‘Enola Holmes 2’: The true story that marked a before and after in the rights of British women

SPOILER attention!

* If you haven’t seen ‘Enola Holmes 2’ yet, don’t read on! Let’s find out the true story behind the big breakthrough and the references of the film.

‘Enola Holmes 2’ seems to exceed the expectations of its predecessor. The sequel proved to maintain the success factors of the first episode and the offer a more complicated and fun case. However, what many do not know is that the case investigated by Enola (Millie Bobby Brown), which is intertwined with that of her brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill), is based on a historical moment of that same year: the Strike of the Matchgirls, a landmark in 1888 London.

In the film, Enola investigates the disappearance of a factory worker, Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd), and connects the dots until she discovers missing pages from the factory log, a suspected typhus outbreak and secret love. While some facts have been fictionalized, Sarah Chapman existed and was one of the key figures in changing working conditions and gender equality in London in the late 19th century.

The alleged typhus epidemic narrated in the film, which later turns out to be a disease caused by contact with white phosphorus, is completely true. it is called the disease phosphorylation of the jaw, destroys the bones of the mouth and is a direct consequence of poor hygiene in contact with white phosphorus. Although affected workers are sent home to die in the film, in reality any Bryant & May worker who has complained of a toothache he was forced to be toothlessto try to prevent the spread of the epidemic.

Despite this, the owners of the factory were aware of the risk it posed to workers, but the price of this toxic substance was considerably lower than that of red phosphorus, as the film relates. However, “Enola Holmes 2” leaves out some of the crucial moments in Victorian London history and what labor rights would have meant thereafter. According to historian Lowell Sastre, matchmakers were more concerned about wages and fines than their safety and would go on strike in 1881, 1885 and 1886, but were not successful until 1888, when Chapman would drive.

Sarah Chapman started working at Bryant & May at 19 and had found a good job in the match factory at 26. However, on 5 July 1888 he was one of the 1,400 workers who perpetrated the boycott of the factory due to the precarious working conditions. Chapman, along with two other women, met with politician and activist Annie Besant for her support. According to the same medium, Enola would be a reinterpretation of Besant: “Instead of trying to raise public awareness, he secretly investigates the factory and follows clues around London”. It was Besant who publicized the dire conditions in an article in The Link, according to Den of Geek. Later, he helped Chapman create the Strike Committee, through which they confronted Bryant and May until they accepted all the requirements they had stipulated and even managed to get them to Parliamentas the powerful final scene of the film shows.

beyond the movie

Although the film passes at the moment triumphant, the story goes much further: Bryant & May didn’t stop using white phosphorus until twenty years later, but the workers united under the Matchmakers union, which would be the largest women’s union. of the country Sarah was not a dancer at the Paragon Theater nor was she in love with the son of the factory, but she played a pivotal role in UK history and would go so far as to represent the workers’ association in the UK Trade Union Congress..