Mrs H and I have whizzed off on holiday, so blogging may be light but here is a snippet from my holiday reading. Not sure whodunit yet though - no butler has appeared so far.
The house had not been used as a farm-house for fifteen years, and was falling to ruin when he bought it in 1918. He had had it thoroughly repaired and fitted with modern conveniences—a bath-room, a telephone, and a plant for making acetylene gas to light it.
Edgar Jepson - The Murder in Romney Marsh (1929)
15 comments:
Dangerous gas, acetylene: I'm impressed that it was ever considered safe enough for domestic use. Or was it manufactured so that it was diluted with some other gas?
Nope: Wokeypedia explains that the gas was manufactured out of doors and piped into the house. That sounds less dangerous though "prone to gas leaks and explosions."
Even braver, it was used for early car headlights!
I wonder if I had once known this and long forgotten?
dearieme - I assume it was generated in an outbuilding from calcium carbide and piped into the house. I remember my father mentioning acetylene lamps for bicycles, but he didn't mention a domestic use for lighting, only coal gas.
In the same book there is a reference to it being used for a movable domestic light by being piped to an adapted car headlight via a rubber hose attached to the domestic pipework. All very casual.
I visited a 'stately home' near Taunton a few years ago and they had an acetylene gas generator for lighting - but the generator was in a separate brick building some way away from the main house. I guess 'ordinary people' were still using candles.
Knowing Romney Marsh quite well, I think you need to look at the positions of some of the sheep in Chapter 6 - they're actually in on the plot, but you don't actually know that by then...
DJ - yes, mostly candles and oil lamps, although coal gas was coming in too, but only where there were plants to make it.
Scrobs - the sheep acting as lookouts is a possibility, they would pass coded bleats across the marsh. Coded bleating sounds a bit like the BBC though...
Acetylene gas ... hours of tension, then kaboom ... for the man or woman tired of life.
For what it's worth, google's AI reports "Gas lighting first appeared in Britain with public demonstrations in London's Pall Mall in 1807. Specifically, Frederick Winsor demonstrated gas streetlights there, initially for special occasions, to celebrate King George III's birthday. By 1850, gas lighting had spread to towns and cities across Britain."
So acetylene would have been for British people who didn't have access to Town Gas - i.e. mainly rural people. It was certainly widely used among US farmers.
"the first major breakthrough in oil lamp technology, the Argand lamp, appeared in the 1780s ... with its circular wick and air channel, [it] provided significantly more light. ... in the 18th century, street lighting using oil lamps became widespread in London and other cities."
... "These in turn were replaced by the kerosene lamp in about 1850."
James - yes, at least a dropped oil lamp might allow time to do something.
dearieme - interesting, there must have been quite a contrast between towns and villages and as always between rich and poor.
I know my mother's parents used candles in their terraced house in Derby at least until the Great War. Coal gas and electricity would have been available in Derby at the time, but if a house wasn't connected when built then presumably there was a cost. I'm not quite sure if the candles were only used upstairs though.
A static caravan owned by Mrs H's parents in the 1970s had gas lamps on the wall, although they never used them, the mantles were extremely fragile.
Our first house, bought as a small totally unmodernised terraced place in 1972, had gas lights in the front room, it had never had an electric supply connected. I assume the previous occupant was using candles or oil lamps in the other rooms (or to visit the toilet down the garden) until around 1970.
Woodsy - blimey, that sounds antiquated for 1972. Maybe the previous occupant lived there for decades, was used to living like that and never cared to modernise it. My cousin used to work with a chap who lived in an unmodernised village cottage which still had earth floors.
During my days as a wallpaper conservator for the National Trust, I was working on some walls in an apartment at the top of Ham House. The wallpaper can often tell a story, if like me, you are expert at reading it. It became apparent that the one time occupant had had gas lighting in the apartment, been persuaded to have it replaced by electric light and then had it taken out and gas lighting reenstated, probably because he or she didn't like the harsh quality of the electric light!
Tammly - yes, electric light can be harsh. I can't imagine gas being any better, but maybe some people who did a lot of reading after dark just preferred the light of gas lamps.
My father was a British Railways wheel-tapper. Of course that was only part of his overall duties. When ever a train pulled into the terminal station he had to check that every wheel on the whole train rang true. For this he had a small headed hammer on a yard long wooden shaft or handle. Tapped every wheel and listened to the ring.
For night work he had an acetylene hand lamp. Before leaving home in the evening, on the kitchen table he would fill the lamp's lower compartment with white calcium carbide, which looked like white chalk, and the upper compartment with water. A screw needle valve let water drip down onto the carbide.
A good few years later I learned that speleologists used the exact same lamps when caving.
I never heard or read of any danger.
I still have my father's lamp.
Doonhamer - I saw a railway hand lamp in an antique shop yesterday. Not the acetylene version from the look of it, but possibly an oil lamp which had lost the oil burner. Interesting aspect of social and industrial history, worth delving into further some time.
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