In 1960, i.e. sixty years ago, the Kattwyk Coking Plant prepared a special
medal in memory of William Lindley. On the obverse there is a bust of William
Lindley with the inscription:
HAMBURGERGAS (Gas of Hamburg, in the upper part) and WILLIAM LINDLEY, ERBAUER DES ERSTEN
HAMBURGER GASWERKS (W.Lindley, constructor of the first gasworks in Hamburg, in in the lower part). There is a large inscription on the
reverse: HGW KOKEREI KATTWYK 1960 (Hamburger Gasworks, Coking Plant, Kattwyk 1960).
Collection: Societas Lindleiana
The commemoration involved the opening of a new coking plant in an industrial
district of Hamburg, opened in 1960. The new coking plant was short-lived. It
was extinguished in 1981 and was demolished a year later.
In August 1844, the foundation stone laying ceremony for the construction of the first gas coking plant at Grasbrook was held. A year later, the first public gas lanterns to illuminate Hamburg's main streets with coal gas were introduced. In the fall of 1845, there was such a large flood that the new gas facilities were unusable. A new building was needed. “It was taken over by the English engineer William Lindley, who was also responsible for building a modern water supply in Hamburg. The gas lanterns burned again at the end of 1846: 2020 in numbers. The brightness of the streets made the gas plant so popular that its image adorned the backs of playing cards, "writes Sasha Disko-Schmidt in the text Gasversorgung für die moderne Stadt (Gas supply a modern city).
Source:https://geschichtsbuch.hamburg.de/epochen/industrialisierung/gasversorgung-fuer-die-moderne-stadt/
Kattwyk, together with Altona, found itself within borders of Hamburg in 1937. Currently, this name is connected with the unusual Kattwykbrücke drawbridge over the southern Elbe for rail and road traffic. A 290-meter-long bridge connects Moorburg with the eastern Kattwyk peninsula, which belongs to the Elbe Hohe Schaar and Wilhelmsburg islands.
On 7-13 April 2014, four members of the Lindley family from Germany, Switzerland and Scotland, along with the President of Societas Lindleiana and his wife, received an invitation to the CATEC W- ater Technologies Exhibition and Conference, organized in Baku by Azersu OJSC (State water supply Company, open joint-stock company). Azersu organized us a wonderful program, through which we were able to not only learn about the history of the Republic, the city and the great changes made by Presidents Heydar Aliyev and Ilham Aliyev, but also see Shollar, a magic place where he William H. Lindley found the source of drinking water for Baku.
Group employees of Azersu with guests of the Lindley family( from left to right: Manaf Suleymanov, Xadija Abdullayeva, Ryszard Żelichowski, Hanna Żelichowska, Alexander Caspar, Tasognov Abdulbagi, Karin Deubner, Hijran Aliyeva-Sztrauch, Catharina Porter, Eugen Deubner and Shakir Mammadov. In the background the monument of H. Tagiyev w Shollar).
On July 23, 1881,
William Heerlein Lindley, authorized by his father, signed a contract with the
Warsaw Magistrate for the execution of sewage and water supply plans and to
supervision of their construction. Agreement between the Magistrate and William
H. Lindley is deposited at the state archive in Warsaw and consists of 42
paragraphs and additional points regarding the relationship between engineers
with the city authorities. The contents of the contract was revealed to the residents of Warsaw only in October with the publication of details in
"Technical Review" monthly.
William Heerlein Lindley in Warsaw
The citizen
committee for the construction of sewage and water supply system of the city of Warsaw was gathered two days
later. As "Kurier Warszawski" wrote on 26 July: "The first
meeting [of Committee] was held yesterday under the leadership of the city
President in the presence of Mr.
Lindley, the son. The President presented the main points of the
contract". For "supervision
and executing of works on the construction of sewage and waterworks" the
municipal authorities were obliged to pay Lindley annual remuneration of
equivalent of 2000 Pound Sterlings (paid quarterly in Rubles).
Public place
William
Lindley-father did not come to Warsaw to sign the contract, officially due to
the illness. In reality, because two years earlier he retired and withdrew from
undertaken obligations making a place for his successor, his eldest son. From
all his rights and obligations resulting from the contract with the Warsaw
Magistrate he resigned on August 26, 1881.
