Day Book
Like all good businesses John recorded his shop sales in a ledger, and luckily for us his Day Book ledger listing sales between August 1825 and September 1829 has survived and is now owned by the Science Museum.
The Day Book was donated to the Science Museum by Bryant & May in 1937. In its current binding, which may not have been its original binding, it measures approximately 422 mm by 140 mm wide and 30 mm thick, over the spine. The pages are not numbered, and the entries inside cover the dates 9th August 1825 to 23rd September 1829. The Day Book states as a heading the date of the entries followed by “sales entry” made on that date, and follows the same format throughout.
Walker would have had other ledgers from his start in business in 1819 to his retirement in 1858 but they have disappeared. He also kept notebooks and diaries where he recorded his chemical experiments, but they too have been lost in the passage of time.
Note : the photographs on this page were take on 9th June 2023 at the Science Museum Archive in Wroughton and are reproduced here under licence from the Science Museum.
First recorded sale of Friction Lights
This surviving Day Book contains written proof in Walker’s handwriting of the first recorded sale of Friction Lights :
- 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 on the 7th April 1827
However, there is a mystery about the numbering of this famous Day Book entry. A person other than John (perhaps his shop assistant as it is in different handwriting) wrote 36th, realised it was a mistake, tried to change the 6 to a 0 but as it did not look right crossed out the number 36th with three lines through it and wrote No. 30. The next sales entry on the page shows how John wrote the number 3. He was a qualified physician and wrote his entries in Latin. Perhaps he told his assistant to write this number in for him and they made a mistake but where did the number 36 come from? There is a possibility John had thought it was the 36th but realised his mistake later after checking his notebooks.
This entry is now interpreted by historians as meaning there were a previous 29 of either unrecorded sales and /or of those he gave away on a trial basis as part of the market research, or that this was batch No. 30 of his Friction Lights experiments and hence the discovery was deduced to be sometime in 1826 (verified by his great-niece Annie Maria Wilkinson).
Sometime in 1827 or 1828, in Thomas Jennett’s print shop at 58 High Street his employee John Ellis (age 66, a bookbinder in the 1841 Census) made the world’s first paste board matchbox container for John Walker to hold his Friction Lights. This replaced the original but expensive 2d tin case John had sold to John Hixon. There is no evidence these paper-based paste board match containers, or the tin cases originally used had a paper label stuck on them and a ‘John Walker Friction Lights’ label is not thought to exist. Perhaps John would rather write in a quill pen on the paste board containers what was inside them. However, there may have been a paper label stuck on the tin case to say what was inside and again it would possibly have been written by John himself, but none are known to be in existence.
The Faraday connection
The first ever public mention of John Walker’s invention was published in 1830 in the prestigious ‘Science, Literature and Art’ Quarterly Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain for July-December 1829 under the title “Instantaneous Light Apparatus‘. This scientific journal gave a summary of the previous 6 months lectures but there is no author given for this particular piece. It is thought to be referring to Professor Michael Faraday‘s lecture in December 1829 when he said that :
- “a Stockton-upon-Tees chemist Mr. Walker supplies the purchaser with prepared matches (note in the report that they were not called Friction Lights) and are put up in tin boxes but are not liable to change in the atmosphere. They are also supplied with a piece of fine ‘glass paper’ folded in two. Even a strong blow will not inflame the matches because of the softness of the wood underneath, nor does rubbing upon wood or any common substance produce any effect except that of spoiling the match, but when one is pinched between the folds of the glass-paper and suddenly drawn out, it is instantly inflamed. Mr. Walker does not make them for extensive sale, but only to supply the small demand that can be made personally by him”.
Professor Michael Faraday was the first man of science outside Stockton to speak about Walker’s Friction Lights in a scientific forum. He exhibited Walker’s Friction Lights in his lecture. It is thought Faraday had bought some of them from John’s shop earlier that year whilst passing through Stockton on a visit to the North East of England. Although Faraday’s name is not recorded in the Day Book, the second Day Book entry on 3rd February 1829 is of ‘A Traveller’ purchasing three boxes of Friction Lights and this was surmised by Doreen Thomas to be Faraday.
Daybook discovered in 1890s
There was a very fortunate event in the John Walker story when his Day Book was discovered by Stockton hairdresser, artist and historian Joseph Parrott in the early 1890’s. He claims to have found it discarded in a pile of pharmaceutical rubbish thrown out from William Hardcastle’s chemist shop in Finkle Street. (Some of the contents of Hardcastle’s shop are now in Beamish Open Air Museum in County. Durham). There is no way to verify the mode and minor miracle of the reappearance of the Day Book but apparently Parrott then avidly read it from page to page and inspired by what he saw, began a local campaign to champion John Walker as the ‘Inventor of the Lucifer Match’.
It is also interesting to note that William Hardcastle bought Friction Lights from John Walker on 28th November 1827. Also, we know many people associated with the Stockton & Darlington Railway Company subsequently visited and bought medication and Friction Lights from John Walker’s shop and perhaps they used them to fire up the engine boilers.