The Gaslight and Coke Company had offices in Pall Mall, and in the street, in front, lamps for public use were once more exhibited, this time for the benefit of the West-end loungers. In the engraving a gentleman explains to his fair companion thus: “The coals being steamed, produces tar or paint for the outside of houses, the smoke passing thro’ water is depriv’d of substance, and burns, as you see.” On hearing this peculiarly elementary scientific explanation, an Irishman exclaimed, “Arrah, honey, if this man brings fire thro’ water, we shall soon have the Thames and the Liffey burnt down, and all the pretty little herrings and whales burnt to cinders.”
A PEEP AT THE GAS LIGHTS IN PALL MALL.
In 1810 the Gaslight and Coke Company got their Charter, and thenceforward the use of gas sprang into life, and although it may be on its last legs, as an illuminating power, there is plenty of vitality in it yet.
Winsor was buried at Kensal Green, and on his tombstone was cut the text from the Gospel of St. John, chap. i. ver. 9: “That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
To light this gas or, indeed, to initiate any illuminating or heating power, recourse was only to be had to the old, original tinder-box and matches; now things utterly of the past, possibly to be found in museums, as in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, labelled “Method of procuring light in the Nineteenth Century.” This primitive arrangement consisted of a flat round box of iron or brass, resembling closely a pocket tobacco-box, which contained tinder. This tinder was made of charred rag, i.e., linen or cotton rags burnt, but smothered so as not to smoulder out in “the parson and clerk” of our childhood, and the means of obtaining light therefrom was as follows:
The lid of the tinder-box being taken off, a piece of flint or agate, and another of hard steel, were forcibly struck together, so as to produce sparks. When one of these fell upon the tinder, it had to be carefully tended, and blown, until it became a patch of incandescence, sufficient to light a thin splint of wood some six inches long, having either end pointed, and tipped with sulphur. You might be successful at first trial, or, if the tinder was not well burnt, your temper might be considerably tried. This was the ordinary mode, but there was another—made with a pistol lock, having, in lieu of the priming-pan, a reservoir of tinder. These two were combined with a small candlestick which bore a wax-taper, and are frequently to be met with in bric-à-brac shops. Sometimes, also, in lieu of tinder, amadou or German tinder, made from a fungus, was used, or else thick and bibulous paper was soaked in a strong solution of nitrate of potash, and both were ignited by a spark from the flint and steel.
The first attempt to improve upon this machine, which was nearly as primitive as an aboriginal “fire stick,” came from France, where, in 1805, M. Chancel invented a very pretty apparatus for producing light. It consisted of a bottle containing asbestos, which was saturated with strong sulphuric acid, and flame was produced by bringing this into contact with matches of the ordinary type as to shape or very slightly modified, coated at the ends with sulphur, and tipped with a mixture of chlorate of potash and sugar. The phosphorous match, too, was just beginning to be known. The following advertisement probably refers to M. Chancel’s invention or some cognate method of producing fire—Morning Post, December 27, 1808: “The success of the Instantaneous Light and Fire Machines daily increases, and the Manufactory in Frith Street, Soho, has become now the daily resort of persons of the first fashion and consequence in town, who express themselves highly gratified with the utility and ingenuity of these philosophical curiosities.”
