A Light In The Darkness

My latest feature for Jane Austen's Regency World is on the advent of new sources of artificial lighting. The main sources when Jane was a little girl were rushlights, candles, and oil-lamps - but they were erratic, smoky and smelly. 

 In 1784 Aimé Argand (1755–1803) created an oil-lamp which gave a clear, steady light, but it proved too expensive for ordinary families.

Then in the 1790s, inventor and engineer William Murdoch (Murdock) experimented with lighting using coal-gas. To celebrate the Peace of Amiens in 1802, Murdoch illuminated the exterior of Boulton and Watt's Soho factory in Birmingham - a splendid display.

Within twenty years, cities like London, Glasgow, Liverpool and Dublin had street gas-lighting, making the streets much safer at night. 

Image: 'A Peep at the Gas Lights in Pall-Mall', Thomas Rowlandson, Publisher: Thomas Tegg, London, 23 December 1809. These 'triple' gaslights were called 'cockspurs' because of their shape. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.