WEBVTT - FB 108: Matchmakers: How a Dangerous Discovery Ignited the Labor Movement 0:00:01.560 --> 0:00:04.120 We all need a break from the constant cycle to 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:08.520 learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:11.399 Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:14.240 knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:17.239 new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.360 researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the rise 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.720 of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court, 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:27.960 and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:31.680 several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:35.240 a special limited time offer a free month of unlimited 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:38.519 access to their entire library. Sign up now through our 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.760 special U r L go to the Great Courses Plus 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.920 dot com slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses Plus dot 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:49.640 com slash o z Y the Great Courses Plus dot 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:57.000 Com slash Assy. Nobody knows for sure how many buckets 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.760 of urine Hinnig Brandt kept in his basement. By some accounts, 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:04.760 the seventeenth century German chemist had more than fifty. He 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:11.000 used to collect the urine from his neighbors. Why well, Brandt, 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:13.280 like a lot of great minds of his day, was 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:17.720 in pursuit of the elusive Philosopher's Stone, the legendary substance 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:22.360 capable of turning base metals into gold and ambitious scientists 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.959 into very rich men. Maybe it was the color. It 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.080 certainly wasn't the smell, but Hinnick Brandt was convinced that 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:35.480 by distilling human urine he could somehow create gold. He 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.160 was wrong, of course, but in a vial of boiled 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:42.040 urine he discovered something else in sixteen sixty nine. It 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:44.800 wasn't the Philosopher's Stone, but it was an element that 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:56.200 would prove just as valuable and destructive phosphorus. Welcome to Flashback, 0:01:56.320 --> 0:02:00.280 a podcast from Azzie. I'm Sean Braswell. Today, our tale 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:03.520 of Unintended Consequences centers on what would become known as 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:07.920 the devil's element, phosphorus. The compound that Henni brand unleashed 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:11.440 would change history in some unexpected ways. It would kill 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:15.160 tens of thousands of innocent civilians and also helped feed 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:18.920 an entire planet. And phosphorus was also the spark that 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.680 lit perhaps the greatest underdog story in the history of 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:32.560 human labor relations. Phosphorus is the most important element on 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.120 the planet. This is kenn Ashley the director of the 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.600 River's Institute at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:42.120 a global expert on phosphorus. It's really what sustains all 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.320 life on the planet. It's both inside is in our 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.000 DNA and we needed to having food to lived, and 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:50.320 so it really is the essence of life on Earth. 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:53.720 But like so many good things, phosphorus has a dark side, 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:56.080 and for a while it was that dark side that 0:02:56.160 --> 0:03:07.320 dominated the balance of its force on the planet. Let's 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:10.640 go back to hitting Brandt are urine boiling seventeenth century 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:14.320 German chemists for a moment. In his laboratory in Hamburg, Germany, 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:18.040 Brandt tried to make magic and his own fortune. What 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:20.519 Henting brand did, and you certainly wouldn't want to have 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:23.280 a neighbor doing this, is that he would take gallons 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:27.280 and gallons of urine that he collected from around his 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:29.720 local neighborhood, and he boiled it, and he drove off 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:31.640 all the moisture, and then he'd keep heating it and 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:35.400 heating it. After months of experimenting with stagnant urine, Brandt 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:38.880 was eventually rewarded with a newly created substance that glowed 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:43.000 with an eerie green light. And because phosphorus blows in 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:45.640 the dark, you can imagine from an alchemist in the 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:47.600 in the Middle Ages there, if you found something that 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:49.840 glowed in the dark, you thought you were pretty close 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.839 to the magic, magic sort of compound. Then that could 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:57.400 transmutate let into gold. But of course that's not what 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:01.680 Brandt had found. White phosphorus was what ning Brand had found, 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.840 and uh, and it's not naturally found in nature because 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:08.840 it's spontaneously combust brand streams of gold and wealth did 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.960 not pan out with white phosphorus. I think Brand seems 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:14.400 to have had a tough life. He you know, he 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.320 discovered it, and then he people found out that he 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:20.800 had it, and they wanted to figure out