March 9, 2022 • 12 mins
In 1952 London was gripped by a acrid smog that settled throughout the city so thickly residents couldn’t see their own feet on the sidewalk.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's chucking. Jerry's hanging around filling him for Dave, whose
spirit permeates us all. The spirit of Dave be upon you, peace,
brothers and sisters and everybody. Uh, and that means this
is short stuff. Yes, Dave spirit who has settled upon us,
like the great stink of London. No, London did have
(00:27):
a great stink. We talked about it. We did a
great smog. That was a good episode two if I
remember correctly. Sure they got a stink in a smock
and they were both great. Poor London, I mean, come on,
there's a lot of terrible things happening in the air
over there, and technically it's their own fault, but still
you hate, you hate for that to happen to anybody,
(00:48):
that's right. Uh. This was a smog in ninety two,
specifically December five, when the day started alf okay, but then,
as it is London, Uh, not surprising if fog starts
to roll len as it often does. But then this
fog combined with the smoke of London at the time,
which we'll get into. Uh, smoke plus fog equals smog.
(01:11):
It's settled in and kind of parked it there for
quite a few days. And it was bad. It was
really bad. And it's really saying something that that it
was so bad that London even named it. Because London was,
like you said, very known for fog, it was also
really well known for small Apparently complaints about the small
problems um have been recorded as far back as the
(01:33):
thirteenth century in London, so they've had smog for a
long time. And apparently it was somebody from London who
coined the term smag to begin with. So they knew
their fog, they knew their smag, and this one combined
was so bad that they named it the Great Smag.
It was just that bad. And it's it's hard but
also easy and kind of fun to get across how
(01:54):
bad this small was because it did all sorts of
terrible stuff to the city and the people who lived there. Yeah,
I mean, you've got uh, you've got factories pumping out
smoke at the time, you've got people's own chimneys pumping
out smoke. This was December, so there were fires going
all over the place. You had cars. I think they
had gone from electric trams to diesel buses recently, so
(02:19):
there was a ton of smoke uh, combining with that
fog to make it a very caustic situation to the
point where you know, of course it's England, so they're
gonna be like, it's all fine, cheerio, and you'll go
about our day. Uh. And they did their best, but
even within that first day it started to literally shut
things down. It did. UM. It shut things down in
(02:41):
that like you you if you were driving at the time,
or you tried to get your car out, um, you
like you would just end up abandoning on the street.
It was too dangerous to continue on. UM. All of
the shipping uh. Transportation on the Thames stopped. UM. There
there was some bus service. I saw in a history
(03:02):
dot com article that some of the bobbies would would
walk slowly in front of the buses that we're trying
to operate with like a flashlight, um, just to serve
as like a beacon for them to follow through this
and even that proved to be too much. The only
way to get around was the underground, which was brilliantly
located underground and away from the small but even the
(03:24):
indoors wasn't safe right yeah, but first of all, you're
talking about cars. Are you saying that someone might leave
their flat and go down to their garage to get
in the car and it would be so bad they
might get scared and hide in their boot. Oh man,
that was beautiful. You just earned us a lot more
(03:44):
British listeners. I think a lot more pins. M I
think he just lost a few. Okay, Uh, yeah, things
were bad indoors. I think there were reports of um
movie theaters that couldn't show the movie because you couldn't
the screen. Uh. There were reports of people not being
able to see their feet, walking around, standing up, not
(04:07):
being able to look down. I wish I knew the
British word for feet, uh shods. They couldn't see their shods,
but it spelled Okay, that's great, but imagine that. Imagine
looking down and they're smag, not just fog, smog that
(04:30):
is making a choke and cough and weeze. It's so
thick that you cannot see your own feet. This is
part of the problem. I did not see this. I
couldn't find confirmation of this. Humi told me about this,
and she was reading me some stuff about it. One
of the things she found was that people would would
accidentally walk into the Thames and they couldn't get out
because they couldn't see the Thames from the smog, and
(04:53):
they were drowned. Like it was working as a research
a system pretty pretty much. Yeah, I got on the
tay roll. How do I get that? You already have
that buddy? Who's that? Oh? I thought you meant like,
how do you get that role? Oh? How do I
get it for myself? I don't know. Um, I don't know.
(05:14):
How about your daughter, she's getting to reading age. Yeah,
she's not into this trainer, young Chuck. I'm trying to
I get We get emails from people are like, oh,
my kid is six or seven and they listen to
the show. I'm like, really, all right, I think it's
just not it's not so much that she's not into
it's just that's where her dad does. And who finds
(05:35):
whatever their dad does interesting? Nobody. She flipped out when
we were on Jeopardy. Oh did she really what she
think about that? I mean, we watched Jeopardy, so she
just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Oh, that's
really cool. So it wasn't like a special like sit
here and be quiet and watched this TV show that
you've never heard of before. Thinks she watches Jeopardy does.
