What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?

You would have thought that with a string of accidents at Trinity Street that the works management would have pulled out all the strings with spending more on processes to ensure the safety of workers and the outside public- but not so!

The article below from Sandwell Evening Mail of 13th June 1981 shows what a cheap skate firm this really was.

I’m not sure how saving money and “efficiency” made the works safer. Indeed, as I will look at in the next post, 1981 would be a year of multiple incidents of failure of a management to do just that. Going forward, as I looked at in the last post, a man died working alone, and another lost a leg. I’m not sure what this bollocks story was really about, but no doubt cutting costs would not help matters.

And so to another Trinity Street Albright and Wilson fatality, showing that this is not something that only happened in the  late 19th or early 2oth centuries.

The Birmingham Mail of 21st October 1982 reported the death of Tom Tolson, a 62 year old who died after chemical fumes leaked from a pipeline. Though there is not much detail as to the circumstances, it comes as little surprise to me that those in charge would have instantly been thinking of how they could save their own skin, from the works manager down as to the inevitable inquiry.

In the aftermath of this fatal blow, the 9th November Sandwell Evening Mail ran a damning piece on the lack of safety surrounding the Trinity Street AW operation. Local residents were worried about a series of reported incidents IN JUST 17 DAYS concerning chemical releases and poor safety practices. It is certainly apt to state that they were “living in the shadow of the Albright and Wilson chemical works ” 

residents were living “in fear”

One resident who knew the unfortunate Mr Tolson feared releases of chemicals whilst another was “nerve racked” about a potential explosion or gas escape into the environment. WE KNOW OF COURSE FROM A COPPER OF THE TIMES THAT THEY WERE RIGHT TO BE SO AFRAID. 

As for getting in touch with their local councillor, we also know what a bunch of AW cocksuckers the labourites in Sandwell were, going right back to chief red fellator Melsom during the days when he defended this bunch of scum from the Oldbury smell.

they had “no confidence” in AW.

The paper then outlines the incidents, starting with Tom Tolson’s death. You may have thought that this would focus the minds of these boffins, or even the unions to whom the unfortunates belonged- but not so. On November 3rd, a phosphorus plant fire was tackled by 9 crews. I wonder what the AW fire brigade were doing that day FFS!  have covered the unfortunate individual and his amputated limb and subsequent fight for compensation, which Albright and Wilson contested  HERE. 

Despite this we get the usual fantasy bullshit, written most likely by liar and weirdo Bloore. Note that the Health and Safety Executive were supposedly conducting an inquiry into the fatal blow.

In March of the following year, the Sandwell Evening Mail revealed more on the circumstances surrounding Tom Tolson’s death. The substance in the plant in question was phosphorus oxychloride, also known as phosphoryl chloride.

Tributyl phosphate is manufactured by reaction of phosphorus oxychloride with n-butanol. Hydrochloric acid is also produced.

POCl₃ + 3 C₄H₉OH → PO(OC₄H₉)₃ + 3 HCl

Unfortunately the HSE appear to be totally absent in this investigation, unless this inquest was badly reported on by this paper. Instead we get Bloore- then “production manager”, telling a story about how they, Albright and Wilson had carried out a replication of the circumstances of the machinery failure. I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT THIS WAS THE JOB OF THE HSE FFS! 

Some questions and observations after reading this-

Was the plant not impounded after the event?

Was the area not searched for evidence?

Why did the HSE not carry out their own tests? 

Why was a man of 62 working alone with dangerous chemicals?

Why did AW and the production manager consider it “safe” for such a man to be working alone at night? 

Did AW review this practice after this event? 

What emergency procedures were followed and were these good enough? 

How could a man of such experience of 20 years make such a rookie mistake as is suggested by Bloore? 

Was Bloore under oath? 

I don’t see any personal regret or statement of sorrow from Albright and Wilson or Bloore himself. 

I cannot believe that the jury returned a verdict of accidental death, and that this was not challenged because the failures were with this company and management, and they contributed to his death. Shit jury! 

We have seen this before with Albright and Wilson where events are blamed on individuals carrying out practices that were not corporately safe to start with, and there would be more after this fatality at the same site and under the same management. Just when does “accident” ever become the corporate manslaughter which it was with these shit judges and juries? I would suggest the freemasonry at work here delivered them the verdict that they wanted once again. You can see how well this company were so well protected by the state it served. 

