There’s evi­dence that gas has been used for light­ing includ­ing in Chi­na in 500BC, with gas trans­port­ed through bam­boo pipes; but here we’re talk­ing about the indus­tri­al age.

Our hero in this arti­cle gets only a foot­note men­tion in the Wikipedia arti­cle, hid­den under the name of his employ­er, Sir James Lowther. Mr Carlisle Sped­ding is the main focus here, sug­gest­ed by some to be the Brunel of Cum­bria.

Sped­ding was employed by Lowther, and found around 1730 that the large seam of methane gas found in the mine could be piped to the sur­face and used for light. Sped­ding lit the pit works with this gas, and offered the town of White­haven to have the sur­plus gas for free to light the Bor­ough. White­haven, of course, declined and it’s cit­i­zens had to wait until 1831 to ben­e­fit from gas light.

Regret­tably, Sped­ding died in 1755 being trapped in a mine that had filled with the methane (or firedamp, as min­ers call it) that he had offered to light White­haven with.

William Mur­doch from Ayr­shire was first to work out how to gen­er­ate gas reli­ably. He found that coal gas — the gas giv­en off when coal is heat­ed with­out oxy­gen — would pro­duce light. He used this to light his own home in Redruth and then the Soho Foundry in Birm­ing­ham in 1798.

It was 1891 before the gas man­tle, a cloak around the flame that glows when heat­ed. This pro­vid­ed a more effi­cient, whiter light than pure gas lamps. It’s this light yel­low glow that even now you might have seen in old car­a­vans or some select­ed streets in cities.

Printing Links

There were two big links to print­ing that gas light­ing opened up. With gas light­ing being a quar­ter of the price of can­dles and lamps it was pos­si­ble for fac­to­ries to remain open longer, this includ­ed print­ing works. It quick­ly became eco­nom­i­cal for print­ers to spend more time print­ing.

Sec­ond­ly, gas light­ing at home made read­ing eas­i­er and pos­si­ble for longer peri­ods. This drove demand for books and oth­er print­ed mat­ter.

I do won­der, too, whether street light­ing made more attrac­tive the Vic­to­ri­an enthu­si­asm for bill post­ing, and how print­ers respond­ed to a light that changed the appear­ance of colours depend­ing on whether it was day­light or gas light land­ing down on the poster.

Gas Lamps Today

You might remem­ber gas lamps in old­er car­a­vans. Quite unlike any oth­er lights they hiss and pop, warm the space and cast a light yel­low glow. I did meet a print­er in Liv­er­pool once who was work­ing from a lock-up garage. He’d trans­plant­ed his gas light­ing from a car­a­van to the garage as there was no elec­tric­i­ty, either.

In some town cen­tres gas lights still exist. In Lon­don, the Gas­ke­teers are cam­paign­ing to stop West­min­ster Coun­cil from remov­ing their gas lamps. In Leeds, Queen’s Square was gas lit when I last vis­it­ed in 2018.

In Sheffield at high points of the sew­er sys­tem, gas is burned off through their sew­er gas lamps.

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Location

White­haven, as home to Carlisle Sped­ding, the first per­son to light his works with gas in the UK.

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Head­er Image: ​“gas lamp” flickr pho­to by sworm https://flickr.com/photos/sworm/415778462 shared under a Cre­ative Com­mons (BY-NC) license