Newspaper miscellany

Thursday, 26 March 2026

Blogs using the British Newspaper Archive Blog #11 Lamplighters

Blogs using the British Newspaper Archive

Blog #11 (URL links are broken) Lamplighters

All newspaper images © The British Library Board

Lamplighters

As towns in Britain continued to grow, especially from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, street lighting at night became important. In the days before the invention of electricity and all of the systems that support street lighting today, it can be hard for us to imagine how much effort was needed to create lights in streets. Once installed, street lights had to be turned on at dusk and off again at dawn. There are numerous reports of lamplighters in British newspapers.

In an age of sinecures, awarded to allies of the monarch, the sinecure of chief lamplighter to his Majesty (George II) was worth 500 pounds per annum.

Stamford Mercury - Thursday 22 February 1739 page 2 col. 2

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000254/17390222/003/0002

Lamplighters were not immune from risk, as the story in the Derby Mercury of the 25 May 1744 reported. “ Last Monday evening a melancholy accident happened t the Door of Colonel Hodges, in Bloomsbury-Square, where a Lamp-Lighter belong to that place, had the Misfortune to fall from the top of his Ladder, on the Iron-Rails before the house, and several of the spikes run into his Body; he was immediately carried to his Lodgings, where he lies in great Torment, and very small Hopes of his Life.”

Derby Mercury - Friday 25 May 1744 page 1 col. 3

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000189/17440525/007/0001

A female lamplighter, Mrs. Read, a printer, and Mrs Darvell, a lamplighter got caught up in the work of extortionists/ arsonists, who wished to secure money by threats.

Derby Mercury - Thursday 03 March 1748 page 2 col. 1

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000189/17480303/003/0002

A longer report appeared in the Ipswich Journal a couple of days later. It is a fuller account, as more information may have been available from the authorities, about the first letter to Mrs. Read, a printer in Whitefriars, is printed in full.

“We, knowing you are a rich woman, desire you will lay a guinea under an Oyster-shell, behind the Watch House in the Alley, that side next Fleet-Street, on Wednesday Night without fili, or by God we will burn your House, murder your daughter Mrs. Nunnely, when she is going home to Islington, for all she has the Devil [i.e. printer’s errand boys] to guard her. Set no watch, nor show the Letter to Nobody; for by God, damn our souls to the lowest Pit of Hell, if you do, you know what you are to expect.”

Ipswich Journal - Saturday 04 March 1749 page 3 col.1

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000191/17490304/013/0003

In the same issue of the Ipswich Journal, on page 1, the second letter was printed of the extortionists to Mrs Darvell, a lamplighter of Red Lion Court.

“The copy of a Letter …before the House of the Widow Darvell…

You are desired, by Order of our Committee, to lay one Guinea, on Friday Night, in the Place on the Right Hand Side of Red-Lion Court going down (it joins to the Steps, for if you don’t, you and all your family will will murder, and burn down your House by G-d, d-n my Blood if I don’t; but if you do, it shall be returned to you very soon by the Penny Post: But if not, you know what to expect; and by G-d it shall be done. It is but one Guinea. Yours &c J.Q. Note. There’s Witchcraft in the Case; Shew this letter to Nobody.”

Ipswich Journal - Saturday 04 March 1749 page 1 col. 3

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000191/17490304/005/0001

Then, as now, low pay caused problems, and the lamplighters of Westminster went on strike in February 1777 in an attempt to secure higher wages. The streets of Westminster remained dark, and other watchmen were put on duty to keep the streets safe. (It would appear, that the lamplighters had a role in public safety, as they could see if people were being mistreated, and take action,) A strike breaker was encountered by some of those lamplighters on strike, and beaten up. Those unlucky lamplighters on strike, who went to a pub in King Street, were unaware that a naval press gang would waylay them and press them into service in the navy.

