SEVERE WEATHER AT HOME.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2201, 16 March 1881, Page 3

SEVERE WEATHER AT HOME.

(“ Home News,” January 27.) The weather has been the chief topic and the event of the last ten days. Nothing like the severity and the suddenness of the wintry extremes experienced throughout England, and apparently throughout Europe, has occurred within the memory of middle-aged men. It was bitterly cold throughout Friday and Saturday, January 14th and 15th. It was colder on Sunday, and again on Monday, January 16th and 17th, but the air was beautifully clear; the sunshine was bright, if it was iced ; and the snow which coated the ground was frozen to the consistency of iron. In the course of the 17th there were signs of a change. The temperature rose a little, and during the night a heavy snowstorm came on. It was prolonged into, and it lasted throughout, the whole of the next day, accompanied by terrifically high winds. These had the effect of producing deep snow - drifts, and those portions of the streets which were left comparatively bare disclosed a thin coating of ice, which made them as slippery as glass, and rendered traffic dangerous or impossible. The gale was so violent and the snow was so blinding that it was almost as difficult to walk as it was impossible to drive. Whole stacks of chimneys were precipitated into the street. Men were lifted clean off their legs by the tempestuous blasts, and at the Albert Docks two laborers were caught up by the force of the tornado, blown into the water, and drowned. The damage done and the sufferings sustained along the coast and throughout the provinces cannot yet be fully estimated, but can scarcely be exaggerated. The long pier at Southend was swept completely away, the Admiralty Pier at Dover was much injured. News of wrecks and harrowing accounts of human misery come to us from every quarter. In London the distress in the poorer districts is appalling, while infinite discomfort and inconvenience are caused to the well to-do by tho freezing up of pipes, the bursting of kitchen boilers, and the scantiness of water. Daring Tuesday and Wednesday, January 18th and 19th, London resembled a great city in a state of siege. Communication from outside was almost entirely interrupted. No country letters came because the railways wera blocked up. The trains in some oases did not start at all from the metropolitan termini; in others started but were compelled to abandon the attempt to arrive at their destination. Thus the locomotive which

left Euston at 415 on January 18th, and which was due at Birmingham about seven, could not get further than Willesdon. Most of the passengers remained in their carriages hoping that the way might be suddenly cleared, and after having spent sixteen or seventeen hours on tho line without moving, returned to the station whence they had started. The next day it seemed as if the milk supply of the capital, the greater portion of which is conveyed by train from some distance, was about to fail, and the purveyors of that nutritious and in dispensable fluid placed even their best customers upon half commons. This unparalleled access of hyperborean weather has made itself powerfully felt in every department of our public and social life. Judges have been snowed up while travelling to assize towns, and Mr Justice Hawkins and Mr Justice Lindley arrived at Maidstone, after having made one false start, ju<t thirty-six hours after their appointed time. Jurymen have been unable to got to the Court. Members of Parliament have failed to come up to Westminster in time to vote, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson took twenty hours to make the journey from Carlisle to London. Never till this extra ordinary weather arrived had the London theatres been doing suck a brisk business. But on Tuesday week, January 18‘Ji, actors had to play to almost empty benches, and in several instances it was a question whether the performance should not be wholly pretermitted. At the Globa Theatre soma of tho most important members of the company could not get to the playhouse, and the chief piece of the evening “ Les Mousquetaires au Oonven*,” was left out of the programme. On Tuesday night, January 18tb, the fury of the tempest somewhat abated, but during nearly tho whole of the next day the snow continued to fall. As evening draw on it ceased, and the night, though intensely cold, was exquisitely clear. Thursday morning, January 20th, broke fine and fair, and since then there have boon no more signs of a renewal of tho snowstorm. It is one of the peculiarities of snow that when it falls in any quantities it paraljscs London as completely as an avalanche would an Alpine village. The attempts made to remove the snow from the streets of the capital have been of the most feeble and ineffectual kind, and where the thoroughfare is partially cleared it is piled up in huge heapes at the sides of the pavement, which, directly a thaw comes, will bo convert ed into mountains of slush and then into reservoirs of liquefied filth.