Domestic service was a Victorian and Edwardian era social disease. One in three women are believed to have worked in this industry as servants by this time in history, and their “masters” included rogues like Arthur Albright and Samuel Barnett, as I have touched on before.
Life must have been both dire and perilous for such young women, children mainly, and we would call this “modern day slavery” and “exploitation” today. With substances like white phosphorus still being present in a works setting without any safeguards, it appears that it was not just those in the match industry who were victims of such labour.
One such tragic occurrence is recorded in the 21st September 1889 Birmingham Weekly Post and concerns a fifteen year old girl called Harriet Duncombe.
She lived and worked in service at a farm in Wales and it appears that the family who lived there had a rat problem that they did not want to address. The girl claimed that there were “rats running over her bed” though this was denied.
Harriet is known to have bought rat poison and taken it upon herself to bait some bread, but apparently touched the phosphorus containing substance by hand and would therefore have probably been poisoned by dermal and likely oral contact if she had not washed her hands. On becoming ill she had been admitted to hospital and died one week later.
The inquest recorded death as a result of phosphorus poisoning; just another wasted life and one which we can certainly say was linked to the partnership of Albright and Wilson and their vile manufacture of this lethal substance. In public they preached “suffer not the little children”, but in capitalism they rubbed their hands with glee as they died.