The Ipswich Journal - Saturday 22 February 1777 page 2 col. 3.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000071/17770222/007/0002

The work of lamplighters may have become more organised towards the end of the 18^th century. In a notice dated the 27^th July 1793, the Commissioners of Northampton placed a notice in the Northampton Mercury asking for proposal to light the street lamps. “The number of lamps to be lighted are 324, which are to continue burning, on an Average, six hours each Evening, for 120 Nights, between the 23^rd of September next and the 6^th of April following; for which Purpose it is expected the Contractor provides three Lamplighters.”

Northampton Mercury - Saturday 10 August 1793 page 1 col. 2

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000317/17930810/014/0001

Lamp oil was a valuable commodity, for those many who could not afford the oil to light their own rooms at home. It is perhaps unsurprising to find lamplighters stealing oil intended for the illumination of street lights. Two reports of 1806 in the Northampton Mercury and in the Norfolk Chronicle report what happened when lamplighters were caught stealing, with harsh sentences being given. George Bowker was “…sentenced to be confined for six months in the house of correction.”

Northampton Mercury - Saturday 25 January 1806 page 3 col. 5.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000317/18060125/010/0003

No less than seven lamplighters were tried for stealing lamp oil. Perhaps the three found guilty, who were sentenced to three months imprisonment, had the better sentence than those who were “…sent on board the tender”. Those sent on board the tender may well have been pressed into the navy, and could have spent years at sea, without seeing home or family.

Norfolk Chronicle - Saturday 02 August 1806 page 2 col. 2.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000246/18060802/003/0002

In an echo of events today, with local authority finances being restricted and reduced, a plea by a Captain Leech on behalf of the inhabitants, that two lamps be set up to illuminate Chandos-street, was rejected by the Town Clerk of on behalf of the Bedford Improvement Commissioners, on the grounds that “…their means were so circumscribed that they were hardly able to pay the lamplighters at present”.

Northampton Mercury - Saturday 19 December 1840 page 3 col. 5

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000317/18401219/018/0003

We can gather from a report in the Cork Examiner of 6^th July 1846 that gas lighting was quite extensive for the Dyke in Cork. A Mr. Gould proposed that some of the 13 gas lamps used to illuminate the Dyke could be re-distributed to other parts of the city. The decision whether to do this was deferred (in time honoured fashion) to a new committee which would look further into the matter. Complaints about the gas lamps being unlit in the evening elicited a response about the routine that lamplighters were expected to adhere to. “The lamplighters were sent out each evening a quarter of an hour before sunset, and they were obliged to have all their lamps lit within forty-five minutes time. On the representation of the most humble person in the community, the lamp-lighters would be fined for a neglect of duty.”

Cork Examiner - Monday 06 July 1846 page 1 col. 4.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000425/18460706/005/0001

It is fascinating to learn that an English company (unspecified in the article) supplied gas to light the streets of Vienna, and that the lamplighters were dis-satisfied with their pay.

Nottingham Evening Post - Wednesday 11 October 1893 page 2 col. 6.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000321/18931011/006/0002

The matter of employing women as lamplighters was discuss at a meeting of the Pollokshaws Town Council. Mr. Baillie Munro, the Convenor of the Lighting Committee, assured his audience: “…he had a good word to say for the ladies,. It might be an improvement to introduce female labour into the different public departments, and he was prepared to take the subject into serious consideration”.

Dundee Evening Telegraph - Saturday 12 August 1899 page 2 col. 1.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000453/18990812/006/0002

The use of electricity came but gradually for street lighting. Timers were being introduced to gas lamps, to automatically turn on and off the lamp, giving “…an enormous saving in time and labour”.

Portsmouth Evening News - Saturday 25 June 1904 page 5 col.2.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000290/19040625/016/0005

Over twenty-five years later, but in a similar fashion, the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette reported that: “Upper Weston’s lamplighter has done his last round, for in future the village is to have the lamps clock controlled”. The inference is that gas lamps were still being used in Upper Weston in 1931.

Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette - Saturday 08 August 1931 page 11 col. 4.

