City streets could be very dark in the days before street lamps. On moonless nights, citizens in 18th century European cities could hire a “link boy” to light the way, whether to precede the passenger who was on foot, or to light the way for the passenger’s sedan chair. The boy used a torch of rope or twisted rags, stiffened with fat, pitch, and resin.
Passengers had to be wary of link boys who were in league with thieves; they sometimes led the passenger into a dark alleyway where he was beset by footpads or cutpurses.
In his diary entry of March 25, 1661, Samuel Pepys interviews a link-boy:
“So homewards and took up a boy that had a lanthorn, that was picking up of rags, and got him to light me home, and had great discourse with him, how he could get sometimes three or four bushells of rags in a day, and got 3d. a bushell for them, and many other discourses, what and how many ways there are for poor children to get their livings honestly. So home and to bed at12 o’clock at night.”
