Cecil—Besides lighting the street, the gas company was prepared to provide gas to homes, if the owners wanted it. But it was regarded with a good deal of suspicion by most people in the town. It was coal gas and it was lethal. Those people who did venture and had gas laid on to their houses only had it on the ground floor. Nobody would have gas in the bedrooms. Because the slightest little leak and you went to sleep, there was a very good chance that you wouldn’t waken up.
I remember about 1917, my grandfather had gas laid on for lighting, and the gas light was a very poor substitute for the old paraffin lamp. One had to fiddle with it to regulate the gas and give it a lot of care. It never seemed to be perfect, and if you ever got it perfect, the mantle would disintegrate. These things used to disappear into thin air so you had the problem of replacing it. The light was never all that good.
My mother did have a gas cooker installed. It was a very primitive sort of thing. Of course, it had no thermostats fitted. It was much like the regular stove. She only found the right heat by putting her hand inside the oven.
Electricity
Cecil—Electricity didn’t come here until 1935.
Ken—As late as that?
Cecil—In 1925 a cable was laid from Camberley to Wokingham by the Camberley & Blackwater Gas & Electricity Company. They bought the Wokingham Gas Works and laid this cable for electricity into Wokingham. That’s the way it first came. I was fifteen at the time and it was 1930 before we had it on in the house. Of course it took some years for it to get round and become general. So without electricity there were none of these appliances that they take for granted today. There were no refrigerators—no washing machines or anything like that—no radio on the mains.