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Bryant & May was a British company created in the mid-19th century specifically to make
match A match is a tool for starting a fire. Typically, matches are made of small wooden sticks or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by friction generated by striking the match against a suitable surface. Wooden matc ...
es. Their original Bryant & May Factory was located in Bow,
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major s ...
. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such as the Bryant & May Factory,
Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a metrop ...
, and owned match factories in other parts of the world. Formed in 1843 by two
Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
, William Bryant and Francis May, Bryant & May survived as an independent company for over seventy years, but went through a series of mergers with other match companies and later with consumer products companies. The registered
trade name A trade name, trading name, or business name, is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name w ...
Bryant & May still exists and it is owned by
Swedish Match Swedish Match AB is a Swedish multinational tobacco company headquartered in Stockholm. The company manufactures snus, nicotine pouches, moist snuff, tobacco- and nicotine-free pouch products, chewing tobacco, chew bags, tobacco bits, cigars, ...
, as are many of the other registered trade names of the other, formerly independent, companies within the Bryant & May group.


Formation

The
match A match is a tool for starting a fire. Typically, matches are made of small wooden sticks or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by friction generated by striking the match against a suitable surface. Wooden matc ...
-making company Bryant & May was formed in 1843 by two
Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
, William Bryant and Francis May, to trade in general merchandise. In 1850 the company entered into a relationship with the Swedish match maker Johan Edvard Lundström in order to capture part of the market of the 250 million matches that were used in Britain each day. Their first order was for 10 or 15 cases of 720,000 matches (each case held 50 gross boxes, with a box holding 100 matches). The next order was for 50 cases; later orders were for 500. This partnership was successful, so Francis May and William Bryant decided to merge the partnership with Bryant's company, Bryant and James, which was based in
Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymout ...
. The company began production after purchasing the rights in Britain for £100. In line with their religious beliefs, Bryant and May decided to produce only safety matches, rather than lucifers. In 1850 the company sold 231,000 boxes; by 1855 this had risen to 10.8 million boxes and to 27.9 million boxes in 1860. Market preference in the UK was for the familiar lucifer match, and by 1880 Bryant & May were also producing them. The same year the company began exporting their goods; in 1884 they became a publicly-listed company. Dividends of 22.5 per cent in 1885 and 20 per cent in 1886 and 1887 were paid. In 1861 Bryant relocated the business to a three-acre site, on Fairfield Road, Bow,
East London East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
. The building, an old candle factory, was demolished and a model factory was built in the mock-Venetian style popular at the time. The factory was heavily mechanised and included twenty-five
steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...
s to power the machinery. On nearby Bow Common, the company built a lumber mill to make splints from imported Canadian pine. Bryant & May were aware of "
phossy jaw Phossy jaw, formally known as phosphorus necrosis of the jaw, was an occupational disease affecting those who worked with white phosphorus (also known as ''yellow phosphorus'') without proper safeguards. It was most commonly seen in workers in th ...
". If a worker complained of having toothache, they were told to have the teeth removed immediately or be sacked. In the 1880s Bryant & May employed nearly 5,000 people, most of them female and Irish, or of Irish descent; by 1895 the figure was 2,000 people, of whom between 1,200 and 1,500 were women and girls. The workers were paid different rates for completing a ten-hour day, depending on the type of work undertaken. The frame-fillers were paid 1 
shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currency, currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 1 ...
per 100 frames completed; the cutters received 2  d for three gross of boxes, and the packers got 1s 9d per 100 boxes wrapped up. Those under 14 years of-age received a weekly wage of about 4 s. Most workers were lucky if they took the full amounts home, as a series of fines were levied by the foremen, with the money deducted directly from wages. The fines included 3 d for having an untidy workbench, talking or having dirty feet—many of the workers were bare-footed as shoes were too expensive; 5 d was deducted for being late; and a shilling for having a burnt match on the workbench. The women and girls involved in boxing up the matches, they had to pay the boys who brought them the frames from the drying ovens, and had to supply their own glue and brushes. One girl who dropped a tray of matches was fined 6 d. The match boxes were made through domestic outwork under a
sweating system A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...
. Such a system was preferred because the workers were not covered under the
Factory Acts The Factory Acts were a series of acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate the conditions of industrial employment. The early Acts concentrated on regulating the hours of work and moral welfare of young children employed ...
