London Smog, December, 1952

13 comments to London Smog, December, 1952

• Roy Grubb

  April 11, 2011 at 4:25 pm · Reply

  These pictures don’t show the half of it. No photograph could, because you would see little but yellowish grey.

  As a small kid in London, I came home from school in the thickest fog I have ever seen. My grandmother came to collect me and we passed each other on the pavement (/sidewalk) no more the 4 feet apart without knowing it.

  I have been in incredibly polluted cities in China – Chung King and Beijing come to mind – but have never experienced anything as bad as London in the 40s and 50s until domestic burning of coal was prohibited.

  Roy

• Carole Ann

  April 15, 2011 at 3:50 pm · Reply

  Really love these pictures. Completely evocative. I remember smog in the 70s and being on a route master bus and the conductor having to walk in the front all down the Uxbridge Road from Hanwell to Hayes so it didn’t hit anything. I loved the magic and mystery of it and yes it had a peculiar grey/yellow quality
  Thanks for the great images.
  Carole Ann – West Londoner

• Mark

  April 19, 2011 at 5:20 pm · Reply

  In part this is why Downing Street is that weird black colour, from the wikipedia article:

  When builders examined the exterior façade, they discovered that the black colour visible even in photographs from the mid-nineteenth century was misleading; the bricks were actually yellow. The black appearance was the product of two centuries of pollution. To preserve the ‘traditional’ look of recent times, the newly cleaned yellow bricks were painted black to resemble their well-known appearance.

• Louise

  June 19, 2011 at 2:20 pm · Reply

  Of course, these photos actually show objects in the fog. At its worst you could barely see your hand in front of your face. I was in primary school and at school assembly the kids at the back of the hall couldn’t see the headmistress standing at the front. I skinned knees walking home because I didn’t see the kerb. The fog stank, our noses were full of black stuff and our clothes filthy at the end of the day. People died. Thank God for the Clean Air Bill banning coal fires.

• Chris

  June 23, 2011 at 1:22 pm · Reply

  Thank goodness for the clean air act of the 1950′s UK.

• Tony W

  August 25, 2011 at 10:30 am · Reply

  My wife to be and I spent every evening walking around London in that smog. We both developed coughs which in her case took a couple of years to clear up. Didn’t help that we both smoked. I was cycling home one evening on a road I had used all my school days, and I fell of my bike when I ran into the pavement on the WRONG side of the road. Visibility? In effect, nil

• Tony W

  August 25, 2011 at 10:32 am · Reply

  What’s a ‘moderation’?

• Jinx

  September 19, 2011 at 4:59 am · Reply

  People complain about SoCal smog, but never in my 50 years have I EVER been in smog like THAT!

  (And NO, the smog in other cities didn’t “migrate” there from LA, it’s just our CARB laws are VERY stringent, while places like Nevada really aren’t – yet!)

  Amazing pix!

• Peter Ceresole

  November 26, 2011 at 12:17 pm · Reply

  I’m horrified to realise how well I remember that smog. I was staying with a school friend, on the first floor of a house in South Kensington. There were traffic lights just below. They simply disappeared- not even a glow. And yes, it was absolutely filthy.

• Eric S. Smith

  December 3, 2011 at 8:50 pm · Reply

  With things like this in living memory, it’s all the more galling to hear blowhards decrying any and all environmental regulation as a Commie plot. It wasn’t “the genius of the Free Market” that got this mess cleaned up.

• TKA

  January 6, 2012 at 10:04 pm · Reply

  Eric, you are correct that the Free Market didn’t clean up this mess. You are also correct that all environmental regulations are not a “Commie plot”. Just be careful not to go to the other extreme and assume all regulations are good.

• Aaron Reuben

  February 2, 2012 at 6:57 pm · Reply

  Hi,
  I’m running a retrospective environmental piece concerning the benefits of environmental regulation. Could we embed one of your images in our web-post to highlight our discussion of the London Great Smog:

  Cheers
  -Aaron Reuben

  Managing Editor
  SAGE Magazine
  sagemagazine.org

  • Chris

    February 2, 2012 at 7:58 pm · Reply

    Sure, go ahead, Aaron