Humphry Davy in 1816: Letters and the Lamp

By 1816, not yet forty-years-old, Humphry Davy had retired from his paid roles at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Board of Agriculture, and the Royal Society, after marrying the wealthy widow, Jane Apreece, and being awarded a knighthood. When Robert Gray, rector of Bishopwearmouth, wrote to him on behalf of coal mine owners in the North East, asking him to turn his mind to the question of how to light mines safely, Davy responded with characteristic optimism and confidence. Davy, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, finds himself at the mercy of ferocious attacks in the press; the public nature of the debate confirms that the divisions that had become apparent during the earlier so-called journal wars still existed.2 This essay explores the role of manuscript draft letters and fragmentary poems in the safety lamp controversy. Miners needed to take candles down the mines but this was extremely dangerous because fire damp, which was largely made up of highly flammable methane gas (as it was later called), could ignite in the candle flame, and the resulting explosion was often devastating. In this history Hodgson conjectures that 6,530 pitmen were employed in the Newcasde coal trade, and he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the coal industry and of mines (1812 232). Hodgson wrote that he was determined " contrary to the feelings of the coal-owners at the time" to make the disaster as public as Journal, vol. 27, 1978, pp. 35-44; Davy Letters Project website, http:// www.davy-letters.org.uk.