ince, when in the West of
Cornwall, I was anxious to find out whether any one remembered Murdock.
I discovered one of the most respectable and intelligent men in
Camborne, Mr. William Symons, who not only distinctly remembered
Murdock, but had actually been present on one of the first occasions
when gas was used. Murdock, he says, was very fond of children, and
not unfrequently took them into his workshop to show them what he was
doing. Hence it happened that on one occasion this gentleman, then a
boy of seven or eight, was standing outside Murdock's door with some
other boys, trying to catch sight of some special mystery inside, for
Dr. Boaze, the chief doctor of the place, and Murdock had been busy all
the afternoon. Murdock came out, and asked my informant to run down to
a shop near by for a thimble. On returning with the thimble, the boy
pretended to have lost it, and, whilst searching in every pocket, he
managed to slip inside the door of the workshop, and then produced the
thimble. He found Dr. Boaze and Murdock with a kettle filled with
coal. The gas issuing from it had been burnt in a large metal case,
such as was used for blasting purposes. Now, however, they had applied
a much smaller tube, and at the end of it fastened the thimble, through
the small perforations made in which they burned a continuous jet for
some time."[7]

After numerous experiments, Murdock had his house in Cross Street
fitted up in 1792 for being lit by gas. The coal was subjected to heat
in an iron retort, and the gas was conveyed in pipes to the offices and
the different rooms of the house, where it was burned at proper
apertures or burners.[8] Portions of the gas were also confined in
portable vessels of tinned iron, from which it was burned when
required, thus forming a moveable gas-light. Murdock had a gas lantern
in regular use, for the purpose of lighting himself home at night
across the moors, from the mines where he was working, to his home at
Redruth. This lantern was formed by filling a bladder with gas and
fixing a jet to the mouthpiece at the bottom of a glass lantern, with
the bladder hanging underneath.

Having satisfied himself as to the superior economy of coal gas, as
compared with oils and tallow, for the purposes of artificial
illumination, Murdock mentioned the subject to Mr. James Watt, jun.,
during a brief visit to Soho in 1794, and urged the propriety of taking
out a patent. Watt was, however, indifferen