THE GREAT SNOWSTORM OF LONDON. January 28th, 1911. Ai Y
DEA.It SON,—I do not wonder at your interest in the great snow-storm of 1881. It is now almost forgotten, but it was the nearest approach to a cataclysm iu English history that has ever occurred from any natural cause ; and even at this distance of time, it is with a certain shrinking that I recall the memories of that month. London was partially isolated for two weeks, and completely isolated for two more, and might in another ten days have been depopulated. The snow began to fall on Tuesday, January 18th, 1881, and continued falling with fury for three days, accompanied by violent winds, which heaped it
together in every railway-cutting, broad street, or space open cakes, and then, at last, an indigestible paste of half-boiled enough to allow of heavy drifts. When the Londoners who flour, for a greater misfortune than all had overtaken London.
had kept indoors while the storm lasted ventured out, The means of cooking, of supplying light, and of making they found four solid feet of snow everywhere, and fires, all failed together. ' The supply of water never quite in all drifts from ten to fourteen feet, while the Cher- stopped till the last day, for the ground and the deep pipes mumeter fell to 16°, and steadily remained there. By great froze slowly, and two mighty hydrants fed wooden aqueducts exertions the pathways and a narrow way in each street were for two hours a day from the remaining unfrozen water in the cleared, and as all traffic, except that of sheer necessity, was Thames. The time, and energy, and health of all women in suspended, this proved sufficient, and little alarm was London were exhausted in getting water ; all sanitary arrange- felt, though prices began from the first to ascend rapidly. mute collapsed, and nothing emerged from the unfluehed sewers, Seven days afterwards, however—on January 25th—another but still no terrible thirst was encountered, except by individuals, severe fall occurred, undoing much that had been done ; and on till the last few hours ; but there was no fuel or light. Very early February 1st another, which finished the work, and completely in the frost the oil gave out, the supply, even at tripled rates, isolated London. The Thames was frozen too thickly for ships not being sufficient for ten days ; the very small stock of wood to come up, the railway managers gave up the effort to send for firing was burnt up, and the coal rose to prices-80s. a ton trains, foot-passage was out of the question, and, except an occa- --utterly beyond the moans of the poor. The Gas Companies sional sledge, driven with sonic danger on account of the great first lowered their pressure, till their lights were almost useless, gaps and unevennesses caused by the pressure of the wind, Lon- then knocked a all private supplies, and finally ceased working don was isolated like a village from the provinces and the world. altogether. Of candles—the use of which had much diminished— The energy shown in clearances was not at first extreme, every the stock did not last six days. The Government appropriated Traffic Manager believing that next day would see a thaw, and all remaining fuel for cooking, but cooking even once a day for afterwards the renewed falls of snow made movement for three millions of people is a tremendous undertaking. The heavy convoys, except by tunnelling, impossible. From first to stock got lower and lower, and on the twenty-third day it was last the railways were rather torpid, partly and chiefly from announced that only raw food could be given out. There the influence of a never-dying hype—a long obstruction from was uo more firing to be obtained ; the stocks in private snow being nearly unknown—but partly also from reluctance to hands were all gone. The Government took all it could, and on expend money on the enormous scale required. At the very this point, the equal distribution of firing, the feeling of the last the Government engaged armies of labourers, and executed multitude was so pronounced and so shared by the white- some extraordinary though useless works ; but before that, shirted police, that it was impossible to guard private property.
things had come to a very bad pass indeed. Every house suspected of coal or wood for fires was visited, and A nation of three millions of men, growing and producing it was during these visits that what of disorder there was—and nothing in the way of food, was shut up on twelve square miles it was not comparatively very much—occurred. The people of stony ground. At first there was little alarm, for the re- were not bad-tempered, rather dogged, and patient of every- sources of London were believed to be boundless, but on the thing except the concealment of fuel, and the batoned police thirteenth day an old merchant published a note of warning. made but short work of any thief. At last the last stores He showed that very little provisions had come in since the dwindled away, and food was issued uncooked. Then the storm, and that the tendency of trade for years had been to courage and stolid patience of the people, always disin- make the food-stocks in Loudon low. Storage was dear, coin- dined to murmur at any act visibly one of Providence, began petition sharp, and capital valuable, while the regular means of to give way. They grew nervous, impatient, and superstitious.
