Biography : John Walker (1781-1859)
In his lifetime, John Walker was known as “The Stockton Encyclopaedia”. He was a well-respected member of the local community, a successful businessman and an expert on local history. Business was brisk at his Chymist and Druggist shop at 59 High Street, and it was from here that he dispensed medicines to the citizens of Stockton and where, starting on 7th April 1827, he sold Friction Matches to the wealthy and curious of the town. Unfortunately, there is no known image of John Walker.
John Walker was born on the 29th May 1781, he was the third of seven children born to John Walker Snr. and Mary Peacock who had a grocery, wine and spirit shop at No. 104 The High Street, Stockton-on-Tees which is the widest High Street in England.
John Jnr. showed academic excellence and is thought to have attended the Stockton Grammar School. At age 15, he was apprenticed to Stockton Surgeon Dr. Watson Alcock, where (according to his great-niece Annie Maria Wilkinson) he became a fully qualified Surgeon. However, surgery in those days was a gory business where the patients were in great pain, and after experiencing the horrors of many operations he decided the medical profession was not the career for him.
In 1819, after re-training with wholesale pharmacists in nearby York and Durham, he opened his own shop in Stockton on Tees, at No. 59 on the east side of the High Street. The premises was rented from Thomas Jennett, a three times Mayor of Stockton, who lived next door with his family at No. 58 where he ran a successful printing and booksellers’ business. John’s customers initially referred to him as Dr. Walker from his previous profession before in time he came to be known as just Mr. Walker.
John liked to experiment with explosive mixtures of chemicals to make percussion caps for guns, and sales of this nature were recorded in his sales ledger (known as his Day Book) in 1825 and 1826. They soon became popular and were known locally as ‘Walkers Pea Crackers’ and the young men of Stockton bought them to frighten unsuspecting girls, as they would creep up and throw one behind them which spluttered and sparked when ignited.
Then, in 1826, this humble man made an invention which literally changed the world – the Friction Match. His experiments with explosive chemicals led to his breakthrough idea of a simple way to produce an instantaneous flame on the end of a thin wooden splint pre-coated with a mixture of combustible chemicals. He called these new matches Friction Lights, and their first recorded sale was on 7th April 1827. It was sale No. 30 of 100 Friction Lights costing 1 shilling plus 2d for a tin case to hold them to a Stockton Solicitor Mr. (John) Hixon.
When they first went on sale Walker’s Friction Lights were considered to be novelties, but John soon realised their potential and stepped-up production for his customers. He recognised how Friction Matches could make a tremendous difference to people’s everyday lives, giving them instantaneous fire on a splint of wood between their fingers instead of having laborious and cumbersome task to get a spark from a flint and fire steel to ignite shaves of wood and rags in a tinder box.
Unfortunately, he gave no public interviews nor any personal account of his life and we have to rely on anecdotal evidence from his family, friends and customers to get some clues about the enigmatic John. It is probably because he had sufficient means for his own requirements that he stubbornly refused to patent his invention (though he was encouraged to do so) and preferred to spend time on his hobbies of botany, mineralogy and particularly experimenting with chemicals.
John remained a bachelor all his life and lived in Stockton with his two sisters Jane and Mary Walker and his niece Ann (born 1822, daughter of Mary) until his death on the 1st May 1859 at the age of 77.
John Walker Ledger, © BML&BS
John Walker Friction Lights, © BML&BS
John Walker gravestone, St Mary's Church Norton