# @wild_history_uk on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DU1rnXgiEEs
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/59841005-wild-history-uk-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/b1016a67bf.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-02-17T00:25:36.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Wild History Shocking Stories From the Past (@wild_history_uk) — https://gondola.cc/wild_history_uk

## Caption

London, 1888. Meet Sarah. She’s fourteen, and her jawbone is dissolving.
Sarah works in a match factory, dipping wooden sticks into white phosphorus—the chemical that makes matches strike. The phosphorus glows in the dark. The factory girls call themselves “the glow girls” because their skin literally shines at night.
But the phosphorus is poison.
It seeps through their skin, into their teeth, gums, and bones. Sarah’s jaw started hurting six months ago. A toothache. Then teeth fell out. Then her gums turned green.
Now her jawbone is rotting from the inside. You can smell it across the room—the sweet, horrible smell of decaying bone. They call it “phossy jaw.”
The bone keeps rotting. Her face will collapse. The only treatment is surgery without anesthesia—cutting away dead bone. Most girls die anyway.
Sarah makes 4 shillings a week. Factory owners make thousands.
This wasn’t hidden. Doctors documented phossy jaw in 1839. Factory owners knew. They didn’t care. White phosphorus was cheaper than safer alternatives.
5,000 girls and women worked in London’s match factories. Hundreds developed phossy jaw. Their faces literally rotted off while they were alive.
Parliament debated banning white phosphorus for decades. Match manufacturers lobbied: “It would destroy British industry.”
Then in 1888, the match girls went on strike. Sarah and 1,400 others walked out. They organized. They fought back.
The strike lasted two weeks. Public outrage forced negotiations. The match girls WON—better pay, safer conditions, the beginning of the end for white phosphorus.
White phosphorus wasn’t banned until 1910. By then, Sarah was dead at sixteen, her jaw completely gone.
But the strike she helped organize changed labor law forever. It proved even the poorest, youngest workers could fight back and win.
London, 1888. When fourteen-year-olds’ faces rotted off for 4 shillings a week. And then they decided they shouldn’t have to.
This is Part 3 of “Cities That Built the World”—the real cost of industrial progress. #MatchGirls #PhossyJaw #London1888 #LaborHistory #VictorianEngland WorkersRights

## Stats

- **Views:** 158,144
- **Likes:** 16,407
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- **Comments:** 297

## Tags

victorianengland, matchgirls, london1888, laborhistory, phossyjaw

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