Match Game

In the new movie Enola Holmes 2, Sherlock’s sister seeks the truth about a missing factory girl. But for The Salvation Army, the game was already afoot .

by Ken Ramstead

When last we saw Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) in the 2020 movie bearing her name, the younger sister of Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) had travelled to London, England, to find her missing mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter). After many misadventures, she ended up solving the case of Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), whose disappearance threatened the political stability of the United Kingdom. Along the way, Enola also reunited with her mother, who explained to her daughter why she had left and why she had to leave again—but not before saying how proud she was of who Enola had become.

Enola had found her purpose—she was a detective and a finder of lost souls.

“After solving my first case, I started a detective agency,” Enola proudly states. “I was going to join the pantheon of great Victorian detec- tives. And best of all, I would be joining my brother. I would be his equal. A detective in my own right, worthy of the Holmes name. Or so I thought.”

Deadly Ingredient

It seems that the Victorian world is not yet ready to embrace a female detective, even one with as storied a pedigree as Enola Holmes.

Without clients, the young sleuth seemed fated to return home when a girl named Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss) asks Enola if she would take on the case of her missing sister, Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd).

The sisters work at a match factory that is experiencing a typhus epidemic. In the course of her investigations, Enola discovers that cheap white phosphorus, used by the match factory owner Lord McIntyre (Tim McMullan) to increase profits, is killing the female workers, not typhus.

Together with Sarah, Lord Tewkes- bury and even Sherlock, Enola intends to expose the scheme. But Lord McIntyre and his police henchmen have other ideas.

Never Alone

In the movie, Enola and Sarah encourage her fellow match factory workers to strike for better conditions. In reality, the matchgirls’ strike of 1888, which was a protest against their appalling working conditions, also raised awareness of a medical condition called “phossy jaw.” The yellow phosphorus used in the production process contaminated the workers’ hands and food, causing their jawbones to decay—with death the result.

Enter General William Booth, the co-Founder of The Salvation Army. Concerned with the workers’ wellbeing, he pioneered the production of non-poisonous safety matches at the Army’s own match factory. Other manufacturers gradually adopted The Salvation Army’s practices and in 1908, the use of yellow phosphorus was finally made illegal by an act of Parliament.

The Army’s response to this and other social concerns, such as poverty and homelessness, echoes down the years to the present. What has kept the church relevant with the times is a refusal to back away when injustice rears its head. When other institutions turn away, Salvationists echo Enola: “No one should be alone.”

And, God willing, no one will be.