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Abstract
Many smog episodes occurred during the nineteenth century because of the steadily rising consumption of coal for industrial furnaces, commercial ovens and domestic hearths, but the few legislative efforts to abate black smoke proved ineffectual. It was only in 1956, and following the major London smog episode of 1952, that the government was finally forced into action and parliament approved the Clean Air Act. But two important elements of the 1956 legislation were key parts of an earlier campaign conducted by Alfred Fletcher between 1864 and 1896 and while he was working for the Alkali Inspectorate. The Inspectorate had expected black smoke to be added to the list of regulated noxious vapours but governments and parliament resisted. Access to Fletcher’s private diaries reveal how he remained a leading advocate for abatement of black smoke, and used his position as Chief Inspector from 1884 to conduct a multi-pronged campaign both inside and outside the Inspectorate that included promoting gas as a fuel and the technical evaluation of cleaner appliances.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Jonathan Aylen for his helpful comments on an early version and to the two reviewers whose comments have also improved the article. I want to thank in particular Mark Fletcher and Mike-Morley Fletcher for their continued support and the Fletcher family for access to Alfred Fletcher’s diaries and for permission to reproduce the photograph of Alfred Fletcher.
Notes
1 Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History (New York: Basic Books, 2016), pp. 15–16. Coal may have been burnt in the Bronze Age for cremations.
2 Ibid., pp. 25–26.
3 Ibid., pp. 24–25.
4 John Evelyn, Fumifugium or the Inconvenience of the Air and Smoke of London Dissipated (London, 1661). In London, coal was widely burnt by bakeries and in domestic hearths.
5 Ibid., pp. 15–18.
6 Stephen Mosley, The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester (Cambridge: White Horse, 2001), pp. 17–18.
7 Carlos Flick, ‘The Movements for Smoke Abatement in 19th-Century Britain’, Technology and Culture, 21/1 (1980), 29–50: 29.
8 Eric Ashby and Mary Anderson, The Politics of Clean Air (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 16–18.
9 Ibid., p. 18.
10 The phrase was used by the chemist Lyon Playfair. See Report of the Select Committee on Injury from Noxious Vapours (486), P.P. 1862, xiv, 93.
11 Third Annual Report of the Inspector appointed under the Alkali Act, P.P. 1867 (3792), 4.
12 Alkali Act 1863, P.P. 1863 (135).
13 Robert Angus Smith, ‘On the Air of Towns’, Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society, 10 (1859), 192–235.
14 Roy M. MacLeod, ‘The Alkali Acts Administration, 1863–84: The Emergence of the Civil Scientist’, Victorian Studies, 9 (1965), 85–112: 90.
15 First Report of the Inspector appointed under the Alkali Act, P.P. 1865 (3460), xx.
16 Alkali Act (1863) Perpetuation Act 1868, P.P. 1867–68 (153); Alkali Act (1863) Amendment Act, P.P. 1874 (99); Alkali, etc., Works Regulation Act 1881, P.P. 1881 (186).
17 Throughout this article, I have used smog rather that fog (except in quotations) to denote all black smoke episodes, reflecting the modern scientific understanding.
18 The Times, 12 December 1873, p. 7.
19 Eric Ashby and Mary Anderson, The Politics of Clean Air (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 55.
20 Ibid., p. 55.
21 Ibid., p. 55.
22 Ashby and Anderson, Clean Air, p. 63.
23 Charles Dickens, Bleak House (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005), p. 42.
24 Ibid., p. 27.
25 Stuart Hylton, A History of Manchester (Chichester: Phillimore & Co., 2003), p. 149.
26 Peter Reed, Acid Rain and the Rise of the Environmental Chemist in Nineteenth-Century Britain. The Life and Work of Robert Angus Smith (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), p. 173.
27 See Peter Brimblecombe, The Big Smoke (London: Routledge, 1988), Eric Ashby and Mary Anderson, The Politics of Clean Air (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), Tim Smedley, Clearing the Air (London: Bloomsbury, 2019) and Beth Gardiner, Chocked. Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2019).
