FROM THE ARCHIVES:THE MAIN issue agitating letter writers to The Irish Timesat the start of 1869 was the poor quality of gaslight, measured in candlepower, provided by the Alliance Gas Company. There were so many complainants, most of them anonymous, that the company threatened to sue the newspaper in order to force it to reveal their identities. George Smith of 81 Pembroke Road, took a more relaxed view of the controversy in this letter. – JOE JOYCE
Sir – Allow me at the commencement of a new year to wish “more power” to the Irish Times. May your shadow, or rather your sheet, never be less and may your columns ever be open to the complaints of the citizens. The public is and ever will be a grumbling animal.
“Lives there a man with soul so dead” as to attempt to deprive it of the chief pleasure of its existence, a healthful growl. When I open your journal in the morning, and glancing at the proper column, find a good wholesome flood of indignation letters, “through all my veins I feel a genial glow.” I eat my breakfast with satisfaction; it aids digestion to think that so many Argus-eyed correspondents are watching over my comfort and happiness - and what a vast amount of our happiness or misery in this world depends on the state of our gas.
Though I conscientiously believe that my wine merchant, butcher, and baker are honest men, and treat me fairly, yet I growl at them occasionally. I have an idea that it does my health good, and that it keeps them well up to the mark.
Why should not the public have its little growl at the Gas Company, and why should it not occasionally imagine that the gas is half a candle short of the sixteen? I know what bad gas is. You will believe this when I tell you that I was for ten years at the mercy of the late Hibernian Gas Company.
The Temple of Janus was never closed with me during that period; nothing but perpetual war, “darkness visible,” and not a ray of hope or light until the “Hibernian” was swallowed up by the Alliance Company. For the last twelve months I have had an ample supply of brilliant gas in my house, my friends and neighbours in this locality have the same story to tell.
I am satisfied that if the consumers would follow the example of my friend Mr. Tronton and would look after their meters and burners occasionally, there would be no complaints except from those anonymous gentlemen who have their own objects in view.
On Monday evening I saw a very lucid illustration of this while reading the second edition of the Irish Times in the Chamber of Commerce. The light was exceedingly bad, and those present commenced an attack on the respected secretary of the Gas Company, who had just entered the room. He made no reply, but mounting on a chair he inserted the point of a quill into the burners, which were choked with dust, and immediately we had a good supply of brilliant light.
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