The great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead is a tragic and spectacular series of events starting on Friday October 6, 1854, in which a substantial amount of property in the two North East of England towns is destroyed in a series of fires and an explosion that kills fifty-three and injures hundreds.

There is only one building still extant on the Newcastle Quayside that predates the fire.

The towns of Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead sit opposite each other, on relatively steep slopes leading down to the River Tyne.

On the north side is Newcastle, the quayside of which is—at least by local accounts—one of the largest in the kingdom, with much shipping and the concentration of town's business and commerce.

Gateshead has similarly dense development opposite the quayside with factories, mills and warehouses built down to the water's edge, behind which and running up the hill are numberless densely occupied tenemented dwellings.

The towns are linked by two bridges, built no more than one hundred feet (thirty meters) apart.

The older is a nine-arched stone bridge, built in 1771, the third to have been constructed on the site.

Slightly upstream is Robert Stephenson's new High Level Bridge, completed five years previously in 1849, an ingenious double-decker design allowing railway traffic on the upper deck and road traffic on the lower.

On the Gateshead riverbank, a few yards downstream of the old bridge, stands the splendid new mill premises of Messrs. J. Wilson & Sons, worsted manufacturers.

This large gaslight-lit building had been erected after a fire that had destroyed their previous premises, on the same site, three years before the events of this great fire.

At half past midnight on Friday October 6, 1854, the mill is discovered to be on fire; the cry is raised and immediately the streets crowd with people hurrying to the scene of the growing conflagration.

The fire being confined to the upper stories of the building, efforts are made to salvage stock on lower floors; but the great quantities of oil in the premises, used to treat wool, add fuel to the fire and quickly curtail the attempts.

Despite the prompt attendance of the North British and Newcastle fire engines, within an hour the building is one mass of flame and within two the roof falls in and the building is a total wreck.

Such a large fire naturally attracts many spectators, who occupy every spot on the bridges, boats, quayside and surrounding buildings.

The fire spreads to a wooden staith or jetty used in former times for loading coal, which for a time shares with the warehouse the attention of the thronging multitude.

A slight concussion warns the crowd that there is something more perilous than sulfur alone in the burning pile.

A second slight explosion does not warn the firemen and surrounding crowds.

A third passes unheeded..

After a few minutes, the final explosion occurs.

The vaults of the warehouse are burst open with a tremendous and terrific explosion, heard twenty miles (thirty-two kilometers) away.

Vessels on the river lift as if lashed by a sudden storm.

The old bridge shakes, and the new quivers.

Massive walls are crumbled into heaps, houses tumble into ruins.

The venerable parish church, on the hill, is shattered to a wreck.

Gravestones are broken and uplifted.

The hands on the dial of its clock stood at ten minutes past three.

Thick black smoke rises; temporarily all is silent; then the scene is lit by falling burning debris from the warehouse, the noise of falling dwellings and the cries of the injured. 

Joseph Swan had begun working on a light bulb using carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb in 1850.

He is able to demonstrate a working device by 1860, and obtains a U.K. patent covering a partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent lamp.

However, the lack of a good vacuum and an adequate electric source results in an inefficient bulb with a short life.

Joseph Swan discovers in 1877 that heat can affect a photographic emulsion.

Swan, a British physicist and chemist, had begun working on a light bulb using carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb in 1850 and in 1860 was able to demonstrate a working device.

However, the lack of a good vacuum and an adequate electric source had resulted in an inefficient bulb with a short lifetime.

Swan had returned to consider the problem of the light bulb in 1875 with the aid of a better vacuum and a carbonized thread as a filament.

The most significant feature of Swan's improved lamp is that there is little residual oxygen in the vacuum tube to ignite the filament, thus allowing the filament to glow almost white-hot without catching fire.

However, his filament has low resistance, thus needing heavy copper wires to supply it.

Swan will first publicly demonstrates his incandescent carbon lamp at a lecture for the Newcastle upon Tyne Chemical Society on December 18, 1878, but after burning with a bright light for some minutes in his laboratory, the lamp will break down due to excessive current.

Joseph Swan has solved the problem of incandescent electric lighting by means of a vacuum lamp; he successfully repeats his lecture with the lamp shown in actual operation on January 17, 1879.

On February 3, 1879 he publicly demonstrates a working lamp to an audience of over seven hundred people in the lecture theater of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, Sir William Armstrong presiding.

In 1879 also, Swan patents bromide paper, a type of Black and White photographic paper with pure silver bromide emulsion, which is sensitive and produces neutral black or 'cold' blue-black image tones.

Joseph Swan, turning his attention to producing a better carbon filament and the means of attaching its ends, has devised a method of treating cotton to produce "parchmentised thread" and obtains British Patent 4933 on November 27, 1880.

From this time he begins installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England.

His house, Underhill on Kells Lane in Low Fell, Gateshead, is the world's first residence to have working light bulbs installed.

The Lit & Phil Library in Westgate Road, Newcastle, is the first public room lit by electric light during a lecture by Swan on October 20, 1880.

Joseph Swan forms 'The Swan Electric Light Company Ltd' with a factory at Benwell, Newcastle, and establishes the first commercial manufacture of incandescent light bulbs by the beginning of 1881.

Charles Algernon Parsons develops a turbine engine in Newcastle in 1884 and immediately utilizes the new engine to drive an electrical generator, which he also designs.

Parsons' steam turbine makes cheap and plentiful electricity possible and revolutionizes marine transport and naval warfare—the world will never be the same again.

Born in London, he was the youngest son of the famous astronomer William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse.

He and his elder brother the Hon. Richard Clare Parsons had constructed a steam car that in 1869 was the cause of the first recorded fatal traffic accident involving a powered car.

His cousin Mary Ward had fallen from the car and suffered a broken neck.

Parsons had attended Trinity College, Dublin and St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating from the latter in 1877 with a first-class honors degree in mathematics.

He then joined the Newcastle-based engineering firm of W.G. Armstrong as an apprentice, an unusual step for the son of an earl; then moved to Kitsons in Yorkshire where he worked on rocket-powered torpedoes; and then in 1884 moved to Clarke, Chapman and Co., ship engine manufacturers near Newcastle, where he is head of their electrical equipment development.

The Newcastle East End F.C. is renamed Newcastle United F.C., following the demise of the Newcastle West End F.C. and East End's move to St James' Park, formerly West End's home, in the north east of England, on December 22, 1892.

Newcastle Badminton Club, today the world's oldest, forms in England on January 24, 1900.