The Safety Match
The statistics of London Fires in one year (1858) show that, out of the 1114 fires forming the total of serious conflagrations, the following proportion was occasioned by the usual contrivances for procuring flame, viz.:
| Children playing with lucifers | 12 |
| Lucifer matches accidentally ignited | 7 |
| ″ ″ making | 3 |
| ″ ″ careless use of | 17 |
| —— | |
| 39 |
In the first of these instances the sacrifice of life and wholesale destruction of property were traced principally to the fact of children inserting lucifer matches into various nooks and crevices, where an accidental concussion had produced their ignition. The next in the series of casualties are accidents resulting from the sudden ignition of boxes or bundles of phosphorized matches. The necessity as well as the possibility of removing the fatal cause of these accidents has long been felt; and by the following contrivance such occurrences, which hitherto have led to so many terrible disasters, may be completely obviated. This invention, which has reached us from France, consists of a match which cannot ignite by friction with ordinary substances, but which bursts into flame when struck upon a chemically-prepared substance, owing to the peculiar action occurring between the two bodies which are thus brought into contact. Without the prepared strip, the matches may be struck or trodden upon without the possibility of ignition. The advantage of having these articles tipped with a material which is not inflammable per se is sufficiently obvious, not only to careful housewives, but to the owners of large establishments where the ordinary “lucifers” are now used, and, we are afraid, often left carelessly about.
The reputed inventor of the Lucifer Match died in 1859, in Stockton, aged seventy-eight. The Gateshead Observer adds to this announcement:—“In the year 1852 (August), correcting the history of ‘matches’ in the ‘Jurors’ Reports’ (Great Exhibition), we stated, says our authority, that ‘A quarter of a century ago, Mr. John Walker, of Stockton-upon-Tees, then (as now) carrying on the business of chemist and druggist in that town, was preparing some lighting mixture for his own use. By the accidental friction on the hearth of a match dipped in the mixture, a light was obtained. The hint was not thrown away. Mr. Walker commenced the sale of friction-matches: this was in April, 1827.’ Dr. Faraday, it is said, first brought the discovery into general notice.”