#leeries

IM TIRED OF PRETENDING

On September 1st 1971, Glasgow’s  sole remaining gas street lamp in North Portland Street  was lit for the last time by Lord Provost Sir Donald Liddle.

Every street in every town, and every city around Scotland and indeed most of the world were first lit by gas, I can’t remember them, the first street I grew up in had the big concrete poles that had the large electric light on top, I thought gas lighting had disappeared way long before the 70’s. 

Gas street lights were introduced to Glasgow in 1818 by the Glasgow Gas-Light Co. The Glasgow Police Act of 1866 authorised the Police Board to install lighting in streets, courts and common stairs. In 1869 the city acquired Glasgow’s two gas companies and by 1870 the Gas Department had installed up 10,657 street lights and 17,284 stair lights in the city. 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.

 At it’s peak the Corporation employed 1,050 workers in the Lighting Department alone!

The first electric lights were introduced to Glasgow in 1893.  As electricity became more popular, gas lights were phased out. By 1955 the Corporation maintained 7,723 gas lights compared to 33,186 electric street lights. Gas lighting continued in Glasgow until at least the mid 70’s but only in the closes. Most of the stairs had gas lamps on each floor, but some had been converted to electricity and needed a triangular key to turn them on and off so no self timers back then.

Among the pics is the Robert Louis Stevenson poem Leerie,  The word leerie is perhaps best known nowadays from this nostalgic poem The character, ‘Leerie’, is depicted as a romantic wanderer who charms the imagination of the child-narrator, trapped behind the window of his house in the evening dusk and musing on ambition.

The word has inevitably fallen out of use as the twentieth century progressed. A fairly late example occurs in The People’s Friend (1953), noting it is ‘only about 20 years since most “leeries” disappeared.’

The oldest known evidence for use of the term leerie is found in an article from The Scotchman, a short-lived Scots newspaper of the early nineteenth century, where we read that ‘the Scotsman may lang be the leery o his countramen’s min’s’ (1812). As a point of interest, the paper ran only briefly, from 1812-1813, and was published by John Mennons, who in 1783 initiated publication of the Glasgow Advertiser, now better known as The Herald. In the spirit of the quotation, the present author set out in pursuit of further linguistic illumination, but with some chagrin must now relate the murky origins of this word of the season. Our oldest quotation evidence records a metaphorical use of the word, linking light with clear thinking. Typically, we would expect a metaphorical meaning to evolve from a more literal one, but earlier evidence for leerie as a literal ‘lamplighter’ is not forthcoming. While it is probably safe to assume that leerie was in use on the lips of Scots speakers before it was captured in print, in 1812 the trail goes cold, and the etymology of the word is unclear. The Dictionary of the Scots Language attributes the word’s inception to the children’s alliterative rhyme: ‘leerie, leerie, light the lamps’, but how this rhyme arose still remains a mystery.

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.

Oh. Right.

Wrong one.