With signing of the contract the uncertain situation in Warsaw concerning the fate of this great project finally came to an end. Tsar Aleksander II, who died on March 13, 1881, in a bomb assault directed by the Polis anarchists, was succeeded by his son, Alexander III. In his inaugural speech (manifesto of 14/2 March) he promised “to follow the footsteps of his father and finish all what he began". In the case of Warsaw, the tsar kept his promise and signed relevant documents enabling the construction of local sewage and modern water supply system. The works could have been started, but it took five long years before the inhabitants of Warsaw could enjoy filtered water.
On March 14, Jakub Lewicki, the Masovian Voivodeship Conservator of
Monuments, informed that the Water Tower of the Polfa Tarchomin Pharmaceutical
Works was registered as a historical monument.
The water tower building was
erected in the complex of pharmaceutical plants in Tarchomin, on the premises
of Ludwik Spiess' plants nationalized after World War II. In 1957, the final project of the tower's crowning by Ing.K. Bohatyrewicz, was
developed by the BIPROFARM company.
The Tarchomin Water Tower, present day
Phot. Małgorzata Łoś
For more photographs of the tower visit:
Małgorzata Łoś, https://wiezecisnien.eu/mazowieckie/warszawa_polfa/
We have received the very sad news of the death of Alexander Caspar, one of the oldest descendants of William H. Lindley.
Alexander Caspar with wife Beatrice (on the left) and Hanna Żelichowska
in Blackheath (2015)
Alexander Walter Horst Caspar (6 April 1934-26 February 2021), was the great-grandson of W.H. Lindley and the grandson of his daughters Julia Fanny Elizabeth and Robert Boveri. He spent his childhood in Germany and worked in Swiss banks. There he met his wife Beatrice Spotti, with whom he has two daughters.
He showed a deep interest in the history of the family and was an outstanding source of knowledge about their many connections with famous European families.
Alexander Caspar's grandmother, Julia Fanny, stayed with her father, W.H. Lindley in Warsaw in 1901.
Alexander Casper visited our city with his wife in 2006, took part in family reunions, incl. Baku and London (2015), where a memorial plaque on the Lindley family home was unveiled.
Alexander Caspar and the family (from left:) wife Beatrice, sister Ursula (in the background) and Heinke Peschke with Karin Deubner
Alexander Caspar's family has long musical traditions, many of its members played different instruments. This tradition is continued by the youngest daughter Julia, a talented Swiss violinist.
With his passing, a very important chapter in the history of the Lindley family has been closed. He was a living link between the distant past and the present. I owe him a lot of invaluable information about the past. It is regrettable that the epidemic took our time to continue these fascinating journeys into the times of the pioneers of civilization's progress at the time.
May He rest in peace.
Hanna and Ryszard Żelichowscy, in the name of Societas Lindleiana
February 2021
In the history of Warsaw, the capital of the liquidated Kingdom of Poland, he has been assigned the ungrateful role of the military president of Warsaw. He held this function as a major general of artillery in the Russian army in the years 1875-1892. He liked Warsaw and stayed with it for the rest of his life. He died on August 23, 1902. His character was viewed positively by Poles from the very beginning. The Monument to Starynkiewicz at the Filter Station and the square bearing his name are the only commemorations from the period of the Russian partition preserved in Warsaw, and his grave in the Orthodox cemetery in Wola is under the care of the capital MPWiK S.A.
He became famous for his responsibility and honesty. His out-of-pocket
payments to the municipal treasury for damages caused by improper investment
purchases have become legendary. During the years of his term in office, there
were great investments in infrastructure, including the construction of water
and sewage systems, the launch of the first public horse-drawn tram line, the opening
of a large Bródno cemetery and the construction of a new gas plant in Wola.
Without diminishing the merits of Starynkiewicz in building the largest investment in Warsaw - water supply and sewage systems - the Russian sources unknown to the then national journalists reveal that it could only be possible thanks to the successful appeals to Tsar Alexander II and Alexander III by two Russian governors-generals - Paweł Kotzebue and Piotr Albedyński - placed higher in the hierarchy of military power administering Warsaw than the provisional president!
Literature:
Sokrates Starynkiewicz, Dziennik 1887-1897, PWN, Warszawa 2001.
Ryszard Żelichowski, Lindleyowie. Dzieje inżynierskiego rodu, Biblioteka Societas Lindleiana, t. I-III, Warszawa 2019.