What if the Winter of 1895 Strikes Again?

Have you ever heard of the big freeze of early 1895? I thought not and no, neither had I until I sat down with a book about past weather extremes.

December 1894 was unusually mild. So much so in fact, that it was precisely the sort of balmy winter that would lead to protesters hurling cans of soup at paintings and shrieking headlines. Even chrysanthemums were flowering in Herefordshire at Christmas.

However, it all changed in January 1895 when the cold started. A vast mass of freezing air had locked itself down over Britain, preventing the mild low-pressure cyclones from pushing up across the Atlantic. Within a few days widespread snow up to 10 inches (25 cm) deep but a fleeting thaw made it seem as if the worst was over.

It wasn’t. On January 23rd 1895 the cold was back and with a vengeance. It began with major thunderstorms followed by a howling gale from the northwest that tore off roofs and ripped up trees while dumping a fresh round of snow. By January 25th a train leaving Wick was buried under 25 ft (7.6 m) of snow.

The snow spread further south, to be followed by plunging temperatures. At Braemar by February 11th it was down to —17°F (—27°C). The same day Buxton in Derbyshire clocked —11°F (—24°C). London was almost mild by comparison. At Beddington near Croydon on February 7th an almost pleasant —2°F (—19°C) was recorded.

The massive freeze ended river navigation. Ships were stuck fast, and cargoes could be neither loaded nor unloaded. The Manchester Ship Canal was solid ice and resisted all attempts to break it up.

The result was also mass unemployment, a catastrophe at a time when there were no benefits and workers could be laid off at the drop of a hat. Farm labourers were laid off because the land was like concrete. Fishermen obviously couldn’t work and had no income, to say nothing of the fish that no-one could now eat (and at a time when the British fishing industry was enormous).

Glasgow became a city of soup kitchens and starving families with tens of thousands of unemployed men. In order to keep the gas works operating on the Old Kent Road a special team had to be organised to be on duty round the clock smashing the ice on the river so that coal could be brought in. That eventually created an ice wall 10 ft (3 m) high and two miles (3.2 km) long.

The frost penetrated two foot (61 cm) underground shattering water mains in the south and even deeper in the north.

By February 14th the Serpentine in London had 9.5 in (24 cm) of ice and a 600-strong battalion of Grenadier Guards performed manoeuvres on it.

It was, in short, a late Victorian Beast from the East. It lasted most of the month and began only gradually to abate in the latter part of February, but Glasgow’s harbour remained blocked by ice until well into March, with another cold snap temporarily halting the thaw.

According to the BMJ for April that year deaths from respiratory diseases in February nearly tripled:

The effect of the cold on the public health was noticeable, especially in the increased mortality among children and old people. The increase in the number of deaths from diseases of the respiratory organs was first notable in the return for the week ending February 2nd, and a month later the weekly number of deaths from these causes was 1,448, or 945 above the average.

That’s more than three times as many deaths than normal from respiratory conditions. There’s no mention of the others who just froze to death.

The meteorological conditions that prevailed in 1895 were far from unique. They were a function of Britain’s location. They had occurred before and have happened since, for example in 2018, even if 1895 was exceptionally bad.

The interesting question though is how will 21st century Britain cope if 1895 happens again, especially in the utopian landscape of Net Zero? We live in an astronomically more complicated world. And it will happen again. The only real question is when?

It’s not hard to imagine the devastating consequences on the supply food chain as every electric delivery vehicle grinds to a halt, its battery rendered lifeless by the temperatures, to say nothing of the deadened solar farms. Indeed, the wholesale economic devastation that could be caused by compromising the electrical supply is too awful to contemplate. Back in 1895 that simply didn’t matter.

We also have today a vastly greater elderly population, many of whom are totally dependent on medication and support to keep them alive during their 80s and 90s. With so few homes now unable to accommodate open fires, the reliance on electric heating to keep them warm will be exposed as catastrophically vulnerable. As it is, many of the elderly who live on their own already cannot afford to heat their homes even through the recent years of mild winters.

And what would happen to the hospitals? As the sick and elderly piled up outside the doors of A&E the creaking NHS edifice would collapse. The death rates of 1895 would look like a mouse breaking wind in a hurricane by comparison.

The main point is it’s not so much that the weather has changed (regardless of what anyone thinks about that or by how they measure it, or what the causes are) because it’s always changed, but that our world has altered beyond imagination since 1895. In some respects, we seem more in control than ever before of our environment, but the truth is that we are actually more vulnerable than we have ever been: every aspect of our existence now hangs by an electronic thread.

Worse, we seem dead set on making ourselves as vulnerable as possible. Moreover, our expectations of the state have exploded. Back in 1895, people were rather more self-sufficient, because they had to be.

Perhaps the next Government, whomever it’s formed by, will have ‘top people working on it’. Perhaps the chancers who run our lives will strike lucky and it will all pan out as we march joyously into the promised land where the sun always shines on solar farms and the battery is always charged. But I wouldn’t bank on that. It only has to happen once, and the whole house of cards will be flattened. Just like the batteries.