Image © Northcliffe Media Limited. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000514/19310808/079/0011

The gradual spread of electric lights in towns and villages is typified by a report in the Tamworth Herald in 1927. The Amington and Stoneydelph Council was not charged for the conversion from gas to electric lighting by the Pooley Hall Colliery Company, which carried out the work. The benefits of electric lighting: “… had enabled the rates to be lowered or for more extended lighting to be done for the same money. Special reference was also made to the benefit which colliers receive from the electric street lighting lamps in the early morning.”

Tamworth Herald - Saturday 01 October 1927 page 5 col. 3.

Image © Northcliffe Media Limited. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000484/19271001/051/0005

The ascendency of electricity for street lighting appears complete by the late 1940s. The photograph in the Hull Mail of 6^th March 1948 shows the staff and guests at the ball organised by the Insular Electric Lamp Works Ltd. In acknowledgement of their origins “Lamplighters Ball” remains the title of the event.

Hull Daily Mail - Saturday 06 March 1948 page 3

Image © Northcliffe Media Limited. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000324/19480306/040/0003

Blogs using the British Newspaper Archive Blog #10 William Randolph Hearst

Blogs using the British Newspaper Archive

Blog #10 (URL links are broken)

William Randolph Hearst

All newspaper images © The British Library Board

Blog #10 William Randolph Hearst

In four previous visits to the USA, we had never travelled down the coast of southern California, south of San Francisco. We were determined to remedy the matter on this trip. So, we hired the car and set off from San Francisco accompanied by February winter sunlight with cold mornings and chilly, watery sunsets. We stopped overnight at Monterey, Pismo Beach, Santa Barbara, finally ending at Venice Beach, before motoring inland to Desert Hot Springs. We had beautiful weather, and the Big Sur was magnificent to behold, as the road twisted and turned for the 80 to 100 miles south. We had been told by my daughter, no less (from the young to the old these days), that a visit to Hearst Castle at San Simeon was compulsory. We were not disappointed. Built atop a mountain of some 2,000 feet, with magnificent views over the adjacent countryside, and down to the Pacific Ocean, Hearst Castle must have seemed like a fairy tale to some of its visitors in Hearst’s lifetime. The castle is a monument to the ability and resources that seemingly unlimited wealth can create.

Image © Edmund MB King

William Randolph Hearst was born on the 29 April 1863. This year marks the 150^th anniversary of his birth. His life, his career in newspapers ,his building and art collecting were followed by UK newspapers. Of the many UK newspaper reports of Hearst’s long life, we can get glimpses of the way he courted public notoriety over many years.

The competition to increase circulation in the 1890s between newspapers owned by Hearst (the New York Journal) and by Joseph Pulitzer, (the New York World), created the term yellow journalism. The Dundee Evening Telegraph carried an early article about the phrase, using definitions of its characteristics. “… there are some 15 or 20 of these newspapers in America. They are all well supplied with money, and their proprietors spend it without stint, with the result that they have attained a notoriety and an influence at home and abroad quite disproportionate to their intrinsic merits. Their conductors appear to possess an almost preternatural perception of the possibilities of a sensational article, and NO CONSIDERATION, PECUNIARY, LEGAL, OR MORAL, is allowed to stand in the way of their efforts to secure it.”

Dundee Evening Telegraph - Thursday 04 August 1898 page 2 col. 3.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000453/18980804/011/0002

By October 1898, the Gloucester Citizen offered an account of how expensive, and potentially ruinious, the competition for circulation in America had been.

Gloucester Citizen - Friday 28 October 1898 page 3 col. 4.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000325/18981028/013/0003

Hearst’s acquisitions of newspapers in the USA must have raised concerns in Great Britain that he would attempt to acquire British newspapers, to increase his influence with the British press. The Standard made a public denial of any connection with Hearst, and the Aberdeen Journal – published this in November 1904, with Hearst referred to as “…the monarch of Tranatlantic yellow journalism.”

