London Fog by Christine Corton – the history of the pea-souper

It killed Londoners in droves, and inspired writers and artists from Melville to Monet: an atmospheric exploration of pollution in the capital

For centuries, London has been known to out-of-towners as the “smoke” or the “big smoke”. The Thames basin, surrounded by low hills, has always been prone to mist. As early as the medieval period this was made worse by domestic fires burning wood and “sea-coal” which was brought by boat from Newcastle. Elizabeth I proclaimed herself to be “greatly grieved and annoyed with the taste and smoke of sea-coales”. In 1661, John Evelyn complained that sea-coal had turned London into “hell upon earth”. Evelyn’s “glorious and antient city” was often shrouded in “clowds of smoake and sulphur, so full of stink and darknesse”. But his far-sighted proposal to move industry outside the city and to create a green belt of aromatic plants and hedges was ignored, and in the coming years, as London expanded to become the largest metropolis the world had ever seen, the city’s fogs grew steadily worse.

By the beginning of the 19th century, some fogs lasted a week and were so dense you could not read during the day, even by a window. The fog made people’s eyes smart and caused breathing difficulties. A tombstone in Kensal Green Cemetery commemorates “LR Who died of suffocation in the great fog of London 1814”. By the 1830s, the city’s population was two million and still rising. Not only was every house heated by coal but London was also a major industrial centre, and firms producing everything from beer to chemicals all added to the noxious fumes in the city’s air.

Continue reading...