I spy with my little eye…….

The over tipped foundry sand carbuncle that resides next to Rattlechain lagoon and which was once home to Rattlechain brickworks may be many things, but it offers a cracking view of the surrounding vista over towards Rowley Regis and Dudley. In this post I thought I’d take a look at some of the noticeable landmarks going in a clockwise direction.

The Rowley Hills

The Rowley Hills– consisting of  Turner’s Hill, Bury Hill, Portway Hill and Darby’s Hill- all no stranger to exploitation for minerals and then dire waste disposal schemes. This type of greened area creation from such industrial devastation is a good example of how the former brickworks tip should be used- for rewilding, and not some housing scheme  “garden city” shit in the sky. It is already rich for butterflies and other fauna and compliments Sheepwash Nature Reserve as a nature corridor.

The radio masts on Turner’s Hill, the highest point in the West Midlands county, with an altitude of 269 metres (883 ft) above sea level, are pretty ugly, but are landmarks visible from every angle, and this is the one from the mound.

Trinity- The three churches of Dudley

Though I’m certainly not standing on consecrated ground 😆 panning West I can see three holy temples that have stood there for a combined set of centuries, and a view which Samuel Barnett and others would also have known all those years ago from atop the brickworks.

The first of the trio of Grade II listed constructions in view is The Kates Hill  St John’s Church.  

The graveyard is notable as the resting place of local legend “The Tipton Slasher” , boxer William Perry.

Further across the horizon the two central churches , or “Top church” and “bottom church”.

The former on the left is officially known as “St Thomas and St Luke” and was rebuilt in the early 19th Century.

The bottom church is known as St Edmund  and has another rebuilt history with the current building completed in 1724.

A much more modern feature of the large Tesco visible.

A fourth Church St James’s, of similar design to St John’s at Eve Hill is obscured by the tree canopy.

Dudley Castle and Zoo chairlifts. 

Everyone in the West Midlands has probably visited this site in their lifetime, and though I am no fan of zoos, the iconic castle is part of the fibre of the area. The chair lifts date from 1958. Following archaeological investigations, the castle is also credited to have the world’s oldest rubber johnnies, albeit without the rubber. Nearby Tipton is of course also famous as the place where God’s underpants were found. 😆

The Showcase cinema and Castlegate. 

It is what it says on the tin. This cinema opened in 2001 and is part of the Castlegate retail and business park, a part of which stands on what was once the Dudley cricket and football ground. This site would be notable when a cache of AW bombs turned up which were disposed of in rattlechain lagoon. 

Rattlechain lagoon!

Of course, we need no introduction here with the view of the former pit, divided into two lagoons with the creation of a causeway path. A prime example of how appearances can be deceptive, and I have spent many an hour looking across here at ailing birds and trying to spot dead ones back in the day. What a shit hole.

The Autobase Industrial Estate

This site has a parallel history to rattlechain lagoon which I have looked at HERE.

The Autobase replaced the former London Steel works after the wretched conman Duport Group had left the scene. The main users today appear to be Clarkes Transport and more recently Comex 2000.

Sheepwash Nature Reserve and pylons. 

You can read more about Sheepwash and the desire to protect it on our sister website HERE. The Summer trees may well mask out views of the site, but it is there, the pylons providing a more unwelcome view however. You can read about the story of how the orange bird diverters viewable across the span came to be HERE. 

And so to the greenery around and behind me, supporting a a variety of wildlife. I would rather look at this any day than what it looked like a few years ago, and hope it will not be turned black again.

#STOP THE GARDEN CITY

All of Albright and Wilson’s manufacture sites had accidents and poor health and safety, bar none. I have detailed the catalogue of issues at Trinity Street, where phosphorus and chlorine were by far the biggest dangers to workers and the public. An incident where several workers were gassed by Cl2 occurred in 1974  , but I have found another at one of the dirty buggers lesser known sites in London called “Canning Road”.

Situated in the East End of London in Stratford, not the better known Midlands beauty spot of Shakespeare by the Avon, I have little information on this place as it occupies a very brief mention in both of the AW propaganda books about the company. The Hugh Podger book reveals that it was to close in 1984 “because of adverse trading conditions and declining sales.” 

