Crystal Palace District Gas Company 1854-1904

The Gas Men Cometh

 

Personalities at the Crystal Palace District Gas Company 1854-1904

 

During the 50-year life of the Crystal Palace District Gas Company, the executive officers were drawn from just five families, all with links to the gas industry elsewhere in Britain and overseas.

 

The five family names were Ohren, Cathels, Watson, Gandon and Shoubridge.

 

Below is a brief outline of these families’ connection with the Crystal Palace District Gas Company, and the sequence of their involvement, followed by a more detailed biography of each of the major players.

 

Magnus Ohren was engineer/manager of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co from a year after the company’s formation and also became secretary a little later. He gave up the role of manager in 1865 when, owing to the rapid growth of the undertaking, the combined job became too much for one person. He remained secretary until the autumn of 1893 when, aged 71, his health started to fail. He died in 1907.

 

He was succeeded as secretary by his son Charles Magnus Ohren who retained the position until the company was absorbed by the South Suburban Gas Co.

 

When Magnus Ohren gave up the role of manager, this post was taken by Scotsman Edmund Cathels, but he and many of his family emigrated to North America in 1872 and another Scotsman, James Watson, was appointed manager. Although Watson later moved on to the Herne Bay Gas Co, his daughter Elizabeth married Charles Ohren and his son, James Clarke Watson, continued to work for the Crystal Palace company as foreman of the works.

 

The next manager – for 20 years, from 1877 to 1897 – was Charles Gandon, and he was followed by Sydney Yarrell Shoubridge, who remained in post until the 1904 take-over by South Suburban.

 

Magnus Ohren

 

Magnus Ohren was born in Rotherhithe on 8 December 1821, the son of Charles Ohren, a wharfinger of Swedish descent. His connection with the gas industry began with his apprenticeship in 1837 to Geddie Pearse, the engineer-in-chief of the British Gas Co, whose London works were in School House Lane, Ratcliff.

 

Ohren remained with the company until 1846, when he went to Hamburg to assist in lighting the city with gas, but on his return to England in 1850, he was re-engaged by Pearse at the British Gas Co. However, the works of the company were too small to meet the growing requirements of the district, and they were acquired by the Commercial Gas Co. Ohren transferred to the new company, and was appointed superintendent of his old district as well as of Millwall. In this capacity, he laid a 10-inch main in East India Road, to afford a better supply of gas to Millwall from Stepney; thereby obviating the large capital outlay required for the erection of an additional works nearer Millwall, which had been in contemplation.

 

Ohren joined the Crystal Palace District Gas Co in 1855 and during his time with the company, was granted two patents, one for “an improvement in the manufacture of gas, and the apparatus connected therewith” and the other for “improvements in the construction of gasholders, and in the mode of rendering gasholders self-acting”.  

 

Ohren was well known in gas-engineering circles, both for his technical and for his financial connection with the industry, acting as auditor to several gas companies. He was one of the founders of the Society of Engineers, was a Fellow of the Chemical Society and the Royal Sanitary Institute, acted as president of the British Association of Gas Managers (1870), and subsequently joined the Gas Institute and the Institution of Gas Engineers. He was elected an Associate of The Institution of Civil Engineers in 1859.

 

Magnus Ohren married Cecilia Emma Graydon on 7 April 1845 in Bromley-by-Bow and the couple had six children – Augusta Clara Ohren (1848), who was born when the family were in Hamburg, Geddie Edward Ohren (1851) and Charles Magnus Ohren (1853), who were both born in Poplar, when their father was back in the UK, and Rosa Cecilia Ohren (1858), Aubrey Magnus Ohren (1860) and Catherine Ohren (1862), all born in Sydenham.

 

Cecilia died on 1 August 1901, aged 75, and Magnus on 21 March 1907, aged 85.

 

Several of their children either worked in the gas industry or married someone who did.

 

Augusta Ohren married Alfred Plane Holt, who at one time was chief cashier at the Crystal Palace District Gas Co.

 

Geddie Ohren, named after his father’s mentor in Stepney, was at one time also a gas engineer, working at first at the Crystal Palace District Gas Co and then in Shrewsbury. He later left the industry, his wife and children, and his unusual first name – he went to live in Loughborough with another woman and became a photographer and hairdresser.

 

Aubrey Ohren was a collector for the Crystal Palace District Gas Co and then for the South Suburban Gas Co.

 

Charles Magnus Ohren

 

Charles Magnus Ohren was the second son of Magnus and Cecilia Ohren, born on 15 May 1853 in Poplar. He became an accountant at the Crystal Palace District Gas Co and later took over from his father as secretary of the company, a role he continued to perform for the South Suburban Gas Co after the merger in 1904 until about 1912.

 

In 1875, Charles married Elizabeth Watson (1855-1926), the daughter of the then manager of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co, James Watson. The couple had one child, a daughter, Winifred, born 1879, who died unmarried in 1967.

 

Charles Magnus Ohren died on 12 May 1920.

 

 

Edmund Small Cathels

 

Edmund Small Cathels was born in Scotland in 1823 and was married to Eliza, who was born in 1829, also in Scotland.

 

In the mid 1850s, he worked in Northfleet, Kent, probably at the County & General Gas Consumers’ Co. Here his two eldest children were born – William McNicol Cathels and Donald Louis Cathels.

 

Towards the end of the decade, Edmund Cathels was in Dover, presumably working for the Dover Gas & Water Works. While in Dover, he was joint-patentee with Samuel Splatt of an invention which improved gas meters. Also while working there, his third son, Edmund Cathels, was born.

 

By 1861, the family were in Shrewsbury, where Cathels was manager of the Shrewsbury Gas Works. Three more children were born – the twins Alfred and Catherine Cathels, and John  Holyoake Cathels. Alfred died within his first year.