She watches it some with me, and she every time
(05:55):
I answer a question first, she's like, she thinks it's
some kind of weird black magic. So that's the thing
that I think that proves my point. She is into
it and smart and curious. It's just that she's not
into whatever her dad's job is. That's what I think
it is. Yeah, I mean she loves story pirates, that's
her jam Pete's right, Yeah, I was made by our friend,
(06:18):
in part by our friend Peter McNerney. And I keep
telling her Peter and Beth and their family came to
Georgia and we all went to the lake together a
few years ago. And I keep telling it was like,
you know, Peter, he went to the lake with us.
She's like really, And I'll show her pictures and she's like,
that's him. I don't remember that. Hey, that's the guy
from the valveoline commercial. That's the guy from the A
(06:41):
T and T commercial. He was in a super Bowl spot.
He's in tons of stuff, all right, So enough with
Peter McNerney. Let's take a break. And we'll talk more
about the smog right after this. Yeah, mm hmmm. So
(07:13):
it's really fun to talk about all the stuff that
just went awry during this this fog. Like you said,
people couldn't see movies anymore because there's so much smog
that came in unless it was awful true, Um, like
ambulance is not being able to run or people walking
into the Thames, right what about what about robberies and
perch snatchings increasing? Sure, you're gonna have an increase in
(07:37):
crime when all those uh oh, there's a good word
British word for criminal. I can't think of it, but
I don't know they would they would definitely per snatch
with that heavy fog. Yeah, man, whatever they call either
cat burglar. Yeah, well, at any rate. Um. One of
the other things that happened to Chuck reportedly was that
(07:58):
an entire um heard of cattle in nearby Smithfield. I
believe Um died choke to death on it. And that
really reveals like just how how much this this how
bad this was And and I don't know if we've
said it or not yet, but this didn't go on
like just on December, Um, December five, this went on
(08:21):
for five days, and it kept getting worse. And the
whole reason it kept getting worse is because remember our
heat waves episode. Yes, so an anti cyclone uh a UM,
I believe a high pressure system settled over London. It
was thirty miles wide and settled over London, and it
basically kept any breeze and air at bay. So all
(08:43):
of those smoke sacks and emissions and all that stuff
just kept building and building and building, and they were
trapped at roughly surface level. Uh. And over five days
they just kept going because this this low or this
high pressure system would not move, and finally went out
to see on December ninth. That's right. Uh. And in
the meantime, it exacted a very large health toll. Uh.
(09:06):
There have been differing numbers on people that they can
directly attribute to dying as a result of the Great Smog.
I think back then they said it was about four
thousand people. Uh. These days people say it might be
more like twelve thousand people. Yeah. Uh, that is an
astounding number of people to um. And you know, granted
(09:27):
some of these people were probably had you know, breathing
issues or asthmatic or co op D, but it would
push them to death. I don't know about like completely
healthy people that died within those five days, but twelve
thousand people is a lot of people. No matari usslice
it Yeah, over five dayste that wouldn't I mean, the
point is these people wouldn't have otherwise died. That's those
(09:49):
like directly attributable to this. And it was so bad
that the British government basically was forced to act. Um
they came up four years later with the Clean Air Act.
And this is the fifties and they're coming up with
a Clean Air Act. Like when you think about environmental
policy and in movements and stuff, you typically think of
(10:09):
nineteen seventies like the beginning of that. That's how bad
this small was. That they came out with a Clean
Air Act in nineteen fifties six directly because of that
small event. Yeah, I mean l A. I remember when
I was living there, people would say, Man, can you
imagine living here in the nineteen fifties, and like when
it was just so clean and beautiful, and the nineteen
(10:30):
fifties and l A were awful, terrible, terrible smag back then.
And the smog I think got worse in l A
through the seventies and then things started getting better. But
it's way better now than it ever used to be,
as well as in London, thanks to stuff like the
Clean Air Act. And then I think later on, uh,
there was another small crisis in sixty two where they
(10:53):
I think they added some more teeth to the Clean
Air Act. But you know, basically they offered a lot
of incentives, they offered a lot of restrictions on industry
and you know people, but they also said, hey, why
don't we try things like electricity or natural gas or oil,
and we set of burning this coal all over the
place and it worked. I don't believe there's been a
great smog since nineteen sixty two. So way to go, London,
(11:14):
way to pull it out, Go London. Ah, you got
anything else, I've got nothing else except to say that
we want to one day come back to London and
do more live shows. Yeah, totally agreed. And um. In
the meantime, thank you for listening London, Thank you for
listening to the rest of the world, and thank you
most of all, Chuck. I think we can say to
(11:35):
you me for coming up with this one too. Oh
it was her idea. Yes, she's the one who told
me about we gotta get her on the on the payroll.