It further however states that this was the site which produced phosphorus acid, where AW were the largest producers in the world. This may be a boast, but it is clear that they were potentially also the biggest cancer manufacturers on the planet with this ghastly substance being used in Monsantos round up.

This process site  eventually closed and the lucky people of Oldbury got it instead. FFS! 😥

I digress however as this toxic archive shows that chlorine was handled irresponsibly at this site and from the Daily Mirror of 11th August 1967 we find out more.

Sixteen workers required hospital treatment, with a further seventeen affected after a leaking cylinder exposed them to the toxic chemical. We see that it was the fire service who were called again to deal with the incident. In peacetime, there is no doubt that this company posed more of a risk than the Germans did in war to the civilian population with chemical weapons. Germany never used used them. 

The “babbles” that Albright and Wilson blew were never a “pretty babbles in the air.” 😆 😆 😆

For those more astute, you may have noticed that there is now an https prefix to this website, well at least it’s now “secure” 😆

I’ve been using WordPress now for ten years without that many issues but unfortunately it appears that like with most things, someone decided to screw up what wasn’t broken with the new default block editing- which is fucking horrendous to put it mildly.

Thankfully, at least for now, I have the option of continuing with classic editor and not having to create text boxes like some 1990’s crap Mac. Another issue is that the comments on the pages have disappeared from public view, but are still there in draft, and over the next week or so I will reinstate them all with original post and text so that they appear in search engines.

I will also be assigning tags to pages and posts which I have wanted to do for some time as subjects eg #whitephosphorus. Another thing I will be doing is creating PDF breakdowns of the main issues surrounding this site, the history, the pollution story and other matters. This website now has well over 200 pages and over 400 posts, and so can be daunting for anyone to get a bitesize appetite for to know the facts of the case. These PDF’s will have the relevant links for further reading and evidence base. Some pages I am keeping deliberately from public view until such time as they may become relevant. 😎

To start as an appetizer, here are the facts concerning the site history.

site history

I have covered other sites and issues related to pollution and especially the toxic brownfield building issues and tried to help others who have been the victims of industrial pollution. If you have a story to tell and are not getting anywhere with mainstream media, then why not drop us a message on our facebook page and I will do my best to help.

Thank you for your continued support. 

Third world Britain of the 1970’s.

This article from the Sandwell Evening Mail of 23rd April 1977 shows how the control of substances hazardous to human health were not being dealt with by any reliable form of legislation but instead the safeguarding of communities unlucky enough with Bad neighbours like Albright and Wilson were reliant on the “early warning” system of one woman’s nostrils.

Of course, at this point in history, the stench from the Langley stink panther was the stuff of legend, and I do not mean myth. “The Oldbury smell” I have chronicled in several posts, and an overview of these can be read HERE.  

1974 had seen The Flixborough disaster  where 28 people died in a chemical explosion in Lincolnshire leading to the Health and Safety at Work Act , and two years later in Italy, the Seveso disaster.  More kneejerk reaction followed this, and yet in 1984 we would see The Bhopal disaster as well. Living near to any chemical factory puts your health and life at greater risk, and that is a fact, whatever the chemical industry tries to lie otherwise. 

We know of course the form for the works management scum at the Langley factory and their semantics and distortions of the truth, and this article appears to show the type of gaslighting that continues to the present day with this industry about health and safety. We know that Day’s successor, the ludicrous “Dr” Bloore, had a nose like Pinnochio. 

Cissie Jones , I assume she is no longer with us unless you know otherwise, should be commended for her community spirit, like that of the terrier Mrs Gunn who took the fight to these phossy buggers back in the 1950’s over the blight to the local area. Unfortunately, it is fairly clear to me that an article like this was a propaganda piece for this company rather than a serious or credible story about the continued risk posed by the works. At this time, phosphorus and chlorine were still being delivered by rail, and there had been leaks and fires. A chlorine leak in 1974 for example had hospitalised several staff. 

The “good neighbours committee”- what a terrible name implying somehow that this dire company were anything of the sort, was a vehicle which they could use for pretending that they cared or were listening. As I found out when attending such meetings where I raised concerns about bird deaths, it was merely a way of gauging what you knew about their shit, and getting nothing and no credible info back in return- such as the toxicity of fucking phosphorus.

