The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-03 00:00:00

LONDON SMOKE.*

All those who have experienced the depressing effects
of a November day, and have seen the atmosphere with-
out a moment's warning put on the changeable com-
plexion of a very bad bruise, and then resolve itself into
a dull, leaden, hopeless hue, for the rest of the day, can
readily understand the fixed belief of the Parisian that
in that month Cockneys give themselves up to suicide,
and leap in a constant stream from London-bridge. In-
deed, a countryman from the breezy South Downs, or
from any country ♦illage where the air " recommends
itself nimbly to the senses," may well feel his heart sink
within him as he looks up in vain for the blue sky, and
sees nothing but that solemn gray canopy of vapour
which sits like an incubus en the whole town.
It may be said that it is unfair to take a November
fog as offering any speeinten of the atmospheric impuri-
ties in the midst of which we live. It may be so, but
we look upon fogs as providential inflictions, which at
certain times in the year seize for our special edification,
as it were, the offending elements, and exhibit them un-
der our very eyes and noses, in order to show us what
filth we are continually throwing into the air, and which
as continually returns, although in not quite so demon-
strative a manner.
Smoke wa have always with us. If we look out on
a fine summer's day through the louvre boards at the
top of the Crystal Palace for a view of tho great metro-
polis, we naturally exclaim, " I see it ; there is the
smoke ;" indeed, any picture of London without its dim
canopy of soot would be as unrecognizable as would a
portrait of Pope, Hogarth, or Cowper without their well-
known headgear.
_ _

This black and heavy cloud is supported by the 500,000
or 600,000 columns of smoke that arise from the 400,000
houses of London. In it we behold tie great aerial
coalfield, which contains annually no less than 200,000
tons of fuel that escapes from u-4 up our chimneys.
Escapes, did we say S Oh that it did, and that we never
heard or saw more of it ; but smoke, a like chicken, still
returns to roost.

We do not allude to "those horrid blacks" that dance
and waltz before our very eyes, and then maliciously
plump down upon the ample page of some fine edition,
or " squat" deliberately upon the most delicate distance
of a sketch by Copley Fielding or Cox, but those finer
blacklets that invisibly permeate the air. If we look at
any fracture through which a draught penetrates, a
cracked window or a shrunken skirtingboard, we shall
find that the edges are ragged, with a fine fringe
of soot pointing towards the fireplace ; this fact
alone is enough to demonstrate that the air is
charged both inside and outside our houses with a vast
amount of infinitely divided carbon. If it is deposited
in this manner by the mere friction of passing any ob-
ject, we may imagine what irritation it must occasion to
the human lungs, into which it is sucked 30 times in the
minute, converting them, as it were, into a temporary
coalscuttle, out of which we are perpetually compelled
to shovel the obnoxious intruder with a cough.
The effect upon vegetable life is still more striking ;
the palm, which annually throws off its great-coat of
soot, is the only tree which will flourish in London.
Young wives fresh from the country in the summer-time]
beguile themselves with the idea that they will snatch a
recollection of home every morning by a view of the I
blooming geraniums and rose-trees in the balcony. Alas±
in a month's time you shall see the debris of smutty stalks
and melancholy flower-pots in the back court, and she
never tries the experimen tagain. If vegetation grows black
our children grow white, and perish in far greater numb, rs
than theywould doin purer air. Life suffering thus, under
the dominion of smoke, what shall we say of fabrics of
all kinds, furniture, &c., which have not the capacity to
throw it off ? Families who have a town and country
experience have only to compare their washing bills to
perceive how enormously a residence in the former aug-
ments them. The loss to Londoners from this source
alone must amount to millions sterling in the course of
the year. But every article that is capable of being
spoilt by the most tenacious of all floating pigments
suffers alike, and in an incredibly short time tones down
to the prevailing leaden hue.
Five centuries ago the very condition to which the
smoke nuisance has brought us was foretold, and attempts
were made to avert it. Until the time of Edward 11.
London used only wood for fuel, drawn from the neigh-
bouring forests. In this reign, however, coal began to
be imported from Newcastle, and, the effects of the
smoke speedily showing themselves, Parliament in 1316
petitioned the King to prohibit its use in London, on
the ground of its being a public nuisance; whereupen he
ordered all who burnt seaborne coal to be mulcted, and
on a seconl offence to have their furnaces demolished.
Like most unnecessarily severe orders, however, it
speedily fell into abeyance, and the evil from that time
has been going on apace. At the Restoration there were
only 200,000 chaldrons imported ; in 1775 500,000 ar-
rived ; a quantity which had increased to 900,000 at
the beginning of the present century, and last year up-
wards of 4,000,000 tons were received in the metropolis
by land and sea.