how to 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:22.400 make it too. Of course, he wanted to keep it 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.640 secret because then that would mean he would get more 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.839 attention and he'd be able to earn an income. And 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:30.320 as is so often the case, the fame and the 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:33.000 money when not to the first inventor but to the 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:37.240 first salesman. A fellow German alchemist named Daniel Kraft stole 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:41.400 Brand's thunder and became phosphorus is first showman. Craft ended 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:43.960 up doing better with it because then he claimed that 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:46.640 he had discovered and he was going around to various 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:50.760 courts with nobility and showing it at night and sort 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:52.599 of bringing in in the dark room and pulling the 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:55.080 cover off and showing the glow in the dark. Still 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:57.760 no one knew quite what to do with phosphorus. It 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.000 did not turn anything into gold. You could only entertain 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:05.880 the European aristocracy so long with glow in the dark urine. Eventually, 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.080 phosphorus was extracted from animal bones and later from mining 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:12.560 phosphate rocks, but it really wasn't until the nineteenth century 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.680 that phosphorus truly came into its own. That was an 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:19.600 eighty seven when an English chemist named John Walker invented 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.680 what was called the lucifer, or what we refer to 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.919 today as the match. The tiny splints of wood with 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:30.880 white phosphorus tips soon became a transformative invention. Matches were 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:36.599 absolutely essential before electricity. You didn't have hot water, you 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:40.120 didn't have lighting, you didn't have hot food unless you 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:43.919 had matches. This is Louise Raw, historian and author of 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.000 Striking a Light. The Bryanton may match women and their 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.640 place in history. Most Victorian homes were lit by candles 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:54.160 or gas lights and heated by coal. Fires and matches 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:57.080 were a huge step forward from previous methods of starting 0:05:57.080 --> 0:05:59.919 a fire, and we see them from the eighteen fists 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:05.200 onwards being sold absolutely everywhere. Everywhere that people would gather, 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.400 everywhere that smoke us would gather, there'd being perhaps a child, 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:10.680 usually a little boy or a girl with a tray 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:13.800 or a basket of matches, eagerly selling them to people. 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:16.800 But the ones really making the money off the groundbreaking 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:20.720 product were the match manufacturers. And the leading matchmaker in 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.760 the UK was a company started by two quaker grocers, 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:27.880 William Bryant and Francis May. Brian and May made in 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.760 sort a variety of goods, and they quickly realized that 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:33.839 producing matches was something that could be done very cheaply. 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.080 So in eighteen sixty one they came to bow in 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:40.720 East London, very very poor East London was then, and 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:42.800 set up what they called the fair Field Works, this 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:48.040 match production site, and very quickly starts to make lots 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:50.839 of money. The two men quickly went from being Quaker 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:56.880 grocers to Victorian industrial royalty. They became incredibly rich, multimillionaires 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:01.360 really the equivalent so of even possibly billionaires, enormous country 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:05.640 states entertaining the great and goods. Bryant and May's newfound 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:09.240 wealth did not trickle down to their workforce. But in 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.640 the heart of London's impoverished East End, a chemical reaction 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.360 of sorts was brewing. The potent mixture of stark inequality 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.720 and the hazardous effects of white phosphorus was about to 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.920 result in the salvation of millions of future workers. The 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:28.840 catalyst for this remarkable reaction hundreds of brave, mostly teenage girls, 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:31.840 willing to take a stand like none that the industrial 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:45.960 world had ever seen. That's next. Do you have an 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:50.000 interesting tale about unintended consequences from history or your own life, 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:52.960 Please share it with us by emailing flashback at ausi 0:07:53.080 --> 0:08:13.920 dot com. That's flashback at oz y dot com. History 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:16.640 can feel like a moving target. Sometimes it can be 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.520 hard to pin down what happened decades ago, much less centuries. 