Before And After Street Lamps

I've spent a couple of weeks reading and researching about streetlamps. It's a huge and illuminating topic: from flaming tar torches on Greek and Roman buildings, through the invention of glass-enclosed candlelight lamps in 16th century cities like Amsterdam and London, to the invention of the 'lamppost' and street lamps on every corner in 17th century Paris, which led the way in urban lighting, and whose thousands of réverbère oil-fuelled street lamps earned that city its abiding nickname La Ville-Lumière (The City of Light). As an aside, during the French Revolution (1789–1799), the revolutionaries found that the city's lampposts were a convenient place to hang aristocrats and other opponents.

The history of street lamps can be roughly divided into two eras, BC (before coal) and AI (after industrialisation). 

What I've outlined above is all BC. With the arrival of coal (and hence gas) during the industrial revolution, civic investment in gasworks and underground pipe networks from the mid 19th century onwards enabled many towns and cities to have their main thoroughfares lit by gas streetlamps. It was confusing for birds and annoying for burglars and stargazers, but great for the convenience and safety of ordinary citizens, particularly women. It also created jobs for a legion of lamplighters who would go round armed with ladders and matches to prime and light the streetlamps each evening and then go round and turn them off again every morning. The only other 20th century refinements of note have been a conversion from gas to electricity and the fitting of automated time switches which rendered lamplighters redundant.

We've taken it for granted for so long that our evening and night time streets are bathed in pools of soft orange sodium vapour light or the brighter white mercury vapour variety shining down from 10m lampposts spaced every 30m to 40m apart. Nowadays everyone is happy and safe at night - apart from the councillors who have to worry about the cost of keeping everything running as utility prices climb and government funding shrinks.

But for a themed poem this week, I want to retrace steps to a time in any post-industrial metropolis before streetlamps had achieved ubiquity. These cities from London to Glasgow to New York and Chicago were bustling and polluted hives of humanity. Air quality was poor in the earliest AI urban centres, as smoke and fumes poured perpetually from thousands of chimneys. 

As one diarist on a night out in the capital recalled: 'We went to the Opera on a foggy night, only to discover that the haze had crept indoors, rendering the stage virtually impossible to see. Although there was nothing in the opera to move one, we in the audience seemed to be perpetually in tears in reaction to of the fog’s chemical sting.'

London's 'pea-soupers' were infamous for nearly three centuries, peaking in the 'killer smog' of 1952, where 4,000 respiratory-related deaths were reported in just a couple of days. leading to the Clean Air Act of 1956. And while London was in the grip of foggy nights through which early and sporadically placed versions of candle-powered or even gas streetlamp shone ineffectually, there grew up an army of mobile streetlamps known as link-boys. 

These enterprising youths carried torches made from burning pitch and tow and their name derives from 'link', a term for the cotton tow that formed the wick of the torch. Link-boys would light the way of pedestrians to the nearest sedan-chair or carriage rank, or even to their doorsteps through near impenetrable fog for the fee of a farthing. Many central London houses still have a link extinguisher on the exterior, shaped like outsized candle snuffers. Of course, employing a linkboy could be dangerous, as some would lead their clients to dark alleyways, where they could be beset by footpads, but their useful services generally outweighed the risk.

Samuel Pepys regularly mentioned them in his Diary, as on 4 February, 1660: 'So with a linkboy to Scott’s'; and on 22 June that same year: 'and so by link home about 11 o’clock'.

Another, more expansive anecdotal record (purporting to be by James Vila Blake, an American evangelist on a visit to England) referenced link-boys abroad on a 'typical' London night: 'The fog lay thick and dense around us; the link-boys were out in all their glory, dashing wildly about among the bewildered crowds, with their “Have a torch, sir?” “Light you home, sir?” “Better take me, sir!” Then darting frantically into the blackness they were lost, only to reappear again, thrusting their blazing fire-brands so near your clothing that it really seemed frightful. Drivers were offered enormous sums by terrified people to take them home—offers refused with frightful oaths; helpless women clung to railings for safety; now and then a solitary omnibus came along, each horse led, by a link-boy with his flaming torch; men knocked against each other, and we clung tightly to each other’s arms and strove to keep each other in sight.'

Of necessity, this new poem is a work in progress because I've been busy co-hosting a poetry-writing event today. I feel it's got to go somewhere else still but don't know where - so revisit the blog in a week or three and it might read completely differently. By the way, the title references the St. Giles Illuminati, a nickname given to the link-boys who plied their trade in London's theatreland in the mid 18th century, and the main characters in the poem (Betty and Larry) are real historical figures.

St. Giles Illuminati

Betty Careless has little to fear

from the stinging yellow of a chemical night

or the dangers that lurk in the swirling fog

as long as her personal link-boy appears

from out the fireflies in the smoke, to light

her progress to each evening's moondog.

Of all the glym-jacks in theatreland,

little Larry Casey always sees her right.

This Cheapside scamp of an artful dodge

carries a torch for the comely courtesan,

his fierce, proud devotion a touching sight

as he snuffs his tow outside another lodge.

As a musical bonus, and I haven't included on of these in a while, here is Van Morrison performing 'Bulbs' from his 1974 LP 'Veedon Fleece ', live at that year's Montreux Jazz Festival. It's an absolute blast. To  fire up the song, just click on the hyperlink here: Bulbs

Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S;-)