Luminescent bacteria are fairly common and their glow was well known in the 19th century before massive amounts of artificial light made their rather faint ligh

Luminescent bacteria are fairly common and their glow was well known in the 19th century before massive amounts of artificial light made their rather faint light less noticeable. Another example can be found in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" where Marley's glowing ghost is compared to "a bad lobster in a dark cellar" as one way to know that food had gone off was to look for the telltale glow.