28 The author has been given access to the private diaries held by the Fletcher family.
29 Fletcher Pedigree (Fletcher family).
30 Lavington became a member of the Society of Arts in 1847. Entry for 25 March 1847 (Fletcher Diaries).
31 Stephen K. Jones, Brunel in South Wales, Volume 2: Communications and Coal (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), pp. 142 and 154.
32 It is interesting to note that for his work during 1847 Alfred was paid £130 17s 6d before tax.
33 Leslie Stephens, rev. I. Gratten-Guinness, ‘Augustus De Morgan’, ODNB.
34 Michael Stanley, ‘Thomas Graham’, ODNB.
35 Frank A.J.L. James, ‘George Fownes’, ODNB. Later in 1855, and following Graham resignation to become Master of the Mint, Williamson was appointed to the chair of chemistry in addition to his responsibility in the Birkbeck Laboratory.
36 This situation did not change in Britain until the late 1860s or early 1870s.
37 In February 1852, Dr Alexander Williamson proposed Fletcher for membership of the Chemical Society and his election was confirmed the next month. Fletcher was elected a Fellow of the Chemical Society in December 1867.
38 See James C. Whorton, The Arsenic Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
39 Letter from William Hinds, M.D. of Birmingham, Medical Times and Gazette, 14 February 1857, p. 177.
40 Tal Golan, Laws of Men and Laws of Nature. The History of Scientific Expert Testimony in England and America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 82–89.
41 Chancery Court C33/1096, p. 1109. 11 June 1863 (National Archives). Reference is made to an appeal to the House of Lords but no record has been found.
42 ‘The Air of Manchester’, Manchester Guardian, 2 November 1844, 5.
43 Robert Angus Smith, ‘On the Air of Towns’, Quarterly Journal of the Chemical Society, 10 (1859), 192–235: 232.
44 Transfer of the Alkali Inspectorate to the Local Government Board was enacted through the Public Health Act of 1872.
45 Peter Reed, ‘The Alkali Inspectorate 1874–1906: Pressure for Wider and Tighter Pollution Regulation’, Ambix, 59 (2012), 131–151.
46 Reed, Acid Rain, p. 14. Angus Smith had recommended Fletcher as his successor to the Local Government Board. Also, as with Angus Smith, Fletcher was appointed an Inspector under the Rivers Pollution Act of 1876.
47 Twenty-First Report of the Inspector appointed under the Alkali, &c Works Regulation Act 1881, PP (C. 4461), pp. 5–6. The register shows 85 works (all alkali works) in 1864 but 1420 works (works in several sectors) in 1884.
48 In June 1877, Fletcher had visited Wilson’s lead works in Sheffield to understand their approach to smoke washing and fume collection from their lead smelters, and he had visited copper works around Swansea on numerous occasions to understand the damage from copper smoke.
49 A major smog event had occurred in London during the winter of 1879–80 resulting in many deaths.
50 John Ranlett, ‘The Smoke Abatement Exhibition of 1881’, History Today, 31/11 (1981), 10–13: 10.
51 Ibid., p. 12.
52 ‘Smoke Abatement: Its Methods and Results, Chemical and Physical. A Critical Exposition and Discussion of the Recently-published Jurors’ Reports and Tabulated Tests at the Smoke Abatement Exhibition, South Kensington’, The Sanitary Record, 15 February 1883, pp. 1–34.
53 Ranlett, ‘Smoke Abatement Exhibition’, p. 10.
54 Stephen Mosley, ‘The “Smoke Nuisance” and Environmental Reformers in Late Victorian Manchester,’ Manchester Regional History Review, 10 (1996), 40–47: 44.
55 British Patent 1888/889, Improvements in Stoves for Heating Air.
56 The Times, 5 January 1888, p. 3.
57 Alfred E. Fletcher, ‘On Noxious Vapours and Town Smoke, with Suggestions on House Warming’, Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, XIX (1888), 297–308.
