Strange Survivals: Some Chapters in the History of Man

by S. Baring-Gould

Another method of kindling a match was by means of Homberg’s phosphorus, or fire-bearer. It was a black powder compound of flour, sugar, and alum, which took fire on exposure to the air. But it never came into general use. It remained in the hands of the curious. None of these inventions displaced the old tinder-box, which maintained itself to within the memory of many of us who are over fifty years.

Of all the ingenious attempts to get rid of the tinder-box, the oxymuriate matches were the most successful. From them our present lucifers are lineally descended. The oxymuriate matches were composed of chlorate of potash and sugar coating a strip of wood. The match was dipped into a bottle containing a piece of asbestos soaked in oil of vitriol. The bottle and a number of these matches, with tipped ends downwards, were put into a neat little case, and this was called the “phosphorus box.” On their first introduction, these boxes sold as high as 15s. each; they gradually fell to 10s., then 5s., but never went below half-a-crown. But they were not altogether successful. The oil of vitriol lost its force after a while, owing to the readiness with which it absorbed moisture from the air, and then the matches smouldered instead of bursting into flame.

The next advance was the lucifer-match, with phosphorus and sulphur combined at the end. But this was dangerous, and frightful accidents attended the manufacture. I spent some winters at Pau, in the south of France, and near our house were the cottages of poor people who worked at match-making. The pans of melted phosphorus into which the heads of the matches were dipped would explode suddenly, and scatter their flaming contents over the match-girls. My mother, as an angel of goodness, was wont to visit and minister to many and many a poor little burnt girl, who had thus been set fire to.

But the phosphorus match-making had another objection to it, besides the accidents produced in the melting of phosphorus. It brought on a frightful disease in the jaw. The bone was attacked, and rotted away. In the “Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science” for 1852, the nature of the disease is thus described:—“An affection ensues which is so insidious in its nature that it is at first supposed to be common toothache, and a most serious disease of the jaw is produced before the patient is aware of his condition. The disease gradually creeps on until the sufferer becomes a miserable and loathsome object, spending the best period of his life in the wards of a public hospital. Many patients have died of the disease; many unable to open their jaws have lingered with carious and necrosed bones; others have suffered dreadful mutilations from surgical operations, considering themselves happy to escape with the loss of the greater portion of the lower jaw. In the Museum of the Manchester Infirmary is the lower jaw of a young woman who is now at work. Her face is much disfigured by the loss of her chin, and, on looking into her mouth, the root of the tongue is seen connected with her under lip, the space formerly occupied by the jaw being obliterated by the contraction of the cheek.”

Thus, in the advance of civilisation, great agonies have been gone through. Our present conveniences have been purchased at the cost of throes and tears in the past. We should not forget that civilisation has had its martyrs.

Lastly came the match made without phosphorus. When we think of the toil and trouble that the lighting of a fire occasioned, we can understand what store was set on never letting a fire on the hearth go out. An old woman on Dartmoor, recently dead, boasted on her death-bed: “I be sure I’se goin’ to glory; for sixty-three years have I been married, and never in all them years once let the hearth-fire go out.” But there the fire was of peat, which will smoulder on untouched for many hours.

There was a stage of civilisation before the tinder-box came in, and that was a stage when fire had to be kept in, and if it went out, borrowed from a neighbour. In the earliest age, fire was obtained by friction; a piece of wood with a hole in it was placed on the ground between the feet. Then a man held a piece shaped like the letter T in his hands, and rapidly twirled this about, with the long end inserted in the hole of the piece he held between his feet, till by friction the upright was ignited. The pieces of wood must be very dry, and requisite dryness was not easily procurable in our moist northern climes, consequently the labour of kindling a flame was proportionately great. Sometimes a wheel was employed, and the axle turned in that to produce a flame. It has been thought that the fylfot

, the crook-legged cross found on so many monuments of antiquity, the Svastika of India, represents an instrument for the production of fire by friction. But owing to the great difficulty in producing fire by this means, the greatest possible care was taken of the household fire, lest it should become extinguished. This originated the worship of Vesta. The flame once procured was guarded against extinction in some central spot by the unmarried women of the house, and when villages and towns were formed, a central circular hut was erected in which a common fire was maintained, and watched continuously. From this central hearth all the hearths of the settlement were supplied. Ovid tells us that the first temple of Vesta at Rome was constructed of wattled walls, and roofed with thatch like the primitive huts of the inhabitants. It was little other than a circular, covered fireplace, and was tended by the unmarried girls of the infant community. It served as the public hearth of Rome, and on it glowed, unextinguished throughout the year, the sacred fire, which was supposed to have been brought from Troy, and the continuance of which was thought to be linked with the fortunes of the city. The name Vesta is believed to be derived from the same root as the Sanscrit vas, which means “to dwell, to inhabit,” and shows that she was the goddess of home, and home had the hearth as its focus. A town, a state, is but a large family, and what the domestic hearth was to the house, that the temple of the perpetual fire became to the city. Every town had its Vesta, or common hearth, and the colonies derived their fire from the mother hearth. Should a vestal maiden allow the sacred fire to become extinguished, she was beaten by the Grand Pontiff till her blood flowed, and the new fire was solemnly rekindled by rubbing together dry wood, or by focussing the sun’s rays. It might not be borrowed from a strange place. The circular form and domed roof of the Temples of Vesta were survivals of the prehistoric huts of the aborigines.