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. 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. Literature and painting of the time sometimes portrayed the boys as cupids, conveying their fares to liaisons. By the way, the main characters in the poem (Betty Careless and Larry Casey) are real historical figures, if you care to research them.

Link-Boys (St. Giles Illuminati)

Since London started swinging once more

in Carolingian days, its amorous ways

are sometimes plagued by murky chancers.

Into this lawless breach, a scruffy corps

of young farthinguides emerged, and it pays.

True there are some dubious freelancers

but 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 cupid appears

from out of the fireflies in the smoke, to light

her safe progress to each evening's moondog.

For 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,

such fierce, proud devotion a touching sight

as he snuffs out his tow before another's 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;-)

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Street Lamps

A letter appeared in the Preston Journal on 18 April 1807 from Miserabilis, who complained:
‘You must know, Sir, that 'tis within these six months that I came to reside in Preston, and from the social disposition of its inhabitants, am inclined to prolong my stay.’

But, he went on: ‘The streets in most parts of the Town are so intolerably dark, that I was continually getting my shoes full of water, which God knows what may be its consequences. The medical men will tell you, that it will lead to colds, coughs, rheumatism, palsies, agues, asthmas, or consumptions; and I need not tell you Sir, that 'twill infallibly lead to medicines, doctors' bills, probably undertakers' shrowds, coffins, parsons, clerks, sextons, gravediggers, graves ... all this for the want of lamps in the streets.’

Preston had tried. Back on the 22nd of December, 1699, the Corporation ordered— “ for the better going in the streets of this town, in the winter evenings, in the decrease of the moon or when cloude interfere, it has been thought necessary that some lamps or convex lights bee provided . And there being four such convex lights already bought, provided, and brought down from London... and the said four lights bee taken care of, attended, and supplied with oyle and other necessaries as occasion requires at the town's charge." The light they gave was reported as being wretched.

It took the friendship between Preston's leading Roman Catholic churchman, Joseph Dunn, and the gas engineer, Samuel Clegg to change not only this state of affairs but also enabled Preston to be the first town outside of London to be lit by gas.

In 1815, the Preston Gas-Light Company was formed by Reverend Joseph "Daddy" Dunn, engineer Samuel Clegg, and local printer Isaac Wilcockson. Just one year later, in 1816, Fishergate became the first street in Preston to be illuminated by coal gas, transforming the town after dark.

So how did they manage to light the lamps?

Work on the use of gas for lighting had been going on for several years prior to Preston getting involved. Possibly the most important was done at Stonyhurst College, a Catholic school just outside the town, where Clegg had, in 1808, used lime-water for purification of gas from sulphuretted hydrogen in large quantities.

By its contract the gas company was required to light agreed areas more effectually than was done in other parts with oil lamps. The annual income from these lights was £162. The locations were to be determined by the commissioners. The lamps and lamp irons together with the pipes were to be one foot below the surface of the ground under each lamp were to be provided by the commissioners. The mention of lamp irons sounds as though lamp posts were intended, but the lamps were more probably secured to walls by brackets, which was the usual practice in the early days of gas-lighting.

Now that the contract had been secured it was necessary to decide on a suitable site for the works. It should not be too far from the centre of the town, and it should be on as low a level as possible to allow the gas to flow up into the town under its own pressure.

It was one thing to make plans for buildings and to see that local craftsmen carried them out, quite another to secure the necessary apparatus when there were no established sources of supply near at hand. In September samples of brass burners, chandeliers, pendant lamps, wall brackets, plain pillars, a glass vases were ordered. Delays were not really exceptional. Even in the case of cast iron pipes, for which there had been an enormous demand during the previous decade from the metropolitan water works companies, delivery was slow and the quality variable. At one point they used as service pipes a supply of surplus musket barrels which were joined muzzle into breech.

But they did succeed and the opening ceremony took place in Feb 1816 and to repeat, Preston became the first town outside of London to be lit by gas.

Information on the above was taken from: 'The Introduction of Gas-Lighting to Preston' by Brian G. Awty and from Anthony Hewitson's Preston Chronology 705-1883.

This is the first verse of a poem about the opening of Preston fm studios which used the Grade II listed building from 2008 to 2013.

Turning On St Wilfrid's School

Think of chalk
scraping down slate
a ten times table
and chairs scuffling
for the best view
of the Master blasted
over Pendle Hill
after turning on gas light
for the first time in Preston
the slight sigh of disappointment
lost in the hiss of history.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q

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