Lighting up London: the introduction of gas lamps

Until the latter part of the 17^th century London was a dark place at night, as were cities across Britain. Streets were mostly unlit and could be dangerous in the darkness. For a fee, a ‘linkboy’ could be hired to carry a flaming torch. Some illumination would have emanated from within buildings. Yet even within those, candles and oil lamps were only used where necessary, and many homes were shuttered at night for privacy and warmth. During the reign of William and Mary eligible houses were required to hang an oil lantern outside or pay a rate towards some streetlights.

As crime increased during the 18^th century, brightening the streets of London’s more affluent districts at night was increasingly seen as a priority. A major fuel for these lamps was from whales, and therefore whaling became a specialist trade for some ships based on the Thames. Replenishing the oil, changing the wicks, and maintaining the lamps was a time-consuming and expensive business and only affordable for the wealthy.

Experiments were made by English inventors during the 17^th century in using gas for illumination, with demonstrations to the Royal Society in London. In the early 18^th century miners digging for coal on land owned in Cumberland by Sir James Lowther came across a pocket of gas. Lowther collected some of it in an animal bladder and found a flame could burn until the gas was exhausted.

In 1792 the Scottish chemist and inventor William Murdoch was able to illuminate his house in Cornwall using gas. Working for Matthew Bolton and James Watt, in 1802 he lit the main building of their Soho steam-engine factory in Birmingham. In the first decade of the 19^th century several factories were lit by gas around Birmingham and Lancashire. Meanwhile, in France in 1799 engineer Phillipe LeBon had patented a gas-fed ‘thermo-lamp’ and in 1802 lit his house and garden.

George Augustus Lee, the co-owner of a cotton mill in Salford near Manchester, was fascinated by the technology and in 1805 arranged for his new Engine Twist Mill at Chapel Street to be lit by gas. The following year he had the street dug up for pipes to be laid and Chapel Street became the first in the world to be lit by gas. The introduction of gas lighting into factories allowed for longer working hours and increased production.

In 1802 German-born entrepreneur Friedrich Albrecht Winzer travelled to Paris, where he witnessed LeBon’s thermo-lamp and decided to copy the process. He arrived in London, where there were greater commercial prospects for gas-lighting, but also importantly where he could plagiarise LeBon’s lamp without fear of legal action. In England Winzer anglicised his name to Frederick Albert Winsor.

To gain interest in the technology Winsor began distributing leaflets, and gave a series of lectures and demonstrations at the Lyceum Theatre. Contributions were made by subscribers into a ‘society’ to undertake further research, and Winsor rented two houses on the site now occupied by 100 Pall Mall from where he continued his lectures. With increasing interest, a public demonstration was organised to celebrate the birthday of King George III on 4^th June 1807. Gas was produced using a carbonising furnace at the Pall Mall premises. With permission of the Prince Regent, it was fed through iron pipes from the building’s rear to lamps in the adjacent street at the prince’s home of Carlton House, and also to St. James’s Park. The results were so novel and spectacular that it attracted large crowds and spectators lingered until midnight.

At the end of 1807, despite reluctance or even opposition from the local paving committee, Winsor erected 13 lamps on the south side of Pall Mall, west from his premises to the corner of St. James’s Street. They were fed by furnaces in Winsor’s two houses. More lamps were added along Pall Mall in the easterly direction. Initially the lamps were only lit on special occasions. Pall Mall was a road travelled daily by royalty and the leading people of the time as they passed to and from the home of the Prince Regent and thus would have been a prominent advertisement for the new invention.

The National Light & Heat Company was formed and in 1812 gained a charter from the Prince Regent on behalf of George III to supply gas to the Cities of London and Westminster and the Borough of Southwark for 21 years. It took over one of the houses in Pall Mall until 1814, while Winsor continued to live in the other. He was initially employed as a technical advisor but increasingly became an embarrassment to the company. In 1815 he fled to France to escape his creditors, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was succeeded as the company’s technical expert by Samuel Clegg, a far more highly-skilled engineer. Clegg had previously worked at the Boulton & Watt steam-engine company and in 1816 took out a patent on apparatus for purifying coal gas.

In 1814 the National Light & Heat Co. was succeeded by the Gas Light & Coke Company. which obtained permission from the local vestry to supply gas for house lighting along Pall Mall and other important streets in the area. St. James’s Square installed street gas lamps in 1817 and during the following few years the vestry took responsibility for the lighting of Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and Coventry Street.

The offices of the Gas Light & Coke Co. were in Horseferry Road at Westminster. Clegg moved the gas works to a new location nearby at Great Peter Street. The entire block bordered by Horseferry Road and Great Peter Street was given over to the company’s offices and its gas production and storage in gasometers. The use of coal gas for street lighting and commercial and domestic purposes rapidly increased. The GL&C Co. continually expanded its supply network across London and by 1819 almost 290 miles of piping had been laid. Numerous smaller companies created gas works to supply their local areas across London but some were absorbed into the GL&C Co. over time. In the second half of the century the GL&C Co. was producing gas at various locations across London.

In 1868 the GL&C Co. opened a major gas works at East Ham to which coal could be delivered from the Thames directly from large collier ships. The company named it Beckton after its chairman Simon Adam Beck and the area is still known by that name. The approach road to the gas works was named Winsor Terrace in honour of the instigator of London’s gas industry.

Gas lighting in streets, commercial premises, and homes was much cheaper than using oil. Supply via pipes allowed for lighting in every room whenever required. The introduction of street lamp-posts also coincided with the growth in the production of cast iron. Throughout the 19^th century there were innovations that made gas lighting more efficient. In particular, the introduction of the non-combustible incandescent mantle, which burned brighter and could direct light downwards.

The invention of electric lighting coincided with that of gas lighting, with the English chemist Humphry Davy giving a demonstration to the Royal Society in 1806 of an electric lamp. Yet it took many decades of experimentation before Thomas Edison in the United States and Joseph Swan in England were able to produce the earliest practicable electric bulbs. The Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company was established in 1883, with its factory at Ponders End at Enfield to the north of London producing light bulbs.

Although street lighting gradually transitioned from gas to more efficient electricity, the GL&C Co. continued to supply gas to domestic and commercial premises. In 1948 it covered an area of over 500 square miles, with over 21,000 employees. In that year it was nationalised as one of Britain’s twelve regional state-owned gas utilities, becoming part of the North Thames Gas Board. That in turn was in 1972 absorbed into the national British Gas Corporation.

Almost all of London’s street lighting is now supplied by electricity, providing a brighter light and requiring less maintenance. There are, however, around 1,300 gas lamps still in operation in the capital, including those around The Mall, Buckingham Palace, the royal parks, and The Temple area south of Fleet Street. About 1,000 of them are maintained by British Gas under contract with the individual owners.

With special thanks to the British Gas lamplighter team.