The quarterly meetings referred to would no doubt give Pat Day the vehicle to bullshit about how wonderful AW were and tea and biscuits would be served. This type of personalised meeting would also offer the biggest moaners a chance to be neutralised in isolation, rather than dealing with the press outright, as Mrs Gunn had done in the early days. All of these matters were about psychology and nothing to do with chemistry.  

Unfortunately, the gaslighting of poor Cissie is completed with believing that she is actually making a difference by reporting such smells to Day. How much had already been covered up, and not reported by those at the plants is not mentioned or delved into in this daft story. If she smelt anything bad, it was just a means of giving her some bullshit knowing that she would communicate this back to the others in her street.

What Cissie and the community did not know, and certainly not revealed by Messrs Day and Bloore was the following, sent to us by a then serving policeman in Oldbury.  The  bloodhound of the law could at least detect bullshit.

A few years ago, I started a list of former waste disposal sites within the West Midlands County; an attempt to list these before the powers that be erase them for purposes of housebuilding and conning people out of money and not telling them the truth about the shite contaminated land that their houses have been built upon or near.

We have seen a massive shift in recent times in the “brownfield building” con man trade, an axis of avarice between politicians who make policy to serve their party political donor mates from this sector, as well as their land owner mates to whom “greenbelt land” will become more profitable so long as they can sit on it for as long as possible by land banking.

We also see this trade facilitated by the snivel service, that glut of lazy still work from home public sector fucking scum who appear unaccountable to anyone if they feel “bullied”- er not doing their fucking jobs properly. They serve business and they fellate certain politicians, and my contempt for them is total. They consider themselves one step above the people who pay their wages- the public, to whom they care nothing. Many of course do not even live in this county preferring Derbyshire/ Worcestershire or anywhere else where they can presumably commute by car whilst trying to inflict their Nazi Globalist lockdown LTN 15 minute cities on those that do.

I have added dozens more sites prefixed by the SL number, but what is clear from the Environment Agencies processed Landfill site database from which I took these is that their information is not complete- there are clearly many many numbers in the SL line that are not there. I have just over 300 named and yet the SL numbers go into the 2000’s! This body or the predecessor in the useless Walsall council run hazardous waste unit further made things difficult by renumbering these with the prefix 644/—-. For example, the infamous Rattlechain lagoon SL31 became 644/60 . At some point, I will add these numbers in and also try to deduce where these are hiding. Some later ones after this also had a WM number, such as the British Waterways Blue Button Tip in Coseley.

British Waterways Blue Button Tip – one of many dredging tips used by this dire former polluter to land

Other observations emerge from compiling this decanted set from theirs.

• Many of the sites were granted to either the useless West Midlands County Council or other local authorities within it.
• The locations have been possibly lost to history, with many old clay pits and quarries filled in.
• There is scant information as to what happened to sites after WW2 and before site licensing, and yet a great deal of information about the historic nature of these sites BEFORE they were infilled with any old crap BEFORE licensing.
• This fact leads to scurrilous faked claims by environmental consultancies who leave out key information deliberately to enable their clients to escape the necessary scrutiny of those who question why they fail to find evidence of harmful chemicals- even though everyone knows that they were dumped there. This emboldens a Jackanory story board “site investigation” where boreholes can be cherry picked to find nothing- nothing that would deter development on land known to be contaminated by past use.

An example of this is a site in Coseley known as “Bourne Street” which I am looking into. notice how long periods of time are omitted between certain key events, such as 1966, BEFORE SITE LICENSING, and then 1992, AFTER THE LICENCE HAD ENDED. The operator at this site was the scandalous Leigh Environmental offshoot, Leigh Land Reclamation Limited. 

The Environment Agency noted the following priceless comment attached to this particular planning application, which is very much a part of the problem.

“Assumption” without any factual scrutiny

• The same goes for local authorities who want to offload land because they are piss poor and have mismanaged money for many years, like Sandwell Council. An example of this is the bent land deal at Friar Park where land has been bolted together with Severn Trent Water’s contaminated shithole remnants that it has not paid a penny to remediate. The land itself is a haven for wildlife and not “brownfield” in any way.