steps. They expropriated. all remaining things had come to a very bad pass indeed. Every house suspected of coal or wood for fires was visited, and A nation of three millions of men, growing and producing it was during these visits that what of disorder there was—and nothing in the way of food, was shut up on twelve square miles it was not comparatively very much—occurred. The people of stony ground. At first there was little alarm, for the re- were not bad-tempered, rather dogged, and patient of every- sources of London were believed to be boundless, but on the thing except the concealment of fuel, and the batoned police thirteenth day an old merchant published a note of warning. made but short work of any thief. At last the last stores He showed that very little provisions had come in since the dwindled away, and food was issued uncooked. Then the storm, and that the tendency of trade for years had been to courage and stolid patience of the people, always disin- make the food-stocks in Loudon low. Storage was dear, coin- dined to murmur at any act visibly one of Providence, began petition sharp, and capital valuable, while the regular means of to give way. They grew nervous, impatient, and superstitious. communication worked with as little friction and as few inter- Parliament was beset by crowds clamouring for unattainable fire. ruptions as the great bodies in space, or the works of a finely- The churches were filled with never-ending relays of Revivalists, made chronometer. Any dealer could obtain any supply of not praying, but lamenting the sins of London ; and shocking any article from the country or the ports within twelve scenes of hysteria were enacted, side by side with services of hours. The distributors, therefore, lived from hand to mouth, piety and supplication. Monstrous schemes for pulling down importing from outside at the utmost a fortnight's stock, and London to burn the timbers were openly broached. The people, this, though partially resupplied, had been heavily depleted, worn with the cold, the excitement, and the low rations, began Already the supply of fresh vegetables, potatoes excepted, was to be Wild with hunger, and felt an unconquerable disgust for at an end, and the potatoes would only last three days more. the uncooked food. Hundreds became delirious. Thousands He recommended, therefore, that Government should ap- wandered on the verge of delirium, seeking food long since con- propriate all provisions, and that London should. be rationed slimed. The majority were patient, and lay iu their beds, or bud- like Paris in the great siege of 1870. The Editor who died together, reading the small, hand-pressed sheets which did published the letter ridiculed. this plan, as contrary to politi- duty for newspapers, and which were full of scientific or wild cal economy, and his readers smiled ; but there was an uneasi- calculations about weather, reports of horrible occurrences, and, noes from that moment in the public mind, which speedily above all, explanations of the death-returns. These returns deepened into panic. The loss of vegetables was bearable, though wore published daily after the first fortnight, and they mounted, severely felt ; but now milk, which had grown scarce and dear, mounted, mounted, till the disposal of the dead, und.er frozen suddenly disappeared. There was no more milk, fresh or con- snow, in places where they would not produce pestilence, be- doused, and the children began to suffer. The supply of fish came a terrible preoccupation. Burial, except in the had ended from the first, Billingsgate being emptied in twenty- snow, was soon given up, and later on even removal, so that four hours ; and the demand for meat became so sharp and the Government, when the snow vanished, was obliged to keep price so high, that the remaining cows were slaughtered for on its army of White-shirts for a week, only to bury the their flesh. The butchers began to sell horse-flesh, at dead. The children went first, poor things ! deprived of first secretly, then openly ; bread went up to the milk, and sugar, and cooked meal ; then the old, already half- highest price recorded—ls. ficl. the quartern loaf—a price dead from the frost ; then the weaker men, then the drinking the poorer labourers could not pay ; and on the fifteenth men, and finally the women, whose patience and comparative day the Government, warned by some dangerous bread-riots, exemption from the effects of alcohol had at first seemed to by a rapid. rise in the death-rate, and by the reports from the give them strength. The cold, though not too bad to bear, the workhouses, took, under sanction of Parliament, two great hunger, which was not quite starvation, the unaccustomed want
their own possession ; and they took 2" food, taking it into of necessaries, found out in every one some weak place. The a,000 men into their people had plenty of clothes, they soon knew the warmth that employ, at Os. a day, partly as distributors, partly as police. second, or third, or fourth shirts will give—the practice of the Money had not lost its value, for every one expected. an end to Northern Chinese—and they were not frozen ; but they died, the frost, the strongest men in London were out of work, died in heaps, every day. By the fifteenth day the average and the educated volunteered as inspectors in thousands. was 2,000, then 3,000, then 5,000, and then it leaped on Armed with short clubs, and placed in uniform, by a simple the twentieth day to 20,000. In the last ton days, when order to wear a second shirt over their clothes, with a hand- cooked food was unprocurable, and there was neither fire nor arti- kerchief for belt, these constables preserved the peace, and so fieiallight procurable in London, there perished 200,000 human far as labour could avail, alleviated the growing misery, which beings, an awful number, yet not 7 per cent. of the population of soon became extreme. At first, bread and portions of cooked thetreat city. Of these more than two-thirds were children. It horse-flesh were distributed, then bread alone in thinly baked was calculated afterwards that half the children under eight
perished, and it was this mortality, with its special pain and horror, which so fixed the snow-storm in the minds of English- speaking men. The death-ritte of London was permanently altered for ten years, the generation which had passed through this trial losing much of its strength, and being ever after liable to slaughter under a low thermometer, or a rush of catarrh. I do not remember many murders. The people were sullen and submissive, rather than furious ; the White shirts were effective, all suffered alike, and no one at first could give up hope that a few hours might bring relief. When at last the relief came—the thaw—it came rapidly, the thermometer rising to 48', and though there was much suffering for many days—for the work of distribution, especially distribution of coal, to three millions of people was excessive, and occupied many days—still, ordinary life at once recommenced, and in a few weeks all suffering, save the loss of children, was forgotten. The literature of the storm, at one time enormous, can now only be studied iu the British Museum, and but two permanent relics of the sad. time remain. The Government still keep together the nucleus of the volun- teer police, the white-uniformed patrol, who are now the universal intermediaries between the people and the police, who are to be found at every intersection of the more central streets, and who gather to a signal whenever the regular police need help ; and there is a covered line of rails to Gravesend, so built that it cannot ho interrupted by snow, and can, therefore, bring coal and oil, and if needful, even corn, from all open ports. So great were the sufferings from uncooked food, that direct grants in aid of this sewer railway were voted by Parliament and the extinct Metropolitan Board without resistance ; and the line is now one of the most valuable arteries of the kingdom, carrying at a slow rate the great mass of heavy imports from the sea to London.—Yours,
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