The Deadly Smog That Choked London In 1952

Londoners were accustomed to polluted fog by the middle of the twentieth century. Coal burned in factories, railways, and home fireplaces had been fouling the air for decades, and London already had a colloquial name for its smoggy conditions: pea-souper. The noxious atmosphere was so mundane that when a highly hazardous smog hit the city in 1952, it didn’t immediately register as something out of the ordinary. The 1952 smog wasn’t London’s first encounter with foul air.

That week, a temperature inversion sealed London in like a lid. The cold air near the ground was trapped by a layer of warm air above it. There was little wind, so there was nowhere for the smoke and soot to go. So London was essentially under a blanket of pollution.

It was December and very cold, so people in London had to use more fuel just to keep themselves warm. But domestic fireplaces were big enough polluters in their own right, and all the coal burning simultaneously out of the city’s many chimneys added up to a lot of smoke. Even years after World War II, Britain was still far from abandoning coal, and many homes relied on it for heat.

But it wasn’t just homes; factories and coal-fired power plants also contributed large quantities of smoke. With the emissions from industry, electricity generation, and transport piling onto the domestic smoke already in the air, there wasn’t any one smokestack to blame. The Great Smog came from everywhere at once.

It’s said higher quality coal was being sold for a profit elsewhere while lower-quality, high-sulfur coal was left for domestic use. Lower quality coal burns much dirtier, so if true, it could well have worsened London’s air that winter.

On December 5, visibility rapidly decreased as the smog settled in. Accounts from the time describe the air as yellow-black, sulfurous, and simply dirty, and at times, individuals were said to have been able to see only a few meters. In some areas, entire roads were soon rendered almost impassable.

People said they had to feel their way along walls, curbs, fences, building fronts, because if you weren’t touching something, you might get lost. Crossing the street was risky if you couldn’t see the car coming. That’s how bad it was.

Transportation was also impacted. Bus speeds slowed, automobiles broke down or crashed, and all kinds of transport were delayed, but none really stopped. The trains underground were relatively unaffected, so even though surface traffic was essentially shut down, subway service continued more or less as usual. Truly the opposite of “as above, so below.”

Poor visibility also made it harder for ambulances to travel. There were even cases where they were unable to reach people in time. This was no small issue. Sometimes sick people had to seek alternative means of transport to get themselves to the hospital because the ambulance couldn’t get there quickly enough.

There was no way to avoid the smog. Fine particles and fog got in through windows, doors, and air vents. Reports indicate that people were having trouble seeing the stage or screen from where they sat because of the smog filling the cinema or theater. Sure you could get warm, but it wasn’t easy to hide from all the smoke.

One oft-quoted example is that during a performance of La Traviata at Sadler’s Wells, the show was called off midway as the smog inside the theater grew too thick for performers and the audience to see clearly.

People were arriving home covered in dirt, too. Bleah. There was soot everywhere: on skin, clothes, windows, on the sides of buildings, and there was a layer of grime on everything. Many sources of the time described it as having a foul smell, namely sulfur, rotten eggs, etc., though I don’t think every street smelled like that.

Even animals were affected: cattle at the Smithfield Show got seriously ill with respiratory problems, according to reports at the time, and several were said to have died or been put down. This was perhaps one of the most obvious indicators of the severity of the smog.

London hospitals also saw large increases in admissions for respiratory complaints, and excess mortality (deaths above the seasonal norm) was observed during and after the event. The elderly, young children, and individuals with preexisting cardiopulmonary disease were at highest risk. Many of these fatalities were caused by bronchitis, pneumonia, and cardiovascular problems.

There was no public health monitoring system in place to alert the citizens of a sudden surge in fatalities. Besides, Londoners were accustomed to the occasional heavy smog, and it was not considered at the time to be a crisis. It would take hospitals, coroners and registration offices to tally the scale of what had happened, because you couldn’t see the crisis unfolding.

The original estimates put the toll at about 4,000 excess deaths following the event, with the number of deaths spiking during the event and the subsequent days.

That original 4,000 estimate has since been revised upward by later research to somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 excess deaths. Excess deaths refer to the number of deaths that occur over and above what is normal for a given period of time. If we use that metric, then the actual loss of life may well have been much greater than those involved were aware of during the crisis itself.

Initially, health officials considered influenza to be the cause of the high death toll even after the smog lifted. However, subsequent research suggested that the flu could not explain such a dramatic increase in deaths.

A little fact-checking here. In The Crown (which was great), we see Venetia Scott, Winston Churchill’s secretary, get hit by a bus and die during the Great Smog. Her death is used as the impetus to get the Prime Minister moving on the issue. However, Venetia Scott never existed. Nor did the plot, nor the scene in which the Queen nearly fires Churchill because of the way he’s dealing with the smog.

It was difficult to ignore dirty air on such a scale, and calls for reform gained momentum in the following years, eventually resulting in the Clean Air Act of 1956. This legislation created smoke control areas, banned certain smoky fuels, and promoted the use of ‘cleaner’ fuel sources for heating purposes. The legislation did not outlaw coal entirely and it certainly wasn’t implemented the day after the smog. London still experienced significant pollution incidents after 1952 (such as in 1962) which demonstrates how the event served as a watershed moment, rather than a quick fix.

This content was created with the help of AI.