58 Ibid., p. 299.
59 Ibid., p. 300.
60 It was not until the Clean Air Act 1968 that dark smoke was defined as any smoke darker than Ringelmann chart 2.
61 Fletcher, ‘Noxious Vapours’, 306–308.
62 Alfred E. Fletcher, ‘The Present State of the Law Concerning the Pollution of Air and Water’, Journal of the Society of Arts, XXXVI (1888), 567–581.
63 Ibid., p. 578.
64 Manchester as It Is (Manchester: Love and Barton, 1839), 26; Robert Angus Smith, ‘What Amendments Are Required in the Legislation Necessary to Prevent the Evils Arising from Noxious Vapours and Smoke?’ Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1876): 518.
65 Manchester Guardian, 7 June 1843; and Smoke Abatement League Annual Report 1898.
66 John Leigh, Coal-Smoke: Its Nature, and Suggestions for Its Abatement (Manchester: John Heywood, 1883), pp. 7–8.
67 Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association Annual Report, (1876), p. 9.
68 Exhibition Review, 22 April 1882. National Society for Clean Air Archives, Brighton.
69 ‘The Prevention of Smoke in Towns, Manchester Meeting’, The Manchester Guardian, 9 November 1889, p. 5.
70 Ibid., p. 5.
71 ‘The Congress of Hygiene’, The Times, 11 August 1891, p. 8.
72 ‘The Hygiene Congress’, The Manchester Guardian, 12 August, 1891, p. 8.
73 Alfred E. Fletcher, ‘The Means at our Disposal for Preventing the Emission of Smoke from Factories and from Dwelling House’, Transactions of the Seventh Annual Congress on Hygiene and Demography (1892), pp. 28–37.
74 Publication of his paper was accompanied by the tabulation of chimney gases from a number of different firms in which the data included composition of chimney gases and make of furnace.
75 Alfred E. Fletcher, ‘The Means at our Disposal for Preventing the Emission of Smoke from Factories and from Dwelling House’, Transactions of the Seventh Annual Congress on Hygiene and Demography (1892), p. 35. This was the committee set up by the Manchester and Salford Noxious Vapours Abatement Association that Fletcher chaired.
76 Ibid., pp. 36–37.
77 ‘The Hygiene Congress’, The Manchester Guardian, 12 August, 1891, p. 8. The Local Government Board was responsible for the Alkali Inspectorate and for policies affecting local authorities.
78 ‘Smoke Abatement’, The Manchester Guardian, 21 July 1896, p. 5.
79 Unfortunately, it has not been possible to locate a copy of the report.
80 ‘British Institute of Public Health’, The Manchester Guardian, 25 July 1896, p. 8.
81 Reed, Acid Rain, p. 173.
82 Ibid., 173. See Michelle L. Bell, Devra L. Davis and Tony Fletcher, ‘A Retrospective Assessment of Mortality from the London Smog Episode of 1952: The Role of Influenza and Pollution’, Environmental Health Perspectives, 112/1 (January 2004), 6–8.
83 The chair was Sir Hugh Beaver, brewer and civil engineer, who chaired a number of government bodies. See Norman Kipping, rev. Christine Clark, ‘Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver’, ODNB.
84 The episode is commemorated by the Donora Smog Museum.
85 The City of London (Various Powers) Bill was approved in July 1954, four months before publication of the Beaver Report.
86 Members of Parliament are able to draft bills but they have to go to a ballot with the winner allocated debating time in Parliament. Few Private Member’s Bills reach the statute book.
87 Reed, Acid Rain, p. 174.
88 Ashby and Anderson, Clean Air, p. 199.
89 Ibid., p. 117.
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Peter Reed
Peter Reed is retired and an independent researcher living in California having worked for 23 years for the museums in Liverpool (UK). He has written widely on nineteenth century science and technology, in particular chemistry and chemical industry, and the impact of industry on the environment and on health. His most recent publication is ‘George E. Davis (1850–1907): Transition from Consultant Chemist to Consultant Chemical Engineer in a Period of Economic Pressure’, Ambix 67, no. 3 (2020): 252–270. He is currently co-authoring (with Peter Morris) a biography of Henry Enfield Roscoe, the Manchester chemist and educational reformer.
Correspondence to: Peter Reed. Email: [email protected].