Air pollution

The air of any large town was filled with particles from home fires used for heat, and from both the fires and dust from manufacturing.  It was bad enough that a 1775 German visitor wrote a friend that the smoke was so thick he had to write "by the light of a candle (at half past ten in the morning." (Mare, Margaret and Quarrell, W.H. (eds and trans.). Lichtenberg's Visits to England as described in his Letters and Diaries (Oxford, 1938), quoted in Cockayne, Emily.  Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600-1770 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007, 146.)  Since fireplaces were used for heat, smut and soot clung to the walls, ceilings and settled on the floors.  Coal was cheap, but it left more residue than wood.  The diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706) wrote that the "pernicious smoke ... superinducing a sooty Crust or furr upon all that it lights, spoyling the moveables, tarnishing the Plate, Gildings and Furniture, and Corroding the very Iron-bars and hardest stone with those piercing and acrimonious Spirits which accompany its Sulphure." (Evelyn, John. Fumifugium, or the inconvenience of the Aer and Smoak of London dissipated (London, 1661), 6, quoted in Cockayne, 152.)  Evelyn believed that private fires were not the primary cause of the air pollution, but that "foul mouth'd Issues" of manufacturing sites were.

Forges, furnaces, and ovens all belched unpleasant smoke when used by craftsmen like hammersmiths, beer brewers, maltsters and goldsmiths.  Kilns for baking bricks were another huge culprit in rapidly expanding cities (Cockayne, 207).  And that is just the pollutants, not to mention the noxious odors from dying, paint-making, candle-making, and multiple other trades (Cockayne, 210-211).  "It is well known that foetid smells, stagnated and putrid Air, are in general the Cause of many Dreadful Diseases; such as Malignant Fevers, putrid sore Throats, the Plague ..." observed a fumigator at the end of the eighteenth century (Groote, Gerard.  Fumigating Ingredients to remove offensive smells, foul, putrid and stagnated air, from halls, chambers, courts of justice, distemper'd gaols (London, c. 1780), quoted in Cockayne, 213).

Food was affected by air pollution.  Produce grown in tiny city gardens would have become increasingly polluted, which meant more people had to buy fruit, vegetables and herbs (Cockayne, 88).  Cabbage, radishes and spinach were most likely to be contaminated by particles from coal smoke (Cockayne, 93).  Meat was also affected by smoke as it hung waiting to be purchased;  Evelyn wrote that London's smoke would "so Mummife, drye up, wast[e] and burn it [the meat], that it suddenly crumbles away, consumes and comes to nothing." (Evelyn, 12-13, quoted in Cockayne, 95-96).

Evelyn worried about London residents, who had to inhale "nothing but an impure and thick Mist, accompanied with a fuliginous and filthy vapour, which renders them obnoxious to a thousand inconveniences, corrupting the lungs and disordering the entire habit of their Bodies; so that Catharrs [sinus congestion], phthisicks [tuberculosis or asthma], Coughs and Consumptions, rage more in this one City, than in the whole Earth besides ..." (Evelyn, 12-13, quoted in Cockayne, 209).

(Wellcome Library)

It was not only bad in the cities, but in the coal mines.  Rev. John Fletcher, a Methodist, served as a Church of England parish priest in Madelay for 25 years.

He wrote, "Form, if you can an idea of the misery of men, kneeling, stooping, or lying on one side, to toil all day in a confined space, where a child could hardly stand; whilst a younger company, with their hands and feet on the black dusty ground, and a chain about their body, creep and drug along, like four-footed beasts, heavy loads of the dirty

Rev. John Fletcher
John Wesley's House, London
13 October 2012

mineral ... destructive damps, and clouds of noxious dust, infect the air they breathe, Sometimes water incessantly distils [drops or flows*] on their naked bodies; or bursting upon them in streams, drowns them, and deluges their work.  At other times, pieces of detached rocks crush them to death, or earth breaking in upon them buries them alive.  And frequently suphurous vapours, kindled in an instant by the light of their candles, form subterraneous thunder and lightning ..." (Fletcher, John.  "An Appeal to Matter of Fact and Common Sense" (Bristol, UK: Pine, 37), quoted in Forsaith, Peter, ed. "Unexampled Labours: Letters of the Revd John Fletcher to Leaders in the Evangelical Revival" PhD thesis, (Peterborough, UK: Epworth, 2008).  Fletcher is notable because John Wesley wanted Fletcher to succeed him as leader of the Methodists.  Fletcher refused in 1773, accepted in 1775 when Wesley was ill enough to die, and then refused Wesley again in 1776.  Fletcher died in 1785 (Forsaith).  Wesley outlived him by six years.

People were not concerned about air pollution (Cockayne, 244), following the adage, "We will bear with the Stink, if it bring but in Chink ["money"*]." (Fuller, Thomas.  Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British (London, 1732), 282, quoted in Cockayne, 241.)
* (Johnson.)