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:23.560 Often the stories we do pin down and tell for 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:27.040 generations are not the whole story, And to get that 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.960 story you have to go beyond the scholars who work 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:33.640 in the ivory towers. Luise raw Again, I called myself 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:37.439 an accidental historian. I kind of fell into historian ng 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.640 By accident, I got very involved in the trade union movement, 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:44.600 and then it was through that that I got a 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:48.079 chance to learn what we call labor history, which is, 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:50.520 you know, the history of working people, so it's not 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.400 your kings and queens necessarily, it's ordinary working people. As 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:56.640 part of her job, Raw was given the chance to 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.960 take a history course. One day she was given an assignment. 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.280 It my mom thinking, oh my god, an essay. You know, 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:06.280 I hadn't done anything like that since I was at school, 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.920 and I sweated blood over that first esset. Raw decided 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.120 to write about the only women covered in the course, 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:15.400 the so called match girls. The best Match Girls strike 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:18.560 was considered to be a colorful footnote in British labor history, 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.760 a curiosity that occurred right before the strike of male 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:24.840 doc workers in London that most scholars think was the 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.640 true landmark event. In the course, you could in those 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:31.439 days learn the history of working people and just think 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:35.319 that women weren't involved at all, which I've subsequently found 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.320 out isn't true, but it was very much told as 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.199 a story of working men. Rock wouldn't find a whole 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:43.920 lot of material on the match women to write her essay. 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.400 So she went digging and the company Branon May, the 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.920 match making company, had ceased to exist in the UK 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.240 in night, and they've given all their records to this 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.720 little local library. So literally, down in the basement of 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:00.520 this library were the Brighton May records. Were they kind of, 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:03.480 you know, just brought to me and dumped in front 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.079 of me all these huge boxes. Raw set to work 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:12.439 and really quickly discovered, to my surprise, that the story 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:16.520 I'd been told really wasn't the way things happened, and 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.120 it was actually a much more interesting and far more 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:23.720 important story one traditional historians had not done justice. Raw 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:27.160 wrote her essay and later a critically acclaimed book. Here 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:31.120 I was, this trade unionist and not particularly well educated, 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:36.400 did not expect to be inadvertently kind of challenging the 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:40.040 great historians who had written about this, But there you go. 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:45.800 That's that's how it turned out. The story Louise Raw 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:48.920 uncovered in the basement of the local library was an 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:52.920 epic Dickinsian tale of perseverance and courage in the face 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:55.839 of a corporate giant's appalling treatment of some of its 0:10:55.880 --> 0:11:00.280 most vulnerable workers. Mostly they were women and girls, and 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.240 they were really famous in the area. The match girls, 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.520 they were treated badly and they were very much looked 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:10.040 down on as well. They were as I discovered, something 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.760 like a really cool girl gang. They really looked after 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:15.720 each other. They knew that the one thing they had 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:19.120 was strength in numbers, so they really supported one another. 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:22.760 Which it's just as well because the employers didn't. You 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:24.959 could tell how poorly the women were paid just by 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:29.200 looking at them. They were extremely small and pale and 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.920 frail looking, and even for East End working class women 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:36.680 who were not you know, through no fault of their own, 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:39.520 were not the healthiest of people. Some of the workers 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.920 were girls as young as nine. They were working twelve 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:45.719 hour days from six in the morning to six at night, 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.360 standing up the whole time. Most most of the work 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:53.200 was done standing up, so it's really exhausting. Um. What 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:58.079 made matters worse is that Brian's may find them as well, 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:01.199 which was actually illegal under the Factory Acts at the time. 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.520 But they find them for the slightest infraction. Really, if 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.280 the girls were laughing, or if they were talking or 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:10.960 just generally mucking about a bit, as teenage girls will, 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.840 then the foreman would find them. But the workers situation 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.960 was even worse than that, something that a crusading activist 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.920 and journalists named Annie Besson soon discovered. Annie Besson was 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:26.200 a socialist of a kind. She was for women's right. 