Let There Be Light

C.A. Asbrey

People have been lighting up their residences since the discovery of fire. For a portable light they found that soaking reeds in fat gave them something that burned longer and brighter than combustable material alone. They were used in ceremonies, walking through homes or streets, or just to light an immediate area for doing something functional. Reed pulp was soaked in tallow, the same material that was formed into candles around a true wick around 500BCE. Rushlights were used along with oil lamps right through ancient periods. These oil lamps have been found through the Palaeolithic and Bronze Ages in the forms of cups or saucers made from clay, glass and stone filled with animal fats with a floating wick. In Mediterranean areas olive oil was used, and for the wealthier, beeswax was a less smelly option than animal tallow. As time progressed, potters began using shallow, wheel-made bowls and pinching the wet clay rim in four equally spaced locations to create spouts for wicks. The model for oil lamps evolved along with wicks, and technology supported the development of new glass chimneys and globes. By the 18th century oil lamps were commonplace. In 1784 Swiss physicist and chemist Aimé Argand invented the Argand lamp. It had a tall glass chimney that created a draft that pulled oxygen directly into the flame. This caused the oil to burn completely, making the lamp 10 times brighter than a candle and entirely smokeless. Shortly after, pharmacists like Antoine-Arnoult Quinquet popularised the design, sometimes using frosted or ground glass globes to help diffuse the intense light. This, coupled with candles made from tallow, spermaceti (whale oil) and beeswax made up domestic lighting for many right into the twentieth century.

Candles also saw developments that improved them into the nineteenth century when plaited wicks were introduced in the 1820s. These wicks eliminated the need for constant trimming as they curled out of the flame as they burnt. Chandeliers, sconces and candelabra had long become elaborate and decorative, with mirrors also being used to reflect and make the most of any light and throw it around the room. There are many posts showing small candles which claim that they were used by prostitutes to time their customers, but there’s no real historical evidence to back that up. Those posts actually show bougies de poche, literally pocket candles; small candles that burn for only a few minutes, to let you light your way to bed or through a house without having to search for a larger candle to light or disturb others. The courting candle, a candle held in a spiral with a side knob or twist, is another myth. When the wax burns down to the metal holder clip, so the tales go, the date is over and the suitor must leave. There’s no contemporaneous evidence of these candles being used that way. The coiled design actually comes from functional candleholders (like chambersticks or wax jacks) meant to securely hold and elevate remaining wax scraps or tapers down to the last drop. Candles were used to time things though. We know that candles were marked to indicate a certain period of time where they had a predictable burn rate. As the wax melted, each passing mark indicated a set amount of time. Equally, people turned candle clocks into primitive alarm clocks by inserting a metal nail or pin into the wax at a specific time mark. When the wax melted down to that point, the nail fell into a metal basin below, creating a clattering sound to wake the sleeper.

In 1417 the Lord Mayor of London, ordained “Lanthornes with lights to bee hanged out on the Winter evening betwixt Hallowtide and Candlemasse.” and Paris issued a similar edict in 1524. In the sixteenth century, the inhabitants were ordered to keep lights burning in the windows of all houses that faced streets. In London in1668, the residents were reminded to hang out their lanterns at the usual time, and, in 1690, an order was issued to hang out a light, or lamp, every night at nightfall, from Michaelmas to Christmas. By an Act of the Common Council in 1716, all housekeepers, whose houses faced any street, lane, or passage, were required to hang out, every dark night, one or more lights, to burn from six to eleven o’clock, under the penalty of one shilling as a fine for failing to do so.

Out in the streets, people tried their best to get indoors before dark unless protected by servants, who were often armed, but it wasn’t always possible, especially in the winter months when there was less daylight. When people had to walk the streets they either risked it, or used link-boys. Link-boys worked most major cities, and they were young lads who carried torches to escort people home. You can still see link extinguishers fitted on Georgian buildings where the torches could be snuffed out if the master was accompanied by a servant from his own household. They could also accompany sedan chairs, often a safer option than wandering the streets, as the chairmen would deliver people from door to door. One famous link-boy was Laurence Casey, known as Little Cazey, became the personal link-boy of the famous courtesan Betty Careless. Henry Fielding, the famous novelist and Chief Magistrate of Bow Street, explicitly named Casey—alongside his high-society companions Captain “Mad Jack” Montague and Captain Laroun—as “the three most troublesome and difficult to manage of all my Bow Street visitors”. Casey was transported to America in 1750, after which he is lost to history.

Link-boys, ironically for torch-bearers, also had a dark side. They could be in league with thieves, leading the unwary into danger and even death. The records also show that link-boys are heavily connected to the sex trade, not just escorting custom to and from brothels and Molly Houses, but they were a good cover for rent boys to pick up custom, and escort customers home to spend the night. They also knew the safe cruising areas for men looking for like-minded people in dark parks and streets. The connection between torch-bearing boys and same-sex desire dates back to classical antiquity, where Cupid or Eros was often depicted as a youthful torch-bearer. In the Georgian era, prominent artists like Sir Joshua Reynolds played on this subtext in paintings such as Cupid as a Link Boy.

