A drawback of industrial progress, these dangerous ‘pea soupers’ were disorienting and depressing

From Murder in the First-Class Carriage: The First Victorian Railway Killing by Kate Colquhoun. Page 256.

Excellent description of the pea soupers of London. When I lived there in the 1960's there was still talk of such pea soupers occurring as recently as the mid-1950s. Clean natural gas discovered in the North Sea quickly replaced residential coal use (and in industry), dramatically improving air quality.

After the freezing temperatures of the previous fortnight it was turning milder. The weather had broken and frost was replaced by an intermittent rain pattering through the bare trees. Fogs rose from the river, mingled with the soot from house and factory and cloaked the city in a yellowing, soapy atmosphere. It was as if, as Miller wrote in his Picturesque Sketches of London, all the smoke from hundreds of chimneys ascended, rotted and then descended all at once – choking [and] foul tasting. With visibility limited to a yard ahead, pedestrians groped their way gingerly along the greasy pavements, feeling their way along walls in an attempt to avoid being knocked down. Street vehicles and riverboats collided. A drawback of industrial progress, these dangerous ‘pea soupers’ were disorienting and depressing.