Electric Companies

In 1900 London Electric lighting was everywhere around us, bidding fair to oust its rival (gas) from the field of illumination, if not of heating.

There were about sixty-five miscellaneous Electric Lighting Companies, of which fifteen had the right to supply particular districts of London.

Their number was not surprising, for when electric lighting became a possibility, the Current Supply Corporations were prompt to recognize that the great city presented the finest field in the world for their operations.

A group of promoters took the whole of the Metropolitan area, and sought for and obtained Parliamentary powers in regard to the different districts into which they divided it.

Provisos, however, gave local authorities the option of buying out the companies at the end of forty-two years; and, ultimately, Parliament authorized sixteen of these parochial bodies, apart from the London County Council, to supply electricity within their own area.

By 1900 The Council had just re-installed the electric lighting of the Victoria Embankment, which, since 1884, had been abandoned.

The lamps on the Embankment and those on Westminster Bridge were of over 2000 candle-power each.

The lights themselves were lamps of what was known as "open" type, and would burn from sixty to eighty hours without re-trimming, and they formed a beautiful curving chain of illumination from Westminster to Blackfriars.

The year 1900 also witnessed the successful launching of the electric light at Fulham, the ninth municipality which had gone in for generating current.

St. Pancras made a start in 1892, and was followed by Islington, Hampstead, Hammersmith, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Newington, Poplar, and now Fulham.

But Battersea, Hackney, and Bethnal Green were also engaged in carrying out schemes, and others held Provisional Orders.

Altogether the right of supply was enjoyed by sixteen local authorities.

Shoreditch Vestry was the first to combine the destruction of dust and other refuse matter with the production of electricity.

The theory was very simple. The dust was cremated in furnaces so arranged that the heat given off was employed for the raising of steam, which in its turn was used for the generation of electricity.

By 1900 the demand for electricity had become so great in Shoreditch that the destruction of refuse was only concerned with the production of a comparatively small proportion of the supply.

Fulham, however, combined the dust destruction and electricity production with a building for public disinfecting purposes.

Next, 1900 London's Utilities: Water Companies