The "Good Lamp is the Best Police" Metaphor and Ideologies of the Nineteenth-Century Urban Landscape

The metaphor, "gaslight is the best nocturnal police," can tell much about the shared value system and ideology of urban citizens who had to cope with immense change that always threatened to dissolve into social disorder. The light's role in creating an "idealogy of the land" in an urban setting is assessed by examining the reasons people chose to light their streets.