Lighting the Settlement: oil, gas and the Council's own electricity, 1854–1935

The short answer. The Settlement’s streets were lit by oil for a decade, by gas for twenty years, and then by a contest between the Shanghai Gas Company and electricity that the Council settled by buying the electricity company itself in 1893. Ten gas lamps were lit in Nanking Road on 18 December 1865; there were 530 gas lamps in 1882, 398 a year later after the first arc lights went up on the Bund, the Maloo and Broadway, and 767 in 1908, when the Council’s own power station already lit the main streets with flame arcs. By 1934 the Electricity Department had 5,641 street lamps against the Gas Company’s 193, and in November 1935 the last gas lamp came down. The numbers below are the Council’s, year by year, with the Gas Company’s letters and the gazetteer’s dates.

1854–1865: oil, then gas at a hundred yards

The first Council’s budget for public lighting was tiny. “The estimate for lighting the streets with oil lamps was $12 a month,” Pott writes of 1854, “and a similar amount was appropriated for sanitation.” The result was what you would expect: “at first, the streets were lit at night with oil lamps, and were nearly as dark as those within the city walls.” Gas came with a company. “In 1864, the Shanghai Gas Company was formed and obtained permission to lay mains, and thus after 1865 gas was used for street lighting.” The gazetteer gives the day: on 18 December 1865 the first ten gas street lamps in Shanghai were lit on Nanking Road, installed free by the company to advertise itself, and the Council signed its first lighting contract in May 1866, by which time there were 205 gas lamps on the main roads. Not everyone was pleased. “There was considerable objection to this improvement on the part of the land renters as it increased their rates, and did not add much in the way of illumination, the lamps being placed a hundred yards apart.” By the end of 1873 the two settlements had 498 street lamps, 485 of them gas; in 1881 there were 489 gas lamps, 351 in the old British settlement, 128 in Hongkou and 10 along Bubbling Well Road outside the limits.

1880–1883: $3.50 a lamp, and the first arc lights

The Council’s reports treat lamps as line items. In 1880 “additional lamps have been placed in the Nanking, Amoy, Tiendong, and Fearon Roads”, and the street names were painted “in black letters on strips of glass fixed into the lamp frames”, in English only, because Chinese characters “only obscure the light”. The Gas Company’s chairman wrote on 30 December 1880 that “from the 1st of January, 1881, the rate will be $3.50 per lamp per month”, including lighting, cleaning and repair, down from $3.63; the Council asked for $3.30, pointing out that private consumers had been given a larger cut. The lamps were not lit all night: they “are only lighted until midnight, on from 60 a 65 nights every year”, and were put out at midnight on five nights a month around the full moon.

Electricity arrived as a demonstration. “The lighting of the streets by gas had never given complete satisfaction,” Pott says, “and in 1882 proposals were made for the introduction of electricity.” “In June a sample light was exhibited on the Band Stand in the Public Gardens, and was greatly admired.” The daotai, Pott reports, warned that “this electric disaster will happen, if you do not put an end to electricity”, and “the Gas Company opposed its introduction, fearing it would supplant the use of gas for street and residential lighting.” In June 1883 the Council contracted with the Shanghai Electric Company for one year from 1 July for the Bund, the Maloo and Broadway, and “the Bund, Maloo, and Broadway have been lighted since 1st July by the Electric Company thereby enabling the Council to dispense with the gas lamps in these localities, the total number is now only 398 against 530 last year.” The arithmetic was not in electricity’s favour: “the number of Electric lamps in the garden and the three thoroughfares is 36, costing about Tls. 720 per month, and displacing 140 gas lamps which cost $460 per month”, though the electric lamps “burn till daylight”. The Gas Company fought back with a tender dated 28 December 1883 to light the whole Settlement for five years with 115 extra-large Bray burners and 400 ordinary lamps, “516 in all”, “for Tls. 16,500 per annum”, “all the lights to burn during the whole of every night”.

