Authentic gas lamps in Gornji Grad in Zagreb, Croatia - lit twice a day by lamplighters. Picture credit: Jorge Láscar
You are now reading the first article of Occupations, a whole new category here in Journeys of Life! We look here at different occupations that people have had throughout history. Many of which continue to this day and are therefore well-known to anyone. Then many which are pretty obscure since they don’t exist anymore except as notes in historical context. And then some that are modern, yet lesser known occupations. We will be concentrating here in the lesser known occupations and professions.
We start out with a lesser known occupation of times gone by. Namely Light Guard - which we for obvious reasons don’t have much use of these days. A Light Guard - also called lamplighter today - was someone whose job it was to light the lanterns of the city. Or the lamps of Roman emperors and overlords or the like.
We could take as an example the German city of Leipzig where on 24 December 1701, an oil-fueled street lighting system was introduced as part of making the streets safer and more comfortable at night. The city employed light guards who had to follow a specific schedule to ensure the punctual lighting of the 700 lanterns. That is a lot of lanterns to light, so there where quite a few men who walked the city streets and got the job done.
Global usage of gas lamps on streets marks the beginning of the big gas companies. Until the early 20th century most of the cities in Europe and America had gas streetlights and gas lamps in the houses. Then, at the introduction of electricity as the source of light, the Light Guards became obsolete.
These days not many cities have funtioning gas or oil lamps anymore. But the Croatian city of Zagreb is one exception. There are a total of 217 gas lamps there that have been lit by hand twice a day since 1869.
Below a video of a modern Light Guard. And yet further down another type of light guard entirely. A Light Guard may also mean these days an adhesive strip that attaches to the side of the window in order to minimize the amount of light that shines through between the shade and window!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mIY-2N5sTg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUT98X1QQEs
http://www.historyoflamps.com/lamp-history/history-of-gas-lamps/