• Severn Trent Water have flogged off many of their former sewage works since privatisation, making over £49 million from the sale yet have relied on the public purse to “clean them up” after this; the days of the corrupt BCDC now merge into the corrupt WMCA- just a different acronym where they steal our money to pay for their own profit giving nothing back. They remain one of the worst environmental polluters in the country. It is even more disgraceful that they are a statutory consultee on planning matters, so may make favourable comments about applications which benefit their own avarice. THEY SHOULD BE STRIPPED OF THIS ROLE.
• A common tactic of those involved in greenwashing by selling land and pretending to increase its biodiversity is the token hedgerow or useless fucking shit like “swales”. These dead end ditches are bollocks, and serve only to collect surface water pollution from polluters like Severn Trent and  others, and probably the contaminants from places built on whose past use has not really been “cleaned up” at all.

Don’t try and tell me this has any nature value FFS. It’s a dirty fucking ditch!

This is where the fun begins………. 😛

SITE-BLIGHT-WMCC-1 (3)

An obscure licence plate tucked away on an out of sight board

Weddell Wynd SL260- another former site licenced area with a contaminated legacy

Should we be concerned about how artificial intelligence may eventually control and replace our lives with that of avatars? This is a hot current debate and one which will continue to unfold as new technology emerges, only limited by the capabilities of human thought. There are now many search tools and websites which write essays, stories and alternate timelines of stories by entering text and prompts.

I am more interested however in visual art and how words can suggest images, and so with this in mind I decided to have a go and enter “Rattlechain Lagoon” to see what AI came up with.

The name itself has always had Scooby Doo connotations , even though the reality is one which probably came from the clanking of rattle chain- a type of chain which drove the workings of the brick factory works as it then was. The picture above imagines a volcanic Middle Earth type world of red mountains and a blue lagoon sea of phosphorescence. I think Bob Ross, or even Blob Phos would be proud of such a painting.  😛

This is a world of no life, of darkest nights with just a hint of breaking dawn, and maybe “a place in which nothing could live.”

Further images from a different site again show more of the phosphine waters and similar landscapes

This Rattlechain lagoon is a lake of fire and spontaneous ignis fatuus.

So long as it stays around this level, and does attempt to control us, I believe this type of thing is fine and is rather cool. There is certainly no doubt that AI provides a more realistic interpretation of Rattlechain lagoon than that of the wild imagination of Rhodia Solvay management, their environmental consultant delusions, and their paid up local political and civil service cocksuckers with their Quaker Garden 15 minute Cities.

We have seen several instances of white phosphorus being used for suicide, and also notorious murders, but the origins of it being used for weapons of war appear to have started with so called “Fenian fire”- Irish republican terrorism from the 1860’s.

In this case, and as a forerunner to the notorious AW bombs, bottles were filled with white phosphorus in a solution of carbon disulphide. When the carbon disulphide evaporated, the phosphorus would burst into flames.

There is no doubt that political terrorism is oxygenated by something which appears harmless but can explosively combust at a particular target, and like the Irish terrorists, in the early part of the Twentieth Century, a particular group of women copied such actions in order to gain the vote, but only for a certain class of women, and we will look more closely at the main protagonists of this, three of the Pankhursts, at the end of this post.

The Suffragette movement was not of one voice. Whilst on one hand there was the non militant National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, run by  “Law-Abiding suffragists” leader Millicent Fawcett, this was not good enough for Emmeline Pankhurst who splintered to pursue her own ego penis envy trip with the  Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). 

This latter group of big hat wearing virago bints were responsible for arson attacks and indiscriminate criminal damage at targets such as Royal Mail pillar boxes, with the attacks on perceived male institutions bearing the cipher of Edward VII and then latterly George V. It is worth bearing in mind however that a woman had been on the British throne between 1867 and 1901 FFS and yet one wonders if she had lasted a few more years as to what the target would have been then?

Examples of this ill conceived action are recorded in archive newspapers, such as the one below from Guernsey Evening Press and Star 5th February 1913 edition.

Grace Burbidge had been arrested for such a crime of using liquid phosphorus to burn letters in a post box but had been burnt herself in the action- she deserved it.

A pillar box bearing the cipher of Victoria’s son’s reign, Edward VII between 1901-1910.

A George V era letterbox shown by its cipher

Another article from the same paper of 8th April describes phosphorus again being used to target letter boxes on Bournemouth, with then Post Master General Herbert Samuel being mentioned in one scrawled message on the phosphorus package. In context, it is worth noting that this coincided with the detention of Pankhurst Senior for three years on April 2nd. Pankhurst had earlier admitted to targeting the then Chancellor David Lloyd Georges house in a terrorist attack. 

