{"id":1457,"date":"2025-11-03T13:28:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/?page_id=1457"},"modified":"2026-05-29T07:51:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T07:51:16","slug":"on-line-exhibition-chapter-6-learn-more-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/on-line-exhibition-chapter-6-learn-more-1\/","title":{"rendered":"What was the chemical composition of Walker\u2019s match heads which made them combustible ?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John Walker’s Day Book \u00a9 BML&BS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Luckily, we have an answer to that question. There was a very fortunate event in the John Walker story when his Day Book<\/strong><\/a> was discovered by Stockton hairdresser, artist and historian Joseph Parrott<\/strong><\/a> in the early 1890s. He claims to have found it discarded in a pile of pharmaceutical rubbish thrown out from William Hardcastle’s chemist shop in Finkle Street.<\/p>\n

In 1896, Joseph Parrott sent the Day Book to Stocktonian Professor William A Bone<\/strong><\/a> of Owens College in Manchester together with eight Friction Lights for chemical analysis.<\/p>\n

In his Paper for Nature Magazine<\/strong><\/a> in April 1927 written for ‘The Centenary of the Friction Match’, Professor Bone concluded there was strong evidence in the Day Book that John’s experiments in 1825\/26 were for the purpose of making sporting percussion powder (for guns) and the Friction Light was a result of one such experiment. Bone thinks the No. 30 on the first recorded sale on the 7th<\/sup> April 1827 was the batch-number of his experimental Friction Lights and he had been making them for some time prior to the first recorded sale which he noted was a credit sale to Mr. Hixon and not a cash transaction.<\/p>\n

Professor Bone’s 1896 analysis showed the Friction Lights were thin splints of wood, three inches long, one sixth inch broad and one-twentieth inch thick.<\/p>\n