#lamplighters

The Lamplighter, by Robert Louis Stevenson

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by; For every night at teatime and before you take your seat, With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea, And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be; But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do, Oh Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door, And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more; And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light, O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him tonight!

RLS wrote these words in the late 19th century, but leeries – or lamplighters – continued to be a feature of Glasgow’s streets until the 1970s.

They were familiar figures you could set your clock by, climbing up their ladders to light the gas lamps which lined the city streets.

But by the early 1970s, electricity was replacing gas, and it was time for the leeries to hang up their lighting poles. (Although they did continue to work as public lighting maintenance engineers, looking after the gas and electric stair lamps in the city closes.)

Sir Donald Liddle, the then Lord Provost, performed the closing ‘ceremony’ for the end of an era - on September 1, 1971, in North Portland Street, watched by 12 long-serving lamplighters with a combined service of 356 years.

Glasgow’s first street gas lamp was installed in 1818 – previously, there had been oil lamps between the Tron Steeple and Stockwell Street as far back as 1780.   In 1819, the Glasgow Board of Police Commissioners decided to convert all street lighting to gas. Electric street lights were introduced in February 1893.

By 1914 there were 19,437 gas lamps in the city's public streets, and 1,541 electric lamps. In the private streets and courts there were 6,527 gas lamps and 126 electric lamps. The Corporation employed 1,050 workers in the Lighting Department.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxwa-BYP3GA)

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The Lamplighters

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