After our enforced vacation from Thursday night to Sunday noon from the computer and hot water and a stove and any electric lights, there was plenty of opportunity to reflect on what life was like in the Eighteenth Century.
Our light consisted of a couple of flashlights and candles. Now, candles may seem romantic, but that is about all that can be said for them, because as light sources they aren't really very good. Reading by candlelight is certainly a strain.
How did our ancestors light the house after darkness set in? The traditional German house did not have the open flame of a fireplace for light. They cooked by coals and heated by fire, but the fire was inside an enclosure and only a small amount of the light escaped. Whether they switched to the English method is not certain. The English method of cooking and heating with the same fire was inferior.
For light, I know of two methods in the Eighteenth Century. One was candles, but I am inclined to think this was relatively expensive. To get any respectable amount of light took a lot of candles, as "one candle power" is not all that much illumination.
There is another and cheaper method called the "rush light", which was inferior, technically, to the candle. One gathers, along water courses, rushes (reeds) which grow very rapidly. The outer shell is crushed slightly and the lengths, about a foot long, are soaked in waste fat and grease until the rush is "well larded". This is held in a iron holder horizontally and either one end or both ends are lit so that the fat burns. I don't believe that the light is very bright and it certainly is very dirty, so the ceiling would be blackened very quickly. The advantage of this method is that it is simple and cheap. (It recycles waste material.)
One quickly decides, after the experience of trying to use candles and the like, that not much detailed work, such as reading or sewing, was done after dark. So maybe people generally retired to bed and sleep.
(I remember visiting some aged aunts and uncles once who went to bed in the summer time before it was dark and were up at the crack of dawn. Before I knew the time they generally got up, I had said that I might be called at six o'clock in the morning and they replied, "If you want to sleep in, you can.")
If anyone has other ideas about illumination or lighting, I would like to hear them.
(22 Sep 03)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.