The politics of occupational ill‐health in late nineteenth century Britain: the case of the match making industry

Using the match making industry as a case study, this paper examines the politics of occupational health in late nineteenth century Britain. It argues that this industry had a high profile within the wider political struggle around the question of working conditions and their effect on workers' health. This was due to the identification of match making with a specific and particularly disfiguring industrial disease, phosphorous necrosis, and that one firm, Bryant and May, featured prominently in the struggles around health and safety. This paper examines the role of employers, the state, and those demanding reform. It suggests that medical and dental ‘experts’ were important both in relation to their ‘official’ role with respect to factory regulation, and also because industrial ill health was a site of professional politics. The extent to which gender issues entered into the politics of occupational health at this time is considered. It concludes that mediation, compromise and the different priorities of the various interests involved prevented the dangers to health in matchmaking as in other industries from being controlled and eliminated in this period.