All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

54 All About Inventions the enthusiastic co-operation of an equally progressive and enterprising spirit in Mr. Winsor. They laid their heads together and decided to endeavour to secure Parliamentary sanction for such a scheme. This decision precipitated a hornets’ nest about their ears. They were relentlessly assailed on all sides, and the Bill for the incorporation of the public supply company, which was styled “ The London and West- minster Chartered Gas Light and Coke Company,” met with vehement hostility from scientist, peer, and pauper, financier and insurance companies indiscrim- inately. Vested interests objected to the measure in vigorous terms, the street-lamp lighters going out on strike, and the parish authorities emphatically de- claring their intention to uproot any lamp-posts and pipes planted in the streets within their jurisdiction. People could not understand the possibility of conveying the gas through distributing pipes. They maintained that the pipes themselves must be full of flame ! Then, should a pipe break—why, look at the terrible calamity which would befall the com- munity ! While it raged, the battle-royal was appre- ciated by only one section of the public—the cari- caturists. They made merry over the uproar, Cruik- shank and Rowlandson being particularly active and satirical in this direction, the former’s “ The Good Effects of Carbonic Gas !! 1 ” and the latter’s “ A Peep at the Gas Lights in Pall Mall ” proving especially popular. The adventures of those who were anxious to intro- duce gas-lighting for the benefit of the public were exciting and infinite in their variety. But they stood by their Bill, and fought grimly.