PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
912
(1780, wax-tipped with phosphorus) which was carried on the person sealed in
a little glass tube; when the tube was carefully broken it would ignite on
contact with the air. The phosphorus box (1786) was first made in Paris as le
briquet phosphorique. It contained sulphur matches, a bottle coated internally with
phosphorus and a cork. Friction was required for ignition.
More dangerous still was the chlorate match (also known as an acid-dip
match), the head of which was tipped with a mixture of chlorate of potash,
sugar and gum arabic. For ignition the head had to be dipped in vitriol
(sulphuric acid). The equipment for this type of ignition was enclosed in a
small container called an instantaneous light box. Henry Bell’s partly
mechanized version of 1824 was little safer, especially when operated by an
awakened sleeper on a dark morning.
A number of patents followed in the early nineteenth century. There were
John Walker’s friction lights of 1827, then Samuel Jones’s Promethean match
of 1828 and his lucifer of 1831. Then came the yellow phosphorus-tipped
matches which ignited more readily, sometimes too readily, causing
accidents. Yellow phosphorus also caused the terrible condition of ‘phossy
jaw’ suffered by match factory workers when it entered their bodies via
defective teeth.
Professor Anton von Schrotter’s discovery of amorphous red phosphorus
in 1845 led to the development of the safety match, credited to John
Lundstrom of Sweden in 1855. In this he divided the chemical constituents
between the match head and the striking surface on the box, so markedly
reducing the chances of spontaneous combustion.
Lighting
A level of artificial illumination which enables people to continue their
domestic activities as well during the hours of darkness as during those of
daylight is a very recent boon, applicable only to the twentieth century. Before
the 1830s the only artificial light came from candles and oil lamps and the

level of illumination was exceedingly low. Constant attention had to be given
to trimming wicks and the burning fat dripped and produced a smoky, smelly
atmosphere.
The cheapest form of domestic illumination was the home-made rushlight
produced by repeatedly dipping a dried, peeled rush into tallow (derived from
animal fat) which had been melted in a greasepan.
Candles were also generally home-made from tallow poured into moulds
into which the wicks had first been inserted. Beeswax candles burned brighter,
needed less attention and smoked less, but were costly and subject to tax. With
the expansion of the fishing industry in the late eighteenth century sperm
whale oil began to be used to make candles and, when in the following
THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR
913
century, paraf fin wax was produced from petroleum, a blend of the two
materials gave a greatly improved flame. The later stearine candle owed much
to the work on the chemical nature of fats by the French chemist Michel
Eugène Chevreul; it was a firmer candle and gave a brighter light without the
accompanying acrid odour.
The use of simple oil lamps made of earthenware or metal dates from very
early times. These were containers for the fuel, which derived from various
sources—olive oil, animal or vegetable oils, rape seed (colza), oil from kale,
whale oil and paraffin—and for a floating wick; this needed frequent
adjustment and trimming.
The first significant contribution towards improving the illumination of the
oil lamp came in 1784 with the Argand design (Figure 19.1); up to this time
the illumination level was only one candlepower per wick. Ami Argand, the
Swiss chemist, devised a tubular wick which was a hollow cylinder enclosed in
a glass chimney. The resulting current of air so improved combustion that the
light from a single wick could be increased up to ten times. This lamp was
Figure 19.1: Colza oil-burning Argand reading lamp. The burner is fed by oil

flowing under gravity from the reservoir above the level of the wick. The oil
level in the reservoir is controlled by a float valve which closes the filling hole.

PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
914
then further improved by replacing the existing gravity feed fuel container by
one with a mechanical pump. The Frenchman Carcel produced one such
design in 1800 and this was followed by that of another Frenchman, Franchot’s
simpler Moderator lamp in 1836. Twentieth-century paraffin oil lamps give a
much brighter light because the fuel is vaporized before it reaches the flame, so
less energy is wasted.
Twenty-six miles of gas mains had been laid in London by 1816 and soon
gas illumination of the streets and public buildings was acclaimed a great
success. Domestic consumers were less satisfied. The mid-century standard
batswing or fishtail burner flickered and smoked; it contained sulphur
compounds which emitted an unpleasant smell and the fumes damaged
furnishings and dirtied the interior decoration.
The refinement of the gas mantle revolutionized gas illumination. It gave a
much better light and did away with much of the dirt and smell. Attempts to
make a satisfactory mantle had begun by 1840 but until the invention of the
Bunsen burner in 1855 it had not proved possible to produce a gas flame of
high enough temperature. In the Bunsen burner air was mixed with the gas
before ignition, so giving a hotter flame. The incandescent gas mantle was
devised by the Austrian Carl Auer von Welsbach in 1886. In it he was making
use of the principle that when the temperature of a substance is raised
sufficiently it begins to glow and so emits more of its energy in the form of
light. His mantle was made of knitted cotton impregnated with solutions of
rare earth oxides (he found that the best mixture proved to be 99 per cent
thorium oxide and one per cent cerium oxide). When the cotton mantle had
burned away, the skeleton of the material retained its form. The first Welsbach