1885–1893: the ratepayers waver, the Council buys the company

Some ratepayers “wished the Council to revert to the former system of having the whole of the Settlement lighted by gas”, and the Electric Company had to ask for a special meeting, which on 2 April 1885 told the Council “to continue the contract with the Electric Company for another year”. The Gas Company’s five-year offer was repeated at 16,600 taels; the Council held 311 gas lamps, and the company offered “the entire lighting under contract at the rate of $3 per lamp per month (for not less than 525 lamps)”. The Council renewed year by year instead: 317 gas lamps in 1887 at $3.30 “subject to the fines as in the past for lamps being out”, 320 in 1888 “at the reduced charge of $3”, 342 in 1889 with 33 more ordered for Yangtszepoo Road, 391 in 1890 under a three-year contract “at $2.70 per lamp per month”. Electricity grew more slowly and cost more: 60 lamps in 1888, when the Shanghai Electric Company “transferred all their plant, etc., to the New Shanghai Electric Company”; 72 in 1889, when twelve went up in Hongkou and the average fell “to Tls. 225 per month for each, against Tls. 250”, in the report’s words, though the budget of 15,000 for 60 lamps shows these are yearly figures; one lamp on the Garden Bridge “at Tls. 220 per annum” in 1890 and two in the new Public Garden at 75 each. In 1890 the Council weighed “5 electric lamps at an annual cost of Tls. 1,100, or by 13 gas lamps at a cost of about $450 per annum” for new Hongkou roads and chose gas. The Bund’s electric lamps were lowered to 25 feet in 1889 “at the suggestion of the Electric Company” and raised again because “the light from most of the lamps having been obscured by the trees”.

1893 was the turn. The ratepayers resolved that the Council should take over the electricity business itself, and “the Council purchased the property, plant and business of the New Shanghai Electric Company, and the whole was transferred to them on the 31st August for the sum of Tls. 66,100, which includes the cost of new plant which arrived here in July and August”; the valuers Chambers, Timm and Mayne had put the business at 60,765 taels with 20,290 for additional plant. The same year’s gas contract was renewed at $2.70 “undertaking that the number of lamps paid for each month should not be less than 400”, and the Council stopped paying 25 cents a month to keep 135 displaced gas lamps in order. The new Electricity Department reported 88 public arc lamps at the end of the year, 123 on its three circuits, and “about 70 more gas lamps will be put out of lighting when the new Brush lamps arrive”. Its summary of the Settlement’s streets is the clearest picture of the period: “About 9 miles of streets (mostly main thoroughfares) are lighted by electricity and about 20 miles by gas. The remaining 14 miles of roadway are not lighted.” West Hongkou still had kerosene lamps, with 600 taels in the budget until gas or electricity could follow the new roads.

1905–1909: 607 gas lamps, 223 arcs, and the 25 per cent

For a decade the two systems grew side by side. On 31 December 1905 there were “607” gas lamps in lighting, 26 of them new that year, and the Electricity Department’s “public arc lamps is now 223, an increase of 17 over last year”, with 76 incandescent lamps; the ten pontoons on the Bund had 50-candle-power lamps and North Soochow Road eleven arcs. The Council used its new position to squeeze its old supplier. It wanted the Gas Company to recognise “the privilege which it enjoys in the use of the Municipal roads for its pipes and mains”, and got “a reduction of 25% in the Company’s charges for public lighting” in a seven-year contract to 31 December 1911. The company’s reply of June 1905 is a complaint about being undercut by its own customers: “the Gas Company is compelled to submit to a keen competition from the Electrical Department carried on with the public funds, so that the Gas Company is actually penalised by its rival competitors, the Ratepayers themselves”. It recalled its 1900 offer of “a saving to the Ratepayers of Tls. 15,000 a year”, asked for a fixed minimum of lamps, which the Council raised “to 600 for purposes of the new contract”, and asked that the standard of its gas “be reduced from 16 to 14 candles” for a cheaper mixed gas.

The gas lamps kept rising even so, to 767 at the end of 1908, “677 of these being incandescent lamps and 89 open flame lamps”, while “a number of ‘flame’ arcs have been erected along the Bund and the Nanking Road” and the department had 291 street arcs and incandescent lamps equivalent to 788 30-watt lamps. The metallic filament lamp cut the price of a 60-candle-power electric lamp from 60 taels a year to 27 from 1 January 1909, and from July 1909 the department fined itself: “for every arc lamp out all night, Tls. 0.80 per night; for every incandescent lamp not lit, Tls. 0.15 per night.” When 55 incandescent gas lamps were replaced that year the Gas Company protested that their net cost was only 1,265 taels a year; the Council answered that its contract “ensures the operation of not less than 600 gas lamps” and that “the difference in cost is still very slightly in favour of gas, this however is outweighed by other considerations”. Gas went where electricity did not pay: “in alleyways and in situations where they can be used to better advantage than electric lamps”, and as high-pressure lamps on Bubbling Well Road, “suspended over the centre of the road to avoid interference by the trees”.

