George starts work
George
Livesey started work at the Old Kent Road gasworks on the 1st of
May, 1850. He had turnedjust a week earlier and was to be paid £30
a year as an assistant in the office. It
seems likely that this means office boy and general help. The officer establishment
was not large and it was housed in a ‘plain two storied edifice’ on the site of
the later clock tower. On the upper floor
was Thomas Livesey’s office plus another for two clerks. On the ground floor was
a store-room with a storekeeper and the Coke Office. In addition two collectors and an inspector counted
as ‘office’ although they worked outside in ‘the district’ for most of the day.
George’s successor in the job of ‘assistant’ was John Surman who later talked
about some of the duties of a ‘confidential messenger’. He
described how he had to take cash and paper work to various offices and City of
London - a pleasant enough job for a young lad. [1]
The money taken to the City was cash which had to be paid as ‘coal dues’
– taxes on coal delivered into London - at the Coal Exchange as well as
lighterage and pilotage payments at the Custom House.
Coal was of course all important to the gas
companies and after 1839 and the change
from cannel coal South Met., like most other London Gas companies, received
coal from the Tyne and Wear and used collier ships to bring it into
London. The collier vessels would unload
in the Thames outside the Surrey Docks and the coal unloaded into
lighters. These would have threaded
their way down to the Grand Surrey Canal.
Coal was unloaded by ‘whippers’ into which the wickerwork baskets. Have in the 1840s these whippers were paid 7d
for each ton of cold heavy coal shifted.
Anyone who travels on suburban roads on the
fringes of Greater
London will see ‘coal posts’ at the road, rail and canal side. They were markers
beyond which any load of coal going into London became liable for tax payments
to the City of London. This system dated
back to the 1600s and formed a fund through which the City had financed
construction of many infrastructure projects.
They were abolished in 1889 following a campaign in which George Livesey
had a leading role. The ‘coal dues’ had
to be paid at the Coal Exchange in Lower Thames street. This was newly built in 1850 the building
designed by J.B Bunning and remarkable for its ironworks. It was demolished in
the 1960s.
The early 1850s were George’s
apprenticeship in the gas industry. His childhood
had been spent watching and learning in the works. He was now spending his time learning his not
just about administration of the works, but also his father’s ideas. He was
also cementing childhood relationships as the boys he had grown up with became
part of the workforce at Old Kent Road.
Crystal Palace
1851, as everyone knows, was the year of
the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace. The then company chairman, Thomas Farncombe,
had been Lord Mayor in 1849. In this role he had hosted a lavish banquet at the
Mansion House for Mayors from all over the country. It was at this event that Prince Albert announced
plans for the Great Exhibition. As far
as the Hyde Park exhibition is concerned South Met had little involvement
beyond the payment of £20 to the Gas Fitters Association for the Exhibition of
Gas - which in any case was not allowed in the Crystal Palace itself. It was the succeeding years in which it was
involved.
When the Exhibition closed the palace
itself was taken down and the structure sold to a firm of building contractors
who set up a private company to re-erect it. Work began on the site still
called Crystal Palace in Norwood in 1852.
The South London Gas companies couldn’t wait to get themselves and their
gas supplies up the hill to Norwood where they saw lucrative contracts awaiting
them. South Met stood a good chance of
getting their fist as they already served adjacent areas and by 1851 their
mains had reached Norwood. Meanwhile a
Sydenham Gas Company was formed with a works at Bell Green and also considered
a site nearer the palace in Westow Hill. Then another Crystal Palace Gas Company
was formed. The Sydenham Company sacked their Secretary, a Mr. Stearns, who then
departed with a list of the company customers and the wage books. There is a
suggestion that he took them to the new Crystal Palace Company. Company meetings were held at which hitherto
unknown shareholders appeared.
The Bell Green works persisted and has only
recently become the site of a supermarket.
