After three weeks the company announced that it was willing to re-employ the dismissed women and would also bring an end to the fines system. Moreover, parts of the book read like a detective story, with Raw ingenious in tracking down the strike leaders. Mary married a docker (traditionally, the matchwomen tended to marry dockers who were part of their close-knit community, one of the facts Raw uses to add weight to her convincing argument that the successful matchwomen strike inspired the Dockers’ Strike the following year). This is the story of one of the best known strikes in labour history, an event whose real significance and truth about what happened has been hidden until now. Raw was very clear in her evidence and her historical methods, and the strengths and weaknesses of what she was using.

In July 1888, fourteen hundred women and girls employed by the matchmakers Bryant and May walked out of their East End factory and into the history books. Early examples originated in China around 577 AD and consisted of small sticks of pinewood coated in sulphur. While at first using the hydrocarbon mixture Naphtha as fuel, most lighters produced from the 1950s onwards run on the more controllable and odourless butane.

Still it was a very interesting book and one I'd definitely recommend to people interested in this period, the histor of labour and the lives of working class women. Lighters consist of a canister filled with a flammable liquid or compressed gas acting as tinder, as well as a mechanism to light it. A more expensive alternative to the tinderbox, which was mostly found in European upper- and middle-class homes, is the tinder pistol. To create a spark, strike down the flint with the steel at a shallow angle, using short, choppy strokes. While true touchwood does not grow in North America, apparently other shelf-fungi from birch trees will work as well.

We are unique in utilising reminiscence, creativity and archive material to blend culture and history.No effort has been spared by those pests of the modern industrialized world to bring this quarrel to a head. The number affected was quite small, but the matchgirls' strike had an influence upon the minds of the workers which entitles it to be regarded as one of the most important events in the history of labour organisation in any country. Louise Raw's book is a brilliant rescue of the role of ordinary working class women in fighting to improve their lives.

Tinder box made from the shells of two half gourds, containing flint, steel, and tinder in form of the pithy flower stem of an agave plant. Not only was Besant not the first mover, and she was probably neither sympathetic to strike action nor optimistic about its outcome, preferring instead a boycott of Bryant and May. Being heavy and dangerous, their popularity was short-lived and ended when the first phosphorus matches were sold in 1827. The actual fire should be laid with small kindling, ready to have the burning tinder "nest" inserted into it.When they went out on strike, the matchgirls were already heavily politicised by the reality of their own living conditions, by Ireland and by the propaganda of the socialist revival, which had paid special attention to the East End. Malthusianism is alive and well as feminists celebrate declining birth rate Since they cannot admit to a solution lying outside of capitalist production relations, ‘women’s rights’ advocates are reduced to prettifying their chains. Once a spark catches in the char and an area of red ember begins to develop in it, drop the steel and gently tilt the char up into the "nest" of tinder, and begin to blow on it gently, perhaps holding it in such a way that the smoke won't choke or blind you. The women move from being followers to leaders in this narrative, as Raw skilfully brings their lives to the light, including their personal histories before and after the strike.