ABSTRACT
I have used information from the handwritten censuses of 1891 and 1896 on 144 male match workers and 258 female match workers in the communes of Pantin and Aubervilliers. The censuses provided the address, names of all the individuals who lived at that address, their ages, their occupations, and their relationships to one another. This data was supplemented with the personnel dossiers of 100 of these workers. For each one, some or all of the following information was found: name(s), year of birth, date(s) of entry into the factory, date at which the worker received a permanent job ( titulaire ), the dates and occasionally the reasons for absences, the number of days worked from 1892-1904, the date of receipt of pension, the reason for retirement, the date of death, and the names and birthdates of pension recipients. 1
The match workers were similar to their neighbors in every way but one. Because the Ministry of Finances named 700 of them as permanent workers at the Pantin-Aubervilliers plants in the early months of 1890, most of the match workers "·ho were found in the 1891 census were still match workers at the time of the 1896 census. Of course they were five years older, so the match worker population aged slightly in comparison with the neighborhood as a whole between 1891 and 1896. That is, the percentage of 16-to 21-year old match workers was much lower than the percentage of 16-to 21-year olds
in the neighborhood. As might also be expected, the percentage of married match workers and parent match workers increased through the 1890s. In contrast with their neighbors, match workers' families grew.
