Chapter 10, 11

Ch.10:Fortunes from Phosphorus- Since the beginning of the phosphorus discovery, there have always been people ready to supply the need.
We met Godfrey in Chapter 2, who was Robert Boyle's assistant in the lab. When Boyle showed disinterest in the selling, Godfrey made his own and sold it, for almost 50 years he had his very own phosphorus monopoly.


Ch. 11: Unlucky Days: As dangerous as we know phosphorous to be, the flammability and toxicity seemed to be the most dangerous of days and brought on the most horrific accidents. That's where chapter 11 begins and ends with telling is more about the unfortunate souls killed and affected by these characteristics.

Chapter 9- Murder

As the chapters shown before, phosphorus can be deadly,  modified to make it a poison. The human body was made with an ability to detoxify many molecules presented in plants and natural insecticides. What it wasn't equipped with is the ability to cope with toxic elements, of which phosphorus is a grouling sample of.
Even with the knowledge of the poisonous characteristics of phosphorus it didn't keep people (in the Victorian Age), from eating it. This came with them eating match heads, with the belief of becoming "smarter", or committing suicide. A lethal dose of phosphorus for an adult is about 100 mg. In other words about a tenth of a gram, which just so happened to be the amount of phosphorus in a box of matches. For a baby, 20 mg, just about 10 match heads would become deadly. The time it takes to kill, is form hours to days. When large amounts are ingested in could take just hours.
Although many deaths to do with phosphorus were planned and done accordingly, there were also many accidental deaths.
And then there are the real murders. For example Dr Bowers, who disposed of his first and second wives, and third for sure. Then the rum and rodine cocktails, rodine being known as rat poisoning, people would easily mix these "cocktails" and give them to there targets.
Sounds chilling and unheard of.. but it happened.

Chapter 8- The ultimate evil - and a power for good

Around 1944 there was a new kind of chemical warfare. Tubun, was the name, and killing people was its game. Tubun was another deadly phosphorus compound and ten times more deadly than any mustard gas Winston Churchill could draw up. It was in the hands of a deadly weapon in itself, Adolf Hitler. But the questions lie ahead as why didn't he use it, and would it have influenced the outcome of the war in Europe. The answer to number one is we're not really sure. His advisers urged him to use tubun, but for some reason he knew that the allies must have had nerve gas as well and it would only retaliate further. He chose not to use the weapon that may have saved his then degrading empire in Germany. To number two, well, the jury rules as though it would have not influenced the outcome. Although, it would have caused panic where ever it had been used. One breath of tubun caused temporary blindness. Two breaths incapacitate, and three, well three it would have caused death.
Phosphorus in the hands of Nazi chemists was not a turn for good.

Chapter 7- Gomorah

When phosphorus bonds are dropped on cities during the Second World War (1935-45), you may wonder what the affects may be. Well playwrights and novelists took on the "dirty job" of describing the affects of burning phosphorus.
"Heisenberg: You never had the slightest conception of what happens when bombs are dropped on cities. Even conventional bombs. None of you ever experienced it. Not a single one of you ever experienced. Not a single one of you. I walked back from the centre of Berlin to the suburbs one night, after one of the big raids. No transport moving of course. The whole city on fire. Even the puddles in the streets are burning. They're puddles of molten phosphorus. It gets on your shoes like some incandescent dog-muck - I have to keep scraping it off - as if the streets had been fouled by the hounds of hell. It would have made you laugh, my shoes kept bursting into flames. All around me, I suppose, there are people trapped, people in various stages of burning to death".  This from Act 1 of Copenhagen by Michael Frayn.
Describing the power and horror phosphorus bombs create can be hard. Some authors have tried to capture the moments of incredible terror.
"But the worst has yet to come ... a large phosphorus bomb fell directly outside ... the people nearest the door now gave way to an indescribable panic ... Terrible scenes took place. since all of us saw certain death in front of us, with the only way out a sea of flames. We were caught like rats in a trap. Doors were thrown on the canister by screaming people and not smoke and heat poured in ... some collapsed and never woke up again. Three soldiers committed suicide. I begged my husband to beat back the flames with our blanket but he was un able to do so. My hair began to singe..".
Not all versions are written in books, or playwrights. The one above was a real account from a woman who survived a phosphorus bombing.
Phosphorus was only used in bombs when it could be produced in rather large quantity. Large scale production became available in 1882 when electric furnaces were produced which allowed phosphorus to be extracted from phosphate ore. This industrialization opened the world to bigger and badder warfare.
Lastly, you must all be wondering... What is Gomorrah, and why is the chapter named after it? It is an  operation and otherwise known as operation Gomorrah. The operation was scheduled for July 1843. it lasted 8 grouling days and destroyed the population of Hamburg, Germany.
People killed at the least- 37,000
Property destroyed
253,000 apartment blocks
35,500 houses
2,632 shops
580 factories
379 office blocks
277 schools
83 banks
77 cinema and theatres
76 municipal buildings
69 post offices
58 churches
24 hospitals
1 zoo
Water mains broke- 850
Shipping sunk- 180,000 tons
Rubble- 40 million tons

