View report page

31
These all belong to the Company, who charge 5/- per Lamp
per annum, for their use, amounting to £253 5s. or 5-4 per cent.
As this is only bare interest on expenditure, I consider the Parish
should be asked to pay the original cost price, from which 5 per
cent, might be deducted.
I should inform you that they have been maintained, and are
now in good repair.
Yours truly,
(Signed) ROBERT HARRIS,
Distributing Engineer.
Taking again the high standard of St. George's HanoverSquare,
our first cost would be about £950.
At present we pay for rent of posts, meters, &c., to the gas
companies £255 12s. a year, and as they ask this Vestry the cost
price, £4,645 4s. 9d., for second-hand lamps, the Vestry is paying
5½ per cent, as rent. The Sub-Committee consider it far better
to borrow the money at 3½ per cent., the usual price paid by this
Vestry for loans, and thus save 2 per cent, or £93 'per annum on
hire for lamps at once, and when the debt is paid off the whole
5½ per cent, is saved.
The Vestry of Fulham is strongly recommended to avail
themselves forthwith of the provisions in Sec. 23 of the Metropolis;
Gas Act, 1860. They should at once (1) provide and keep in
repair their own lamp posts and lamps and apparatus connected
therewith, and after such are in working order (2) to burn the gas
by meter, and light and extinguish their own lamps.
(1.) It would be necessary to arrange with the London Gas
Light and Coke Company to sell their lamps which are secondhand
at a much reduced price than at present asked, and for the
future to provide our own lamps either from Messrs. Pontifex and
Co., 22, Coleman Street, E.C., or Messrs. Sugg and Co., Westminster,
when a better pattern of lamp at a lower price may be
obtained. At present we pay 3/6 per lamp for repairs and painting
per annum, while St. Leonard's Shoreditch, pays only 2/This
saving of 1/6 per lamp, equal to £75 a year, can easily
be effected on repairs, &c.
Here only the Gas Light and Coke Company is referred to,,
though the Brentford Gas Company which, receives 1 per cent, of
the amount of the former company's account, would be similarly
treated.
(2.) When the Vestry take to burning their own gas by
meter, and lighting and extinguishing their own lamps, there will
in the first instance be the cost of gas saved, more gas burned, and