author logo, Florence Cole
Florence Cole as a child

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

Council-owned Streetlights

The light from the street lamps

When I was a child in the early 1900s, the streets were lit by gaslight.

Gas street lamps gave out a circle of light which didn't spread far. In between the lamp posts was dark.

Peter Johnson

The light from the gas street lamps was greenish, eerie and flickering. Both my father and I on separate occasions thought we saw a woman ghost in our front bedroom, but I didn't want to think of such things and put it down to the eeriness of the gas lighting.

Three lighted mantles in an old gas street lamp

Three lighted mantles in a gas street lamp. Photographed in Blists Victorian Town,


How gas street lights worked

The street gas lights worked the same way as the house gas lights in that the flame from the lighted gas heated up a mantle which became incandescent and gave out light.

An old gas street lamp in the early 1900s showing the bar for the lamplighter to lean his ladder

A gas street lamp, a detail from a larger photos from the early 1900s. The bar to support the lamplighter's ladder doubles as a support for the road name.

Street lights gave out more light than house lights because there were more gas jets to a lamp, each with its own mantle.



How the early street gas lamps were lit

Every evening the lamplighter used to come along on his bicycle to light the street lamps, 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.

There were bars near the tops of the street lights for the lamplighter to lean his ladder against.

How the later street gas lamps were lit

Even as late as World War Two and for a period afterwards I remember street lights running on gas. Every evening just before it got dark a man on a bicycle came to turn on the lamps. He arrived with one hand holding a wooden pole over his shoulder the other hand steering the bicycle. He would stop at each lamp post and reach up with his pole to turn on the gas. He would insert the pole into the vent at the bottom of the glass case and push a lever into the 'on' position. (Some lamps had a chain instead of a lever.) Then the pilot light lit the gas making the mantle glow.

Just after the war clockwork timers started being installed. Then the light came on automatically every evening and went off automatically every morning. Every so often a man with a ladder would visit each lamp to wind up the clockwork mechanism.

Also every so often during the day a man came round with a ladder to service the lamps or to repair the panes of glass that often got broken. Council men would also come round to paint the lamp posts which were made of cast iron.

Peter Johnson


Lamplighter, early to mid 1900s England, lighting a pilot light streetlamp by turning on the gas with a pole.

Enhanced screen shot from the 1940s film Gaslight. Although the film was set in earlier times, gas street lamps were still common. So it is likely that this is probably reasonably authentic.

    

Another use for street lights

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


 

Shop window street lamps

Shops had their own gas lamps outside in the street, to light their window displays in the evenings and in winter, and to give a welcoming feel. These privately-owned gas lamps also contributed to the general light on the streets.

Gas lamp outside a London shop in the 1940s, a left-over from former times

Gas lamp outside Eustances greengrocers shop in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy of Vic Nunn.

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

Privately owned lamp outside a shop. Detail from a photograph in Farnham Museum.

Gas lamp above the display window of an early 1900s drapers/haberdashers

Lamp outside a terraced house used as a draper/haberdashery shop in Leicester in the early 1900s

































Typical old gas lamp, as hung outside public houses in the UKPrivately owned gas lamps were used outside pubs. This photo shows the lamp that used to be outside the Old Bull pub in Silver Street, Edmonton. It has now been repositioned in a similar position outside the new Bull pub, although it is now electric.

When I asked the landlord why, he said that these lamps were a historical feature of public houses.

Cliff Raven


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This website Join me in the 1900s is a contribution to the social history of everyday life in early to mid 20th century Britain, seen through personal recollections and illustrations, with the emphasis on what it was like to live in those times. It is © Pat Cryer.

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early 1900s

early & mid 1900s

mid 1900s

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