author logo, Florence Cole
Florence Cole as a child

Gas lighting in the streets on a working class estate in the early 1900s

An old gas street lamp in the early 1900s with a policeman standing underneath

A gas street lamp at the corner of Bulwer Road on the Huxley Estate in Edmonton, north London in the early 1900s (1900's). .A detail from a larger photograph on the Silver Street page.

When I was a child in the early 1900s, the streets were lit by gaslight. Every evening the lamplighter used to come along on his bicycle to light them, carrying his ladder on his shoulder. It was a wooden ladder which must have been very heavy, unlike the aluminium ones of later years. I often wonder now how long it took him to do his rounds and how large his rounds were.

It has been difficult to find good photos of street lighting in the early 1900s presumably because people were not interested in photographing lampposts. Similarly it has so far been impossible to get contemporary photographs of the lamplighter men - although modern sketches showing various interpretations are readily available on the internet.  Pat Cryer

The gas mantles were like those used in houses but probably bigger or there may have been more than one of them. I never saw them closely.

We children used the lamp posts as winning posts in some of our outdoor street games.

A typical privately-owned gas lamp suspended outside, over a shop window and contributing to the illumination of the streets in the early 1900s (1900's).

Shops also had their own street lamps, presumably to light their window displays in the evenings and in winter. These privately-owned gas lamps would also have contributed to the general light on the streets. Detail from a photograph in Farnham Museum.

I have not been able to find out if the street lamps had a pilot light in the early 1900s. In later years, they certainly did, and they also had timers to turn the gas on. I understand that some lamplighter men had a pole with a hook on the end to pull the chains, but I haven't been able to talk to anyone old enough to remember this happening. Pat Cryer.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.

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These childhood recollections from around the time of the 1911 census are of street lighting on a working class housing estate in north London (then Middlesex).