Later called the South Suburban Gas Company it became a firm effectively
controlled by George Livesey. The
Livesey Memorial Hall still stands in front of soon to be demolished
gasholders. In the early 1850s the boy
learning his trade at the Old Kent road must have been aware of scandals which
had resulted from competition.
Crystal Palace was a positive asset to
South London life providing a venue for meetings, exhibitions and events. In
the story of George Livesey’s life it will crop up on many occasions. He must have gone there often in the early
stages of the temperance movement and it was where he attended meetings. In the
1880s one of his biggest rows was about an exhibition which he masterminded at
the Palace and in the 1900s it was where vast dinners were held for South Met
and South Suburban workers. In the last
photograph taken of George Livesey he is just outside the Palace leaning on one
of the sphinxes
PENSIONS
In 1855 the company’s bi-annual meeting
passed a resolution that ‘this meeting approve the suggestion of the Directors
to establish a superannuation fund the benefit of the company’s workmen and
contributes to start the fund some of £50 and the same sum annually’.
Rule 1 was ‘to provide a minimum pension in
order to save workmen from the necessity of appealing for parish relief in the
event of incapacity in old age’. It was
not to be a ‘competency to retire on’ while they could still work and the average
age to retire was fixed at 65. But after
10 years of payments they could leave at 60 or 55 if infirm. . Thus the principle was fixed in the scheme of
‘no dependency in old age’ but not so as to weaken the individuals need to save
for himself. Ostensibly in the hands of
the workmen it would in fact be guided by Board members. The scheme was announced at meeting of
workers by Thomas Livesey. George was at
the meeting together with a group of young workers. He remembered carefully the ideas behind the
scheme and the response to it.
This arrangement for workers’ pension seems
to have been Thomas Livesey’s suggestion and he had guided it and through the
board and subsequent shareholders’ meetings.
How far such schemes were common in the 19th century and
industry is not at all clear. South Met,
were not alone in setting up such a scheme.
While the workmen in South Met seemed happy
to accept the scheme. The officers however refused a scheme for themselves
There is no doubt the scheme was helped by
an increasingly religious flavour in the company. At a company meeting a few
years later a plea was made by Benjamin Edgington , the Southwark canvas and
rope manufacturer, about the need to promote religion among the workers. As a result he began a campaign to leave Bibles
at easy access in the works.[2]
THE BAND OF HOPE
There was a lot of religion about in South
London in the 1880s. The great preacher Charles Spurgeon, only two months
younger than George Livesey, gave his first London sermon in 1854. From then on
South London rang to the resonance of Spurgeon’s ministry and his work. Many
local industrialists contributed to the Metropolitan Tabernacle, built for
Spurgeon, and many gas workers must have been among the thousands who heard
Spurgeon preach.
George Livesey had signed the pledge as a
teetotaler when he was 18 in 1852. he
had done so t he persuasion of David Broadberry who he described as a
blacksmith’s hammerman who later became Engineer to the Tottenham and Edmonton
Gas Company – he failed to mention that he was also his cousin. He was also to remain
enthusiastically in the Church of England. He began teaching at a Sunday School in Christ
Church opposite the works in Church Street and he continued to do this for the
rest of his life in a variety of churches as he left his parents’ home and
moved house. Some of the workmen at
South Met. remembered being taught by him and some followed him as he moved to
new schools in new areas
Never once did things by halves George also
took up vegetarianism although, according to his mother, he still managed to
eat the gravy from the joint.
In 1855 George, now 21 attended a meeting
of the Band of Hope – this is now Hope UK.
The organisation was already active in parts of Northern England under
the leadership of Joseph Livesey- there is no known connection between him and
George’s family. In the Band of Hope records at Lambeth Palace the meeting
attended by George Livesey is the first – the inaugural meeting of the Band of Hope
in London. George signed himself giving
his address as the Old Kent Road gasworks among 20 or so others. He was not elected to the first committee but
joined them after a year. He was however
put on a subcommittee which was to promote the Band’s work in South London. Their initial ideas were modest – ladies’
committees, bazaars and the hope of rallies at Crystal Palace
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