Aberdeen Journal - Wednesday 09 November 1904

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000576/19041109/077/0006

Speculation about Hearst’s business ventures continued. His Mexican estate was mentioned in a brief report of the Derby Daily Telegraph, 30^th November 1906. He prospected for oil on his Mexican land, with some early success.

Derby Daily Telegraph - Friday 30 November 1906 page 4 col. 3.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000327/19061130/059/0004

However, Hearst could not prevent the expropriation of his property in Mexico, which took place in the early 1940s.

Dundee Evening Telegraph - Friday 09 January 1942 page 8 col. 5.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000563/19420109/094/0008

With regard to Hearst’s role in the Spanish-American war of 1898, an Editorial in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser of November 1907 deplored his writing to the British press, saying disparaging things about Great Britain, instead of answering in the American press the charge that he had provoked the war. According to this report, Hearst was attempting to create anti-British feelings amongst voters in America, to secure more advantage for his electoral prospects in New York.

Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser - Monday 04 November 1907 page 6 col. 3.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000206/19071104/060/0006

Hearst continued to acquire property, securing St. Donat’s Castle in Wales in 1925. The article in the Western Daily Press emphasised that the purchase transaction took only three hours to conclude.

Western Daily Press - Wednesday 16 September 1925 page 12 col. 2

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000264/19250916/104/0012

As befitted a man of great wealth, Hearst could take lightly his expulsion from France in 1930. The matter was due to an incident in 1928, “…when Mr. Horan, an employe [sic] of Mr. Hearst, telegraphed details of Anglo-French naval negotiations, which were published in Mr. Hearst’s American newspapers.” Hearst hints that France ought to use some of the German indemnity from World War I, to pay off France’s debts to America, adding, as only a very rich man could: “If being a competent journalist and a loyal American make a man persona no grata in France, I think I can endure the situation without loss of sleep”.

Western Morning News - Wednesday 03 September 1930 page 7 col. 4.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000329/19300903/058/0007

Hearst’s views expressed in his paper continued to be widely quoted. Implicitly supporting European imperialism in Africa in 1935, he stated: “ ‘I do not think the nations of the Old World can be blamed for expanding…they are only carrying the light of civilisation into the dark places of the earth. …Why should not the vigorous nations of Europe proclaim the waste places of Africa and dedicate them to civilised development?’” Today, this seems quite outdated, in the era of post-colonialism.

Western Daily Press - Monday 14 October 1935 page 12 col. 3.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000513/19351014/129/0012

Hearst’s many years of collecting works of art especially from Europe, became fascinating to many. That Hearst had acquired some 240,000 acres of land in California was itself noteworthy. That he created an enormous house 2,000 feet atop a mountain, spending a fortune on its construction and its furnishing, became as notorious as his earlier years as a newspaper owner. In a long article written for the Western Morning News, Geoffrey Harmsworth recorded some of the figures: 400 square miles of the San Simeon ranch; a cost of £7 million pounds spent on the building up to 1939; the cost of furnishing it with art treasures - £3 million pounds; the use of private aeroplanes for the flight from Los Angeles to San Simeon. All this simply increased the fairy tale aspect of his work, for millions who could never hope to own such wealth. The sense of beauty, of fine surroundings in all aspects of the house and its grounds, persist to this day, offering to hundreds of thousands of visitors the embodiment of the ‘American dream’, that unlimited wealth can offer. Harmsworth offered his readers the term: ‘the Enchanted Hill’, for Hearst’s castle – entirely correctly.

Western Morning News - Saturday 01 April 1939 page 13

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000329/19390401/098/0013

With all round views from his mountain top home, with the word ‘castle’ having its own connotations, Hearst created a special place to lead his life, and we can all wonder at the compulsion that drove him to do this.

Ed King

April 2013

Newspaper miscellany

Thursday, 26 March 2026

Blogs using the British Newspaper Archive Blog #11 Lamplighters

Blogs using the British Newspaper Archive Blog #10 William Randolph Hearst

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