Chapter 6- The cost of a box of Matches

Unfortunately the cost of a box of matches wasn't just a few cents. In some cases it was the bones, gums and teeth of the girls who worked with the phosphorus. This was called phosphorus necrosis, it is a corrosive condition, in which it eroded their teeth and gums and sometimes all the way through to the bone.
On one account of a young female who started working at the Bryant and May match factory when she was just 18 years old. The work was tough, but the wages, before and after the strike that she brought home were a blessed addition to her family. She was married when 22, and welcomed her first baby boy, a year later. When she was 24, her wisdom tooth began to ache, so bad that she visited a local dentist. He saw it had been so eroded, the cavity it left behind refused to heal, and days later, it began to discharge a pus, which became so bad it started oozing from her nose. Her jawbone became exposed and one day a piece of it came away. What finally happened to her is undescribed, but you can only imagine what happened next.
Phossy jaw, or phosphorus necrosis was not new. It was a hazard of the phosphorus industry.
As stated before, money wasn't the only expense, but also the liveliness and health of those working with it.

Chapter 5- Strike!

The chapters of this book are incredibly long and detailed, with much consideration, I decided to tell you about the great year of 1888, which is included in this chapter. 1888, the British Empire included a third of the world's population; Victoria was Queen Empress and Marquess of Salisbury was her Conservative Prime Minister; Leo XIII was Pope; and Grover Cleveland, a democrat, was President of the United States; Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets of London, murdering and mutilating; and in July of 1888, a threatening event occurred in the same city, the girls who worked at Bryant and May match factory came out on a strike, and won.
The strike at Bryant and May's was actually rather unexpected. Bryant and May had been motivated by the highest ideals, and other than the set backs mentioned last chapter, there business seemed to flourish thoroughly. What caused the strike was the horid economic depression of the late 19th century, which had driven down the price of lucifers.
Bryant and May, had become a public company in the year of 1884. It employed roughly 3,000 people, majority working at home making match boxes and about 1,300 working in Bow factory itself. The employers were actually extremely worker loyal. When a tax was imposed and they fought for it to be levied. Unfortunately Bryant and May and other nanufacturers were furious, and began a public campaign to stop it. We can take it as them being against the tax, and as the campaigns and riots increased authoritative powere tried to stop it. Eventually the unliked tax on matches was lifted, when Queen Victoria expresses her non-amusement of the tax.  As loyal as they were to their workers, it wasn't enough and when wages and hours were cut, the strike began.

Chapter 4- Strike a Light

In chapter 4 it begins with the phosphorus lucifer. What is the phosphorus lucifer? I am asking myself the same question. It turns out that the phosphorus lucifer was a match, originally discovered by Robert Boyle. He first discovered it by coating a piece of paper with phosphorus and a piece of wood with sulfur and rubbing it together and creating a fire. Later on, chemists like John Walker made advancements to the original experiment and created the match. After eighty years of being on the market it was the world's best selling match, but in 1910 it had been outlawed. The phosphorus lucifer was very popular in the war era, as they used them to light fires and much more. The matches were made with white phosphorus, until in the 1850's when the first safety matches were made. They relied much less on red phosphorus. People relied on the matches for everyday tasks like cooking, heating, and lighting there homes. The phosphorus made it very easy to light matches, and were extremely cheap. A person could by 1,200 matches for just the price of one penny.

Matches have been around since the Roman Empire, usually consisting of a small wooden stick and covered with sulfur on one end. How did one get a flame on a cold winters night? Flint and tinder. Knocking the flint against a piece of metal of  some sort would knock of incandescent sparks and like the tinder on fire.
In 1825, a new match was developed, called the Eupyrion feuerstoffe. The problem with these although was that one must have carried around a bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid to ignite the matches.
Phosphorus was always referred to as an instant flame device, the problems that occured included low control over the flammability and its high cost.