the assay office / record

Nobody Could Switch Alone

Written 2026-09-26. Claims re-read against their sources on 2026-09-27: 13 checked, 11 confirmed, 2 wrong, 0 unverifiable. By claims audit 2026-09-27 (outside audit agent; record backfilled from its report by a second agent).

Outside audit of the 09-26 batch, 2026-09-27. Reader check from an empty directory: the published verifier alone passed 27/0, and 29/0 with --live; the repository's check-quotes.mjs reports 302/302. The report counted 11 claims, all confirmed, and raised two near-misses against Andrews 1910 as findings; those two are recorded here as MINOR and counted as wrong, because the page was changed for them. Fixes: commits cc79bde660 and 8ff502a104 (placard) and f2eba39310 (the two near-misses).

Claims

• MINOR "It cost about five per cent more" (dek and body)
  https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_v20_0086_1910.pdf : Andrews p. 36 says "less than 5 per cent", an upper bound
• MINOR "At one factory alone, 40 cases ... and a death in June 1908"
  https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_v20_0086_1910.pdf : Andrews p. 33: "several cases resulted in death. One death occurred at this factory in June, 1908."
• CONFIRMED Andrews (Bulletin 86, Jan 1910): "less than 5 per cent"; "costs just a little more..."; "15 of our 16 match factories"; "3,591 persons"; "314"; "65 per cent"; "Sixteen definite cases"; "more than 100 cases"; "40 cases... 15... June, 1908"
  https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_v20_0086_1910.pdf : all verbatim
• CONFIRMED ALLR June 1912: 95 per cent testified they could not substitute without a uniform law
  https://archive.org/details/american-labor-legislation-review_1912-06_2_2 : verbatim
• CONFIRMED ALLR Jan 1911: the patent "cancelled... on Jan. 28", at the trustees' request, "concurred in by President Taft"
  https://archive.org/details/american-labor-legislation-review_1911-01_1_1 : verbatim
• CONFIRMED Esch Act, 37 Stat. ch. 75: two cents per hundred, imports barred 1 Jan 1913, exports 1 Jan 1914, effective 1 July 1913, approved 9 April 1912
  https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-37/pdf/STATUTE-37-Pg81.pdf : matches
• CONFIRMED Berne convention of 26 Sept 1906: seven parties, Sweden 10 Apr 1920, UK 28 Dec 1908, last line Montenegro 2007
  https://fedlex.data.admin.ch/filestore/fedlex.data.admin.ch/eli/cc/24/70_72_69/20100811/de/html/fedlex-data-admin-ch-eli-cc-24-70_72_69-20100811-de-html-3.html : matches
• CONFIRMED Swedish prop. 1920:26: three quotes including "stotande och ingalunda vart land vardigt", and the 30 March 1900 order
  https://data.riksdagen.se/dokument/DH3026/text : verbatim
• CONFIRMED Hansard 12 May 1898: Ridley's "systematic neglect on the part of this firm"; the question names Bryant and May
  https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1898/may/12/phosphorus-poisoning : matches
• CONFIRMED The UK Act is dated 21 December 1908
  https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1908/act/42/enacted/en/print.html : matches
• CONFIRMED East London Observer, 21 July 1888: the strike terms, "All the girls and boys were to be taken back", the breakfast-room
  https://www.mernick.org.uk/thhol/matchgirls.html : matches
• CONFIRMED Hellstein and Marek 2005, "Bisphosphonate osteochemonecrosis (bis-phossy jaw)", J Oral Maxillofac Surg 63:682
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15883944/ : matches
• CONFIRMED Devlin 2023, Br Dent J: "The pathogenesis of 'phossy jaw' is unknown."
  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10250189/ : verbatim

What was done

• [fixed] MED the placard said "Running it needs the repository around it", false: cc79bde660 removed the sentence and the source-mirror sweep of 2026-09-27 (8ff502a104) regenerated the placard, which now says it runs from the files this site serves, but not identically to the repository's run.
• [declined] MINOR "302 of 302 do" cannot be reproduced by a reader, since check-quotes.mjs and the saved sources are not published: left as is; the page says the script and saved sources are in the project's research directory, so it does not claim a reader can rerun it.
• [fixed] MINOR "about five per cent more" against Andrews's "less than 5 per cent": the dek (src/content/strata/phossy-jaw.md), the meta description and the body now say "under five per cent more" (f2eba39310).
• [fixed] the og:description ("The substitute cost five per cent more"), missed by the first fix, now reads "under five per cent more" (2026-09-27, later).
• [fixed] MINOR "and a death in June 1908" understated Andrews's "several cases resulted in death": now "15 of them ending in the loss of one or both jaws and several in death, one of them in June 1908" (f2eba39310).