Standing at the road junction, in front of Bow Church in East London, you will find a rather stern-looking statue of Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone.
Look closely and you will notice it has a rather odd feature: red hands.
Why? Well, brace yourselves, the story takes us back to Victorian London and is one mired in urban myth and legend. A good place to start then is with some facts!
William Gladstone and The Match Tax
William Gladstone (1809-1898) served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for twelve years over four terms and was a titan of Victorian politics.
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Inequality was incredibly high in this period and the East End was one of the most deprived areas of London.
Most in this area worked very manual, back-breaking jobs. One of the biggest employers was the Bryant and May match factory, nearby to where the statue stands.
During Gladstone’s first term, from 1868-1874, his chancellor Robert Lowe proposed a new tax on matches.
Many virulently opposed it on the grounds that matches were essential to everyday life and the potential loss of jobs. Worried about the effects on their profits, the owners of the Bryant and May match factory organised a protest march of its workers to Victoria Park.
Thousands attended and Queen Victoria herself wrote to Gladstone to object to the tax. It was promptly abandoned.
The Statue
A few years later Gladstone was back in Bryant and May’s good books and Theodore H Bryant funded a new statue of him. Gladstone’s popularity was also said to have improved due to his support of Home Rule in Ireland; particularly amongst the significant Irish population of the East End.
In 1882 the statue was unveiled with large crowds turning out to witness the event, some sources saying there were up to 30,000 attendees.
In the build up to the unveiling, a rumour apparently circulated that the statue had been paid for by docking the wages of the match factory girls by one shilling each.
Writing six years later in 1888, social activist Annie Besant wrote that the match factory girls attended the unveiling with stones in their pockets and shouted “we paid for it!”. Her account says that some of the girls then cut their arms and trickled their blood on the base of the statue.
At that time Annie was leading a huge strike of the match factory girls against their employers.
The Matchgirls Strike Back
Conditions at the Bryant and May match factory were appalling. Roughly 1400 people worked there; mostly Irish women and girls from the age of 13 upwards.
They would have to work 14 hour shifts, were paid hardly enough to survive on and were fined for various ‘misdemeanours’ such as unscheduled toilet breaks or a messy work area.
The bosses and shareholders meanwhile were receiving dividends of at least 20%.
Perhaps worse of all, match production at this time involved the use of cheap, profit-boosting, but poisonous, phosphorus. This caused what was known as “phossy jaw”: essentially an incredibly painful form of bone cancer in the jaw.
In 1888, activists Annie Besant and Herbert Burrows carried out an investigation into conditions at the Bryant and May factory and published an article in the press.
The company tried to force employees to sign a statement to refute the claims. A worker refused and was summarily dismissed, triggering a mass walk out, assisted and partly organised by Annie Besant.
They demanded better pay and conditions and after a few weeks Bryant and May capitulated.
Compromises were made, conditions improved, but sadly it was over 10 years until the factory stopped using phosphorus in production.
The inspirational matchgirls and their strike were influential in sparking industrial action elsewhere, most notably the Great Dock Strike just a year later in 1889.
Caught Red-Handed!
But how does all this relate to Gladstone’s red hands?
It was at the time of the strike that Annie published her statement about the statue unveiling. There is no other evidence of any unrest, so, was Annie potentially trying to tie the story of the statue in with the matchgirl’s plight to strengthen their cause?
Whether true or not, the story of the blood became the accepted truth in the area.
The hands of the Gladstone statue are said to have first been painted red in 1988 on the 100th anniversary of the strike in remembrance of the matchgirls strike.
Whenever the council repaint the hands or replace their original colour, someone paints them red again.
For example, the hands were cleaned in the run up to the 2012 Olympics but overnight were repainted.
Today, the statue, imperiously overlooking a busy road junction, is a reminder of the hardship of the brave East Enders who risked everything to fight for their basic human rights and paved the way for others to do the same.
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I actually feel rather proud of whoever paints them red again – that someone cares enough that an injustice in the past not be ‘whitewashed’ and forgotten, in such a quietly rebellious way, is just perfect and so English I feel!
Agreed! A peaceful but steadfast act of defiance!
I agree. I am critical of Gladstone on several counts and I add this to the list!