Clare Briggs / Comics

The Night Watchman

by Clare Briggs · May 10, 2022

Tags: Real Folks at Home

Clare Briggs

Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.

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Kolohe says:

May 10, 2022 at 3:10 pm

“Flashes” are these things, right? I seem to remember in boy scouts (in the 1980s) that they were called flashes, as well as mantles.

(I was half wondering if propane lanterns were still being made, now that between LEDs and a solar charger you could probably have a camp lantern that lasts indefinitely. )

edit – oh duh, ‘one of them flashes’ is a(n electric) flashlight.Report
- Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:
  
  May 10, 2022 at 6:31 pm
  
  I thought “they had those?” and Indeed they did.
  
  D batteries and everything.
  
  Huh.Report
  - Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:
    
    May 10, 2022 at 7:53 pm
    
    Lots depends on relative costs. My mother was born 1927 in rural south-central Iowa. Among her skill set for household chores as a child was trimming the wicks in the kerosene lamps used to light the house. My father, a year younger, worked as a brakeman on the Chicago-to-Kansas City trains (that ran through that part of Iowa because of the coal seam/mines) and talked about using kerosene lanterns with wicks.
    
    To Kolohe’s implied question, if I lived in hurricane country I’d probably have a wick lantern and kerosene tucked away. You can burn other fuels in that lantern if you have to. Mantles and solar panels are relatively fragile.Report
    - Jaybird in reply to Michael Cain says:
      
      May 11, 2022 at 7:56 am
      
      So *NOW* I’m thinking “how much would a flashlight have cost back then?”
      
      Well, the answer seems to be a dollar. Oooh, but that’s probably the cheap version that you’d get for a precocious child. In the bottom left, it says “20 other models up to $5.00” and, I’m guessing, our protagonist above would need the $5 one if he were willing to switch at all.
      
      That’s $82.60 in today’s money.
      
      Which, you know, isn’t *PROHIBITIVE*. But if you have something that works just as well, why spend the dough?Report
      - Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:
        
        May 11, 2022 at 12:33 pm
        
        Sturdy kerosene lanterns seem to have been on the same order of price, $5 per lantern.
        
        Now consider the batteries. The only price reference I can find for No. 2 batteries in 1925 (the No. 2 would eventually be relabeled as “D” cells) is ten cents each. Zinc-carbon cells, incandescent bulbs… not real long life. Even worse in the cold.
        
        Kerosene was about 20 cents per gallon. Rule of thumb seems to be that with a 1-inch wide wick, a kerosene lamp will burn for 45 hours per quart, so 180 hours per gallon. Big advantage for kerosene.
        
        Convenience and safety no doubt won out eventually. Also narrow beam in single direction, eg, the classic theater usher stereotype.Report
  - Kolohe in reply to Jaybird says:
    
    May 12, 2022 at 2:06 pm
    
    One tangential thought for most of these is that similar to how ‘The 90s were 10 years ago’ I still have to check my instincts that all the roaring 20s era comics were a full one hundred years ago, as opposed to, “long ago, but I still know people who have memories of that time”. Or rather ‘100 years ago’ is not at all ‘the 1800s’
    (though in contrast, I’ve used ‘last century’ ironically so often in the past 20 years that ‘last century=20th’ has long fairly well lodged in the my head. Now I just have to un-irony it.
    
    eta this also came to mind because I went to this woman’s memorial service last weekend.Report
    - Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:
      
      May 12, 2022 at 9:53 pm
      
      I’ve reached the point where the 90’s were 20 years ago. (The early 90’s, anyway.)
      
      And she seems like an awesome lady.Report