EARLY GAS MAKING - A MYSTERY ON SHOOTERS HILL - Fredrick Albert Winsor and Shrewsbury House. What really went on?
Thomas Boorman Winser was a retired actuary and a collector of ephemera about the area. No doubt he had noted the similarity of his name to that of Frederick Albert Winsor, one of the pioneers of the early gas industry in London. In 1883 he must have known that the early gas industry was being highlighted in view of publicity on the centenary of the earliest experiments on coal gas for lighting. It was the subject of lectures by Samuel Smiles, also a Blackheath resident.
The earliest experiments on lighting with gas made from coal are usually attributed to William Murdoch in Cornwall while working for Birmingham based engineers Boulton and Watt. There is however a parallel story of demonstrations of gas lighting on the Continent and these ideas coming to England. This is where Frederick Albert Winsor comes in.
Frederick Albert Winsor was, more than anyone else, responsible for bringing gas lighting to London. To say that he was a ‘colourful character’ is an understatement – he was, well, wildly eccentric.
Winsor, or Winzer, was a merchant from Brunswick who came to England in the early 1790s. He had demonstrated gas lighting to the Duke of Brunswick in 1802 based on what he had seen done in Paris by the French inventor, Phillipe Lebon. He then came to England to tell people what he had seen and perhaps to start manufacture.
Leaflet writing was something Winsor took up in a big way. He produced a whole barrage of writings which put forward the advantages of gas, made from coal, for lighting. English was not his first language, and, apparently, his accent was difficult to understand but in writing both verse and prose, his imagery expanded and took off, to amazing heights. It was 'A Philosophical, chemical, historical and legal Rhapsody on the primogeniture and genealogy of the Will o' the Wisp Lights or Ignis Fatuus vulgarly called Jack o'Lantern Lights'.
He said that coal gas could be used for lighting and also for cooking and heating. He wrote about the profits to be made out of the sale and use of tar and ammonia, by-products of gas making, and one whole pamphlet was about coke.
His biggest and most important idea, was that of a gas works. Before Winsor gas for lighting had been produced in small installations which made only enough to light one building. Winsor's idea was to make gas in a factory, a gas 'works', and sell it to whoever wanted to buy.
He invited the public to a programme of lectures and demonstrations, at the Lyceum Theatre in the Strand. He was in fact one of a number of showmen/inventors/illusionists showing off their ideas and discoveries at the Lyceum in this period.
Winsor's claims about the profitability of investing in gas became more and more amazing. There would, he said, be "a most cheering balance of £12 millions of profit which when divided into 20,000 shares, offer a most welcome annual bonus of £600 for each subscriber of only fifty pounds". In 1807 he arranged a display of gas lights in Pall Mall to celebrate the Prince of Wales birthday.
As Winsor's ideas became better known he gathered around him a body of supporters to promote a 'National Heat and Light Company’. From this, following a Parliamentary enquiry, came the first gas works – as distinct from small gas making plants used to light factories. As this first works, in Westminster, was set up it became clear that Winsor had no practical experience whatsoever and the new company quickly hired someone who knew what they were doing – Samuel Clegg. Winsor went back to Paris where eventually he died and is buried. His son, also Frederick Albert Winsor remained in England.
So - what has all this to do with Shrewsbury House? Today Shrewsbury House is a busy community centre. It was built in 1923, replacing an older house, a short distance away up the hill. In 1799 the original house had been leased by the future George VI, as a summer home for his small daughter Princess Charlotte – and there are contemporary accounts of her living there in 1801. However her main home was at Carlton House in Westminster and it seems likely that she was no longer going to Shooters Hill by 1804 and the house was thus vacant. If Winsor lived at Shrewsbury House it would have been between this date and 1815 when he finally went to Paris.
I know or no contemporary record which definitely links Frederick Albert Winsor to Shrewsbury House – although material in the Greenwich archives may give more information but are currently unavailable. However Winsor does seem to have been based in Shooters Hill. In 1812 he gave his address as ‘Shooters Hill’ in a patent which he filed for mixing gunpowder with sugar to save money without affecting efficiency. It must however be noted that ‘Shooters Hill’ is not necessarily Shrewsbury House.
So - did Winsor erect the first gas holder ever seen when he lived at Shrewsbury House. I am very, very sceptical about this. It very tempting to imagine him experimenting at home with gas making but before 1808 he had his own pioneer gas plant on Millbank, called the Westminster Gas Supply Co., where he could do his experimenting. In any case the system of gas making which he had been advertising in all those leaflets did not include a means of storing the gas. He actually thought gas holders were dangerous! In any case by 1811 there were industrial gas lighting installations in use. The ealiest known in London was that at the Golden Lane Brewery in 1808 and soon after another in a Limehouse ropeworks. These were built and erected by young men trained at the Boulton and Watt works in Birmingham who were infinitely more competent than Winsor.
Was there perhaps someone else who experimented with gas at Shooters Hill? In 1811 many residents of the area were scientists who worked at the Royal Military Academy. Among these were at least three who are known to have experimented with coal gas - Sir William Congreve, James McCulloch and James Sadler. Did Winsor know these scientists? Did they meet and discuss their ideas, perhaps in The Bull or The Red Lion?
Its perhaps important to say that Winsor wherever he lived, wasn’t a scientist, but a publicist - a quotation I like about him describes him as a “ vagabond entrepreneur of talent and ebullience” -so can we leave it at that!
The quotation above comes from an article in Transactions of the Newcomen Society by Meade and Saint about the Marquis of Chabannes. Much other material from Everard’s History of the Gas Light and Coke Co. and my own https://marysgasbook.blogspot.com. Winsor’s pamphlets are in the British Library, and scattered among other collections like The Goldsmith’s Collection at Senate House, etc.
GW Octover 2018
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