 |
|
MEDIEVAL
POLLUTION
Londoners
have a long history of concern about the environmental hazards that accompany
urban life. In medieval London, pollution from coal burning was seen as
such a serious matter that a commission was established in 1285 to investigate
the problem. It was reconvened three years later with firm instructions
to find a solution. In 1307, during the reign of Edward I, legislation
was introduced to prevent the use of sea coal in kilns and by blacksmiths.
Like so
much of the legislation that was to follow in succeeding centuries, the
statutes of 1307 proved largely ineffective. Wood for burning became scarce
and expensive, and an increasing number of domestic chimneys encouraged
an ever-wider use of fossil fuel. London rapidly changed from a wood-burning
city to one that relied on imported coal. By the end of Elizabeth I's reign
in 1603, coal consumption in the city had risen to more than 50,000 tons
a year.
In 1661,
the diarist and proto-environmentalist John Evelyn published a diatribe
against air pollution in London: Fumifugium, or The Inconvenience of
the Aer and the Smoak of London Dissipated. In another book, A Character
of England, he wrote that London was
cloaked
in such a cloud of sea-coal, as if there be a resemblance of hell upon
earth, it is in this volcano in a foggy day: this pestilential smoke which
corrodes the very iron, and spoils all the moveables, leaving a soot on
all things that it lights; and so fatally seizing on the lungs of the inhabitants,
that cough and consumption spare no man.
Evelyn was
quick to suggest a correlation between the death rate indicated in London's
'bills of mortality' - documents, compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries
by parish clerks, that listed births and the numbers and causes of deaths
- and the incidence of particularly severe fogs. His conclusions have been
substantiated by the detailed records of foggy weather kept by his contemporary,
the astrologer John Gadbury. For example, the arrival of two 'Great Stinking
Fogs' in mid-November 1679 coincided with an unusual rise in deaths in
the bills of mortality.
The literature
of the late 17th and early 18th centuries demonstrates a lively interest
in the causes and effects of air pollution in London. However, with the
possible exception of Fumifugium, the prevailing view could be embodied
in the old rubric: 'If you don't like the smoke, get out of the kitchen'
- leave London or at least move to the suburbs.
Next:
CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT
|
|
John Evelyn
The first
page of Fumifugium
Industry
was the cause of much of the pollution
|
|
