Winser on Shooters Hill

EARLY GAS MAKING - A MYSTERY ON SHOOTERS HILL

BY MARY MILLS 

In 1883 a Mr. Thomas Boorman Winser of Shooters Hill Road wrote to The Standard. He said that old gas pipes had been found in a house demolished at Shooters Hill. Mr. Winser linked this with some old handbills in his possession which advertised 1807 demonstrations of gas lighting in London.   In 1883 the early gas industry under discussion as a possible centenary of the 'first attempt' neared. In September Samuel Smiles, also a Blackheath resident, lectured on the subject at the Royal Aquarium in Westminster. Mr. Winser did not say, but he may have known, that there were stories about how the first ever "gasometer" was sited in the grounds of Shrewsbury House at Shooters Hill.

Today Shrewsbury House is a busy community centre. It was built in the 1920s, replacing an older house which was occupied in 1811 by the author of Mr. Winser's handbills, Frederick Albert Winsor.  Winsor (a spelling anglicised from Winzer) was, more than anyone else, responsible for bringing gas lighting to London.  His home on Shooters Hill links Kent not only with the start of the gas industry but with an eccentric and colourful personality.

Frederick Albert Winzer was a merchant from Brunswick who came to England in the early 1790s and married an English woman, Harriett Wilkinson.  His career had some strong royal parallels -in 1795 Princess Caroline of Brunswick had come to England to marry the Prince of Wales, the future George IV. She lived in Blackheath after the failure of this marriage and her daughter, Princess Charlotte, heir to the throne, lived, as a child, at Shrewsbury House. Winsor demonstrated gas lighting to the Duke of Brunswick in 1802 while on a visit to Europe to buy gas making apparatus from the French inventor, Phillipe Lebon.  He also wrote strongly anti-French and pro-royalist leaflets, some of them under the pseudonym of 'Obadiah Prim', described as a Quaker.

Leaflet writing was something Winsor took up in a big way. In the years after 1800 he produced a whole barrage of them which put forward the advantages of coal gas. His claims were far from sober and his language was colourful and extreme. English was not his first language, and accent was difficult to understand but in writing both verse and prose, his imagery expanded and took off, to amazing heights.  It was 'A Philosophical, chemical, historical and legal Rhapsody on the primogeniture and genealogy of the Will o' the Wisp Lights or Ignis Fatuus vulgarly called Jack o'Lantern Lights'.

He said that coal gas could be used for lighting and also for cooking and heating - something which did not happen for many years. He wrote about the use of tar and ammonia, by-products of gas making, and one whole pamphlet was about coke.  His biggest and most important idea, was that of a gas works. Before Winsor gas for lighting had been produced in small installations which made only enough to light one building. Winsor's idea was to make gas in a factory, a gas 'works', and sell it to whoever wanted to buy.

He invited the public to a programme of lectures and demonstrations, first at the Lyceum Theatre in the Strand and later at the 'Theatre of Science' in Pall Mall where he worked with a popular lecturer, Professor Hardie. He was also lent premises at the Rhedarium in St.Marylebone, from where balloon flights had taken off. Balloonists, were also early experimenters in coal gas. 

Winsor's claims about the profitability of investing in gas became more and more amazing. There would, he said, be "a most cheering balance of 12 millions of profit which when divided into 20,000 shares, offer a most welcome annual bonus of #600 for each subscriber of only fifty pounds".  In 1807 he arranged a display of gas lights in Pall Mall to celebrate the Prince of Wales birthday.

As Winsor's ideas became better known he gathered around him a body of supporters to promote a 'National Heat and Light Company' (note the word 'national'; they were nothing if not ambitious). These supporters were all important men, bankers, lawyers and merchants and a duke. Because of the scale of the intended venture an Act of Parliament was necessary before they could start work.  This was opposed by manufacturers of equipment for factory lighting by gas and there was a Parliamentary Enquiry. It had become apparent that Winsor and his inflated claims were a potential liability to any respectable concern and he was dropped once the new gas company was formed.  They built the first gas works, as we know them, in Westminster and gas was first made and sold in 1813.

Did Winsor, therefore erect the first gasometer ever seen when he lived at Shrewsbury House in 1811? Unfortunately this is almost certainly untrue. One of the problems with the system of gas making which Winsor advertised is that it did not include a means of storing the gas. He actually thought gas holders were dangerous! In any case by 1811 there were industrial gas lighting installations in London and elsewhere. The first recorded in London was that at the Golden Lane Brewery in 1808 although it is very probable that there were others - some perhaps to Winsor's designs.

When Thomas Boorman Winser wrote to the press in 1883 he drew attention to gas pipes found in "an old house" under demolition. He didn't say that this was Shrewsbury House - which was not demolished until after his letter was written.  Was there perhaps someone else who experimented with gas at Shooters Hill? In 1811 many residents of the area were scientists working at the Royal Military Academy. Although there was no early gas works at the Royal Arsenal it would seem likely that someone there would have been interested in experimenting with this exciting new medium. Among those who worked at Woolwich at that time were at least three who are known to have experimented with coal gas - Sir William Congreve, James McCulloch and James Sadler.  Did Winsor know these scientists? Did they meet and discuss their ideas, perhaps in The Bull or The Red Lion?

After 1813 Winsor went to Paris to start the French gas industry. He died there, and is buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. His son, also Frederick Albert, remained in England. He became a barrister and had a lifetime's involvement with that first gas company - which grew to be the famous Gas Light and Coke Co. He died at his London address, in Lincoln's Inn Fields and is buried at Kensal Green. Strangely, the Dictionary of National Biography describes him as 'of Shooters Hill'.

This leaves us with another mystery. Who was Thomas Boorman Winser, what did he know about the gas pipes and how did he get copies of Winsor's pamphlets? He an actuary and a pillar of Blackheath society. He was born at Salehurst in Sussex, and his father was a Mr. Thomas Winser. No connection has been traced between them and Frederick Albert, father or son.  However, the similarity of the name and the fact that Winsor was probably married at least twice raises a number of questions. His family's births, deaths and marriages in a variety of European countries provides complications.

Thomas Boorman Winsor was a keen collector, perhaps the items he described in the letter were just picked up out of interest. They almost certainly bought from him and may be the items in the British Library's Woodcraft Collection. Whether or not Thomas Boorman Winsor knew something about early gas making on Shooters Hill his letter represents an interesting link with one of the more colourful characters in our past.