FOG AND SMOKE
Just two hundred and forty years ago, Mr. John Evelyn, F.R.S., a
well-known writer on meteorology, sent a curious tract to King Charles
II., which was ordered to be printed by his Majesty. It was entitled
"Fumifugium," and dealt with the great smoke nuisance in London. I find
from the thesis that he had a very hazy idea of the connection between fog
and smoke; and no wonder, for it is only lately that the connection has
been fully explained.
We know that without dust-particles there can be no fog, and that smoke
supplies a vast amount of such particles. Therefore, in certain states of
the atmosphere, the more smoke the more fog. In Mr. Evelyn's day the fog,
which he called "presumptuous smoake," was at times so dense that men
could hardly discern each other for the "clowd." His Majesty's only sister
had complained of the damage done to her lungs by the contamination, and
Mr. Evelyn was disgusted at the apathy of the people to do anything to
remedy the nuisance. He deplored that that glorious and ancient city of
London should wrap her stately head in "clowds of smoake, so full of stink
and darknesse." He was of opinion that a method of charring coal so as to
divest it of its smoke, while leaving it serviceable for many purposes,
should be made the object of a very strict inquiry. And he was right. For
it is now known that fog in a town is intensified by much smoke.
In a city like London or Glasgow, where a great river, fed by warm streams
of water from gigantic works, passes through its centre, fogs can never be
entirely obliterated, for the dust-particles in the air (often four
millions and upwards in the cubic inch) will seize with terrible avidity
the warm vapour rising from the river. That is the main reason why fogs
cannot there be put down. Smoke is being consumed to a great extent; yet
we find particles of sulphur remaining, which seize the warm vapour and
form fogs dense enough to check all traffic. The worst form of city fogs
seems to be produced when the air, after first flowing slowly in one
direction, then turns on its tracks and flows back over the city,
bringing with it a black pall, the accumulated products of previous days,
to which gets added the smoke and other impurities produced at the time.
What irritated Mr. Evelyn was that, outside of London, the air was clear
when passengers could not walk in safety within the city. So vexed was he
about the contamination, that he made it the occasion of all the "cathars,
phthisicks, coughs, and consumption in the city." He appealed to common
sense to testify that those who repair to London soon take some serious
illness. "I know a man," he said, "who came up to London and took a great
cold, which he could never afterwards claw off again."
Mr. Evelyn proposed that, by an Act of Parliament, the nuisance be
removed; enjoining that all breweries, dye-works, soap and salt boilers,
lime-burners, and the like, be removed five or six miles distant from
London below the river Thames. That would have materially helped his
cause.
But there is more difficulty in the purification than he anticipated. Yet
there was pluck in the old man pointing out the killing contamination and
suggesting a possible remedy. He had the fond idea that thereby a certain
charm, "or innocent magick," would make a transformation scene like
Arabia, which is therefore "styl'd the Happy, attracting all with its gums
and precious spices." In purer air fogs would be less dense, breathing
would be easier, business would be livelier, life would be happier.
Few, I suppose, have laid their hands on this curious Latin thesis, or its
quaint translation, directing the King's attention to the fogs that were
ruining London. Since that time the city has increased, from little more
than a village, to be the dwelling-place of six millions of human beings,
yet too little improvement has been made in the removal of this fog
nuisance. King Edward's drive through London would be even more dangerous
on a muggy, frosty day than was Charles II.'s, when science was little
known.