Coal Gas as a way of fighting Pollution - George Livesey and smoke control

 

Livesey and Smoke Control – Coal Gas Fighting Pollution

Gas made from coal to make gas for lighting - then– North Sea gas - gas for cooking and all those gas boilers. Today gas a big, big factor in climate change and we’ve all got to get rid of our gas boilers because they’re polluting the atmosphere. But it was not always like this.

Somewhere, sitting on my laptop, is my almost finished biography of George Livesey - I started it in 1978, and only one more chapter to go.   George could never keep away from an issue of public concern– and air pollution was yet another cause to take up when it seemed something needed to be done in the early 20^th Century.  George had been onto the problem already.

South London’s George Livesey was the dominating figure in the late 19^th century gas industry – apparently an upright Christian man, a strong temperance movement worker - who changed the gas industry politically, economically and technically. He is best known as a strike breaking boss in 1889 who then set up a profit sharing and a sort of worker management system. He built the biggest gas holders in the world.  He always did things differently from everybody else. We might see coal gas as a polluter but he saw it as the solution to pollution.

Rather to my surprise I found that in 1905 Livesey was described as ‘the leader in London’s smoke abatement movement’.  Among other things he presented a paper to the Royal Sanitary Institute, arguing that London was less smoky because more and more working class customers were using gas stoves rather than coal for cooking.  So-problem solved!

To be fair, in 1905 there was something in what he said – and it made sense to most people then. As ever Livesey and South London were ahead of (most) of the rest of the country by a very considerable margin.  The ideas and actions which led to gas as a solution to air pollution had been around for some time – and happily solved other problems. For a start,  it helped that it increased the profits of the private London gas companies very considerably and saved them from the immediate threat of electricity and/or oil.

So –where did all the smoke in the atmosphere come from? Clearly there were lots of sources and they couldn’t all be dealt with at once. Using gas as a fuel meant less smoke than coal burnt directly.  One example of this was substituting gas engines for smoky boilers and steam engines. But a major source of smoke came from people’s homes. In  the overcrowded city many poor families lived in just one room with a grate for a coal fire.  Most cookery was done with a pan on the side of the fire, probably resting on a trivet. People who were better off, and maybe living in the newly developed and ever expanding suburbs, might only have a coal fire to cook on, maybe in the form if a ‘kitchener;  which was a coal-fired stove. My Grandma, who was a keen pastry cook, still used hers in the 1970s.

 

Coal  gas,  in the first fifty years or so of its manufacture, was mainly used for public lighting and sold by the gas companies via contracts with the local authorities concerned.  There were other uses but street lighting was the main one. By the 1870s some of the problem of bad smells from  gas lighting had been solved and it became more usual to have gas for lighting in the home and public buildings. Later the introduction of gas mantles made a difference as well –but that is another story.  

The point I want to make is that in most of the 19^th century gas was not generally used for heating and cooking and very rarely in working class homes. Most homes were rented and landlords did not want to to pay to have gas installed and tenants could not afford it – and in any case why should they pay to improve the landlord’s property. There were also issues around the design and manufacture of domestic appliances which was led by ironmongers who were outside the gas industry itself.

There were attempts to address this. In the late 1860s the Crystal Palace District Gas Company sent its customers pamphlets offering to rent out heating and cooking stoves.  George Livesey’s father, Thomas, was a board member of the Crystal Palace Gas Co, at the time. Many years later, in 1889, the Ramsgate Gas Company offered its customers free appliances and fittings in conjunction with a  prepayment meter.  This scheme was extremely successful and gas sales rose.  Although the Ramsgate meters were not ‘coin in slot’, it was meters of this type which was seen as a way to get working class customers to use gas appliances.  Helpfully  for the gas companies it shifted payment from retrospective bills to payment in advance.

Coal gas manufacture is a continuous process, day and night, but the demand for street lighting peaked in the evening and also differed winter to summer.  For manufacturing efficiency there was a need to smooth out demand during the day. One solution was the huge gas holders of the 1880s and 1890s like the two –now sadly gone - in east Greenwich.

The Ramsgate scheme for supplying cookers and meters was followed by one in Liverpool. Then, in 1892 it was taken up by George Livesey’s Old Kent Road and Greenwich based South Metropolitan Gas Co. and within two years they had the biggest such scheme in the country with 15,000 installations. Sales were limited only by the inability of meter makers to make then  fast enough. The majority of installations were in family homes and were a package which included a cooker. Boiling rings were popular in some rented properties and for lodgers

Gas companies set up exhibitions and demonstrations of cooking by gas at various public events. They opened showrooms in most town centres and home advisors were employed to demonstrate gas appliances. Cookery classes were also held. Richmond Stoves was a manufacturing company which worked closely with South Met. and in 1893 they  had a group of six lady lecturers who gave talks on gas with  lantern slides.

At the same time coal gas was under threat from other sources of power.   Initially this was from various oils –Livesey said he thought the real threat to gas came from petroleum - and in the 20^th century South Met, and some other gas companies made their own coal oil.  From the 1890s electricity was promoted for domestic use and was seen as much cleaner –athough in the 1890s huge power stations burning vast amounts of smoky coal did not yet exist.

Gas company managers and directors were of course very aware of all these issues. South Met., as ever, was leading nationally and Livesey gave talks and papers about how solutions could be implemented.  From  the 1880s the gas industry gave substantial financial support to smoke-abatement groups and collaborated with them in sponsoring exhibitions and conferences that promoted both their product and clean air. In 1883 South Met donated £100 to the National Smoke Abatement Institution.

In subsequent decades the gas industry continued to give money to antismoke organisations. In return, smoke-abatement groups welcomed advertisements that promoted gas and other 'smokeless' technologies . These efforts paid handsome returns. The amount of gas sold in Britain tripled in the three decades preceding the Great War as more consumers adopted it for cooking.

Gas cookers and slot meters kept electricity at bay for almost another century. Like many others in the 21^st century I still have a gas hob.  My Grandma liked her coal fired kitchener because it gave her control over the heat to cook her pastries – and I like the control given me by a real flame under my saucepans.