I got her covering. Okay, okay, Uh, everybody's short stuff
is that stuff you should know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
(11:56):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's chucking. Jerry's hanging around filling him for Dave, whose
spirit permeates us all. The spirit of Dave be upon you, peace,
brothers and sisters and everybody. Uh, and that means this
is short stuff. Yes, Dave spirit who has settled upon us,
like the great stink of London. No, London did have
(00:27):
a great stink. We talked about it. We did a
great smog. That was a good episode two if I
remember correctly. Sure they got a stink in a smock
and they were both great. Poor London, I mean, come on,
there's a lot of terrible things happening in the air
over there, and technically it's their own fault, but still
you hate, you hate for that to happen to anybody,
(00:48):
that's right. Uh. This was a smog in ninety two,
specifically December five, when the day started alf okay, but then,
as it is London, Uh, not surprising if fog starts
to roll len as it often does. But then this
fog combined with the smoke of London at the time,
which we'll get into. Uh, smoke plus fog equals smog.
(01:11):
It's settled in and kind of parked it there for
quite a few days. And it was bad. It was
really bad. And it's really saying something that that it
was so bad that London even named it. Because London was,
like you said, very known for fog, it was also
really well known for small Apparently complaints about the small
problems um have been recorded as far back as the
(01:33):
thirteenth century in London, so they've had smog for a
long time. And apparently it was somebody from London who
coined the term smag to begin with. So they knew
their fog, they knew their smag, and this one combined
was so bad that they named it the Great Smag.
It was just that bad. And it's it's hard but
also easy and kind of fun to get across how
(01:54):
bad this small was because it did all sorts of
terrible stuff to the city and the people who lived there. Yeah,
I mean, you've got uh, you've got factories pumping out
smoke at the time, you've got people's own chimneys pumping
out smoke. This was December, so there were fires going
all over the place. You had cars. I think they
had gone from electric trams to diesel buses recently, so
(02:19):
there was a ton of smoke uh, combining with that
fog to make it a very caustic situation to the
point where you know, of course it's England, so they're
gonna be like, it's all fine, cheerio, and you'll go
about our day. Uh. And they did their best, but
even within that first day it started to literally shut
things down. It did. UM. It shut things down in
(02:41):
that like you you if you were driving at the time,
or you tried to get your car out, um, you
like you would just end up abandoning on the street.
It was too dangerous to continue on. UM. All of
the shipping uh. Transportation on the Thames stopped. UM. There
there was some bus service. I saw in a history
(03:02):
dot com article that some of the bobbies would would
walk slowly in front of the buses that we're trying
to operate with like a flashlight, um, just to serve
as like a beacon for them to follow through this
and even that proved to be too much. The only
way to get around was the underground, which was brilliantly
located underground and away from the small but even the
(03:24):
indoors wasn't safe right yeah, but first of all, you're
talking about cars. Are you saying that someone might leave
their flat and go down to their garage to get
in the car and it would be so bad they
might get scared and hide in their boot. Oh man,
that was beautiful. You just earned us a lot more
(03:44):
British listeners. I think a lot more pins. M I
think he just lost a few. Okay, Uh, yeah, things
were bad indoors. I think there were reports of um
movie theaters that couldn't show the movie because you couldn't
the screen. Uh. There were reports of people not being
able to see their feet, walking around, standing up, not
(04:07):
being able to look down. I wish I knew the
British word for feet, uh shods. They couldn't see their shods,
but it spelled Okay, that's great, but imagine that. Imagine
looking down and they're smag, not just fog, smog that
(04:30):
is making a choke and cough and weeze. It's so
thick that you cannot see your own feet. This is
part of the problem. I did not see this. I
couldn't find confirmation of this. Humi told me about this,
and she was reading me some stuff about it. One
of the things she found was that people would would
accidentally walk into the Thames and they couldn't get out
because they couldn't see the Thames from the smog, and
(04:53):
they were drowned. Like it was working as a research
a system pretty pretty much. Yeah, I got on the
tay roll. How do I get that? You already have
that buddy? Who's that? Oh? I thought you meant like,
how do you get that role? Oh? How do I
get it for myself? I don't know. Um, I don't know.
(05:14):
How about your daughter, she's getting to reading age. Yeah,
she's not into this trainer, young Chuck. I'm trying to
I get We get emails from people are like, oh,
my kid is six or seven and they listen to
the show. I'm like, really, all right, I think it's
just not it's not so much that she's not into
it's just that's where her dad does. And who finds
(05:35):
whatever their dad does interesting? Nobody. She flipped out when
we were on Jeopardy. Oh did she really what she
think about that? I mean, we watched Jeopardy, so she
just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Oh, that's
really cool. So it wasn't like a special like sit
here and be quiet and watched this TV show that
you've never heard of before. Thinks she watches Jeopardy does.
