Writing a short while after the disaster, my ancestor wrote in his diary the following words:

1755 – Nov 1^st – a Great Earthquake in Lisbon – felt in several parts of

Spain. At the same time the Water in the Sea and in Fishponds in several

parts of England  had a surprising commotion by suddenly rising, and

overflowing.

It was indeed a major catastrophe. Estimated now as having a magnitude of 8.5 on the Richter scale, the quake hit the port area of Lisbon first and killed around 600 people. The epicentre was hundreds of kilometres away  off the coast and it was 9.30 in the morning when the effects were first felt in the Portuguese capital.

Lisbon was home to perhaps 275,000 people. It was All Saints Day and many of the population would have been attending church. Many buildings collapsed, trapping others indoors. Twenty churches and chapels were destroyed - indeed it was reported that ecclesiastical buildings bore the brunt of the damage and that the brothels of the city went largely unscathed! 

The earth shook for nine minutes but just as the survivors thought that the worst was over the city was hit by a giant tsunami which ripped through the sea defences and drowned another thousand residents.

Even worse was to follow; fires triggered by the quake were whipped out of control by high winds and within hours much of the city was engulfed in flames. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the fire - perhaps as many as sixty thousand. The tsunami alone is believed to have killed another ten thousand people by the time it travelled down the coast to Morocco. It was indeed a huge disaster, and one which was to have repercussions throughout Europe.  

      Eighteenth Century  engravings showing the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami

Readers of the Journal of a Georgian Gentleman will know that Richard Hall never missed an opportunity to talk about the weather; indeed we are fortunate that he found time to talk about anything else at all!

The events of October 1784 presented him with a quandary - his infant daughter Anna (and her cousins) were to be inoculated against smallpox. Somewhere he had to find space to record the progress of her reaction to the  'variolation' as it was called, with the regular updates on the climate.

He started to set the scene on Wednesday 6th October "Began to light a Fire.Very fine day - cool. Began to warm bed"

 (And yes, I still have his brass bed-warmer!)

The next day was "Fine, cold wind" while the following days were either "cool and very fine", or "fine and cool"

On the Sabbath (10th October) he recorded that he went out of mourning for "poor Mr Kearse" (his first wife's uncle) "who has been departed four months this day" before adding that it was "Dull,Cold"

The weather remained that way for several days and on Wednesday 18th October Richard records that "This day poor little Anna, her Cousins Maria and Eliza were Inoculated for the smallpox.May the Lord of his great mercy be pleased to carry safely  thro' and spare them. Dull day, a little rain, cold"

                                                            

Apart from recording that the next few days were cold not a lot happened that week, except that another cousin (Patty Snooke) was also inoculated and on Monday 18th October Richard's wife "Went to sleep at Mrs Snooke's on account of the poor baby" and perhaps to get away from the weather forecasts! By then it was "a fine day, cool"

The next day we are told that "Dear Anna began to fail" (don't forget, the poor mite had just been given a live inoculation of a mild form of smallpox, a disease which was fatal in a worryingly high percentage of cases). It was "dullish in morning, after fine with Sun. Cold."

The next day Richard records that the barometer rose and that "Anna still but poorly, a little rain in morning,cool"  and the day after that mentions that "The smallpox came out in poor Anna and Eliza - may the Lord still mercifully appear & preserve."  It was a "pretty fine day - cold - a frost".

The children's health appears to have alternated over the next couple of days, and on 23rd October Richard noted that the barometer fell, and that it was dullish in the morning, and that in the afternoon there was a good deal of Rain.

Richard's diary for the following week records "snow in the past night" (Sabbath, 24th October). "Frost,Very wet in morning.Some more rain in afternoon.Cold"

The next day saw "a hard Frost, Snow in morning - after, fine, very cold" while noting that it was the day of Stow Fair. The children did get a mention the following day ("children thro' Mercy mending") although they shared the entry with the information that it was "cold, part fine, with sun".

The usual cycle of life in the Cotswolds went on - he began to make a collection for the Poor of the Church (31st October) and he  took coffee at Mr Palmer's two days later.

November 5th sees the entry "Through the goodness of God, my Wife and Anna returned from Mrs Snooke's. The Dear Baby through great mercy finally recovered from Inoculation....dull day,not cold. Preston came to be with us" (Preston was the maid, probably intended to help Mrs Hall with the baby-minding duties).  

The weather stayed miserable; the week afterwards the wind got up "Thursday November 11th wind very high with rain in the past night...exceeding wet and windy in the afternoon and evening.Not cold"  He refers to "A pretty deal of rain" on the following day. Indeed it rained all weekend until Tuesday "A very fine day with Sun.Not cold. Mr Clifford came from Stow about 10 o'clock at night.Saw lightning & heard Thunder - pretty loud"

And so the entries for the week continue until Thursday 18th November - when we see "A very wet day - not cold. Trouble and affliction; but Man is born to trouble - and the Lord won't lay upon Man more than is right" (No, I have no idea what sparked that off!)

A hard frost is mentioned for most of the next week, but by Tuesday the family all set out by chaise for Evesham. "Din'd at the Crown, drank coffee at Mr Dune; Lay at The Crown.Fine in morning - turned Foggy."

All in all, quite an eventful month...

