William Cavert
"Making Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Society in Early Modern London"
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Abstract
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This dissertation will argue that early modern London was the first city in world history whose air was continually polluted by smoke, and it will present an account of how and why this change happened, and what it meant for London’s inhabitants. Until the mid-sixteenth century most Londoners burned wood in their homes and shops, but after about 1575 coal use expanded enormously, and the provision and consumption of coal quickly became embedded in larger social and political relationships. Coal soon became associated with basic survival for London’s poor and prosperity and growth for its governors and leading citizens. But this consumption was also problematic, as contemporary medical theory was ambivalent about whether breathing smoke was healthy or dangerous. Attitudes towards the consumption of coal and towards smoke in the air, therefore, were complex and contested, as Londoners and their governors disagreed both about whether it was unhealthy and about whether coal smoke symbolized dirtiness, disorder, and danger, or warmth, growth, and prosperity. It will be emphasized, therefore, that in early modern London air pollution was doubly made, first by those whose fuel use filled the air with smoke, and secondly by those who proclaimed such smoke to be matter out of place.
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