mantle was manufactured in 1887 and improved versions followed including
the inverted mantle of 1903.
The arc lamp, its principle based upon the voltaic pile, was the earliest form
of electrical illumination. This could not be developed until the invention of
Gramme’s ring dynamo (1871) (see p. 360) but soon afterwards arc lighting
was being installed for use in the streets, factories and railway stations. But the
arc lamp was totally unsuitable for domestic illumination; the light was too
dazzling, it was too costly, it was difficult to adjust (see p. 362ff.).
Electric lighting in the home had to await the incandescent filament lamp.
The concept had been understood from before W.E.Staite’s first demonstration
in Sunderland in 1847, but there were three difficult problems which had to be
solved before a satisfactory lamp could be manufactured. The principle was
the same as for the incandescent gas mantle, but for the electric counterpart it
was very difficult to produce a filament sufficiently durable to survive the high
temperatures; the technology available made it almost impossible to evacuate
sufficient air from the lamp bulb; and it was even more of a problem to
provide a satisfactory seal for the wires carrying the electric current where they
passed into the bulb.
THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR
915
A successful carbon filament lamp was produced almost simultaneously in
the USA and in England, by Thomas Alva Edison in America (1879) and
Joseph Wilson Swan in England (1878 or 9) (see p. 365ff.). Both were
manufactured, at first in competition; later the firms were merged to become
Edison and Swan United Electrical Company.
The carbon filament lamp dominated the market until about 1910.
Meanwhile, better metal filaments were being devised: osmium (1902),
tantalum and then tungsten (1906). The tungsten filament with its high
melting point of 3410°C was very durable, but the high temperatures
blackened the inside of the bulb. The research carried out at the General

Electric laboratories in the USA under the American chemist Irving Langmuir
led, in 1913, to the development of the argon-filled incandescent lamp with
coiled-coil filament. Today’s electric lamp gives about four times as much light
as a carbon filament lamp for the same consumption of electricity. Later
improvements include interior frosting of the bulb and the introduction of a
fuse to avoid explosion of the lamp if a filament burns out.
The fluorescent lamp, introduced in the 1930s, was developed from the
mercury vapour discharge lamp of the type in use for street lighting. It has
become popular in the home in more modern times especially for bathroom
and kitchen use. The lamps are coated on the inside with several different
phosphorescent compounds (phosphors). The ultra-violet light which is
produced by the discharge of electricity through the mercury vapour in the
tube is absorbed by the phosphors which emit light. The colour of such lamps
can be altered by using different types of phosphors. Fluorescent lamps use
little electrical power and the tubes last much longer than the equivalent
filament lamps.
Heating
Until the beginning of the seventeenth century most rooms were heated by
wood burning on the open hearth. The hearth surface was of brick or stone
and the logs were supported on this by andirons. Alternative fuels were peat,
turves or heather. Supplementary heating was provided by charcoal burned in
portable metal braziers.
Soon after 1600, depletion of Britain’s forest stock, used in profligate
quantity without adequate replanting for hundreds of years for shipbuilding,
charcoal-burning, glass-making and general building, became so serious that
various forms of legislation were passed by Parliament restricting from this
time onwards indiscriminate felling of certain woods. Gradually coal began to
replace timber as the normal domestic fuel, though this was a slow process and
many households, particularly in rural areas, continued to burn permitted and
dead woods until the early nineteenth century.

PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
916
This changeover to coal as a domestic heating fuel marked the end of the
traditional open hearth design. It is difficult to kindle and burn coal on a flat
hearth, as a draught is needed under the fire; also andirons, which satisfactorily
support logs, are not suited to containing lumps of coal. A metal basket was
devised to hold the fuel which had bars in front and a slatted base below; the
basket was attached at the sides to andirons similar to those previously in use
and this raised the basket on legs above the floor of the hearth. Such grates, in
general use by the later seventeenth century, were called dog grates. The name
derives from the alternative term for andiron which was firedog, referring to the
shape of the leg which resembled the hind leg of a dog. The next stage was the
basket grate in which the fireback was also incorporated into the design. The
beautiful eighteenth-century grates of polished steel and brass, such as those
which Robert Adam designed, were of this type.
As time passed less wasteful though much less beautiful fireplaces were
produced. The chimney draught was more carefully controlled by reduction of
the fire-basket area, as in the hob grate, for example. A smoke canopy was fitted,
also a chimney register; this was a metal plate which could be slid across the flue
opening to adjust the air intake. With the contraction of the fireplace opening,
the chimney flues became narrower also, leading to the iniquitous practice of
employing small boys to climb inside the flues to sweep them as these were no
longer wide enough for men to enter: this practice only ended in 1875
The modern open fire burns smokeless fuel; convection heating and
provision of hot water may be incorporated. Gas or electric lighting devices are
usually fitted. The free-standing solid fuel stove is an alternative. Nineteenth-
century versions of these were ornate designs in cast iron; their modern
counterparts are usually finished with coloured glazed enamel.
Paraffin heating stoves became available in the 1860s. Their use was chiefly
in rural areas where gas (and later electricity) were very late in coming.

Nineteenth-century examples, made of ornamental cast iron, were primitive
and odorous; they were markedly inefficient. The Valor Oil Stove of the 1920s
was a great improvement; in this type a brass vessel contained the paraffin.
The circular wick in its holder stood upon this removable container.
After the invention of the Bunsen burner many attempts were made to design
a gas fire on the radiant principle in which a gas flame would heat a material to
incandescence. The difficulty was to find such a material: fire-bricks, woven
wire, pumice balls were all experimented with. Success was finally achieved with
asbestos tufts fixed into firebrick and gas fires began to be sold in considerable
numbers from 1882. Fire-clay radiants were then introduced, the familiar
columnar ones in 1905. In the early twentieth century the idea of convector gas
radiators was revived; the Embassy design of 1920 was a notable example. The
present-day version of such heaters became available from the 1950s.
The use of electricity for heating lagged behind its adoption for lighting. In
Britain the earliest heaters put on sale were the 1894 designs of Crompton &
THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR
917
Co. They consisted of cast-iron radiant panels in which the heating wires were
embedded in enamel. They were not very successful because of breakages due
to the differing thermal expansions of the iron and the enamel. A different type
of heater was then devised by Dowsing of Crompton, Manchester, in which he
used two or four large sausage-shaped carbon filament bulbs. Despite a
reflector backing, these gave out little heat.
It was A.L.Marsh’s work on the resistance wire made from nickel-chrome
alloy (1906) and, later, the element devised by C.R.Belling in which the wire
was coiled round fire-clay formers, which revolutionized electric fire design.
Despite this, it was some time (after 1930) before electric heating competed
with gas and solid fuel in the home, partly because many households were not
yet wired for electricity and partly due to its higher cost.
A scheme to exploit off-peak electricity, in heaters containing concrete

blocks which would retain heat when switched off in the intervening hours,
was begun in the 1930s; its success was then minimal. In the 1960s the more
efficient storage heaters, which then contained bricks and a fan to maintain a
flow of air through the heater, brought a better response but it is the modern,
much improved slim-line heater which has been most successful.
It is well known that the ancient Romans employed a method of central
heating by hypocaust; all over Europe remains of such systems have been
excavated, showing their use for all types of buildings including homes. This is
a heating method whereby hot air from a basement furnace is passed under the
floor and through wall flues to heat all the rooms of a dwelling. The hypocaust
was the underfloor chamber, the term deriving from two Greek words
meaning ‘the place heated from below’.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west the hypocaust idea in this
part of Europe fell into disuse and it was many centuries before central heating
systems were once again devised. Several methods were developed in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to use steam for this purpose in factories
and other large buildings. Domestic central heating in Britain is very much a
feature of post-1945 building, although in Europe and North America, because
of much colder winter weather, schemes were given more urgent priority.
WASHING, BATHING AND TOILET FACILITIES
The marked reluctance to wash or bathe the person more often than was
absolutely necessary which pertained in Europe in the centuries before about 1850
stemmed chiefly from the problems of heating sufficient water and its disposal and
the unreliability of the domestic water supply. Similarly, the inadequacy of sewage
disposal facilities made the evacuation of the waste products of the human body, at
best, an uncomfortable, unhygienic and malodorous proceeding and, at worst, a
dangerous hazard to health and even life.
PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
918
Under the administration of the Roman Empire there had been

