Britain's flannelette nightwear fires led one manufacturer to run ten thousand burn tests

historyThe Public Domain Review1890s–1910 · Manchester, England

Britain's flannelette nightwear fires led one manufacturer to run ten thousand burn tests

the gist

Flannelette, a cotton fabric brushed to raise a soft nap, was popular for nightwear in the 1890s because it was warm and cheap. It proved extremely flammable, and a spark at a hem could spread to the collar in fifteen seconds, so many women died. Coroners began calling for a ban. The manufacturer Whipp Bros & Tod hired chemists to develop a flame retardant that would not change the cloth's feel or colour and would survive repeated washing. After about ten thousand burning tests, its treated product, Non-Flam Flannelette, appeared in 1910 and passed the British Fire Prevention Committee's approval.

how it works

Flannelette is cotton that has been abraded so its surface fibres stand up in a soft fluff. That raised surface burns quickly, since air reaches many fibres at once. A retardant has to coat or bond to the fibres without making the fabric stiff, dusty or smelly, and it must survive washing, which is why the testing included many wash cycles.

so what

The same logic shaped later clothing flammability rules.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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