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This article was first published in the Lurgan Mail.
Older people, born around the turn of the 20th century, used to rehearse with glee how in their childhood they had followed the urban lamp-lighter chanting 'Jack show-yer-light'.
'Jack' hailed from the Hill Street area and he got the equivalent of 50p a week for manually lighting the gas street lights (a corny question of the era was 'how much does he get for putting them out?).
Coal gas came to Lurgan around 1848 and its use for street lighting dated from 1857.The council-owned coal fired gasworks were located at William Street where Costcutters store now stands. The gas manager's house was nearby - its site is now a car park.
Later, oil-based gas was introduced. The plant was at North Street, which site is also now a car park and was once the site of a C o I School =(Church of Ireland).
An older citizen, the late Alfie |Pearson, veteran of World War 1, used to rehearse for me the difficulties of finding people's houses after 10 pm of a Saturday night when widely-spaced and dimly-lit gas lamps were the only illumination and numbers of doors were haphazard.
As a message boy employed by Gilchrists', Alfie had to go out every Saturday night after the shop closed with bulky hat boxes to deliver hats purchased by female customers and needed for Sunday wear. That was pre 1914.
In those dark ages even the dim street lights were extinguished at bedtime, at least all but a select few. Outside the town all was gloom, without car headlights or anything else to guide the traveller.
There was a natural fear of the darkness experienced by children and the timid but the generality of people just went about their business after dark as during the day. The same applied during the total blackout of the war years. Real fear was virtually non-existent and most country people did not even lock up their homes at night.
Past generations would have regarded a flood-lit environment such as we all enjoy nowadays as paradise. Isn't it a sad indictment of our present age that nowadays no-one is safe on the streets at night? Jack show-your-light would need a security guard if he had a nocturnal task to do in this enlightened age. The adjective 'enlightened' is ironic.
Years ago, a former Castle Lane resident regaled me with tales of an old lady who kept a flock of cats. She lived near my contact who recalled how as a child she used to creep out of bed and, from behind a curtain, spy on the cat lover.
The latter set off at bedtime every night with her flock at her heels. As they passed a gas lamp halfway along the lane, the old lady leading and about 20 cats all with their tails up, my friend knew that the route march was out onto Market Street down the back of the middle row, around the far side of the church, up Market Street again and home. Second childhood? Obviously a lone pensioner with only her cats for company. Either way, to my eye, it was an idyllic peaceful exercise.
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