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:29.640 Since she was becoming quite a socialist. She interviewed the 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:34.080 women and they told her about their terrible working conditions, 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.760 about the fines that they suffered, and also about the 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:41.560 biggest curse I suppose of matchmaking, which was fossy jaw. 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:45.199 Fossy jar was an occupational disease of the jar caused 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:49.200 by exposure to phosphorus white faster us is incredibly toxic 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:51.520 and it was being pumped in the air throughout Brian 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:55.240 and May's match factory. There was no escape. There wasn't 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.360 even a separate dining area for workers, so they would 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:02.080 bring in a bit of bread for home, and working 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:05.439 class girls lived on stale bread and tea. That was that. 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:09.080 That was their daily diet, no vegetables, no fruit, and 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:11.640 by the time you got to eat at the phosphorus 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.360 particles in the air have settled onto your bread, so 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.760 you've got this awful, deadly seasoning that you can't see, 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.800 but it's there on your food. The first symptoms of 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.440 fazzy jar were too thick and a swollen lower jar, 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:28.600 then your gums, cheeks and jar would develop putrid abscesses. 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:31.040 But the worst thing about it, the most horrendous and 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:35.560 really sad aspect of it, is that your jawbone is 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:40.160 decaying while you're still alive, and women would spit bits 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:43.880 of bone the size of peas apparently out of these abscesses. 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:47.400 It was a terrible situation. The met women endured these 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:52.000 horrors for years. Enter any bescent. So the match women 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:55.960 told any Besson all of this, and she recorded it 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.880 in this really hard, hissing, brilliant ascal. It's only short article, 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.880 it's only a few columns, but it's called white Slavery 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:08.440 in London, which is a really attention grabbing title. The 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:12.200 article appeared in June. In it, Any Psson did not 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:16.000 just recount the women's hazardous working conditions. She emphasized the 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.560 gap between them and the quote monstrous dividends being paid 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.560 to Briant and May's shareholders. It did not go over 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:26.120 well with the company. Brian toon May read this article 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:31.680 and they are furious. They've worked really hard on their 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.520 pr Brianson May, they're very like a modern company in 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:38.080 that respect, you know, there are no slouches in getting 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.360 good publicity and presenting their good side to the public. 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:44.240 So people think Brianton may are quite a nice firm 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.160 that are looking after their work as well, and this 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.040 is really messing things up for them. The first thing 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:52.960 the company does in response put pressure on the match 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.160 women themselves. They try to get them to sign a 0:14:56.160 --> 0:15:00.440 paper which is a pre prepared statement say that Annie 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:04.120 Besson has lied, that everything she said is untrue, and 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:07.320 that you know they love working for finding the old 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:09.840 foss jewel is no problem at all, and they're all, 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:13.160 you know, one big happy family and treated marvelously. Remember 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.560 these women had no trade union, they had no employment contracts, 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:18.800 and they knew that if they did the slightest thing 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:22.240 wrong they would be fired. But they refused to sign 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:26.320 the paper. The foreman report that they come back to 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:29.920 collect the papers and every single one in every single 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.760 workshop on this huge factory site is blank. The women 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:37.200 just won't sign. The first attempt to intimidate the match 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:40.240 women hadn't worked. The next thing that they do is 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:44.040 try to sack one girl, and they make up a 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.280 reason for it because they don't want to admit that 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:48.560 they're just doing it because I think she's probably one 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:51.320 of the people who've spoken to Annie Bessent. So they 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:54.880 visibly enforcibly removed one of the women from the factory. 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:59.560 And also the match women had this tremendous solidarity, absolutely 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.600 no questions are They stick up for each other. So 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:05.240 when she goes out the door, so do they. They 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.560 lay down their tools and they go streaming out of 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.440 this factory out on to the fair Field Road, out 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.880 onto the Bow Road and they start parading the neighborhoods. 