Paraffin, known in the United States as kerosine, was discovered in 1830 by German chemist Carl Reichenbach when he attempted to develop a method to efficiently separate and refine waxy substances naturally occurring in petroleum. When stearic acid was added, it raised the melting point, creating a wax that burned more cleanly and cheaply than animal fats and beeswax. in 1850, Scottish chemist James Young patented a method for distilling paraffin and oils from coal, setting up the world’s first commercial oil refinery. Young’s shale oil was the dominant worldwide until the discovery of crude oil in the Middle East and America, and the improvement of the methods to turn that into commercial chemicals from about 1910 onwards. Paraffin had the added advantage of being much lighter, and that enabled new lamp designs. Lamps could now be suspended from a ceiling more easily, and more decoratively. The previous oil, colza, was so thick it had to be fed from a reservoir above or pumped in. Most colza oil lamps have a reservoir often shaped like a classical urn to one side that sometimes obstructed the light. The Sinumbra lamp got around the problem by having a circular reservoir around the base of the glass light shade. Those with a keen eye can spot the wrong kind of oil lamps in Regency dramas, using technology not yet invented.

Paraffin lamps became ubiquitous in the 19th century for every class. The glass chimney design gave a bright light, burning a woven wick, improved by the duplex burner in 1865. This popular design used two flat wicks side by side (or controlled by concentric winders) to double the light output. Neither candles nor oil lamps were without risk. Paraffin vapour was volatile. Blowing out the flame instead of turning down the wick could force the fire down into the fuel reservoir and cause an explosion. Accidental spills or tipping over fragile glass bases made household fires a frequent hazard in Victorian newspaper reports. It’s worth noting that deaths by fire reduced by around ninety percent in the twentieth century through the phasing out of live-flame lighting, the introduction of strict building codes (mandating brick, stone, and fireproofing), and the widespread deployment of smoke detectors, sprinklers, and professional fire departments.

Mantles were the next step forward. These were made of either woven cotton or silk that was impregnated with an inflammable mixture of thorium and cerium suspended over a fierce flame. When it was first lit, the fabric burned away leaving the non-combustible material to glow to provide an incandescent light. Invented by Carl Aur von Wesbach in 1885, this technology is still very much in use today in camping lights.

Then came gas. Miners had known for centuries that gas accumulated in pockets underground, and scientists worked out that some geology was more likely to cause it than others, so knew where to find it. Some attempts were even made to catch it in bladders to transport it. In 1733, Sir James Lowther attached tubing to a bladder of gas and lit the end of the pipe, thereby discovering the principles behind gas lighting. In the 18th century William Murdoch used such a bladder as a portable torch to light his way home at night. It was so successful he fitted his home out with gas lighting in 1797. In 1807 he expanded his business by demonstrating gas street lights along with Frederick Albert Winsor in Pall Mall for George III’s birthday, but the 1806 lighting of a portion of Chapel Street in Salford, Lancashire is thought to be the first in the world. By 1820 many cities had streets or areas lit by gas lamps.

People were reluctant to fit it in homes, fearing it was unsafe, but the tide turned after it was fitted in the houses of parliament in 1859. My old home in Scotland was built in the sixteenth century, with parts added over the centuries. I remember when we were decorating seeing the whole plan to fit the house with gas sketched on the plaster in the hall, clearly as a guide for the workmen to refer to. Records show that would have been around 1870, average for a rural area in Scotland’s central belt.

Then electricity overtook gas. Thomas Edison beat rivals like Sir Joseph Swan to perfect the first viable incandescent light bulb in 1879. One year later, Cragside, a mansion in Gateshead, was the first house to be lit electrically, using Swan’s ‘electric lamps’. Early light bulbs came in a wide variety of shapes and patterns, often highly ornamented, but the novelty soon passed and attention turned back to the shade and the fittings. Gaslights remained the primary method lighting homes until after the First World War, with many residences still having gas into the forties and fifties. In Scotland, some villages to have areas still referred to as “the electric houses” as they are situated where the first electricity was fitted in that area in the 1950s. The Chapelton area of Polbeth, is a good example of this.

Both gas and electricity had a profound effect on society and working hours. Streets became exponentially safer when criminals couldn’t hide in pools of darkness, and that extended hours for socialisation. Commerce gained as ordinary people became more ready to go out in the evening, as well as extending working hours beyond the natural hours of daylight. Feelings matter in society, and the streets feeling less perilous meant that people were more prepared to spend their time after work doing things outside of the home; so societies flourished in the evenings as people took up hobbies. The arts, choirs, sciences, literacy, history, archeology, politics, fitness, religion, musical, natural history, and sports are just a few of the typical types of meetings Victorians were attending now it was safe to go out of an evening, and both genders did, although ladies groups tended to meet in the afternoon, but it was the start of change.

I’ll cover the way in which access to societies and libraries contributed to a massive societal shift in other posts, but what started as a way to crowd out the darkness really sparked human ingenuity for centuries. And having more time to work, learn, and socialise meant that ideas can be exchanged and expanded in every area of human existence.