It was on this day in history, December 4, 1952, the pea soup fog over the city of London turned deadly. 

I listen to This Day in History almost every day on my Echo (Alexa) and often find an event that I wish to know more about. A killer fog 69 years ago definitely caught my imagination. Here’s the story:

Smog in London was nothing new in 1952. London had suffered from poor air quality since the 13th century, shortening a lot of lives. It was often called fog, but almost always had involved particles in the air from centuries of coal-burning combined with weather conditions common to the British Isles.

Dickens wrote about it eloquently in his novel Bleak House.

“….Fog everywhere…Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.”

Jack the Ripper was said to have stocked his victims shrouded in thick fog. This however is a myth. It actually wasn’t that foggy on the nights of his murders in August through November 1888.

It was very foggy (smoggy) earlier in the year. On Thursday January 12, 1888, according to the Daily News, the intense smog-fog in London caused “…Several serious accidents, some of them resulting in loss of life…”

But that Thursday in 1952 began the worst air pollution event in the history of the United Kingdom. 

A high-pressure air mass stalled over the Thames River Valley. Then exceedingly cold air arrived suddenly from the west. This combination trapped the air over London in place. And what was that air like?

Because it was so bleeding cold, people were burning extra coal in their furnaces. This wasn’t quality coal either. The better-quality "hard" coals (such as anthracite) mined and collected in the UK were being exported to pay off World War II debts. The citizens of London were stuck with post-war domestic coal, which tended to be a low-grade, sulphurous variety (similar to lignite). It increased the amount of sulphur dioxide in the smoke. 

The same stuff was being pumped out of smokestacks at numerous coal-fired power stations in the Greater London area, including Fulham, Battersea, Bankside, Greenwich and Kingston upon Thames. The Battersea factory was known to be the worst.

You had the smoke, soot and sulfur dioxide from the power stations, along with other industries, along with car fumes (Car ownership was on the rise), along with increased consumer usage. And that heavy smog couldn’t go anywhere, held in place as if a giant dome was cupped over the city.

It was a perfect smog storm.

By the morning of December 5, there was a visible pall cast over hundreds of square miles.

The Great Smog of 1952, as it became known, was so thick and dense by December 7 that there was virtually no sunlight. Visibility was reduced to one meter (just over three feet) in the daytime. Pedestrians had to shuffle forward feeling for obstacles and curbs. 

Still, there was no panic. London was infamous for its “fog.” And post-war Brits, in general, were used to surviving tough times and minimizing complaints. The old “Keep Calm and Carry On” mentality.

But conditions only got worse.

Eventually, all transportation in the region came to a halt, but not before several rail accidents, including a collision between two trains near London Bridge. 

Visibility was even worse at night. Street lamps at the time were fitted with incandescent light bulbs, which gave no penetrating light onto the pavement for pedestrians to see their feet or even a lamp post. Fog-penetrating fluorescent lamps did not become widely available until later in the 1950s.

Then the worst effect of the smog started to become apparent: respiratory distress. That smog had nowhere to go except into the lungs of Londoners. Reports came in of humans and animals having difficulty breathing. Some vomited phlegm. One of the first noted victims was a prize cow that suffocated on December 5. 

Those who had the means and insight purchased "Smog masks" from chemists until supplies ran out. But most people didn’t have them. 

That weekend, thousands of people died in their sleep.

It is estimated that between December 4 and December 8, the smog killed anywhere from 4,000 to as many as 12,000 people. Most of the victims were very young or elderly or folks with pre-existing respiratory problems. Some 25,000 more people claimed sickness benefits in London during that period.

Finally on December 9, the smog blew away. 

In the aftermath, the British government gave more attention to environmental research, government regulation around pollution, and public awareness of the relationship between air quality and health. Parliament passed the Clean Air Act 1956, which tried to move the country towards “smokeless fuels.” 

Despite these measures, a similar smog ten years later killed approximately 100 Londoners.

There was another Clean Air Act passed in 1968. Both were consolidated into a new Clean Air Act in 1993. But air quality continued to be an issue in the highly populated island city. Reports estimate that up through 2015, more than 9,000 people in the British capital were dying prematurely each year due to dirty air. 

Since then, however, there is good news for air-breathers in London. Pollution has plunged with a 94% reduction in the number of people living in areas with illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide. The number of schools in such areas has fallen by 97%, from 455 in 2016 to 14 in 2019.

Many credit London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan. His administration instigated restrictions on “dirty vehicles,” not allowing them to enter the city center. The old diesel double-deckers were replaced with low-emission buses on the most-polluted routes. They stopped licensing diesel taxis and extended the amount of protected space for cycling, among other new initiatives. 

It appears to still be a work in progress, but you can breathe a little easier in London these days—if you don’t count the global pandemic, that is. -Sigh- 

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By the way, if you are a fan of Netflix’s show The Crown, you know that the Great Smog is a major event in season 1, episode 4. “Careful out there. It’s a real pea-souper!”

If you are a Dr. Who fan, the Great Smog is the setting for the audio play The Creeping Death (2019) starting David Tennant as the tenth Doctor.

The Great Smog of 1952 was creepy, alright! (And not the only one like it on our planet.)

What if that happened now, to you, where you live? Hmmm. Good fodder for a story!