Selling the smokeless city: advertising images and smoke abatement in urban-industrial Britain, circa 1840–1960

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor, Jennifer Tucker, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on the first draft of this paper.

Notes

1. See, for example, Mosley, Chimney of the World; Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives; Thorsheim, Inventing Pollution; Uekoetter, Age of Smoke; Whitehead, State, Science and Skies.

2. Burke, Eyewitnessing; Rose, Visual Methodologies; Mirzoeff, How to See the World.

3. Burke, Eyewitnessing, 9–16.

4. A ‘Gallery’ feature has also appeared in the journal Environmental History since April 2003.

5. The phrase was coined by Lewis Mumford in Technics and Civilization, 156.

6. ‘Reign of Darkness,’ 85.

7. Mosley, Chimney of the World, part 1; Thorsheim, Inventing Pollution, chapters 4 and 5; Department of Energy and Climate Change, ‘Historical Coal Data.’

8. Lowe, ‘Tall Chimneys,’ 11–19; Mosley, Chimney of the World, 25–35; Mosley, ‘Fresh Air and Foul,’ 1–21.

9. Spencer, Manufactures of Lancashire, 48.

10. Corton, London Fog, 178–89; Mirzoeff, How to See the World, chapter 6; Danahay, ‘The Aesthetics of Coal,’ 3–18.

11. Black’s Guide to Manchester, 70.

12. Mosley, Chimney of the World, 18; Morton, Call of England, 144.

13. Mosley, ‘Fresh Air and Foul,’ 1–21; Mosley, ‘Home Fires,’ 196–223; Smith, ‘Noxious Vapours and Smoke,’ 513.

14. Marsh, Smoke, 264.

15. Mosley, Chimney of the World, 89–113; Thorsheim, Inventing Pollution, chapter 7.

16. ‘London Smoke,’ 5; Clinch, ‘Smoke Abatement,’ 2.

17. For example, see: Simon and Fitzgerald, The Smokeless City.

18. Mosley, ‘Home Fires,’ 206–10; Whitehead, State, Science and Skies, chapter 4; ‘Mr Therm,’ 1010; Boon, ‘The Smoke Menace,’ 57–88; Goodall, Burning to Serve, 207.

19. Hodgson, Eric Fraser, 19 and 30; Luckin, Questions of Power, 26.

20. Although a start has been made. See Clapp, Environmental History of Britain, chapter 10.

21. Committee on Air Pollution. Report, 8–10.

22. Clapp, Environmental History of Britain, 220–24; Bone, ‘Coal and Health,’ 3–6; Mackenzie, The Vital Flame, 65–70.

23. Although Britons soon slipped back into a ‘throwaway culture.’ See: Cooper, ‘Challenging the “Refuse Revolution.”’

24. Mosley, ‘The Home Fires,’ 210–16.

25. Orwell, ‘The Case for the Open Fire,’ 190–91.

26. Mass Observation, An Enquiry into People’s Homes, 136; PEP, Household Appliances, 125; Association for Planning and Regional Reconstruction, Housing Digest, 51.

27. PEP, British Fuel and Power, part 2.

28. Mosley, Chimney of the World, part 1.

29. Meller, Towns, Plans and Society, 68; Worpole, Here Comes the Sun, chapters 1 and 4; Labour Party, ‘Your Home,’ 4–9 and 14; Davis, Smoke Ran like Water, chapter 2.

30. But we should not overlook the fact that smokeless fuels, still derived from coal, did not wholly solve pollution problems, but shifted them to new sites of centralised production (gasworks and power stations). See Thorsheim, ‘Smokeless Fuels,’ 381–401; Sheail, Power in Trust, chapter 19.

31. Mosley, ‘Home Fires,’ 206–10; Goodall, Burning to Serve, 238–48.