Victorian candle lighter, as seen in Scrooge (1970)?
December 26, 2019 8:17 AM Subscribe
in Scrooge, the 1970 musical version of the story, with Albert Finney, he lights his candle with matches when he gets in the house, but then he takes a small stick from a cup/vase (seemingly made for the purpose of holding these things), lights it with the candle and then uses the stick to light his fire, other candles, etc. What is that stick?
It could, of course, just be a STICK. But they look somehow more intentional, and possibly reusable, than that. They are all the same color and length, They are irregular enough to be of natural origin, but are not really "wood" color and seem somehow manufactured.
It's also, of course, a MOVIE, so it could just have been some lark and not an actual common Victorian thing. But the movie is lavishly art-directed (and Oscar/GG nominated for it) and other small details throughout are consistent with heavy research, accuracy, and intentionality.
You can see the holder, the sticks, and the usage here. You should probably watch the whole thing. Finney was 33!
It could, of course, just be a STICK. But they look somehow more intentional, and possibly reusable, than that. They are all the same color and length, They are irregular enough to be of natural origin, but are not really "wood" color and seem somehow manufactured.
It's also, of course, a MOVIE, so it could just have been some lark and not an actual common Victorian thing. But the movie is lavishly art-directed (and Oscar/GG nominated for it) and other small details throughout are consistent with heavy research, accuracy, and intentionality.
You can see the holder, the sticks, and the usage here. You should probably watch the whole thing. Finney was 33!
My mother’s church had one that was mostly a hollow stick with a retractable wick threaded in it. One end was a handle and the other end was forked - one curved hollow termination (the wick side) and one straight and not hollow. You just extended enough wick to do the task, and it came out of the curved half of the business end. The straight end had a little thimble or bell-shaped snuffer on it for the end of the service/evening. The curve was clever for the geometry of reaching to light candles. That’s fancier than what’s in the show, but the idea of a wick stiffened just enough to not be floppy is the same.
posted by janell at 8:23 AM on December 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by janell at 8:23 AM on December 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Or possibly a wax taper.
Spills
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 8:26 AM on December 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
Spills
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 8:26 AM on December 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
Response by poster: Spills! Spill Vase! I love learning a new word!
No doubt, those are spills. I'm guessing these are just long splinters being used as spills, they still seem like a little more than just splinters, slightly manufactured somehow (splinters treated or soaked in something that helps them burn but retards embers? I don't know!), but "spills" is exactly what I was looking for.
Thank you very much, that's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me!
posted by dirtdirt at 9:33 AM on December 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
No doubt, those are spills. I'm guessing these are just long splinters being used as spills, they still seem like a little more than just splinters, slightly manufactured somehow (splinters treated or soaked in something that helps them burn but retards embers? I don't know!), but "spills" is exactly what I was looking for.
Thank you very much, that's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me!
posted by dirtdirt at 9:33 AM on December 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
There’s also the candle lighter and snuffer used in churches. They are long for reaching tall candlers but have a retractable wick on one side and a snuffing bell on the other. One source. When I started having more candles around I searched through Etsy for a snuffer until I found one I liked. Lots of vintage/used on there. It’s a very small, brass cone with a little handle.
posted by amanda at 9:58 AM on December 26, 2019
posted by amanda at 9:58 AM on December 26, 2019
Wood spills are popular now as cigar lighters, but would work for your purposes as well.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:22 AM on December 26, 2019
posted by Lyn Never at 11:22 AM on December 26, 2019
Also, you can use dry spaghetti noodles as spills. Particularly handy for deep jar candles, if you don't have long BBQ matches or a long lighter.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:28 AM on December 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Lyn Never at 11:28 AM on December 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
If you want to make the style that's a tightly curled wood shaving, Lee Valley sells a replica spill plane.
posted by bonobothegreat at 12:51 PM on December 26, 2019
posted by bonobothegreat at 12:51 PM on December 26, 2019
I also remember using basically the same thing in chemistry lessons at school, only we called them splints.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:00 PM on December 26, 2019
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:00 PM on December 26, 2019
Funny I should see this; just last night I was starting to read "The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans As Told By Themselves" edited by Hamilton Holt, and the first chapter made a reference to a "basket of splinters" in the home of a Lithuanian family:
posted by msittig at 8:41 PM on December 26, 2019
I remember that the little shoemaker had pulled a big crooked pipe out of his bag. Now he took a splinter from the basket of splinters which hung on the wall and he lit his pipe and puffed it.At the time I wondered how that worked, but now reading through these links it seems that he lit the splinter in the hearth and used it to light his pipe. The shoemaker was visiting the house and using their leather to make shoes for the hosts, so it seems this "basket of splinters" must have been a commonplace thing, well-known enough that the shoemaker would expect to find one in his customer's home, and feel comfortable helping himself to a splinter and using it. Like Bloxworth Snout above, I used the idea of splints in chemistry labs to form my idea of how the shoemaker would have used splinters.
