Smog and smoking chimneys

Smog (sometimes called London Smog) was a fact of life for those who lived in cities, towns and suburbs during the 50s and 60s. It was probably around long before that but I cannot speak from personal experience.

What was smog? There are surely some highly technical explanations but, basically, it occurred when too much fog and smoke from the millions of smoking house chimneys (most houses heated themselves with an open coal fire) came together to form an unbelievably thick blanket of smog; nothing like thick fog, umpteen times worse; the smell was strong and distinct, the pollution contained in it was high; I remember sucking in just one lungful through a white handkerchief – a dark yellow round stain was the result.  It was so hard to see where you were going that people routinely missed their houses as they walked home;  the lights on lampposts peeped out of the smog only when one was beneath them;  sound was deadened and the world was sometimes contained in a circle only an arm’s length wide.  Many people died – it is said that the great smog of 1952 killed 12,000 people.  ‘Back then’ many buildings were blackened by the smoke of home fires and industry – Nelson’s column in London was black and the first time that I saw it after it had been cleaned (along with many of the buildings around Trafalgar Square) it looked all wrong!  If you have never experienced smog, just be happy and don’t think that it is like thick fog – because it isn’t!