We tend to think of earthquakes as a modern phenomenon, caused by long-term weather changes and global warming. However those living in the eighteenth century, and even earlier, experienced them too. The accounts they left behind reveal what our ancestors experienced, what they feared and how they tried to prevent the tremors from damaging their towns and cities.
In one, on 8 February 1750, a number of chimneys collapsed, along with some walls. A shepherd marvelled at the hard ground that undulated under him as if it were water. The Thames 'became greatly agitated', wrote one observer, although the legal minds of London had other worries. 'The barristers were greatly alarmed', they wrote, 'for they thought that Westminster was falling down'.
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| Joseph Farington, 1747–1821, British, Westminster Abbey and Bridge, 1794. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1976.7.28. Public Domain. |
Exactly one month later there was another shockwave. Houses near the river shook, and bolts of lightning flashed across the sky. Dogs howled and fish jumped three feet out of rivers and ponds. A boatman steadied his boat as he felt a blow come up and onto its base. The Reverend Mr Pickering was in bed, when he 'heard a sound like that of a blast of wind. I then perceived myself raised in my bed, and the motion began on my right side, and inclined me towards the left'. The sound was compared to the blast of 'several cannon', as London seemed, they said, to lurch violently sideways and then back again. Some witnesses said they saw not only thunder but a ball of fire in the sky.
If Londoners went to their beds thinking it was all over that evening, they would have an unsettling shock when a louder and heavier impact was felt the next morning at 5.30am. People woke from their sleep, the new spire at Westminster Abbey was damaged and the bells of parish churches rang out haphazardly as they clanged against their stone towers.
One 'imposter' claimed one earthquake would take place at a designated time and day 'which would lay Westminster in ruins'. Residents ran to their churches in case prayer might help fend off the predicted event, or perhaps in the hope that the religious building could provide a place of safety. Others ran to the countryside to escape the danger instead.
On 11 March 1750 Horace Walpole wrote of his experience of one of the quakes, 'In the night between Wednesday and Thursday last... the earth had a shivering fit between one and two; but so slight, that if no more had followed, I don't believe it would have been noticed. I had been awake, and had scarce dozed again, when on a sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head; I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon found it was a strong earthquake, that lasted near half a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang my bell, my servant came in frightened out of his senses; in an instant we heard all the windows in the neighbourhood flung up. I got up and found people running into the streets, but saw no mischief done; there has been some - two old houses flung down, several chimneys, and much chinaware. The bells rung in several houses. Admiral Knowles, who had lived long in Jamaica and felt seven there, says this was more violent than any of them'.
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| The Earthquake Scare in Piccadilly 1750, Yale Center for British Art, Public Domain. |
More earthquakes followed in February 1756 and February 1761. The latter was felt most violently by residents along the Thames near Richmond but also witnessed at Hampstead and Highgate.
On 8 March 1761 the weather was unusually warm, and between five and six in the morning Londoners experienced a lightning storm. An earthquake followed, and people were said to have run from their beds and out into the streets, understandably, considering their previous experiences of the last few years, thinking that their homes were falling down around them.
Notes and Sources
Notices of Earthquake-Shocks felt in Great Britain. By David Milne Esq. Jameson's Journal, No 61. Timbs, Curiosities of London Bogue, London 1855
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