the use of white phosphorus in the match-making process. In those times, when anaesthetic was not a given, the prospect of surgery was grim.
It is no surprise that in 1888, the girls and women of Bryant and May reached breaking point, and united in one of the influential examples of strike action in the UK. A social reformer and Fabian named Annie Besant published a newspaper article exposing working conditions at the factory, prompting the firing of one worker, which sparked a revolution amongst the remaining workforce. The victory of the Matchgirls set the foundations of the new labour movement and the formation of their Union of Women Matchmakers heralded the dawn of New Unionism.
Although there is still work to be done, in the UK injustices as vast and explicit as those lived by the matchgirls of the 1800s are firmly in the past. Women are no longer barred from any professions, and the number of women in senior management positions across all industries continues to rise steadily.
We can’t make progress without continuing to honour the work done by those who have come before us. We are proud to have commissioned a musical work telling the story of the 1888 Matchgirls Strike for our project in partnership with The Matchgirls Memorial. The piece, A Fair Field, by Jonathan Pease, will be premiered by massed community choirs and community musicians on the 1st July, at the Great Hall of the People's Palace in Mile End.
To learn more about the story, and the women of the strike, we encourage you to visit The Matchgirls Memorial’s website, where you can read more about the historic event and important work of the charity.