adequate supplies of fresh water for washing and for sanitation purposes
and heating of water by the hypocaust method. The majority of town
dwellers in European countries ruled by Imperial Rome lived in flats
(cenacula) in apartment blocks (insulae). These flats were mostly overcrowded
and lacked amenities, so it was customary for people to use the public
baths (thermae, from the Greek thermos = hot). These great bathing
establishments provided free, or at least very cheap, facilities for the
population to attend daily to bathe, relax, chat, carry out business, receive
massage and medical treatment, eat and drink, take part in sports or be
entertained as they so desired. More well-to-do citizens living in a house
(domus) would have water laid on in their homes, a means of heating and
disposal of it and adequate bathing facilities. This would apply even more
to inhabitants of the country house (villa).
The Romans attached great importance to an adequate water supply. All over
Europe they built great aqueducts to bring the water from the mountain and hill
regions to the cities on the plains. In the capital city of Rome, for example,
eleven great aqueducts carried the water for miles across the Campagna to
supply the daily consumption of 1615 million litres (355 million UK gallons,
427 million US gallons). Vitruvius, the first century BC architect and engineer,
gives the desirable rate of fall in building an aqueduct as I50mm per 30.4m (6in
per 100ft) and large detours were made to avoid sudden descents.
To the Romans, using the latrine was a communal, even social, activity and
communities were provided with public (or private in larger houses) sanitary
latrines, well equipped with running water and washing facilities. This can be
seen in many parts of the Empire as at, for example, Ostia Antica, the port of
Rome, where public toilets in the forum baths survive with twenty marble
seats, washing facilities and fittings for revolving doors. Remains of rows of
toilet seats also survive at the military fort on Hadrian’s Wall at Housesteads,
beneath which is a channel for perpetually running water.
Washing and bathing

After the collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire, the medieval
monasteries maintained a fair standard of bodily cleanliness. Cold water was
provided in basins or troughs for daily washing and warmed for less frequent
bathing; this had to be carried to wooden bathtubs in ewers.
From about 1530 until the mid-nineteenth century personal cleanliness lapsed
to a very low level, mainly due to a lack of domestic facilities. People washed in
the kitchen or in their bedrooms. Whatever the class of household, water had to
be carried into the house from an outside pump and heated in a cauldron over
the kitchen fire. Wealthier people, who employed servants to carry out these
THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR
919
tasks, bathed in the privacy of their bedrooms in wooden or metal tubs. The
poorer section of the population bathed in front of the kitchen fire.
The water supply was intermittent until about the mid-eighteenth century.
The introduction of the ball valve at this time helped, as it meant that the main
house tap did not need to be constantly turned on and off. At the same time
fashionable furniture designers were making purpose-built pieces for bedroom
use such as washbasin stands and toilet tables which were fitted with shaving
mirrors and spaces for toilet articles.
From about 1850 onwards technical advances began to give much
improved facilities. Running water was supplied, at first to the ground floor,
only later to bedrooms. Washbasins with taps were fitted to the walls. With
better water supplies many different designs of bath appeared on the market.
Chief of these were the full-length lounge bath, the sitz-bath, where the bather
washed the bottom half of the body retaining (for warmth) his clothes on the
top half, the hip bath for washing legs and feet only and the slipper or boot
bath. This metal bath was very sensible. It was shaped like a boot and in it the
water kept hot and only the bather’s head and shoulders were exposed; the
bath could be topped up with hot water as needed. There were also shower
baths fitted with curtains and a tank of water above which was operated by a