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:22.360 That's right. In the summer, workers, mostly young women and girls, 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.440 walked out of Brian and May's match factory in East London. 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:28.440 It was a bold act of defiance. And what I 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:31.120 love about the way they get their message across because 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:34.040 you know, no Facebook, no Twister in those days, so 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:37.440 how do you do it? But they are very clever 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:40.200 and they know that although they're supposed to be powerless, 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:42.800 one thing they do have is numbers. They can make 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.960 a lot of noise and they do. They march the 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:50.800 streets of Bow singing very disrespectful songs about their employers 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:52.840 and how terrible their employers are and what they'd like 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.160 to do to their employers, which is not nice. The 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.720 women marched all over London, including straight through Trafalgar Square, 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:01.840 they saying, quote, We'll hang old Brian on the sour 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:06.080 apple tree, to the theme of Glory, Glory, hallelujah. Observers 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:08.159 started putting their heads out of their home and office 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:11.520 windows to see what the first was about. So people 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:14.639 throw down money, They throw down pennies and farthings, and 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:18.119 the match women catch the money that's failing through the 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:20.920 air in the long aprons that they wear to work, 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:24.680 and that is their first strike funds. The young women 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:29.119 start to get organized. They organized themselves brilliantly into a committee, 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.360 had a vote on who was going to represent them 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.760 on the strike. Committee went back in put their demands 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:38.200 to Brian and May, who basically told them not interested. 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:40.119 You're all SATs no matter what you do. We're not 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:42.840 listening to you. Bran and May outrage you know here 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:45.720 we are. We're a rich Victorian gentlemen and these wretched 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:49.680 rough set of girls as they called them, these common 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:52.199 working people are trying to tell us what to do. 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.000 They were absolutely not having it. Things did not look 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:57.360 good from the match women at the start, When they 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:01.480 first walk out, local papers are saying, well, I mean, 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.240 how dare they're They're very lucky to be employed by 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:08.240 these lovely, top hated gentlemen who are so well esteemed 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:10.879 and friends with government and friends of the great and 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:14.240 good and famous, and lucky to have jobs. The tide 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:16.919 really turns quickly, because this is only around two weeks 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:21.120 this strike, and the paper start to become much more sympathetic. 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:24.520 The press started to shame Bryant and May and accusing 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:27.480 their shareholders of profiting off the jars of poor women 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:31.760 and girls. So the share price tumbles and Branton May 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:37.040 are forced into a climb down, incredibly reluctant, with very 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:41.680 very very bad grace. Indeed, But the women, in around 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.960 two weeks go back to work triumphant, and the first 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.280 thing they demand is the right to form a trade union. 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:53.600 The metal women had not only improved working conditions for themselves, 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:56.159 they had ignited a chain reaction that would do the 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:58.800 same for millions of other workers in the years ahead. 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.600 We like to think that histories all great individuals, that 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:06.280 it's kings and queens. We're quite happy with that individual 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:09.119 heroes and heroines. But you know, a sort of rabble 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:13.359 of working class Irish, uneducated girls taking matches into their 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:16.240 own hands, or you know, a bit scary, sounds a 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:19.800 bit revolutionary, so we tend to talk that down. Historians 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:22.399 might not have taken much note of that victory, but 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:26.000 other workers at the time certainly did. Working people are 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.680 not stupid, and you would have to be stupid not 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:33.159 to notice a large, large group of workers, four Drew 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:37.400 women were on strike achieving what had never been achieved. 