CHEAP FUEL.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1708, 11 August 1879, Page 4

CHEAP FUEL.

During the recent two months of bitter weather thousands of poor folk at the East* end of London diacoyoied that, with a little ingenuity, they need be no longer at the mercy of the rapacious coal dealer, whoso threepennyworth of fuel, eked out so sparingly, would serve for not more than a handful of fire between noon and night. The poverty-pinched ones burned rock oil in strong cheap lamps made for the purpose. These lamps are made all of tin, excepting the short glass chimney, with a tank to hold a quart, a wick two inches broad, and a bright tin reflector at the back. The light from one such lamp is sufficient to illumine an ordinary room as brilliantly as a dozen candles, and the heat thrown out from the broad flame of the well-nigh red-hot chimney is very groat. This lamp would make a room quite warm and comfortable on the coldest winter evenings. Nor is this all. In a quarter of an hour a couple of quarts of water in a kettle suspended over the chimney will boil, as, of course, will the liquid contents of a saucepan or frying-pan. It cannot perhaps bo claimed for the lamp that it is a particularly sightly contrivance, or that it is absolutely free from soot and smell; but it is marvellously cheap. A pint of the oil will burn for twelve hours, and a pint costs threehalfpence. Some of the lamps are made with metal chimneys for use by daylight.