posted by msittig at 8:41 PM on December 26, 2019
You might ask why Scrooge used a wooden spill instead of a wax taper, or simply used another match. People have used wooden spills to transfer fire from one light to a new one for as long as we have had fire. They have such a long history we have no idea really when they were first used. The spills used in the Victorian era were often made out of resinous wood such as pine. If you were thrifty you could even make your own. There was lots of wood scrap available, so much so that they put down sawdust to soak up blood in slaughterhouses and used sawdust to stuff the cheapest kind of upholstery because it was so inexpensive. Puppet's heads were sometimes stuffed with sawdust and it was used for insulation. Wood was one of the least expensive materials around.
Tapers were much more expensive than spills because of the wax. For centuries people kept the bees for the wax and the honey was just a by-product. There were so many uses for wax that it was worth more than the honey. All you could do with honey was eat it, ferment it, or use it to seal wounds. But wax was used to seal everything from letters to jars, to wooden surfaces, to waterproofing leather and the seams of boots.
Wax was so expensive that in most households in the era you would save any bits of it. Not only were candle ends found in every sewing basket to wax the thread, but you would gather up and blobs of wax that dribbled down your candle and save them to melt. The drips of wax that run down from a candle were called winding sheets in the Victorian era - they thought they looked like the linen that was used to wind around a corpse to dress it for burial.
A taper not only required some sort of wax but also a wick that was probably made of cotton which had had to be processed, and wax, which was expensive. It wasn't until the middle of the century that you were able to get candles with self consuming wicks. Until then you had to trim them yourself if the wax started to burn down too fast, the way you have to trim the wick in a lamp. If there was a draft and the candle or the taper burned too fast the wick would curl down on itself and make the flame much bigger - your candle could burn itself out in just a few minutes, and might easily set a fire. But a spill was easy. You lit it and used it and then you could toss it into the fire. You didn't need to tend a wick, or make sure you had extinguished it so you could save it.
Tapers, being thinner than candles burn much more quickly. If you wanted to burn wax you'd want the thickest candle possible so that the wax would last as long as possible. Not too thick, of course, or the flame would make a socket in the candle and the light would be hidden, but thick enough that it would last as long as possible. Tapers and candles work much better in cold weather when they burn slowly and the light lasts for longer.
Because beeswax was so expensive candles were also made of tallow, but tallow was soft and burned even faster than beeswax. It had a dreadful way of dribbling molten oil, which could burn you badly and stained what it fell on. Spermaceti was better than both tallow and beeswax, but there were only so many sperm whales out there. The era of the spermaceti candle was brief, but just long enough to be used in the definition of the earliest unit of illumination - one candlepower was the light given off by a pure spermaceti candle burning at 120 grains an hour.
Matches were expensive too, expensive enough that you could buy just one of them if you could not afford more. In the Victorian era they were made with white phosphorus. There were no safety matches. They were all the kind of match that you could strike on any rough surface.
One reason they were expensive is that white phosphorus is extremely nasty stuff to work with. After a few weeks of working in a match factory you'd start to get phosphorus poisoning. Work there long enough and your liver or your kidneys would fail. Just handling it would cause burns. Most of the people who worked in match factories were young people - teenagers, desperate to find work. You worked there just long enough to get "phospho jaw" or "phossy jaw". An early symptom of phosphorus poisoning was pain in the jaw. It was just like a toothache. The workers would stick it out until the pain became unbearable, and then quit. But the pain wouldn't go away. It would last for the rest of your life. You could die of phospho jaw, the same way you could die of an abscessed tooth.
Match factories were some of the first industries to be regulated because of how many people died or were disabled. In 1888 the London match girls went on strike for safer working conditions. White phosphorus matches was the first product subject to an international ban. And because of the many deaths and disability that it caused the workers, match producers were eventually levied a special tax - two cents, per hundred matches. It wasn't until about 1915 that the use of white phosphorus to make matches finally ended. Some churches were active in trying to help the workers who made matches. You might have heard a sermon from the pulpit exhorting you not to waste them because of what it cost the workers who produced them.