. Such workers received 2 to 2 d per gross of boxes. The workers had to provide glue and string from their own funds. In 1861, at the Fairfield Works, a dilapidated site that had once been used for the manufacture of
candle A candle is an ignitable wick embedded in wax, or another flammable solid substance such as tallow, that provides light, and in some cases, a fragrance. A candle can also provide heat or a method of keeping time. A person who makes candles i ...
s,
crinoline A crinoline is a stiff or structured petticoat designed to hold out a woman's skirt, popular at various times since the mid-19th century. Originally, crinoline described a stiff fabric made of horsehair ("crin") and cotton or linen which was ...
and
rope A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly ...
, close to the
River Lea The River Lea ( ) is in South East England. It originates in Bedfordshire, in the Chiltern Hills, and flows southeast through Hertfordshire, along the Essex border and into Greater London, to meet the River Thames at Bow Creek. It is one of t ...
in Bow, they began to manufacture their own safety matches and "other chemical lights". This site was gradually expanded as a ''model factory''. The public were initially unwilling to buy the more expensive safety matches so they also made the more profitable traditional Lucifer Matches. In 1871
Robert Lowe Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke, GCB, PC (4 December 1811 – 27 July 1892), British statesman, was a pivotal conservative spokesman who helped shape British politics in the latter half of the 19th century. He held office under William E ...
, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, attempted to introduce a tax of  d per hundred matches. ''The Times'', in a
leader Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets view ...
on the proposal, opined that the tax was "a singularly reactionary proposal" that would affect the poor more heavily. Match-making companies complained about the new levy and arranged a mass-meeting at
Victoria Park, London Victoria Park (known colloquially as Vicky Park or the People's Park) is a park in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London, England. It is the largest park in Tower Hamlets and one of London's most visited green spaces with approxim ...
on Sunday 23 April; 3,000 match workers attended, the majority of whom were from Bryant & May. It was resolved to march on the following day to the
Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north bank ...
to present a petition. Several thousand match-makers set off from
Bow Road Bow Road is a thoroughfare in Bow, London, England. The road forms part of the A11, running from Aldgate to Norwich in Norfolk. To the west the road becomes Mile End Road, and to the east is Bow Interchange on the A12. The College of Techn ...
in an orderly fashion. The demonstration comprised mostly girls between the ages of thirteen and twenty, and were described in ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fo ...
'' as "beyond doubt of the working classes. They ... were accompanied by men and women of their own class, without any admixture of the usual agitators." The marchers were harassed along the way before their progress was blocked by police at
Mile End Road The A11 is a major trunk road in England. It runs roughly north east from London to Norwich, Norfolk, although after the M11 opened in the 1970s and then the A12 extension in 1999, a lengthy section has been downgraded between the suburbs o ...
. Much of the march progressed through the police line, but parts were split off and made their way via alternative routes to the Westminster, by which time the march numbered approximately 10,000. Clashes ensued, and ''The Times'' described that the police had "by their hard usage of the matchmakers and spectators, converted what was before not an ill-behaved gathering into a resisting, howling mob". ''
The Manchester Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' described that "policemen, strong in their sense of officialism, and bullying in their strength, approached the verge of brutality". On the same day as the meeting in Victoria Park,
Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previo ...
wrote to the
prime minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is n ...
, William Gladstone, to protest about the tax:
it is difficult not to feel considerable doubt as to the wisdom of the proposed tax on matches ...
hich Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
will be felt by all classes to whom matches have become a necessity of life. ... this tax which is intended should press on all equally will in fact only be severely felt by the poor which would be very wrong and most impolitic at the present moment.
The day following the march, Lowe announced in the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
that the proposed tax was being withdrawn. Bryant and May was involved in three of the most divisive industrial episodes of the 19th century, the sweating of domestic out-workers, the wage "fines" that led to the
London matchgirls strike of 1888 The matchgirls' strike of 1888 was an industrial action by the women and teenage girls working at the Bryant & May match factory in Bow, London. Background Match making In the late nineteenth century, matches were made using sticks of popl ...
and the scandal of "
phossy jaw Phossy jaw, formally known as phosphorus necrosis of the jaw, was an occupational disease affecting those who worked with white phosphorus (also known as ''yellow phosphorus'') without proper safeguards. It was most commonly seen in workers in th ...
". The strike won important improvements in working conditions and pay for the mostly female workforce working with the dangerous white phosphorus. The company rebuilt their Bow factory in 1909-1910, with many modern innovations including two tall towers housing water storage tanks for a sprinkler system. By 1911 it employed more than 2,000 female workers, the largest factory in London.


