http://www.screenonline.org.uk/audio/id/877883/index.html

Partial synopsis – ‘Window cleaners, chimney sweeps, laundry workers and building restorers struggle to combat soot, but their battle is never-ending. Buildings are not only discoloured, but permanently damaged by the 75,000 tons of soot that falls annually on London, causing £60-80 million of damage. Children deprived of sunlight as a result of the smoke haze suffer deficiencies in Vitamin D, making them prone to rickets. Young patients are shown undergoing ultra-violet treatment at the Middlesex Hospital Sunray Clinic. High smoke levels also increases the risk of asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory diseases, and the death toll doubles during the winter in some Northern cities. It also creates hazardous conditions for air, road and rail transport. A bi-plane takes off in fog and a bus crawls along a London street due to low visibility’

“BTW, in some circles Toronto is known as “The Big Smoke”.”

London was simply “The Smoke” mostly in the view of Northerners.

It may be of interest that the “Clean Air Act 1956″ was not universally popular.

For many it meant a change in domestic fuel from coal to coke which given the typical small domestic grates meant a change from warmish to not very warm at all. The replacement fuel simply didn’t burn well in small grates. Many houses only had a single grate and no other heating except from cooking.

As you might imagine this was in fact a rich/poor thing (cue violins).

Many of the people saw little benefit, an West End/East End thing and much grumbling there was in the ranks.

Something similar is happening again but also quite different. The scourge of fuel poverty. This has a formal definition that means it accounts for ~20% to ~25% of all UK households. A more telling but more unfathomable figure is the number of households inadequately heated. By this I mean that fuel poverty is judged as the need to spend greater than a certain proportion of houshold income on energy which is not the same thing as the number of households that lack adequate heating.

I sometimes wonder just how many of those that support measures to increase energy costs have ever over-wintered in unheated or barely heated accommodation.

Increasingly the popular numbers are against them. It would be a pity for the UK Climate Change Act 2008 to go up in smoke because those that can afford to stomach higher costs and advocate higher prices were too busy sorting out their applications for reaping their solar subsidies to notice the growing numbers of poor who are, through lack of an alternative, already more green than they.

Alex

1910 4.2
1911 5.0
1912 5.1
1913 5.3
1914 5.2
1915 4.3
1916 5.5

2009 3.5
2010 2.4
2011 3.1

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/ssn_HadCET_mean.txt

http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/01/warm-winter-1911-1912.html

Use Aerial View as keywords and check scanned photographs
https://gencat4.eloquent-systems.com/webcat/request/DoMenuRequest?SystemName=City+of+Toronto+Archives&UserName=wa+public&Password=&TemplateProcessID=6000_1580_11104&bCachable=1&MenuName=City+of+Toronto+Archives&eloquentref=toronto