She watches it some with me, and she every time
(05:55):
I answer a question first, she's like, she thinks it's
some kind of weird black magic. So that's the thing
that I think that proves my point. She is into
it and smart and curious. It's just that she's not
into whatever her dad's job is. That's what I think
it is. Yeah, I mean she loves story pirates, that's
her jam Pete's right, Yeah, I was made by our friend,
(06:18):
in part by our friend Peter McNerney. And I keep
telling her Peter and Beth and their family came to
Georgia and we all went to the lake together a
few years ago. And I keep telling it was like,
you know, Peter, he went to the lake with us.
She's like really, And I'll show her pictures and she's like,
that's him. I don't remember that. Hey, that's the guy
from the valveoline commercial. That's the guy from the A
(06:41):
T and T commercial. He was in a super Bowl spot.
He's in tons of stuff, all right, So enough with
Peter McNerney. Let's take a break. And we'll talk more
about the smog right after this. Yeah, mm hmmm. So
(07:13):
it's really fun to talk about all the stuff that
just went awry during this this fog. Like you said,
people couldn't see movies anymore because there's so much smog
that came in unless it was awful true, Um, like
ambulance is not being able to run or people walking
into the Thames, right what about what about robberies and
perch snatchings increasing? Sure, you're gonna have an increase in
(07:37):
crime when all those uh oh, there's a good word
British word for criminal. I can't think of it, but
I don't know they would they would definitely per snatch
with that heavy fog. Yeah, man, whatever they call either
cat burglar. Yeah, well, at any rate. Um. One of
the other things that happened to Chuck reportedly was that
(07:58):
an entire um heard of cattle in nearby Smithfield. I
believe Um died choke to death on it. And that
really reveals like just how how much this this how
bad this was And and I don't know if we've
said it or not yet, but this didn't go on
like just on December, Um, December five, this went on
(08:21):
for five days, and it kept getting worse. And the
whole reason it kept getting worse is because remember our
heat waves episode. Yes, so an anti cyclone uh a UM,
I believe a high pressure system settled over London. It
was thirty miles wide and settled over London, and it
basically kept any breeze and air at bay. So all
(08:43):
of those smoke sacks and emissions and all that stuff
just kept building and building and building, and they were
trapped at roughly surface level. Uh. And over five days
they just kept going because this this low or this
high pressure system would not move, and finally went out
to see on December ninth. That's right. Uh. And in
the meantime, it exacted a very large health toll. Uh.
(09:06):
There have been differing numbers on people that they can
directly attribute to dying as a result of the Great Smog.
I think back then they said it was about four
thousand people. Uh. These days people say it might be
more like twelve thousand people. Yeah. Uh, that is an
astounding number of people to um. And you know, granted
(09:27):
some of these people were probably had you know, breathing
issues or asthmatic or co op D, but it would
push them to death. I don't know about like completely
healthy people that died within those five days, but twelve
thousand people is a lot of people. No matari usslice
it Yeah, over five dayste that wouldn't I mean, the
point is these people wouldn't have otherwise died. That's those
(09:49):
like directly attributable to this. And it was so bad
that the British government basically was forced to act. Um
they came up four years later with the Clean Air Act.
And this is the fifties and they're coming up with
a Clean Air Act. Like when you think about environmental
policy and in movements and stuff, you typically think of
(10:09):
nineteen seventies like the beginning of that. That's how bad
this small was. That they came out with a Clean
Air Act in nineteen fifties six directly because of that
small event. Yeah, I mean l A. I remember when
I was living there, people would say, Man, can you
imagine living here in the nineteen fifties, and like when
it was just so clean and beautiful, and the nineteen
(10:30):
fifties and l A were awful, terrible, terrible smag back then.
And the smog I think got worse in l A
through the seventies and then things started getting better. But
it's way better now than it ever used to be,
as well as in London, thanks to stuff like the
Clean Air Act. And then I think later on, uh,
there was another small crisis in sixty two where they
(10:53):
I think they added some more teeth to the Clean
Air Act. But you know, basically they offered a lot
of incentives, they offered a lot of restrictions on industry
and you know people, but they also said, hey, why
don't we try things like electricity or natural gas or oil,
and we set of burning this coal all over the
place and it worked. I don't believe there's been a
great smog since nineteen sixty two. So way to go, London,
(11:14):
way to pull it out, Go London. Ah, you got
anything else, I've got nothing else except to say that
we want to one day come back to London and
do more live shows. Yeah, totally agreed. And um. In
the meantime, thank you for listening London, Thank you for
listening to the rest of the world, and thank you
most of all, Chuck. I think we can say to
(11:35):
you me for coming up with this one too. Oh
it was her idea. Yes, she's the one who told
me about we gotta get her on the on the payroll.
I got her covering. Okay, okay, Uh, everybody's short stuff
is that stuff you should know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
(11:56):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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