Sometimes when I visit a state park I happen to catch some history on the place. And sometimes that history triggers a desire to know more about what life used to be like as compared to how it is now.
While researching information on Southford Falls State Park in Southbury, CT. I came across a reference to the Diamond Match Company. It was just a brief mention that the Diamond Match Company used to own the property and that there also used to be several different kinds of mills in the town of Southbury over its long history. That was enough to peak my curiosity so I started to look up information on the Diamond Match Company.
One of the first things I found out was that matches were a highly competitive manufacturing item world wide back in the 1800's. The Diamond Match Company was extremely industrious and as many other companies went out of business or were taken over by other match companies, the Diamond Match Co survived and to this day Diamond produces all the box matches in the United States. (hmmmm...didn't we learn in school that is called a monopoly?)
And there is a lot more information out there about the Diamond Match Company but that's the kind of stuff you can find on any company. What REALLY caught my attention was something called Phossy Jaw that kept popping up in association with the Diamond Match Company. And this is what I found out about Phossy jaw.
Phossy jaw...pronounced like: Fosi jaw. Phossy is a shortened form of the word phosphorous which is a poisonous chemical used to make match heads. Can you tell where this is going now?
In 1830, the French chemist, Charles Sauria, created a match made with white phosphorous. Sauria's matches had no odor, but they made people sick with an ailment dubbed "phossy jaw". White phosphorous is poisonous.
Yes, the Diamond Match Company along with every other match company in business in the 1800's was using a chemical called white phosphorous (sometimes also called yellow phosphorous) which was highly poisonous and for quite some time they knew it. People were dying from working at the companies that made these matches....lots of people and for a long, long time.They first became aware of it in England and other countries outside of the US. Many of the people dying were woman and children which is probably why it was ignored for so long or considered a necessary evil by-product of the trade. Keep in mind this is also around the time when children were working in the cotton mills in England and dying on a regular basis because they worked such long hours they would fall asleep and fall into the machinery. The mills needed the little fingers and nimble bodies of young children to untangle the threads and often arms; legs and fingers were lost in the process. These children died horrible deaths if they were even lucky enough to die outright. Many were also maimed for life and destined to become beggars on the streets or a burden to their families as a result. Little or no compensation was given to the family of any child maimed or killed in the mills. Life was very very hard in those days.
It wasn't until 1855 that safety matches were patented by Johan Edvard Lundstrom of Sweden. Lundstrom put RED phosphorus on the sandpaper outside the box and the other ingredients on the match head, solving the problem of "phossy jaw" and creating a match that could only be safely lit off the prepared, special striking, surface.
Now this means that for 25 yrs they were knowingly using the white phosphorous that was poisonous. And red phosphorous was only LESS poisonous, not non-poisonous. But it was deemed sufficient to correct the problem and business resumed as normal.
Finally in 1910 the Diamond Match Company patented the first nonpoisonous match in the U.S., which used a safe chemical called sesquisulfide of phophorous.
The United States President William H. Taft publicly asked Diamond Match to release their patent for the good of mankind. They did on January 28, 1911, Congress placed a high tax on matches made with white phosphorous which effectively stopped production being made with that chemical.
This is what anyone who contracted Phossy Jaw could expect to suffer:
Symptoms of Phossy Jaw:
Those with phossy jaw would begin suffering painful toothaches and swelling of the gums. Over time, the jaw bone would begin to abscess. Affected bones would glow a greenish-white color in the dark. It also caused serious brain damage. Surgical removal of the afflicted jaw bones could save the patient; otherwise, death from organ failure would follow. The disease was extremely painful and disfiguring to the patient, with dying bone tissue rotting away accompanied by a foul-smelling discharge.
Those most quickly affected were the workers who dipped the sticks into the phosphorus paste. Direct contact with the phosphorus paste may have contributed but the dipping rooms of these factories often were poorly ventilated and filled with dense vapor. But the workers, often children, who dried the matches, ejected them from the drying racks and those who packed the finished product eventually also developed the disease. The condition might develop slowly over years but in its final phase would run a course of 6-18 months and end with general debility, then "inflammation of the brain", convulsions and hemorrhage from the lungs.
The saddest part of the whole story is that it all need not have happened! It was long known that the other form of phosphorus, red phosphorus, worked just as well in matches as white phosphorus. However, plentiful cheap labor, the absence of industrial health regulations and a profit-seeking mentality did not encourage the manufacturers to change to red phosphorus.
