The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Turning Night Into Day
We read on one of the pages of this book:
One may safely be out on the main streets up to 10 or 11 o'clock at night. At nightfall street lamps are lighted on all streets and bridges. These burn until two or three o'clock in the morning. These lamps are suspended on chains at regular intervals along the middle of the street. They make a very beautiful sight, especially when one stands at an intersection and looks down the different streets.
Some shops, cafes, taverns, and tobacco shops remain open until ten or eleven o'clock at night. Their windows are illuminated with an enormous number of candles which cast a brilliant light on the street. In fine weather there are as many people on the streets at night as in the daytime. Thefts and murders are of rare occurrence on these crowded lively streets. But I would not guarantee that you might not be robbed on the little streets. I do not advise anyone to go about the city on a dark night. For, although there are mounted watchmen on guard throughout the city, nevertheless things happen which they do not see.
Not long ago the carriage of the Duke of Richmond was stopped at midnight by unknown persons not far from the New Bridge. One of the group forced himself into the carriage and ran the duke through with his sword.
After ten or eleven o'clock at night it is impossible to find a porte-chaise or a fiacre for hire. The best thing is to take a servant along to walk ahead with a torch.
In 1765, Paris installed a new kind of street lamp, "reflector" lamps, using oil lamps instead of candles, with bright reflector-plates. Some kerosene lamps are still made with these reflectors. This new kind of street lamp was in use for many years. One of them, at the corner of Vanner Street and Place de la Greve, became famous during the great revolution, for on it the revolutionary citizens of Paris hung royal officials and courtiers. Once a certain abbot, who was being dragged to the lamp post to be hanged, saved his life by shouting: "Very well, hang me then, but will that make your light any brighter ?"
London was lighted up twenty years later than Paris. One inventive man named Edward Hemming agreed, for a small sum, to place a street lamp at every tenth door. True, he didn't need to have them there all the time, only on moonless nights; and not all the year round, only in winter; and not all night but only from six o'clock to midnight. But nevertheless his proposal was received with the greatest enthusiasm. They hailed him as an inventive genius; said that "the inventions of all other inventors were nothing in comparison with the achievement of this man who had turned night into day!"
