Flint and steel was a common combination.
Later on, chemicals were used to induce fire and the first self-igniting match was born.
When the match tip was dipped into a vial of sulfuric acid, the match ignited.
Phosphorus bottle pocket matches, circa 1828.
Joseph Allen Skinner Museum.
Many users of the match used to crush the vial with their teeth.
These first matches were extremely difficult to ignite, and they frequently erupted in a shower of sparks.
In addition, the smell was particularly offensive.
In 1826, John Walker, an English chemist and druggist, created the first successful friction match.
When scraped against a rough surface, the matchhead ignited.
Walker began selling them in boxes of 50 priced at one shilling.
Women working in a match factory in London in 1871.
The resulting matches were then boxed up ready to be sold.
Working 14 hours a day in poorly-ventilated factories these dippers breathed in copious amounts of phosphorus fumes.
Soon thousands of workers began to show symptoms of phosphorous toxicity.
It began with tooth ache, swelling of the gums, and then the teeth fell out.
The face swelled up and abscesses along the jaw oozed foul-smelling pus.
Sometimes the bone glowed in the dark from the accumulated phosphorus.
The only remedy was to remove the jawbone.
This condition was known as phossy jaw, and it left many match factory workers permanently disfigured.
A phossy jaw sufferer.
A lithograph from the 1870s showing a skull with jaw affected by phosphorus poisoning.
Photo: Wellcome Library, London.
In chronic cases, the toxic phosphorus reached the brain provoking seizures.
Many of the protesters were women.
Dropping trays of matches attracted steeper fines.
Within two weeks, the whole factory had stopped work.
The first company to produce phosphorus sesquisulfide matches commercially was the British company Albright and Wilson in 1899.
However, white phosphorus continued to be used until the early 20th century.
The United Kingdom passed a law in 1908 prohibiting its use in matches after 31 December 1910.
India and Japan banned them in 1919.
China followed, banning them in 1925.
