The Second Age of Smoke
We tackled particulate pollution once. Can we do it again?
The smoke was so thick, you couldn’t see much. It wasn’t healthy to go outside. People felt terrible after a few hours of breathing in the particles suspended in the air. They were fed up with the pollution, so they petitioned the authorities to do something about it.
No, I’m not talking about living in parts of eastern North America during June, 2023. I’m talking about London in the seventeenth century.
Back in the 1600s, though, they used much more flowery language than we do today:
It was one day, as I was Walking in Your MAJESTIES Palace, at WHITE-HALL … that a presumptuous Smoake issuing from one or two Tunnels neer Northumberland-House, and not far from Scotland-yard, did so invade the Court; that all the Rooms, Galleries, and Places about it were fill’d and infested with it; and that to such a degree, as Men could hardly discern one another for the Clowd, and none could support, without manifest Inconveniency….
It is this horrid Smoake which obscures our Churches, and makes our Palaces look old, which fouls our Clothes, and corrupts the Waters, so as the very Rain, and refreshing Dews which fall in the several Seasons, precipitate this impure vapour, which, with its black and tenacious quality…
