The Cold Wave in England

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 929, 26 March 1881, Page 6

The Cold Wave in England

(From the Jan. I9th). •Nb Bfldh bloat ‘oF-Human euch closing up of (the ways, of the English world has _be£sjlsn ; ys r3 within living.memory as that which has visited the Struth of Englaricf, and, indeed,jfor all we know ,in our sudden d^olation, the whole of the British Isles in the, last four and twenty hours. FrosTwe’ know, snow we know, gales 4ve knofr, high tides we know.;'blit it has been reserved for January 18, 1881, to' show what a combination of all these, forces together can do to reduce the" greatest eity.-in.-the world to a condition of helpless isolation and inactivity. It will be some days, .perhaps, bpfore we know the full effects throughout the country of the unprecedented weather which haa prevailed fdr the last twenty-four hours. Though some accounts have reached us, wa -are, comparatively speaking, snowed up and cut off from the world. The Post Office has announced that communication Between London and the country is almost entirely suspended, so that all we can record at present is the condition of London and the nearer parts of the South of England. Of this nearly every one who lives in London will have some special tale of danger, inconvenience, and adventure to. tell. As if the snow, the frost, and the gale were not enough to try us, the inhabitants of the southern shores of the Thames have had to bear the stress of an unprecedentedly high tide. .The south-east wind, piling up a flowing tide, poured the water into the lowlying districts and. brought upon thejn a disastrous flood laden with, floating blocks of ice. In the estuary more thaji a hundred barges are said to have been sunk, and the pier at Woolwich has-- been wholly washed away. Brighton,’ Portsmouth, and Exeter are blocked with snow, and the whole traffic of the 'southern and western lines is either thrown into confusion or suspended altogether. At Dover, only one packet .. arrived and none sailed, while those which attempted to make the passage were unable to approach the Admiralty Pier, and were forced to put. to sea for safety. Of wlrat may have happened in the more distant parts of the kingdom we as yet know little. The Irish mail due yesterday morning did not reach London till the afternoon, and yet, if we may judge-from the weather which prevailed in London, it had not encountered the worst of the storm. Frojn all parts of the country, so far as our intelligence extends, accounts are sent of trains snowed up, of traffic on the roads suspended, of risks to life and destruction of property. No Londoner is likely to forget the effects of yesterday's weather in the metropolis/. Windows coated and doorways blocked with snow, ice-floes piled on the Speaker’s steps at Westminster, every line of every building picked out in strange-unearthly lines of white, the “celebrated eminence” of St. Jariies’sstreet turned into a truly Alpine slope, the toil of belated pedestrians, and the despair qf ■ carriages reduced to a standstill—these and similar things will fix the day indelibly in the memory of every inhabitant of London. To the infinite miseries of .'frost to the houseless, the ill-fed, the ; ill-clad, and tlie ill-warmed are now added in many cases those of flood, and in many more those of the suspension of ordinary labor and traffic. The poor watchman frozen to death in Gray’s-Inn-road, is, we fear, only an extreme ease of the suffering imposed by the weather on all whose avocations or necessities deprive them of sufficient food, warmth, and shelter. Compared with suffering of this kind, the mere inconveniences and misadventures of yesterday sink almost into insignicance. Yet it is somewhat humiliating to reflect how completely the weather when it exerts Itself, can become master or the situation, and extinguish for the time being some of the chief elements of material civilization. It is some days since many London householders were placed on a short allowance of water, and reduced to depend on a scanty and precarious supply obtained from an improvised

conduit lf it were possible for yesterday’s weather to continue for long without abateifidiildl kobni begin- to short'd? WAfer. Milt w-ereiblqfiked. and the iptefruption qf street traffic would soon affect the market for almost -every article of food. Letters cduld not be delivered, telegrams t could,pot be. sent, newspapers could, nptipq^^tri^ufed,if i%ee or. four,days such as.yesterday were to come upon us together, and London would soon begin to wear ! the r dokdlate aspect jt has not thb days of the pjggue. jtbsit.omen. Qnespch day is almost more'than we can Rear, a succession of such would literally overwhelm us. Even now traffic is almost at a Htandfstill, and we shall hear ,tb©. Of (Md .incapacity of the,inppi.cipal authorities to deal with.the effectsjpf a single snowstorm. The best ■ municipality in‘ the world -would fail before the task of removing hundreds of thousands of tops of snow from such an area as that of London in, a. short space of time. The carts, the horses, and the men are not to be found for the task, and if they wereladen the darts woUld be brought to a staridstill’ita' the ‘strbets. There is jjothing for it, but patience and a hope that we have, now seep the worst. .After all, unpleasant as the experience-is, there is at least something fascinating in th'e memory of some of the wofst weather ever known.