page_title: Bryant & May
section_title: Formation
hierarchical_section_title: Bryant & May / Formation
caption_attribution_description: English: Cartoon showing police brutality against the match makers' demonstration, 1871
context_page_description: Bryant & May was a British company created in the mid-19th century specifically to make matches. Their original Bryant & May Factory was located in Bow, London. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such as the Bryant & May Factory, Melbourne, and owned match factories in other parts of the world.
  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; and were taken over.
  The registered trade name Bryant & May still exists and it is owned by Swedish Match, as are many of the other registered trade names of the other, formerly independent, companies within the Bryant & May group.
context_section_description: The match-making company Bryant & May was formed in 1843 by two Quakers, 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 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; and later orders for 500 cases. 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. 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. 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 engines 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. 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 which 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 per 100 frames completed; the cutters received 2​³⁄₄ 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. Such a system was preferred because the workers were not covered under the Factory Acts. Such workers received 2​¹⁄₄ to 2​¹⁄₂ 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 candles, crinoline and rope, close to the River Lea 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, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, attempted to introduce a tax of ​¹⁄₂ d per hundred matches. The Times, in a leader 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
caption: Cartoon from The Day's Doings, showing the police clashing with the match makers' march
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