Illuminating Brighton

Brighton 1807. It’s 2.30 in the morning. George, age 10, is cuddled up with his two sisters and brother on a straw mattress on the floor of their one-room home in Orange Row when he is woken up by his dad. Time to go to work: to put out the oil street lamps they had lit the previous evening. Careful not to wake the two families, who live on the floor below, George and Dad pick up their ladder from the backyard and set off.

They are a link in a chain of workers that began in Beijing around 500 BC when hollow bamboos were used to channel natural occurring gas which was lit by men like them at night. They are descendants of the Roman slaves called lanternarius who cared for the vegetable oil lamps that hung outside the houses of the rich, lamps that would light the cities and towns of the world. In 1417, the Mayor of London ordered all homes to hang oil lanterns outdoors after dark in the winter. In 1712 ‘All the way, quite through Hyde Park to the Queen’s Palace at Kensington, lanterns were placed for illuminating the roads on dark nights.’

It’s not clear when street lamps were first used in Brighton. We do know that in 1794 Richard Knighton was paid £30 a year to look after street lights from the end of July until the beginning of February lighting them at dusk and putting them out at 3am. We also know that by 1807 there were 230 lamps in Brighton. Perhaps George and his dad worked for Knighton and as they walked through the streets of Brighton before dawn, they chatted about something which excited George but worried his dad. On 4th June 1807, the first gas street lights in the country had been lit in Pall Mall, London. George thought they must have looked amazing. His dad thought they’d never catch on and he might lose his job. They did catch on, by 1820 there were 40,000 gas street lamps in London, but he never lost his job.

The idea of gas street lighting was first raised in Brighton in 1816. In 1818 the commissioners allowed the Brighton Gas Light and Coke company to be formed and a gasworks to be built at Black Rock.

A gasolier with 200 burners was installed in the Banqueting Room of the Royal Pavilion in 1821 where it still hangs today although now converted to electricity. In 1824 Mr Trevett installed 17 gas lamps around the Steyne which were lit, perhaps by George? on 3 May.

The early gas lamps were a single flame and didn’t throw out much light but thankfully in the late 1800’s the gas mantle arrived and the streets became brighter and safer

George’s dad needn’t have worried about losing his job as the lamps still needed to be lit and put out. It was a bit of a nightmare as they had to carry a ladder to reach the gas burner and a portable lamp to light the gas but in due course, they got hold of a ‘lighting stick’ which made life a lot easier.

The stick was a pole with an open flame running on calcium carbide at the tip, a rounded point to push open the lantern panel and a hook to pull the chain lever down to turn the gas on. They could also earn a few pennies by using the pole to give ‘a knock up’ on the bedroom windows of those who were worried about being late for work. With the coming of the railway in 1841 it was decided to light the station.

The Brighton Gazette stated ‘The station was lighted up on Monday evening for the first time, and formed a most imposing object, being from its elevated situation visible in various parts of the town.’

Gas was everywhere, then electricity arrived. By January 1882 bare electric wires were strung along the parapets of houses in Queen’s Road and Western Road. The Brighton Gazette wasn’t concerned by this in fact quite the opposite: ‘the latest phase of the electric lighting craze in Brighton is shortly to be witnessed in a series of experiments among private tradesmen whose public spirit is certainly commendable’. There was no mains power and the bare wires were just slung from house to house. In Hove this was especially dangerous as they just slung them straight across the squares with one unsupported span reaching over 180 metres.

Eventually Brighton Council did commit itself to electricity and on 16th September 1891 Mrs S H Soper, wife of Brighton’s mayor, formally switched on Brighton Corporation’s electricity supply and perhaps unsurprisingly the first building to be lit up was Soper’s Emporium at the top of North Street. The first major public electric lighting scheme was a series of 41 new lamps on King’s Road which The Mayoress, Miss Ewart, officially switched on 16th September 1893.

Electricity had arrived but gas street lamps were not swept away. In 1853 there were 947 in Brighton streets and in 1919 1,958 in Hove. In 1938 there were still around 100 in Brighton and the Lanes was lit entirely by gas.  It was the blackout restrictions imposed during World War II that signalled the beginning of the end for gas street lights. When they were switched back on the ones that no longer worked were converted to electricity. The general transition was completed UK-wide by 1968. However, in central London, thanks to English Heritage, there are still around 1,500 gas lamps lighting the Royal Parks, the exterior of Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and almost the entire Covent Garden area. British Gas employs five lamplighters to keep the city’s gas lamps burning. Perhaps a descendant of George’s is one of them. Who knows?

If you would like further information on this subject, I would suggest consulting Judy Middleton’s excellent exhaustive article on this subject at https://hovehistory.blogspot.com/2015/11/brighton-hove-and-portslades-street.html