General Chat

All pea soupers were horrid but that smog in 1952 was unlike anything before or since. Even normally healthy people felt they were being choked and it just went on for so long.

Almost exactly 5 years later, during a heavy pea souper of a fog, 2 trains crashed near Lewisham and that's a night that will forever live with me. My father always walked in the house at 5.40 pm on the dot. That evening he was late but we just thought it was down to the fog slowing everything up. By 8 pm my mother was panicking, my 9 year old brother was refusing to go to bed till his Daddy got home and, at 15 years old, I was trying to be the calm one and hold everything together. At 9 pm my mother asked me to put the news on the radio. We heard about the train crash and found out that one of the trains involved was the one my father usually caught. We could do nothing but wait. No mobile phones in those days. We didn't even have a land line. At 11 pm my father walked in the door. My mother disappeared into the kitchen to get him some food (and I suspect to have a little weep), and I burst into tears. My father had no idea what was going on and hadn't heard about the crash. Apparently he had got a slightly later train than usual. It went along at snail's pace in the fog and then stopped at St John's station (the next one up the line from Lewisham) and everyone had to get out there. My father had then walked home.

Sorry, I've rattled on about an incident unrelated to the 1952 smog, except it helps to show how much that Clean Air Act was needed.

I was just shy of 2 at that time so don’t temper it. But I do remember later ones. I remember telling the teachers at my little ‘Dame’ school that I could get home in the thickest smog I’d ever seen ( s w London) as I only had to cross the quiet road by school side gate and then one more opposite our house. How lucky we were that traffic was so much lighter in those days.

North London too, not far from LG :-D

I dont remember the one in '52 but do remember being taken to school in the fog. I didnt like the fact that you could not see more than a foot in front of you, and then when you walked that foot, you could not see behind. :-S :-D :-D

Yep, bundled up with a scarf over mouth and nose.

We also got smog up north, in the mill towns of Lancashire during those years.

I remember being on the bus with Mum and Dad in 1952 or '53, going home from doing something in town, and the smog had come down. At one point of what was actually one of the major roads over the Pennines, the main road took a bend to the right and another road went to the left. There was a house right at that junction, and if a vehicle missed the bend, then it was straight into the corner of the house.

It was really thick, with that yellowish colour around the street lamps, but the driver and conductor were determined to get to the terminus, about 3 miles away, even at a very slow speed. We may have been the only passengers on the bus!.

The driver suddenly stopped, and there less than a foot away was the corner of the house. He'd just seen it in time!

After that, the conductor walked about 2 feet in front of the bus all the way up the hill and to the terminus.

It’s the yellow around the lights that I remember too. We certainly all wore our scarves

over our noses. I do remember being quite scared

Because it was known as a pea souper we country cousins thought it was a very thick fog, we weren't told how bad it really was or how it was killing people. :-|

I don't remember that exact one as I was born in 1952 :-D :-D :-D. But I do remember smog as I got older

you know,

I lived in west ham, and was 14? at the time.....but although I recall other fogs, I don't recall THAT one...selective memory?

North London born and bred :-D. I too remember the horrible pea soupers as we called them. A bright yellow haze around the gas lamps and it smelt awful.

London SE. Me too.
As I remember it, the street lamps appeared in a yellowish haze.

ZZzzz, I don’t have to imagine it. Like Shirley, I remember it. I also lived in S.E. London and was 10 and in my first term at grammar school. I had about a mile to walk to the bus stop and then a couple of miles on the bus and the same back home after school. I remember walking along all on my own feeling garden walls and fences and crossing roads completely unable to see or hear any traffic till it was on top of you. But there was never any question of not going to school. You were expected to turn up so you did. No closing schools because of the weather in those days.

It was quite frightening and we can only imagine what it was like. And by shear coincidence the like of the prime minister were out of London, not that I am cynical of course.

I remember it !

Lived in south east London and even then we struggled to get to work by train to London

You literally couldn’t see the pavement in front of you

Remember too having a scarf over my nose and mouth to breath and to try and keep the stink of the smoky smog out

Our mum had copd and even though she never left the house she struggled to breath indoors

Horrifying and and the usual government arrogance then not unlike unlike today with covid.
Did anyone else watch it?