December 5, 1952: The Great Smog of London

December 5, 1952: London is hit by the deadliest smog in human history.

London is known for its fog, adding to the atmosphere of books, movies and TV shows set there. There is a brand of clothing named London Fog. Stories involving the fictional Sherlock Holmes and the very real Jack the Ripper tend to be shrouded in fog.

In 1967, when the producers of the Batman TV series wanted to do a 3-episode arc parodying the era's "Swinging London," they renamed the city Londinium (the ancient Roman name for it), and the villains were felonious sibling aristocrats, Lord Marmaduke Ffogg (played by Rudy Vallée with an accent even more ridiculous than Dick Van Dyke's in Mary Poppins) and Lady Penelope Peasoup (played by Glynis Johns, who was also in Mary Poppins, and was, at least, English).

But London was also the world's 1st truly industrial city, which led to it not only becoming the biggest city in the world by the mid-19th Century, but also to the production of pollution on a scale never seen before. "Smog" is a portmanteau of "smoke" and "fog," and the city has long been called "The Smoke" or "The Big Smoke" by people from elsewhere in England.

And the seat of the British Commonwealth, formerly the British Empire, had been hit hard by smog before: 780 dead in 1873; 2,200 in 1880; 779 in 1892; 800 in 1948. (In some cases, exact numbers can't be reached, based on symptoms.) And it didn't smell too good, either: 1858 was called "The Year of the Big Stink."

A period of unusually cold weather, combined with an "anticyclone" and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants, mostly arising from the use of coal, to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday to Tuesday, December 5 to 9, then dispersed quickly when the weather changed.

The smog caused major disruption by reducing visibility and even penetrating indoor areas, far more severely than previous smog events, called "pea-soupers." Government medical reports in the weeks following the event estimated that up to 4,000 people had died as a direct result of the smog, and 100,000 more were made ill by the smog's effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater, with estimates of between 10,000 and 12,000 deaths.

The Great Smog was many times worse than anything the city had ever experienced before: It is thought to be the worst air pollution event in the history of the United Kingdom, and the most significant, for its effects on environmental research, government regulation, and public awareness of the relationship between air quality and health. It led to several changes in practices and regulations, including the Clean Air Act 1956.

But that Act had not yet been implemented in December 1956, when another smog killed 1,000 people. Another 400 died in the long and especially cold Winter that began in December 1962, and another 160 in December 1991.

Certainly, when it came to deadly smog, London was not alone: New York would lose 260 in 1953, 405 in 1963, and 168 in 1966. But the American city best known for smog is Los Angeles. On July 26, 1943, the smog in L.A. was so bad, people began calling the police, thinking that the Japanese were conducting chemical warfare as part of their effort in World War II. The Japanese military never developed anything like that, but America didn't know that at the time. And on October 21, 1954, the smog in L.A. was so bad, the City actually closed its public schools for several days.

Oddly, the American city best known for fog, San Francisco, has never reported a smog causing multiple deaths.

Environmental activism from 1970 onward has gone a long way toward preventing such smog disasters, but not entirely, as pointed out by the 1991 London smog event.

*

December 5, 1952 was a Friday. Baseball was out of season. There were 2 college football games played that night. The University of Georgia beat the University of Miami, 35-13 at Burdine Stadium in Miami. Burdine Stadium would be renamed the Orange Bowl in 1959. And the University of the Pacific beat the University of Hawaii, 49-13 at Honolulu Stadium.

There were no games scheduled for the NHL. One game was played in the NBA: The Indianapolis Olympians beat their geographical rivals, the Fort Wayne Pistons, 84-74 at the Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.