 

Also while at Shrewsbury, Edmund Cathels was granted two more patents for “improvements in compensating gas-meters” and “improvements in apparatus used in the manufacture of gas”.

 

In 1865, the family moved to Sydenham and Edmund Cathels became manager of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co. Again Cathels was granted more patents while with this company – for “improvements in apparatus for conveying and regulating the supply of gas” and, with David Terrace, for “improvements in apparatus used in the manufacture of gas, part of which apparatus is also applicable for ventilating mines, for promoting combustion, and for pumping, measuring, and forcing fluids”.

 

Two more children were born in Sydenham – Blinshall Cathels and Colin Cathels.

 

Edmund Small Cathels was connected with at least one other gas company – the Barnet Gas Light & Coke Company – while he was manager at the Crystal Palace company. At the end of 1870, it was announced that a Bill was to be presented to Parliament creating a new company, Barnet Gas Company, which would acquire land and presmises owned by the Barnet Gas Light & Coke Co and Edmund Small Cathels.

 

In 1872, several members of the Cathels family emigrated, first to Canada and then some moved on to the USA, all working in the gas industry. Edmund Small Cathels was in Montreal in 1876 when he was granted yet another patent for “improvements in apparatus used in the purification of gas”.

 

 

James Watson

 

James Watson (1832-1881) was born in Dundee and his wife Catherine (1830-1893) in Berwick. By 1855, James was working in Northumberland as the manager and engineer for the Hexham Gas Works, based at Old Burn Lane.

 

While the family was living in Hexham, James and Catherine had three children:  Elizabeth (1855-1926), George (1858) and James (1859-1936).

 

In 1861/2 the family came south to Kingston on Thames, when James was appointed manager of Kingston Gas Works in Lower Ham Road. While in Kingston four more children where born – William (1862), Ellen (1864), Charles (1865) and Alexander (1870).

 

Where James was in 1871 is not known: the 1871 census has James’s brother – William Clarke Watson – who was also a gas engineer, living in the house next to the gas works in Lower Ham Road, together with his own family, including his wife Jane (nee Rankin), whom William had married in Hexham in 1861.

 

The three eldest sons of James and Catherine (George, James and William) were at boarding school in Kingston in 1871 but there is no record of James, Catherine or the younger children.

 

In 1872, James took the position of manager of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co. Three years later, James’s daughter Elizabeth Watson married Charles Magnus Ohren, the son of the secretary of the company.

 

By 1878, James Watson had left the Crystal Palace District Gas Co and in 1881, James and Catherine Watson were in Herne Bay, Kent, with James senior was described as a Civil Engineer and son William as a collector for a gas company. Meanwhile, two other sons – James Clarke Watson and Charles A Watson – were working as clerks in the Crystal Palace company and living in the same house as Charles and Elizabeth Ohrens.

 

James died in Herne Bay in May 1881 and left an estate of £1,468 7s 8d.

 

By 1891, James Clarke Watson was foreman of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co’s works in South End Lane, Sydenham, a position he continued to hold until at least 1897. It is not clear if he was working for the company in 1901, but by 1911, he was living in Forest Hill and described as a gas engineer.

 

 

Charles Gandon

 

Charles Gandon was born in Whitechapel, in 1837, the son of a cooper, Jonas Gandon.

 

Charles Gandon began his career by assisting in construction of gas works in Germany.

 

In 1861, he was described as a civil engineer and married Emma Knight, the daughter of a printer.

 

Charles and Emma Gandon travelled extensively as Charles’s work took him round the world. Their journey can be followed through the births of their children: their eldest, John Gandon, was born in Peterborough in 1862; Emma Gandon (1865) and Herbert Gandon (1867) in Smyrna, Turkey; Florence (1869) Hackney; Maud (1872) in Bombay, India; Harold Gandon (1873) in Islington; and then Reginald Gandon (1877) and Philip Gandon (1879) in Sydenham.

 

In Smyrna, Charles Gandon was engineer and manager of the Ottoman Gas Company. After a period as engineer and manager of gasworks in Bombay, Gandon returned to England as engineer and manager of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co. He was president of The Gas Institute in 1888.

 

The link with Smyrna was continued when Charles Gandon’s eldest son. John Gandon. worked developing a gas supply system there in the 1890s and later his son Kenneth Gandon, who was born there, continued the work in the 1920s.

 

Charles Gandon was manager of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co for 20 years from 1877 to 1897. He died in 1902.

 

Sydney Yarrell Shoubridge

 

Sydney Yarrell Shoubridge was born on 9 February 1852 in Clapham, the son of an artist and architect, William Shoubridge.

 

In 1871 Sydney Shoubridge was a mechanical engineer working in Middlesborough, but by 1876 he was superintendent of the gas works in Duddeston Mill Road, Satley, Warwickshire.

 

In 1883, while he was in Warwickshire, he married Mary Matilda White and the couple’s first child, Mary Gladys Shoubridge, was born there in 1885.

 

By 1888, Sydney Shoubridge had become engineer and manager of Salford Co-operative Gas Co, a position he still held in 1895, when the family lived at Inglewood, Minton Road, Eccles.

 

Two more children were born while the couple were in Eccles – Sydney Cyril Shoubridge (1888) who died in infancy, and Lucy Dora Shoubridge (1891).

 

In 1897, Sydney Shoubridge was appointed manager of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co and he retained that position after the merger with South Suburban Gas Co until at least 1919.

 

He died in Eastbourne in 1926, leaving an estate of over £17,500.

 

The Share Scheme

 

In 1894, the year after Charles Ohren took over from his father as secretary of the Crystal Palace District Gas Co, the company introduced an employee bonus share scheme, but it did not encourage any improvement in productivity and the scheme was revised in 1897.