Have you got a light, boy?

An illuminating history of matches, by Vicky Liddell

Some 190 years ago, on April 7, 1827, the first box of friction matches was sold—as recorded in the daybook of their inventor, John Walker—to a mr Hixon for the sum of 1s 2d. The 3in-long splints tipped with a special mixture were ignited by striking through glass paper and, before the year was out, 1,836 tins had been sold.

Sadly, despite being urged to take out a patent by scientist michael Faraday, mr Walker didn’t feel that his invention was significant enough and never saw any financial return on it. eventually, a Londoner, Samuel Johnson, patented and sold the matches under the name Lucifers—a name still used by the Dutch today. most people these days will be familiar with the brand from the First World War song Pack Up Your Troubles: ‘While you’ve a Lucifer to light your fag/ Smile boys that’s the style.’

originally apprenticed to a Stockton-on-tees surgeon, before realising he had an aversion to operations, mr Walker had opened a pharmacy in 1819 and developed a keen interest in finding a way of creating fire easily. It was while experimenting with chemicals in 1826 that a stick coated with a dried mixture of antimony, sulphide, potassium chlorate, gum arabic, starch and water accidentally scraped against his hearth and created a spark.

The first friction match had arrived and was soon declared by the philosopher Herbert Spencer to be ‘the greatest boon and blessing that had come to mankind in the 19th century’.

Prior to this, kindling a flame was a problem not easily appreciated in our centrally heated and automated modern lives, although several dangerous attempts at a solution had been attempted. one proposed answer, the Instantaneous Light Box, was particularly hazardous as it contained a small bottle of sulphuric acid and splints tipped with potassium chlorate, sugar and gum arabic, which ignited when dipped in the acid.

A rudimentary lighter was invented in 1823 by the German chemist Johann Döbereiner

(of lamp fame), using zinc and sulphuric acid to create a flammable hydrogen gas.

Although Mr Walker’s matches were chemically effective, they needed a lot of friction to ignite and were soon replaced by an alternative devised by Frenchman Charles Sauria, who added white phosphorus to the mixture. These new matches flared up like fireworks and their toxicity was lethal—one packet contained enough white phosphorus to kill someone. Indeed, the substance was commonly used in murders and suicides.

Worse still, among the unfortunate, lowpaid match workers—many of whom were women and children—the poisonous phos-