Denny Lane Papers Descriptive List (Ref. U611)

U611/

5pp

85 [19] June 1881 Memo. From Denny Lane, Oxford, England, to J.O’Mahony, Cork Gas Company, Cork. Concerns Lane’s social activities in Birmingham which he says he ‘entered...comparitively unknown and left…the most popular man amongst the Gas Engineers’. He attended a party of 450 where he was called upon to respond to the Toast of Science, Literature and Art and ‘happened by some good luck to strike the right key and was applauded to the skies…and had my praises sung in all the dialects of the North Countrie by the Scotchman’. He ‘got more “Blarney” in one evening than I ever got in all my life in Ireland’. Lane explains that there was not much in his speeches, but that they were a contrast to ‘some very stodgy men who went before me... who never used a phrase…that one had not heard 1000 times before. I suppose it was the brogue did it.’ 2pp 86 21 June 1881 Letter, from Denny Lane, Mellon’s Hotel, Covent Garden, London, to ‘My dear Mr O’Mahony’. ‘I got your letter only now as I was kept in Oxford…’. Mentions a fellow whose acquaintance he made and that Oxford is a ‘most delightful place’ which is ‘greatly improved’ since he last saw it 48 years ago. 1p 87 24 June 1881 Letter, from Denny Lane, Covent Garden Hotel, London, to ‘My dear Mr. O’Mahony’, Cork Gas Company, Cork. Mainly concerns Lane’s investigations on Electric Light. A Mr.Shoolbred M.I.C.E. is giving him a lot of information and ‘In every way corroborates the views I have already expressed to you’. Lane says there has been ‘no commercial success’ with the Fablockoff Co. ‘in difficulties’, Bush ‘selling below cost’, with Siemens only selling at a ‘price that pays’ and, Lane thinks, enthusiastic for the future extension of gas. Mr Schoolbred says electric light ‘has greatly benefited the Gas Co here and will do so wherever it is introduced’. Also mentions arrangements for the delivery of gas coal.

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