CONTINUED
A Vesta Virgin — Drying out matches … is the pits.
by Max Magee
Didn’t Doctor Hardcastle know better, didn’t Doctor Doyle know better, than to deposit matches in his armpit to dry them?! But as I reflected on the conditions of caves — unusually and regularly cold and damp, colder than the ambient temperatures in summer — and the circumstances of the events of the story, I started to wonder if there wasn’t some merit to this approach.
Consider that in the country, near Castleton or Derbyshire, tweed or some other spun wool was the likeliest material for outerwear. That area is famous for cotton mills, but wool was also plentiful (when monsters weren’t eating their sheep). If Hardcastle entered from a warmer and relatively dry atmosphere from outside of the cave, any air trapped by the coat or between the fibers of another garment would be relatively dry (compared to the humid environs of the cave).
In the reader’s mind’s eye, placing a matchbox beneath his left armpit seems to be counterproductive: next to skin that is potentially among the dampest and potentially sweatiest areas of a man’s body. However, when taken in the context of the story, although his body would be warmer than the ambient air, and the pocket beneath his arm that was not wetted by being soaked in the cave system’s river, it might actually contain dryer air than the moist air of the cave. He says that he’s wretchedly damp and cold due to being dunked in the cave river, so it’s entirely possible that he is not sweating at all, in spite of his panic.
Let’s turn now to the box of matches — particularly if it remained mostly sealed, one can imagine that almost no water would’ve entered the box itself, although the box lid and outside layers may have gotten dampened or even wet. If these were safety matches (invented in the mid-1800s through a series of developments including the discovery and isolation of red phosphorus), the striker strip on the box would need to be intact and dry in order to strike and light a match. If, instead, the matches were what we now call strike-anywhere (containing some white phosphorus or other phosphorus compound on the tip of the match head), Dr. Hardcastle would only need to make sure that the matches themselves were dry enough to catch, when struck. Fun fact: because of the sulfur content of strike-anywhere matches, they were known as “Lucifers” at this time.
Due to the toxicity and danger of matchstick makers developing symptoms of “phossy jaw” — an osteonecrotic and terrifying exposed-bone condition producing pain, swelling, disfigurement of the jaw and face, and eventually death, mostly among the young women who worked in match factories (as discussed by Cindy Brown on page eight of this project) — the white phosphorus used to make them was eventually banned in matches, and by about the time of this story, phosphorus sesquisulfide, a non-toxic alternative was used almost exclusively in them, instead of white phosphorus, except in the UK. A matchstick-maker strike in 1888 called the London Matchgirls’ Strike led to the creation of the largest union of women and girls in the UK, (the Union of Women Matchmakers), as well as bans in many other countries beginning with Finland (then part of Russia) in 1872. However, it wasn’t until the year of this story, on December 31st, 1910, that white phosphorus was finally eliminated from matches in the UK.
By 2018, strike-anywhere matches were virtually banned by the European Union. At the end of May, 2018, the chemicals that replaced white phosphorus (phosphorus sesquisulfide and its precursors) were targeted for regulation and limited in their use, and due to this, as well as shifting market demand toward safety matches, the most popular British brand, Swan Vestas, pledged to sell only safety matches (although there was no direct ban on strike-anywhere matches).
In Victorian England, matchmaking was a lucrative market; in 1850 alone, the UK used 250 million matches per day. In 1860, one of the leading British firms, Bryant and May, sold 27.9 million boxes of matches. They became a publicly traded company, and in the 1880s they employed 5,000 matchmakers, mostly young Irish women or women of Irish descent, including many under the age of 14, who could only earn 4 shillings per week.
Returning to the main track of the story, we note that the narrator’s primary concern was that the matches themselves weren’t waterlogged and were dry, again, indicating strike-anywhere type matches.
Likely, therefore, the matchbox had only been dampened and much of the wetness was absorbed by the dryer material of his coat or sweater. The matches were “Lucifers,” containing white phosphorus, as the good doctor stooped to strike one in a crevice of the rocks — possibly on a shelf at convenient height or a rough vertical crack that was not wet — rather than simply striking one on the box to light it (as would be required if they were safety matches).
Fortunately, either the wick of the candle remained dry or it also had time to dry out after being dunked — Dr. Hardcastle doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about its dryness, although he lost the first in the river — and it lit immediately, so he was correct not to worry.
Although his story has a positive outcome in terms of the matches and candle, this story, among Doyle’s other Sherlockian references in “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” and “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” are cautionary tales that show how useful a wax-coated, waterproof match, a “wax vesta,” can be. Although not specifically mentioning a brand, Swan Vestas were a likely candidate for which brand Doyle preferred, although the term comes from an early 1832 patent for “wax vestas” by William Newton. Doyle also used the term “vestas” to refer to a box of matches in “The Adventure of Black Peter,” but as previously stated, this was a generic term that evolved from the popularity of Swan Vestas and could’ve referred to other brands.
A safety measure that developed into an affectation for the wealthy was the “vesta case,” a silver or other hard-sided, usually metallic or ceramic case that would keep strike-anywhere matches from igniting from an accidental bump or scrape in the pocket — they could even be an effective mechanical water-proofing mechanism even if the vestas weren’t wax-coated. These cases were often decorated with enameled paintings or artistic engravings and could be hung from the end of an “Albert,” the decorative watch chain, with the pocket watch attached to the other end of the chain — one of several fobs that would adorn the end of the chain, which could also include a sovereign case (to keep valuable coins safe), a smoking knife for adjusting pipe tobacco, a locket, small painting or photo, or even a Chinese coin (as Jabez Wilson wore in “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League”).
Returning to the earlier discussion of Bryant & May, the Liverpool-based Swan Vesta company merged with them in 1906, and by 1930, Swan Vestas became the top seller in Britain, known as “The Smoker’s Match.” The company is no longer producing matches in Britain nor operated as a British company. Today, the Swan Vesta brand is owned by the world-leading Swedish Match Company AB, (which, in turn, was taken over by the American firm Phillip Morris in 2022), which produces over four million matchboxes of matches a day. Thus they are still popular in the U.K.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchgirls%27_strike
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/east-london-english-heritage-british-alan-turing-asian-b2115989.html
https://www.bada.org/features/terms-trade-vesta-cases
https://www.dalvey.com/blog/the-albert-pocket-watch-chain
https://houseofswan.com/about/interesting-facts/
https://www.ebay.com/itm/363479433404
WHO IS MAX?
Maximilian P. Magee, PSI (“Agent Tobias Athelney”) is an aerospace engineer turned software developer from Madison, Wisconsin. He’s a Student of Starrett, a Devotee of Derleth, and of course, a Doting Doylean. As a computer-scientist, Max has engaged in various enterprises to electronically analyze, re-serialize, socialize, and discuss Doyle’s works in new and (sometimes) interesting ways.