Created:  18 December 2011

In February 1956 the City Council's Street Lighting Committee decided that the remaining gas lamps that were lit manually by lamplighters, which numbered around 450, should be changed to automatic lighting until such time as they were replaced by electric lighting.  [1]

Before the Second World War brought about the end to all night street lighting, each lamplighter would like something like 100 lamps each between, say, 5pm and 7pm of an evening.  He would then have to start his round again at maybe 3.30am the next morning in order to extinguish them all.  However, when the street lights went on again in 1944 they put the lights out sometime between 11pm and 1am.  [1]

In the mornings, after putting out the lights, the lamplighters were responsible for cleaning and repairing the lamps and at one time they even made the lanterns themselves.  The lamplighter's torch was a 9 feet long pole, inside which was a metal tube to hold petrol.  The pole could be split into two in the middle to enable it to be carried on public transport.  There was also a container of oil, a wick at the top, and a device at the bottom which throws the flame from the wick to the gas-lamp.  [1]

The lamplighters' depot was in Deptford Place.  Seven men were employed on the work in March 1956, amongst whom were Mr Cyril Burridge, of Regent Terrace; Mr Henry Dann, of Notte Street; Mr Thomas Rambridge, of Peter's Park Lane; and Mr Frank Richards, of Collingwood Avenue.  [1]

Plymouth's last lamp lighter, Mr Frederick Dann.
©  Robert Chapman.

Mr Henry James Dann, whose father was also a lamplighter  [2], lit Plymouth's last gas lamp for the last time at the end of the 1950s.  The lamp was in Bedford Place, near the Church of Saint Matthias.  When he retired from the Plymouth Corporation Street Lighting Department on Friday February 16th 1952 he recalled that his first wages were just £2 11s 2d and that the job had both amusing and annoying moments.  While on patrol at Teat's Hill one night a man, clearly the worse for drink, overtook him.  He learned later from a policeman that the man had continued down the road, over the cliff and fallen on to the rocks in the Cattewater, killing himself.  At the rear of Clare Buildings at Coxside he had to endure being pelted with jars and bottles and even buckets of water while on Cattedown Hill he had to step over drunks lying on the footpath.  In Evelyn Lane he was up the ladder attending to a lamp when he heard the wooden lamp-post break.  He jumped to safety and ran back to the Depot to report the resulting gas leak.  At the time of his retirement -- he was 65  years of age on Saturday February 17th 1962 -- there were only of the original lamplighters left at work, including his younger brother.  [3] 

Mr Frederick Alfred Dann, Plymouth's last lamplighter, retired in September 1963.

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Sources:

[1]  The Lamplighter Soon Just History: Plymouth to go all automatic", Western Morning News, Plymouth, March 1st 1956.

[2]  1911 Census, RG14/PN12967/RG78/PN748/RD276/SD2/ED9/SN300.

[3]  "The Man Who Lit Last Gas Lamp in City: Henry Dann Retires after 40 Years with Department", Western Evening Herald, Plymouth, February 16th 1962.