Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/16

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. vm. JULY 5, 1913. charm may be deemed of sufficient moment to merit a record in 'N. & Q.' The hill was widened several years ago for L.C.C. tramway purposes, and the "Huntsmen's Lodge" swept away, I believe, at the same time. The kennels, however, have remained until now, picturesque, though battered relics of more picturesque days. When, by whom, and under what circumstances were they built? As they gave their name to the hill, they must in their time have been of some local note.

—In several books on surnames there are quotations from a humorous poem by Horace Smith, e.g.:

I should be glad to know where the original can be found.

was introduced by way of experiment at the Lyceum Theatre as far back as June, 1789, by means of what was termed an "Æropyric Branch," which illuminated the Saloon. In September, 1804, Frederick Albert Winsor gave lectures at that theatre, and his observations were illustrated by means of

"a chandelier in the form of a long flexible tube suspended from the ceiling, communicating at the end with a burner designed with much taste, being a Cupid grasping a torch with one hand and holding the tube with the other."

In 1807 the experiment of lighting the stage with gas was tried by Winsor, who in that year lighted Pall Mall with gas, the first street in London that was so illuminated. Byron may well have seen some of these experiments before he left England for Italy in 1816. Turning to the last paragraph of 's question, I may observe that on 6 Aug., 1817, the Lyceum bill announced that "the gas lights will this evening be introduced over the whole stage," and so successful was the experiment that on the 8th of the following September a manifesto was issued to the effect that

"the complete success which, after a trial of several weeks, has attended the experiment of lighting the stage by gas, has induced the proprietor of this theatre still further to consult the improvement of the Publick Accommodation; and this evening a new and brilliant mode of illuminating the audience part of the theatre by means of Gas Lights will be submitted to the observation and, it is respectfully hoped, to the approbation of the visitors of the English Opera House."

This method of illumination did not, however, appear to find much favour with the public at the Lyceum, for on the opening night of the season of 1823 an advertise- ment announced that " twelve elegant new cut glass chandeliers have been added and are to be lighted with WAX," the last word being emphasized in capital letters as a special attraction.

WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

It must, I think, have been at Covent Garden Theatre, and in May, 1821, that Lord Byron and a good many other people first saw a theatre illuminated by gas.

My authority for this statement is a very excellent and informing article entitled appeared in The Builder in April, 1879. It is there stated that
 * The Night Lights of Old London, 1 which

" in 1819 Messrs. Taylor and Martineau erected an apparatus at Apothecaries' Hall for making oil gas, and in May, 1821, the Whitechapel and Bow Works adopted the invention, as did also Covent Garden Theatre, Whitbread's Brewery, and the Argyll Rooms."

It was clearly very successful, for it was proved in evidence given before a Royal Commission in the following year that the Chartered Gas Company, one of the three then in existence in London, supplied 8,586 houses and 172 public buildings, including seven theatres.

But long before that date the Moravian refugee, Mr. F. A. Winzer, or Winsor, had been enthusiastically extolling the wonders of gas-lighting, and he is said to have fitted up the Lyceum Theatre and lectured there on the merits of the new invention. Whether or not these lectures and experiments of Winsor' s were really given at the Lyceum Theatre on the site of Wellington Street, as this statement would imply, seems to me rather doubtful. There was a place known as the Athenian Lyceum at No. 22, Piccadilly, and as it was at that place that, according to a contemporary programme, a facsimile of which is now before me, a Mr. Hyde lectured on 8 March, 1808, and other dates, on ' The Danger of Gas Lights,' with " a Grand Display of Philosophical Experi- ments and Illustrations," by which he proposed to prove " the insalubrity of Carbonated Hydrogen Gas and the Fallacy of the pretended Inventor's Assertions," it