The Brighton Gazette of a day later shows how this campaign was growing around the country- probably because of agitation caused by the WSPU. In Eastbourne, several attacks had been made, with some letters addressed to prominent figures like then Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith as well as Lloyd George again.

As Christmas eve of 1913 dawned, a Brighton Gazette piece noted that the WSPU had cancelled Christmas for some people by destroying letters in Nottingham by phosphorus tubes again being put in boxes. It also shows how innocent individuals just doing their job had been burned by the stupid suffragettes.

The Pankhursts – hypocrites and the establishment

If you think that Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel were heroines, then you have a warped and misinformed view of history. THEY DID NOT WIN THE VOTE FOR WOMEN. 

It is a strange thing that those who claim to fight perceived injustices inflicted by the establishment appear to eventually become canonised by that establishment with which they cut a deal. It is also surprising that those self appointed leaders who do so have a false history written for them, with statues and their importance exaggerated by the political establishment through the media. We have seen this with Irish Republican terrorists and their political friends as “men of peace” whilst their innocent victims have never received any justice, like those killed or injured by the  Birmingham Pub bombings for example.

The Liberal pre World War One leadership was obviously not that Liberal enough to allow universal suffrage to women, and most notably, though never usually cited, ALL MEN EITHER. To be clear, Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel were only concerned with the vote for property owning women, and those over the age of 21,  AND NOT ALL WOMEN. Why, because they were not of poor means and like most of a Liberal thinking mindset and champagne socialist Fabians, are complete fucking hypocrites and talk a good talk by using others to get what they really want for themselves. 

The WSPU campaign was not a votes for all women like street whores, but to attain equal rights for “Ladies” with the Gentlemen. It was also not a very democratic organisation, but a top down nepotistic one with the trio of Pankhursts at the head- like all political parties it seems.

But this is not the only hypocrisy with this narcissistic person who has had a false aura painted around her by latter day feminists and liberals who have invented their own perceived emancipation. Before the outbreak of war she deserted her tribe to evade arrest and by touring abroad to give rebel rousing speeches. She even gave an analogy in one in New York about being “a soldier”. FFS! I don’t think breaking windows or setting fires makes you anything but a petty criminal dear.

She was an advocate of The First World War and campaigned for “King and Country” in a conflict which sent millions of men to their deaths in trenches whilst no doubt her and her WSPU sisters treated themselves to a stand up piss with the aristocratic  bourgeois in stoneware urinals miles from any front line. How many widows with fatherless children did WW1 produce? For it is apparent that Emmeline and her daughter Christabel had done a deal with the Government which saw her and her terrorist harridans released from prison. From here, their misanthropy continued with the four feathers movement, shaming working class MEN of fighting age  into joining a pointless war between three Grandsons of the same WOMAN- Queen Victoria with the same type of political propaganda that had been advocated in women planting phosphorus in letter boxes bearing the King’s mark.

Her other daughter Sylvia, resigned from WSPU because of the violent action, and was also against the war to end all wars. Despite being “socialists”, it seems that Emmeline and Christabel were more on the National socialist part of the movement.

All direct action by WSPU stopped at the start of the war in August 1914 whilst their attacks on men continued. After the war the two main antagonists joined the Conservative party, thus establishing themselves as part of the establishment they claimed to be against.

Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were  clear eugenicists and British Empire Imperialists, who toured Canada after the war spouting crap such as this.

One wonders how these two spiteful women compare with those of low social standing involved in the matchgirls strikes of 1888 and their leaders and how they were burned and disfigured with phossy jaw by the same chemical that the clan Pankhurst advocated posting with gay abandon?

One wonders how many women were burnt by producing phosphorus weapons at Albright and Wilson in WW1 and other factories only to receive some worthless tin medal for their “service”? 

One wonders why it is that the two of them have had statues and a bust erected in their memory within Westminster, and yet the pacifist Sylvia daughter has not?

WHY? Because history is littered with political and manipulative scum like Emmeline Pankhurst purely out for themselves who use a rights issue to whip up tensions until such a time that they cut a deal with their enemies to suit themselves. Historical monuments  infect the present day with the same thinking political people who use them as martyrs to serve their own warped cause and rewritten history that is not deserved. 

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.