Posted by Peter Hyland on March 02, 2012 at 02:40:06 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Beckfoot Lighting posted by Peter Ceresole on March 01, 2012 at 12:49:17:
Yes, the episode in WH Ch 18 tells us a great deal. The children had candles in their rooms, not lamps. The candles were mounted in candlesticks (“followed by Roger holding the candlestick” – p 223). These would probably have been the traditional flat type, also known as chamber-sticks or “go-to-beds”, made usually of metal and enamelled. There was a lamp in the Holly Howe kitchen (“. . .to find the lamp low in the kitchen”), possibly a large hanging oil lamp. Before going out Roger asks “Shall we want a lantern?”. Titty replies “We’ve got torches” (all the quotes are p 223).
There we have the full range of lighting sources for various uses at night in rural surroundings. There is one more – a portable oil lamp which the GA used in PM. It could have been a small type which Peter describes, or a slightly larger one with a bigger reservoir – one can imagine the GA insisting on one, and no doubt it had to be cleaned, and the wick adjusted and trimmed, before her arrival so that it didn’t smoke. Oil lamps were high maintenance objects – yet another reason why so many households then had a servant. I don’t think Beckfoot would have had a pressurised lamp – too many things to go wrong, and not necessary anyway. The farms might have had them.
I still think that the 30 seconds or more which it takes to get an oil lamp going gave Dick time to hide in PM. If Beckfoot had had electric light, the GA would have been down the stairs straight away and caught him.