hand-pump.
Heated baths, using charcoal or gas for fuel, were expensive but became
popular in well-to-do households where baths were fitted with taps connected
to a cold water supply. The usual charcoal heater was a vessel containing the
fuel which was put into the bottom of the bath and then ignited. Two
breathing tubes were attached to the vessel to enable the air to circulate and the
fuel to burn well. When the heater was alight the bath was filled with cold
water. The fuel continued to burn, since the tops of the tubes remained above
water level.
There were two chief types of gas heater. One was portable; it was
connected to a gas lighting bracket and, like the charcoal heater, was placed in
the cold water. The other, a more popular design, was fitted to the exterior of
one end of the bath. A gas burner was swung out to be lighted and then
swung back so that the flames played directly on to the underside of the bath
(for example, see Figure 19.2). Such devices were advertised to heat a bathful
of water in six minutes. They also carried a warning to turn the gas off before
entering the bath.
From the 1880s bathrooms were designed in new houses; these contained a
bath, often with shower fitting, a bidet and washbasin. Soon after 1900 the
more expensive porcelain-enamel finished bath began to replace the painted
cast iron one. In more modern times this has given way to the plastic bath.
Apart from the few heated baths hot water for bathing continued to be a
luxury until the satisfactory development of the gas geyser. Until the late
nineteenth century water was still heated over the kitchen fire and carried
PART FIVE: TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
920
upstairs in jugs. A gas geyser had been invented in 1868 by Benjamin Waddy
Maughan, taking the name from the Icelandic word geysir = a gusher or hot
spring. But for a long time gas geysers were hazardous to operate. There were
no pilot jets, the water supply was unreliable and bathrooms were ill ventilated.

Even well into the twentieth century, unless the user carefully followed the
lighting instructions, an explosion could result. It was in the inter-war years
that safety devices were fully incorporated into geyser design, after which the
gas geyser became a common item of household equipment.
Electric instantaneous water heaters were marketed from the 1920s and by
1930 immersion heaters were being installed in lagged hot water tanks but for
some time these were much less numerous than gas geysers as electric heating
was more costly.
Figure 19.2: Gas heated bath by G.Shrewsbury, 1871.
Note swinging bunsen burner at one end, no flue fitted. Advertisements for this
type of bath read ‘By the use of the above, a hot bath can be obtained in six
minutes for less than 2d. Every family should provide itself with this invaluable
requisite, its limited cost placing it within the means of all and its simplicity
within the management of a child.’

THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR
921
Sanitation and toilet facilities
During the Middle Ages monastic houses had their necessarium built near or
over a water supply; these facilities, like the Roman ones, were communal.
Public latrines were provided in towns; London Bridge had a large latrine
which served over 100 houses. In castles and manor houses the garderobe was
built into the thickness of the great walls and drained into the moat. The exits
to these conveniences can still be seen in the exterior walls of the White Tower
at the Tower of London.
Between about 1500 and 1750 sanitary arrangements deteriorated and the
close stool and chamber pot largely replaced the garderobe. The close stool,
used in well-to-do homes where it would be emptied and cleaned by servants,
was a bowl inside a padded, lidded box. Elaborate examples had arms so they
were like chairs to sit upon. Pots were emptied into the street. A large house

might be equipped with a ‘house-of-easement’, sited in a courtyard or
basement and accommodating two or more people.
In the eighteenth century sewage disposal was still primitive and insanitary.
The usual method was a privy or closet outside the back of a house; in poorer
quarters one privy served many houses. These privies had wooden seats and
were built over small pits. They had to be emptied by buckets, which were
then carried through the house to larger communal cesspools and these were
emptied regularly by night-soil men. In many cases the pits drained through
into the drinking water supply, with serious results. Indoors, chamber pots
were used. These were often concealed in pieces of furniture, for instance, in
the dining-room sideboard for the relief of gentlemen after the withdrawal of
the ladies after a meal and, in the bedroom, in a night table or night-commode.
The invention which finally abolished the malodorous germ-ridden forms
of privy was that of the water closet. The original inventor of this was Sir John
Harington, a godson of Queen Elizabeth I, who constructed a valve closet in
1596 at Kelston near Bath. It had a pan with a seat and a cistern above.
Harington described his invention in his Metamorphosis of Ajax: A Cloacinean
Satire. (‘Jakes’ was current slang for a privy.)
Unfortunately, owing to the lack of good and reliable water supplies and
drainage systems, 179 years were to pass before the first WC was patented by
a London watchmaker, Alexander Cumming. This also was a valve closet with
overhead cistern; when a handle was pulled up, the valve opened to empty the
contents of the pan into a waste pipe and water entered to flush the pan. This
was the principle common to subsequent WCs, but its sliding valve was
inefficient and remained unsatisfactory until, three years later in 1778, Joseph
Bramah improved the valve and so produced a WC which was the best
standard pattern for a hundred years.
Despite the great improvement which Bramah’s closet represented, only
comparatively few houses were fitted with valve closets and more common, at