ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows that the gas industry's lady demons and home service women mediated between the private and public worlds of domestic consumption and industrial production. It argues that by stressing women's domestic contributions, the home service women, and indeed the 'new feminists', reinforced gender differences, including the sexual division of labour. When compared to its rival, electricity, business historians and scholars of industrial design have often characterised the English gas industry as conservative and old-fashioned. Curiously, studies of the electrical industry have offered more positive assessments of the continued commercial success of the English gas industry. Although the gas managers continuously reiterated the ameliorative potential of gas technology, their fundamental interest was not social welfare, but increasing consumer demand for coal gas which resulted from the sale of appliances and consumers' dependence on utility services.