Spills were convenient, cheap, safe. They didn't break if you dropped them. If they got wet you could dry them out again and still use them. Spills were easily the most practical thing to use once you had a flame to light them from.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:39 PM on December 27, 2019 [10 favorites]
Tapers were much more expensive than spills because of the wax. For centuries people kept the bees for the wax and the honey was just a by-product. There were so many uses for wax that it was worth more than the honey. All you could do with honey was eat it, ferment it, or use it to seal wounds. But wax was used to seal everything from letters to jars, to wooden surfaces, to waterproofing leather and the seams of boots.
Wax was so expensive that in most households in the era you would save any bits of it. Not only were candle ends found in every sewing basket to wax the thread, but you would gather up and blobs of wax that dribbled down your candle and save them to melt. The drips of wax that run down from a candle were called winding sheets in the Victorian era - they thought they looked like the linen that was used to wind around a corpse to dress it for burial.
A taper not only required some sort of wax but also a wick that was probably made of cotton which had had to be processed, and wax, which was expensive. It wasn't until the middle of the century that you were able to get candles with self consuming wicks. Until then you had to trim them yourself if the wax started to burn down too fast, the way you have to trim the wick in a lamp. If there was a draft and the candle or the taper burned too fast the wick would curl down on itself and make the flame much bigger - your candle could burn itself out in just a few minutes, and might easily set a fire. But a spill was easy. You lit it and used it and then you could toss it into the fire. You didn't need to tend a wick, or make sure you had extinguished it so you could save it.
Tapers, being thinner than candles burn much more quickly. If you wanted to burn wax you'd want the thickest candle possible so that the wax would last as long as possible. Not too thick, of course, or the flame would make a socket in the candle and the light would be hidden, but thick enough that it would last as long as possible. Tapers and candles work much better in cold weather when they burn slowly and the light lasts for longer.
Because beeswax was so expensive candles were also made of tallow, but tallow was soft and burned even faster than beeswax. It had a dreadful way of dribbling molten oil, which could burn you badly and stained what it fell on. Spermaceti was better than both tallow and beeswax, but there were only so many sperm whales out there. The era of the spermaceti candle was brief, but just long enough to be used in the definition of the earliest unit of illumination - one candlepower was the light given off by a pure spermaceti candle burning at 120 grains an hour.
Matches were expensive too, expensive enough that you could buy just one of them if you could not afford more. In the Victorian era they were made with white phosphorus. There were no safety matches. They were all the kind of match that you could strike on any rough surface.
One reason they were expensive is that white phosphorus is extremely nasty stuff to work with. After a few weeks of working in a match factory you'd start to get phosphorus poisoning. Work there long enough and your liver or your kidneys would fail. Just handling it would cause burns. Most of the people who worked in match factories were young people - teenagers, desperate to find work. You worked there just long enough to get "phospho jaw" or "phossy jaw". An early symptom of phosphorus poisoning was pain in the jaw. It was just like a toothache. The workers would stick it out until the pain became unbearable, and then quit. But the pain wouldn't go away. It would last for the rest of your life. You could die of phospho jaw, the same way you could die of an abscessed tooth.
Match factories were some of the first industries to be regulated because of how many people died or were disabled. In 1888 the London match girls went on strike for safer working conditions. White phosphorus matches was the first product subject to an international ban. And because of the many deaths and disability that it caused the workers, match producers were eventually levied a special tax - two cents, per hundred matches. It wasn't until about 1915 that the use of white phosphorus to make matches finally ended. Some churches were active in trying to help the workers who made matches. You might have heard a sermon from the pulpit exhorting you not to waste them because of what it cost the workers who produced them.
Spills were convenient, cheap, safe. They didn't break if you dropped them. If they got wet you could dry them out again and still use them. Spills were easily the most practical thing to use once you had a flame to light them from.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:39 PM on December 27, 2019 [10 favorites]
I am so glad you asked this!
I was planning to ask this very question after watching Scrooge this year.
Thank you!
posted by kristi at 2:23 PM on December 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
I was planning to ask this very question after watching Scrooge this year.
Thank you!
posted by kristi at 2:23 PM on December 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 8:23 AM on December 26, 2019 [8 favorites]