BEHIND THE HEADLINES
1952: The Great Smog
The worst fog in the history of the UK had some far-reaching effects, but for the people caught up in it, the challenge was just how to get through the day. At its worst, those who ventured out struggled to breathe. Even indoors there was little respite, as fog crept its way inside. It started on Friday 5 December after a period of prolonged cold had led people to burn more fuel than normal. Five great coalfired power stations – Battersea, Bankside, Fulham, Greenwich and Kingston upon Thames – poured smoke, hydrochloric acid, sulphur dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Domestic fires contributed to the mix with their use of ‘nutty slack’, a cheap fuel made of coal nuggets and coal dust. This had not been rationed as had other solid fuels, so its use had become widespread.
Ghastly coloured fogs were a familiar feature of London winters, and they were named for their tint: a ‘London particular’ after a murky brown-coloured Madeira wine, or a ‘pea-souper’ which was a pale green colour. The great pea-souper of 1952 took place among abnormal atmospheric conditions where there was little wind and an anticyclone settled over the city, trapping cold stagnant air below a layer of warm air. It was too thick to see far – in some cases you could not see your outstretched hand. The cold meant that people used more fuel, which added to the problem; the low visibility kept cars and other vehicles off the roads, so the air was not stirred by their movement.
By Saturday night the capital was clear of traffic except for buses crawling nose-to-tail back to their depots. The area for 20 miles around London also fogged, and Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Essex and Suffolk experienced the same weather albeit to a lesser degree.
Shipping on the Thames was brought
A TOTAL OF 12,000 DEATHS WERE ULTIMATELY BELIEVED TO BE RELATED TO THE GREAT SMOG
to a standstill. British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) passengers were taken by rail from Victoria to Bournemouth where weather conditions were better and their planes could take off. The Automobile Association warned their members that they could not help them because they would not be able to locate people who telephoned them after breaking down, and the ambulance service stopped driving around, out of concern that it might actually cause injury because of the terrible visibility.
Smog disruption
Sports events were cancelled. There was little indoor entertainment either as the smog seeped in, causing the abandonment of films, plays and concerts because stages and screens could not be seen. At night street lights barely penetrated the fog, so the only way to move was to shuffle along feeling for obstacles. One group of Londoners made use of the fog: criminals did a brisk trade under its cover. Thieves were able to erect ladders and burgle premises unobserved.
Sunday was a quiet day in the 1950s and most people stayed at home, just suffering the annoyance of not having a newspaper because the delivery vans could not get through the gloom. On Monday morning milkmen could not do their rounds, and people were additionally short of milk in their tea. The city tried to get back to work – underground trains were running, but nearly all buses were at a standstill, with serious road accidents happening as people ventured out in cars. The Uxbridge Road and Hillingdon Road roundabout had to be closed after 15 vehicles piled up in a crash. Two trains collided at Gordon Hill, luckily without injury.
Farmers taking their stock to Earl’s Court for the annual Smithfield Show found low visibility meant that it took many hours to drive around London by lorry. Cattle developed breathing difficulties in the putrid atmosphere; some died and others were put down because of their obvious distress.
Minor matters irritated. A lady wrote to The Times: “An increasing layer of moist grime on a polished table protested eloquently that I was paying a high price for my neighbours’ indulgence in nutty slack or some similar form of solid fuel.” She felt her reputation as a “good housewife” was besmirched because “clothes, linen, hangings were all begrimed”. Your London forebears mostly just kept calm and carried on, making light of the problem, but as winds came and the fog lifted on Tuesday 9 December, the human cost of the pollution was counted: some 4,000 deaths from respiratory conditions and accidents were recorded in London across the five days, and the continuing impact on people’s health meant that a total of 12,000 deaths were ultimately believed to be related to the Great Smog. Victims were the very young, the elderly and those who already suffered from respiratory conditions. This curse of fog was an ancient one in London, but the nation which had recently come out of the collective effort of the war resolved that now was the time to address it. Scientists and public policy analysts came together and the result was the 1956 Clean Air Act, which banned the use of smoky solid fuels in urban areas.
The replacement of electric trams with diesel-fuelled buses had not helped the atmosphere. The gradual ‘retirement’ of trams had been going on for two years when London’s last tram ran in the early hours of 6 July 1952 to New Cross depot, where it was bid a sad farewell. Cars and other internalcombustion vehicles had won the battle for the streets. Powerful road-haulage and motor-manufacturing lobbies had criticised trams for being inflexible and getting in the way of cars and lorries; now they finally had the roads to themselves.
A cunning plan
Newspaper readers were enthralled by tales of the well-planned robbery of a post office in Eastcastle Street just off Oxford Street in May. Seven masked men held up a post office van after boxing it in with two cars and driving off with it. They got away with £287,000 and were never caught, though later it was revealed that the mastermind was Billy Hill, the ‘Boss of Britain’s Underworld’ according to the title of his autobiography. It was the first of a new kind of crime that was to become more frequent in an increasingly prosperous Britain: the ‘project’, a meticulously planned operation by a ‘firm’ of criminals equipped with specialist skills.
The first UK singles chart was seen in the
pages of the New Musical Express this year. The NME had been launched earlier in 1952 to challenge the staid musicindustry magazine the Melody
Maker. It was launched by Percy Dickins and his partners who correctly judged that British music was in for an expansion. Dickins felt there would be advertising revenue to be gained from the publicity attracted by a pop chart. He therefore telephoned 20 record shops and asked them their ten top-selling songs, and aggregated them into a chart. The first number one was Here in My Heart by the American crooner Al Martino; it remained in the top position for nine weeks.
Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim opened at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal in November, in a play about eight characters trapped in a snowbound house, one of whom is a murderer. The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie toured the provinces before its West End opening at the Ambassadors Theatre. Audience members were asked at the end of the play not to spoil the surprise of the guilty party by revealing it to others. No one could predict that the play would have the longest run in theatre history, and is still going today over 60 years later. Agatha Christie, then at the height of her fame, also had two novels out this year. Meanwhile televisual entertainment for the young was taking off with a new star. A glove puppet called Sooty won the BBC’s Talent Night programme accompanied by his handler Harry Corbett with whom Sooty communicated by whispering in his ear. The puppet was yellow, but Harry put soot on his ears and nose so that he would show up better on a black-andwhite screen. The pair became regulars on the children’s show Saturday Special, and Sooty remains popular today.
Ooh flobbalob
Another children’s TV favourite was first screened this year. The Flower Pot Men were string puppets who lived in a garden behind the potting shed, and spoke their own language with their friend Little Weed. Bill and Ben were criticised in letters to the press for teaching tots to speak incorrect English, to which they responded: “Ooh flobbalob.”
Jad Adams is a writer and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Don’t miss his article on women’s suffrage on page 66