  

                              

                             Gillray's ' Raw Weather'  © National Portrait Gallery, London  1808

 

"1761 Bought my Weather-glass"

 

 

When Richard Hall mentioned the purchase of a weather glass he was referring to a barometer, but not the ones with which we are familiar today i.e. an aneroid barometer. The aneroid (from the Greek ‘without liquid’) model was not invented until 1843, by the Frenchman Lucien Vidie.  Richard’s model would have been a Torricelli or mercury Barometer, named after its inventor Evangelista Torricelli.

According to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research:

"In a 17th century laboratory in Florence, Italy, Evangelista Torricelli- physicist mathematician, and assistant to the astronomer Galileo - filled a long glass tube with mercury and turned it upside down into a dish forming a vacuum so that the mercury remained held within the tube. To his amazement, he witnessed that the mercury was not the same height everyday. The changes in its level were caused by changes in the atmospheric pressure. Torricelli had not only created a vacuum, but also a very important weather instrument - the barometer."

                                            

Torricelli had been born in 1608 and died in Florence of Typhoid Fever at the age of just 39 on October 22, 1647.  

Writing in 1643 he famously stated in a letter: "We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air" (which, let's face it, is a rather neat way of describing atmospheric pressure). 

                      My own Torricelli barometer, no doubt similar to the one Richard bought.

Richard's brother in law, farming in the Cotswolds, also bought a barometer, noting the cost on 10 May 1768 "Barometer Tube five shillings. Case one shilling"

That´s what I love about the 18th Century - they had the same pre-occupation with the weather as we do today, but without the reliance on  people on TV standing in front of a map of meaningless symbols, reciting from an autocue. There is no substitute for tapping the glass of your own barometer, which has done the job perfectly for centuries, and making your own personal forecast for the day.*

 

 

*And as I have just arrived in Spain, it has to be: "sunny, followed by sunshine. Maybe some sunny spells later"

 

 

Remember Eyjafjallajökull -  the Icelandic volcano with the unpronounceable name which caused chaos for air travellers in Europe last year? Well it has a big brother, and it is getting more irritable… scientists are expressing concern about Bárdarbunga, a large central volcano which last erupted over  century ago. Indeed its last major eruption was in 1477 – and at that stage it produced gigantic quantities of ash and pumice as well as releasing the biggest lava flow seen on earth in the past 10,000 years.

And what if it happens again? A warning comes from the events of  1783/4, events which Richard unwittingly recorded in his diaries. For in that year an explosion of the Laski volcano in Iceland produced something far more deadly than ash – poisonous gasses.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Farm workers in particular were exposed to the poisonous cloud. Acid rain caused crops to wither and fade, leaving crop yields to plummet. Cattle perished in their thousands and food prices soared.

For weeks on end an eerie haze hung over the countryside, the sun failing to break through the thick cloud. Richard noted the haze and recorded the sickness and commented that it was hot and stifling.

Inside the cloud electric storms raged, causing a terrifying spectacle, which Richard mentioned as “Much lightning…. a remarkable Phaenomenon seen in various parts between 9 and 10 o’clock at Night.”

At  the end of 1783 Richard reflected:

“This year has been remarkable for very hot weather and a great deal of terrible

Thunder and Lightning – by which very much damage was done - much Sickness has attended”.

And the relevance of all this? Just that if Bárdarbunga blows, we may get rather more than ash disruption and cancelled flights, we could end up wearing gas masks for months on end!

More information appears on my website at http://mikerendell.com

Recent devastating earthquakes  in South Island New Zealand and in Japan remind us of the enormous damage inflicted by these calamitous events. Richard Hall often noted earthquakes in his diaries – even if they happened hundreds of miles away in other parts of Europe. The earliest mention was in 1750 – a year which started with not one but two earthquakes felt in London.

Richard notes

“An earthquake felt in London February 8^th 1750 about Twelve o’Clock at noon. Another shook Thursday March 8th 1750 about half after Five o’Clock in the morning”.

It did not take long for the clergy to blame the tremors on Divine displeasure at the sinfulness of their flocks – the Bishop of London proclaimed that it was as a direct result of lewd and pornographic behaviour (Fanny Hill had just been published). So one month later the “End of the World is Nigh” brigade led a mass exodus out of town, convinced that the eighth of each month was blighted and that the eighth day of April would see a major ‘quake. The city was totally gridlocked, as huge numbers of people tried to leave for the security of the open country. Presumably, having driven their carts out of town, they all waited until sunset before sheepishly coming home in the evening, but not before they had given London a taste of traffic chaos which today would be familiar to us all.

 A later diary entry reads:

"1755 – Nov 1^st – a Great Earthquake in Lisbon – felt in several parts of

Spain. At the same time the Water in the Sea and in Fishponds in several

parts of England  had a surprising commotion by suddenly rising, and

overflowing."

It was indeed a huge disaster. Estimated now as having a magnitude of 8.5 on the Richter scale, the quake hit the port area of Lisbon first and killed around 600 people. Many buildings collapsed, trapping others indoors. The earth shook for nine minutes but just as the survivors thought that the worst was over the city was hit by a giant tsunami which ripped through the sea defences and drowned another 900 residents. Even worse was to follow; fires triggered by the quake were whipped out of control by high winds and within hours much of the city was engulfed in flames. An estimated 10,000 people were killed in the fire

alone.

"1783 – Feb 5th -  Awful Earthquake at Messina in Sicily – great damage".

Much of the historic town of Messina was devastated and widespread damage occurred in Sicily and Southern Italy – some 40,000 people are estimated to have perished. It is perhaps a reminder that no matter how ‘advanced’ we think we are, humankind is entirely at the mercy of the forces of nature. And we always have been…