Extract : In 1895 Joseph Edmund Webb of Birmingham patented his Sewer Gas Destructor lamp, and then went on to improve it over a number of years. It was invented to solve a problem- that gas built up in sewers, and quite apart from the danger to personnel that this represented, if not released elsewhere it tended to leak out and create unpleasant odours. Webb's solution was to design a lamp that burnt the sewer gas along with ordinary gas in a very hot flame, in a gas mantle. Sewer gas