London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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St Mary (Islington) 1892

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Islington, Parish of St. Mary ]

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40
4. Whether the demand for electric energy for motor
power is likely to be considerable or otherwise.
5. Whether it is desirable to have two or three distinct
generating Stations in different parts of the Parish or one central
Station from which current could be supplied to any part of the
district.
PROBABLE COST OF PUBLIC STREET LIGHTING-.
Your Committee has been unable to obtain any definite data from
actual experience of the relative cost of lighting public streets by gas
and electricity. Very little street lighting has up to the present time
been carried out by Local Authorities (many of whom own the gas
works), but there are indications of rapid advances being made in this
direction, notably at Blackpool, Brighton, Dublin, Hanley, Preston,
Tunbridge Wells and Pancras. In nearly every town where streets are
now lighted by electricity, the current is supplied by a private company,
and the charges made by these companies cannot be taken as representing
the cost of street lighting. For instance, in the City of
London (where the public street lamps are supplied by a private company)
there were about 11 miles of streets lighted by electricity at the
close of last year. The street lamps supplied numbered 409, each with
2,000 nominal candle power, or a total nominal candle power of 818,000.
These lamps superseded 1,126 gas lamps of about 14 c.p. each, representing
a total candle power of 15,764. The amount paid by the
Corporation for lighting these 11 miles of main streets is said to be
£10,634 per annum, while the estimated cost during the same period
of the gas lamps superseded is given at £3,720.
At St. Pancras, where Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road
have been lighted by arc lamps for some time past, the cost as compared
with gas cannot yet be ascertained as some of the lamps have not been
alight continuously for 12 months. It is stated, however, that the
officials of the Vestry anticipate that the cost to the Vestry will not
exceed that of the previous cost of gas. Whether this be so or not,
the Vestry has deemed it advisable to further extend their street