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Smokey England and smokey anyplace else back then saw huge numbers of deaths from "consumption" which we assume to mean TB. I suppose some could have been other lung diseases. The density of population and the bad air quality was an early death sentence for many people. My maternal great grandmother, living in an Irish tenement in St. Louis, died at 34 of consumption in 1894. She also had ten kids (that I know of) and only three survived to raise a family of their own. Most died as infants or children. Photos of American cities from the early 1900s up to about the 1950s show how bad it was. We burned coal up until 1953 when we moved to a new house with a natural gas furnace.
Average life span 1840 in the London Whitechapel district was 45 years for the upper class and 27 years for tradesmen. Labourers and servants lived only 22 years on average. The thick greenish fogs were popularly known as "Pea Soupers"
Young boys because of their small size often worked as chimney sweeps so it's a fair assumption that most of them didn't even manage to reach 22 years of age.
Death from lung disease was only one factor for life in the slums was often brutish and full of deprivations of every kind
The writer Jack London's book "Children of the Abyss" gives a good account of life in the East End during the late Victorian period.
I don't know how they survived but probably Darwinism took over.
Not a historian, but from personal family stories, "the air in the North was so dirty that the pigeons had to fly backwards." (dark humor--sometimes all you can do it laugh.)
"You could tell what color dye the mill was using that day just by looking at the river."
It doesn't seem as though there were any safety standards and it was all about making money on the backs of the poor working class mill workers. My great grandmother died young of something respiratory.
There are always some who can survive anything. Maybe they're just genetically strong. That applied to the first generation of my family that left the highly polluted (but beautful) North of England. That generation and their offspring, with a few exceptions, were strong and hardy, even though they now lived here in the US away from filthy air. Third generation? Time will tell.
Another possibility was the desire to get near the ocean as much as possible. My family lived in a seatown for a while while my gt grandfather worked in a nearby mill. People of that generation always spoke of the benefits of the good salt air. It wasn't always possible to live by the sea; that would have been a dream come true for them.
Cancer of the bladder was a major cause of death among people who worked in dye factories.
Many of the comments here remind me of the memoir Angela's Ashes, written about growing up impoverished in Ireland in the 1930s. Maybe a century later than the OP, but still a tough life filled with struggle and disease. I haven't read the book in a while but I recall the author being exposed to unexpected deaths from the get-go, it was just part of life and they carried on. Siblings, friends, neighbors, etc.
If anyone's done any reading or research on daily life and exposure to pollution in China it's not much different today. Chinese manufacturing cities are the modern day filth pits that was London during the Industrial Age of the 1800s, early 1900s.
The Clean Air Act made the urban cities more smog free, but in the rural areas, they were still using coal in their homes right up into the 1970's.
Coal miners were given free coal, enough so they could sell some of it. And even after a miner retired, they could receive their annual coal allotments right up into the 1990's.
Yes, they could have burnt more expensive anthracite coal, but they preferred the embers in the fireplace of bituminous coal.
Cleaner Anthracite coal is what kept the air in NY and New England from becoming so smokey as Pittsburgh. But there was a limited amount of anthracite coal in England.
In reality London was no more poverty ridden or smog ridden that other major cities of it's size including the likes of Paris and NYC, whilst life expectancy was generally far lower globally than it is today and this was especially the case in terms of industrialised major cities of the time.
Although the poorest air quality and highest rates of air pollution today tend to be in industrialised and emerging economies or third world nations rather than in first world cities, and it should be noted that poor air quality is often compounded by extreme heat and other such factors. In terms of Europe the poorest air quality rates are generally found in Eastern Europe and some parts of Southern Europe.
Imagine 600,000 homes in London with fireplaces, belching out bituminous smoke in the winter time, and add to that the belching smoke of manufacturing plants? They actually thought the smoke was a benefit during the Wars as it hindered pilots from finding any landmarks, but on the other hand they couldn't find the planes in the air to shoot at.
They did find 2 trees that could withstand the pollution, Plane and Tulip trees, because they shed their bark every year.
Even with gas being introduced, there was nothing like seeing the coal embers in the fireplace.
Was the death toll ever calculated?
I'd also like to know if the corresponding LIFE TOLL was ever calculated. How many people survived the winters because affordable coal was made available for heating? How many people survived because food was properly cooked using coal stoves? How many people survived because of improvements in agriculture, medicine, and transportation that were made possible by technological advances in the 19th century?
It was not just London. Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, etc, were all the same well into the 1960s. Diseases through pollution and repository problems were normal, coupled with excessive promotion of smoking. Smokers could light up anywhere and were annoyed if told to stop, thinking it was a divine right. Thankfully that has all changed.
The British have always promoted parks in urban areas, which helped to counter the problem.
In the late 1940s the British were aiming for an all electric society to eliminate air pollution. The post war clean air act was probably the first in the world with smokeless zones setup. Electric heating with nuclear power stations was to become the norm. Hence why UK electrical systems are larger in amps delivered in general than the Continental neighbors, where large homes can be given only a 230v 30 amp supply. Very few of those amps available were used as the country turned to natural gas domestic heating gas in the 1960s - and also gas power generation. But now with promotion of heat pumps it has turned full circle using the available supplies. So the country is already ready.
The UK has only one coal fired power station left at Ratcliffe in Nottinghamshire which is scheduled to close September 2024. This was to be decommissioned a few years back but because of Covid it was kept on. Much of the power is generated by clean emissions nuclear and wind. Grid battery storage assists the wind generation at peak times. At times 100% is generated by renewables. Electricity is imported from France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Norway (clean hydro), and also exported. We need to go over to EVs asap to clean up cities, of which adoption is accelerating.
Right now, 1300hrs GMT 16% is generated by nuclear, 33% by wind and 15% by solar. About 22% is imported. https://gridwatch.co.uk/
One side benefit of mass switch over from city gas for ovens in UK to electric was suicide rates plummeted.
Being an impulsive and rash action many Britons considering doing away with themselves lost one ready option I suppose.
The Clean Air Act made the urban cities more smog free, but in the rural areas, they were still using coal in their homes right up into the 1970's.
Coal miners were given free coal, enough so they could sell some of it. And even after a miner retired, they could receive their annual coal allotments right up into the 1990's.
Yes, they could have burnt more expensive anthracite coal, but they preferred the embers in the fireplace of bituminous coal.
Cleaner Anthracite coal is what kept the air in NY and New England from becoming so smokey as Pittsburgh. But there was a limited amount of anthracite coal in England.
Plenty of people in upstate NY, good part of PA, Appalachia area and elsewhere in USA still burn coal. Mostly in areas where hard coal is still easily found or purchased, if not they will burn soft type.
Some have located culm coal with enough reserves to last quite some time. Still others go down old or long closed mines (usually illegally).
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