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:39.439 People are gone on strike, but no one had had 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:43.080 a victory against a huge, important, powerful firm like that before, 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:47.040 and another group of famous London laborers, the dark workers 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.359 would certainly have noticed. They couldn't have missed it because 0:19:50.400 --> 0:19:53.960 they were married to match women. Matchwomen and dockers traditionally 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:56.840 dated each other, knew each other, you know, they were 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.880 each other's mothers and sisters. They all were. They were 0:19:59.880 --> 0:20:03.520 the same people, essentially the same Eastern people. Three months 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:05.959 after the match women went on strike, more than one 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:08.800 hundred thousand male doc workers at the Port of London 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:13.119 started their own strike. These women are absolutely the inspiration 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:17.000 for this huge strike of hundreds of thousands, which spreads 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.040 and spreads all over its practically a general strike, really 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:23.240 a national strike. It spreads all over the country and 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.200 to other parts of the world as well. The leaders 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:28.960 of the match Women provided guidance and encouragement to their 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.879 male counterparts, so they all follow the match Women's example. 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:35.880 They go out on strike and their demand for coming 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:38.480 back to work as you must, let us form a union. 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:42.640 Hundreds and hundreds of new unions form over the next 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:47.399 few years. Just over a year later, the number of 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.160 trade union members in Great Britain had more than doubled 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:53.600 to nearly two million. Thanks to what the match Women began, 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.840 Great Britain and other countries now have laws governing health 0:20:56.840 --> 0:21:00.200 and safety in the workplace, and from this eventually really 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.760 grow the seeds of the Labor Party in Britain, and 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:08.520 I'm very pleased that are lamented. Former leader of the 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:12.399 Labor Party Jeremy Corbyn acknowledged my book and my work 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:16.760 has said in s that the match Women were the 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:20.760 mothers of the modern labor and trajing and movement, and 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:24.720 that really was everything that I'd ever once said. Thanks 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.680 in part to Phosphorus, a revolution in labor relations and 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.639 workers safety swept over England and the world in the 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:34.120 late nineteenth century, but for millions of others, there would 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:38.360 be no hiding from phosphorus destructive capability. In the twentieth century, 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.879 nearly three d years after hinnig Brand discovered phosphorus, his 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:47.280 hometown of Hamburg would suffer an almost unimaginable tragedy at 0:21:47.320 --> 0:22:08.520 its hands. We all need a break from the constant 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:12.960 cycle to learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The 0:22:13.040 --> 0:22:15.960 Great Courses Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:19.120 expand our knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:21.840 up a new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:25.960 Plus while researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:29.119 the Rise of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:32.600 Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the 0:22:32.640 --> 0:22:36.200 dots on several stories from history. Right now, they're giving 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:39.600 our listeners a special limited time offer a free month 0:22:39.640 --> 0:22:43.320 of unlimited access to their entire library. Sign up now 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:46.040 through our special U r L go to the Great 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:50.200 Courses Plus dot Com slash as. That's the Great Courses 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:54.040 Plus dot Com slash o z y the Great Courses 0:22:54.040 --> 0:23:00.760 Plus dot Com slash As. It wasn't long before the 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:03.720 qualities of phosphorus were harnessed for one of human kind's 0:23:03.760 --> 0:23:09.840 favorite pastimes, war ken Ashley. Again, bostrous was first adopted 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:13.680 for military use because when the white phosphorus is exposed 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:16.920 to oxygen, it burns and produces a heavy white smoke. 0:23:17.000 --> 0:23:20.280 So its original use was was just to produce smoke cover. 0:23:20.880 --> 0:23:22.920 You might have seen some of the photographs of World 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:26.040 War One trench warfare where there is smoke covering the 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:29.280 no man's land between the armies. And then it became 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:32.639 used in for tracer shells, so you fired a bullet, 0:23:32.680 --> 0:23:34.719 the phosphorus would burn. You can see where the bullets 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:37.359 were going particularly night, and think it very easy to aim, 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:40.840 aim the bullet. And then came phosphorus bombs. They were 0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:43.600 first used by the Allies in World War Two. You know, 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:48.560 after Hitler started bombing bombing England, that the retribution from 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:52.399 the from the English was to do these massive raids 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:56.919 with a thousand planes. And they decided to pick a 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:00.240 pick a town and try and try and just moment 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:03.560 repeatedly over several nights. The aim was to destroy an 0:24:03.720 --> 0:24:07.440 entire German city and to demoralize its inhabitants. It was 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:11.480 called Operation Gomorrah, and for good reason. Starting in July 0:24:13.520 --> 0:24:17.320 and continuing for seven more nights, Allied bombing raids dropped 0:24:17.320 --> 0:24:21.120 over two thousand tons of burning phosphorus material on Hamburg, 0:24:21.440 --> 0:24:25.040