Striking a light: how a 'rough set of girls' took on the world

Join Louise Raw in a talk about the historic Matchgirls' Strike with lessons for today’s fights against injustice.

This is the last event in the series for the exhibition Combining Efforts: 200 Years of Trade Union History.

In Victorian London, one of the worst things you could be was a ‘matchgirl’.

The women and girls who worked for Bryant & May were everything the Victorian establishment despised and feared: Irish and Jewish, Eastenders, ‘factory lasses’, and poor, when this was considered a moral failing.

Worse, they had the temerity to be proud of who they were, and celebrate it with their own styles and fashions: all far too colourful and provocative for a Victorian ‘lady’.

But- living in cramped rooms, always hungry and tired, jaws aching from deadly white phosphorus, fined or sacked if they stepped out of line: how could they possibly take on the might of the Victorian establishment and one of the nation’s wealthiest firms, whose directors wined and dined prime ministers on palatial country estates?

Find out why the women fought, how they won, how history tried to bury their victory, and its essential lessons for today’s fights against injustice.

About our speaker

Louise Raw is a historian and activist interested in the lesser-told histories of the majority of us who are not kings, queens or wealthy white men.

Her PhD and book focus on the 1888 strike and victory of the Bryant & May matchwomen, some of the most exploited workers in Victorian London.

She is a regular contributor on BBC London and to the Morning Star newspaper, and founded the activist group Survivors against Fascism.

About our chair

Johann Koehler joined the LSE as an assistant professor in 2019, and has been the Director of the LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology since 2024. His chief interests lie in the origins, applications, and limitations of the movement to pin criminal justice to robust science — what in some circles is called ‘evidence-based’ justice reform.

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