Mergers with other match makers

To protect its position Bryant & May merged with or took over its rivals. These were: ;Bell and Black In 1885 - factories in Stratford, Manchester, York and Glasgow. ;Diamond Match In 1901 the American match maker the
Diamond Match Company The Diamond Match Company has its roots in several nineteenth century companies. In the early 1850s, Edward Tatnall of Wilmington, Delaware was given an English recipe for making matches by a business acquaintance, William R. Smith. In 1853, Tatn ...
bought an existing match factory in the United Kingdom, at
Litherland Litherland is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, Merseyside. It was an urban district, which included Seaforth and Ford. It neighbours Waterloo to the north, Seaforth to the west, and Bootle to the south and is approximately north ...
, near
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
, and installed a continuous match making machine that could produce 600,000 matches per hour. Their matches were sold under the ''Captain Webb'', ''Puck'' and ''
Swan Vesta Swan Vestas is a brand of matches. Shorter than normal pocket matches, they are particularly popular with smokers and have long used the tagline "the smoker's match", although this has been replaced by the prefix "the original" on the current pack ...
''
brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...
names. Bryant & May could not compete, so in 1905 they bought the
asset In financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything (tangible or intangible) that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value of ownership that can b ...
s and
goodwill Goodwill or good will may also refer to: * Goodwill (accounting), the value of a business entity not directly attributable to its assets and liabilities *Goodwill ambassador, occupation or title of a person that advocates a cause * Goodwill Games, ...
of the British Diamond Match Company; and the (American) Diamond Match Company acquired 54.5 percent of the share capital of Bryant & May. ;S. J. Moreland and Sons In 1913 Bryant & May also took over the
Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west, east of Monmouth and east of the ...
match maker S.J. Moreland and Sons, who made and sold matches under the trade name '' England's Glory''. ;Swedish Match In 1927 Bryant & May combined with J. John Masters & Co. Ltd (match importers and owners of the Abbey Match Works, Barking, Essex) and the Swedish Match Company's interests in the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
(except for major plant in India and elsewhere in Asia) to become the British Match Corporation. ;Albright and Wilson In 1929, the British Match Corporation set up a jointly-owned company with another Quaker company
Albright and Wilson Albright and Wilson was founded in 1856 as a United Kingdom manufacturer of potassium chlorate and white phosphorus for the match industry. For much of its first 100 years of existence, phosphorus-derived chemicals formed the majority of its produ ...
: The A & W Match Phosphorus Company. It took over that part of Albright and Wilson's Oldbury site which was manufacturing amorphous phosphorus and
phosphorus sesquisulfide Phosphorus sesquisulfide is the inorganic compound with the formula . It was developed by Henri Sevene and Emile David Cahen in 1898 as part of their invention of friction matches that did not pose the health hazards of white phosphorus. This ye ...
, as these two chemicals were used in safety matches and strike-anywhere matches, respectively.Threfall (1951).


Merger with Wilkinson Sword

In 1973 the British Match Corporation merged with
Wilkinson Sword Wilkinson Sword is a formerly British brand for razors and other personal care products sold in Europe, owned by the US company Edgewell Personal Care. The company was founded as a manufacturer of guns made in Shotley Bridge in County Durham, ...
to form the new company Wilkinson Match. Wilkinson Match's shares were acquired by US company Allegheny International from 1978 with Allegheny taking full ownership in 1980. In 1987 Allegheny filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Swedish Match re-acquired the company. In 1990 Swedish Match sold the Wilkinson Sword business, retaining the match business.


Closure

In 1971 the Northern Ireland factory, Maguire & Patterson closed down following a terrorist attack. The original Bow match factory was closed in 1979, when it still employed 275 people; unlike some of the other match factories little recent investment had taken place. The Bow factory site consisted of a number of listed buildings, which have subsequently been converted into the Bow Quarter flats complex. In the 1980s, factories in
Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west, east of Monmouth and east of the ...
and
Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated pop ...
closed too leaving Liverpool as the last match factory in the UK. This continued until December 1994. The premises survive today as 'the Matchworks' (grade 2 listed building) and the Matchbox all using the existing buildings with renovations done by Urban Splash. The former Australian match factory, in Melbourne, closed in the mid-1980s. This was converted into offices in 1989.''Sunday Age'', 3 December 1995. The British match brands continue to survive as brands of Swedish Match and are made outside the UK. Other parts of the merged company involved in shaving products survive, and still use the trade name Wilkinson Sword in Europe, and the Schick trade name elsewhere. However, the shaving products are made in Germany.


Products


Vitafruit

Vitafruit was a confectionery manufactured by the Bryant & May group in 1988. There were three varieties including tropical fruit flavour (Vitafruit), mint (Vitamint) and a throat soother (Vitasooth). When Swedish Match acquired Bryant & May the confectionery arm of the business was sold and eventually the new owners stopped production of Vitafruit.


Arms


See also

* Bryant and May Factory, Bow * Bryant and May Factory, Melbourne * Mersey Match Factory * Redheads (matches)


Notes and references


Notes


References


Sources


Books

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Official reports

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News articles

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Journals

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Internet and audio-visual media

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External links

*
Competition commission: Bryant & May and Wilkinson Sword
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bryant And May Defunct companies of the United Kingdom Chemical companies of the United Kingdom History of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Companies established in 1852 Chemical industry in London Manufacturing companies established in 1843 Matches (firelighting) 1843 establishments in England British companies established in 1843