Electricity started to replace gas street lamps in the 1920’s throughout Blantyre. However, it wasn’t without it’s problems. On Saturday 28th January 1922, in the middle of Winter and long dark nights, inconvenience was caused to Blantyre residents through the failure of electric street lights. We take street lighting for granted these days and outages are very rare. However, on this dark weekend in 1922 a leakage in the cable, caused the failure of the newly installed electric lights in Glasgow Road.
The main thoroughfare, got dark around 3.30pm and on a busy Saturday, locals were left fumbling along the pavements in the complete dark. However, it was the shopkeepers who felt the inconvenience. They had only just weeks before discarded their gas equipment in favour of this new technology. Light was restored to the town the next day.