The same year he announces a display “on the Thames immediately after Astley’s Exhibition in Honour of His Majesty’s Birth-day,” and concludes by saying “the Fireworks are made under the Direction of Mr. Astley, by Messrs. Cobonell & Son, who will let them off on the Thames this evening at different signals from Mr. Astley, Sen., who will be mounted on the Gibraltar Charger, placed in a Barge, in the Front of the line of Fireworks.”
Firework Temple at Vauxhall, 1845. From a woodcut in “The Illustrated London News.”
The “Philosophical fireworks” above mentioned were evidently an imitation of those exhibited at the Lyceum by Diller, which he describes as “Philosophical Fireworks from Inflammable Air without smell, smoke or Detonation.” These appear to have been nothing more than gas jets arranged in patterns and designs, some revolving and some stationary. Air was forced from a bladder through a sponge saturated with ether. Movement and variation were produced by turning on and off the gas from separate sets of holes. Two colours only appear to have been produced—rose and green; these were by the addition of strontia and baryta or copper.
A handbill is in existence advertising a similar display at Hull in 1804, by W. Clarke.
During the early part of the nineteenth century several gardens round London made a feature of pyrotechnic displays. The Mermaid Gardens, Hackney, in “The Morning Chronicle” of June 1st, 1812, announces “the greatest feast for the eye ever exhibited is a superb firework by that unparalleled artist, Mr. Brock, Engineer.”
The Yorkshire Stingo and Bayswater Tea Gardens in the west gave displays up to the early forties. White Conduit House, in the Islington district, had firework displays from 1824 up to shortly before the closing of these gardens in 1849.
Rosherville Gardens, opened in 1837, the North Woolwich Gardens, the Eagle, 1825–82, the Globe, Mile End, the Cremorne, 1843–77, all had their firework displays. The best known, however, for this feature were the Surrey Zoological Gardens, 1831–56, where Southby, of Vauxhall, conducted displays for several years, producing pyrotechnic and scenic displays there. In 1841 he gave a reproduction of the fireworks of St. Angelo, and the Illumination of St. Peter’s, Rome, which proved a great attraction to the gardens.
In the provinces the Belvue Gardens, Manchester, and the Clifton Zoological Gardens, Bristol, have made a feature of firework displays in their list of attractions, those at the latter being carried out in 1835 by Gyngell.
The famous Cremorne Gardens made a feature of pyrotechnic displays and spectacles of the scenic type with more or less regularity from their opening in 1846 down to the final closing owing to public petition in 1877. The earlier displays were carried out by Mortram and Duffel.