"Things when they are at their worst generally
mend," says the old proverb. It required, however, a
great deal of apparently hopeless agitation of the smoke
question in Parliament to make that slowly-moved body
entertain the idea of removing the nuisance by a public:
act, and it was not until last autumn that the measure
now under review came into operation. According to
this act no furnaces employed in the metropolis, with
certain exceptions to be mentioned presently, are to he
used without being so constructed as to burn their own
smoke, under a penalty of sot less than 4.0.4. and not
more than 51., while for a second offence King Ed-
ward's punishment of "demolition" is almost equalled
by the fine of 101., "and for each succeeding conviction
a sum double the amount of the penalty imposed for the
last succeeding conviction." As a considerable portion of
the penalty inflicted goes to the informer, it may be
readily imagined how narrowly the 6,500 furnace chim-
neys which come under the act are watched.
The smoke-producing districts lie almost entirely over
the water, in the parishes of Lambeth, Bermondsey,
Rotherhithe, and the borough of Southwark. Here lie
the greater portion of the factories—such as those of
ta.n,iers, bone-boilers, brewers, saw-mills, flour-mills,
distillers, and engineers, whose wealthy proprietors, be-
fore the passing of this act, were in the habit of deluging
the town with the densest smoke, while they retired
themselves every evening with the most philosophic in-
difference to their country villas, far away from its bale-
ful influence.

Nothing can be more satisfactory than the working of
this act. You may steam it many times up and down
between Westminster and London-bridge and see the
tall chimneys len the Southwark bank standing idle in
the air. Upon its first passing its utter and early
failure was predicted, but the Home Secretary is not the
man to let a measure fail in his hands ; and, people
having found this out, are with extraordinary celerityoi
complying with its provisions, for neglecting which y
31 convictions have as yet taken place, while 78 chim-
neys have been inspected preparatory to their owners
being summoned for a nuisance.
One would have imagined that the proved gain to
the manufacturer of 12 per cent. on the amount of
coals consumed by either Jukes's, Hazeldine's, or
Hall's smoke-consumiag furnace would have been suffi-
cient to induce their adoption without the interference
and coercion of the law ; but such has not yet proved to
be the case in an considerable degree. The advanced and
more enlightened manufacturers—such as Truman, Han-
bury, Buxton, and Co., the great brewers, and Price
and Co., the patent candle-makers, indeed, adopted
smoke-consuming furnaces long before the passing of the
act, and the latter company have introduced them into
their great factory on the banks of the Mersey, near
Liverpool. It is not our purpose here to enter into any
account of the different smoke-consun4ng furnaces which
have lately been patented, and it wiil be sufficient to
state that the principle of all those in general use is the
same. By the action of moveable furnace bars a thin
stratum of coal is continually pushed under the fire, and
of course all the smoke has to se lend through the in-
candescent mass, and is consuls:Led in its pass ige.
Although this plan entirely meets the requirements of the
act, yet it cannot be concealed that it does not consume
the carburetted hydrogen, the carbonic oxide, and the
various hydro-carbons—all of which escape in the form of
thin unindictable vapour, of a highly obnoxious character.
We ought to be able to adjust the quantity of oxygen to
the quantity of disengaged gases requiring its presence
to produce combustion in the furnace as easily as we do '
in a moderator lamp, where the slightest motion of a
screw converts the angry and lampblack-giving flame
into a pure white light. Attempts have been made, we
believe to produce such furnaces, but we know not with
what success.
The second clause of the act provides that all steam-
boats plying above London-bridge shall have their fur-
naces so constructed as to consume their own smoke. At
first sight one certainly cannot see why the unfortunate
people on the banks of the river below bridge should be
condemned to wear out a sooty existence by reason of this
arbitrary demarcation of the stream ; indeed, we feel
strongly inclined to think that the framers of the act must
halsolagiarised this ideafrom the announcement generally
posted 13Pon the paddlebox, of "No smoking allowed
accorded to le
abaft the f "
ennel west-enders, like cabin passengers,
this distinctiZe
being supper '
to demand an exemption which is not
London- bridge demand
people. The reason urged for
which unfurl such ;ilithat. ocean-going steamers never pass
allowed to escape freep we are at a los,
wtoilkthoe
tloWhy these leviathans of passage,
nghrennants of smoke, should
the Bride are forced to burn* W.
penny boats are paunced
their furnaces, but the magniacenTt he Bridegroom and
anthracite coal or to alter
Waterman No. 3, that plies betwe'estle
steamers may do as they like ; and Dundee or Ostend
more absurdly,
London-bridee
Woolwich, mass f away as merrily neerford and
until it passes under it Pleases
must cease to smoke as suddenly 'as but thee. it
gentleman in a train, when the any
10,uti11,
guard pops his inquiring nose in at theagesiendow.
Perhaps Lord Palmerston has given the west-endr the
best of it by water as a compensation for their euffeerei
by land, fir the pedestrian passing by the Penitentiaryn
g 9
is surprised to see the chimneys on the Lambeth side,
between Westminster and Vauxhall bridges, stainino the air with smoke as they did of old. These belong to
glassworks and potteries, which are especially exempted
from the operations of this act ! How long such ob-
noxious exceptions are to remain and abuse the patience
of the public is a question which, perhaps, the House
Secretary can best answer.
Since the six thousand and odd chimney shafts cf
the metropolis have been put under the surveillance
of informers and policemen, who watch their tops
as a terrier would a rathole, the air has become 1
sensibly purer on the south side of the river. It
cannot be supposed, however, that the total sill-pees.
eion of smoke in all manufacturers' chimneys will
have more than a partial effect in freeing the town