1911–1915: every night of the year

The decade before the war is when the modern street lamp arrived. In 1911 high-pressure gas lamps went up in Yuenmingyuen, Museum, Hongkong and Soochow Roads; the Electricity Department had “350 arc lamps” (287 enclosed, 63 flame) and 632 metal-filament lamps, declared the enclosed arc “an obsolete type which it is advisable to replace as occasion offers”, and began “keeping all street lamps alight every night of the year instead of, as formerly, extinguishing them for six nights a month during moonlight periods, no extra charge being made for these extra seventy-two half nights”. The arcs then fell as fast as they had risen: 125 in 1913 against “1,098 Metal Lamps”, with 167 enclosed arcs disconnected; 108 in 1914, when the flame arcs suffered from “the great difficulty in getting native lamp trimmers to carefully carbon, clean and generally attend to the lamps”; 44 in 1915 against 1,422 metal lamps. The typhoon at the end of July 1915 showed the system’s weakness: “the electricity supply failed, mainly on account of its overhead wires, and many streets and houses were left in darkness for six days”.

1922–1935: the last gas lamps

After the war the gas lamp was a residue. The Council’s year-end tables count 589 gas lamps in 1922, 498 in 1925 and 487 in 1928, when the Electricity Department had “3,945” lamps of “568,750 candle power” connected and had put two new public lighting circuits into commission. The gazetteer records that gas public lighting almost stopped in 1933 and that “in November 1935 the gas street lamps of Shanghai were all removed”; the Council’s 1934 tables give 5,641 electric street lamps against 193 gas. The company survived, as Pott had predicted, “by providing gas for other purposes than lighting”, and Darwent had noted that it made “a bold stand against the electric light, supplying the older illuminant at a cheaper rate than it is supplied in many English towns”. In 1934 “the Council was mainly concerned during the year with negotiations with the Gas Company for the granting of a franchise”; “the Company’s new gas making plant at Yangtszepoo was put into operation during February, and the plant on the west side of Thibet Road was demolished”; and the royalty the company paid the Council, a nominal 1,000 a year since 1917, became 50,000 in 1934 and was estimated at $62,000 for 1935. Seventy years after the first ten lamps on Nanking Road, the Council was collecting rent from the company whose lamps it had put out.

What the sources disagree on

The price of the electricity undertaking in 1893 is 66,100 taels in the Council’s report and in Pott, and 60,765 in Darwent and in the Council’s own valuation; the report explains the larger figure as including new plant that arrived that summer. The Gas Company’s five-year offer is 16,500 taels in its letter of December 1883 and 16,600 in the 1885 report’s recap. The gas lamp counts of 1884–1888 do not line up: 311 “in all” in the Council’s 1885 text against the company’s “present number of 308”, and 320 at the end of 1888 against the 1889 report’s “324 last year”. The displaced gas lamps of 1883 are 97, 140 or 155 depending on whether the Council, its report or the Electric Company is counting. The 1889 text gives electric lamp costs “per month” where the budget shows the figures can only be yearly. The 1908 gas total of 767 does not equal its printed parts, 677 and 89. The 1934 totals of 5,641 and 193 come from badly printed table rows and are given as medium confidence. The gazetteer’s 240 gas lamps replaced by 1885 is its own figure; the Council’s 1883 report gives 140.

What to look for

Nothing of the oil or gas era is left on a lamp post; the lamps on Nanjing Road East and the Bund are modern, though the Bund’s are still hung high enough to clear the plane trees that defeated the arc lamps of 1889. The Garden Bridge carries lamp standards on its restored 1907 steelwork where the Council paid 220 taels a year for one electric lamp in 1890. The bandstand where the sample light was shown in 1882 is gone with the 1905 reclamation, but the lawn is where it stood. On Xizang Road the gas works site, demolished in 1934, is under later blocks west of the road near Suzhou Creek, and the Yangshupu works that replaced it survives on Yangshupu Road as an industrial relic. The old street name glass of 1880 can be imagined on any lamp frame; the Council painted them in English only.