The Daily Echo was quick to recognise the gravity of the situation. The next day, its front page screamed an urgent warning to its readers: *“Here is a warning about a fiend. Fog will be general in the south again tonight.”*
This simple, sixteen-word declaration was the public’s first taste of the chaos that had unfolded—a story of an atmospheric villain that had paralysed the city.
The fog, which residents quickly nicknamed “the fog fiend,” was so thick that visibility was reduced to just a few feet. It plunged the town into a state of disarray. Traffic was reduced to a crawl, with desperate motorists bumping along curbs and twisting fenders as they collided with trees and lampposts.
In an almost theatrical display of mutual aid, pedestrians waving white handkerchiefs bravely stepped into the gloom to guide cars through the maze of the town. Thankfully, due to the slow speeds, no serious accidents were reported, thanks to the “care and alertness of both drivers and pedestrians,” as the Echo noted.
The Echo’s coverage went beyond mere reporting; it captured the shared sense of bewilderment and frustration. The paper lamented that the “fiend” was not only a killer on the roads but also a “killer of business.”
One manager of a shop on Above Bar ruefully commented that they “might as well have shut early in the afternoon,” as people, sensing the impending doom, had already gone home.
The town’s entertainment venues were no exception to the fog’s grip. While early evening shows saw some attendance, later performances were plagued by empty seats. Who could blame people for not venturing out again after such a perilous journey home?
Southampton’s public transportation system faced its own Herculean task. Tram and bus drivers, hailed as heroes, worked “splendidly” to keep services running, navigating the treacherous conditions with a terrible responsibility on their shoulders. The Southampton Corporation Transport Department was heartily congratulated for their efforts in getting people home.
The fog of 1934 remains a vivid, if unpleasant, memory for many residents. It was one of the worst fogs the town had experienced in years—a reminder of the vulnerability of a busy town to the whims of nature and industrial pollution.
This particular kind of fog, thick with coal smoke and pollutants, would become a recurring problem in the UK. This atmospheric villain finally met its match years later—not in the courage of drivers or the guidance of pedestrians, but in legislation.
In the aftermath of London’s notorious “Great Smog of 1952,” the UK Parliament passed the Clean Air Act of 1956. This landmark legislation sought to combat air pollution by establishing “smoke control areas” where only smokeless fuels could be burned.
By encouraging homes to switch to cleaner sources of heat like electricity and gas, the act aimed to reduce the very kind of smoke pollution and sulfur dioxide that had contributed to the infamous “pea-souper” fogs of the past.
It was a long-overdue victory against the “fog fiend” that had once brought Southampton to its knees.
https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/25494770.southampton-brought-standstill-fog/?ref=rss