Constance by Franny Moyle

Author:Franny Moyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

11

A dark bitter forest

THE SUMMER OF 1893 was peculiarly hot. The signs of an imminent heatwave began to emerge in the spring. In April residents of Coventry sweltered in 26.7° sunshine, while Cambridge reached an astonishing 28.9°, record temperatures for the time of year that remain still unbroken today. Between 4 March and 15 May not a drop of rain fell on Mile End in the East End of London, still the longest recorded run of consecutive dry days in the UK. By June local papers and magazines were celebrating the potential bounty that such a shift in the climate might produce for the nation’s gardeners, naturalists and foragers. Butterfly enthusiasts would have more luck than usual if they took their nets out, since some varieties, such as the Duke of Burgundy, with its golden spots and white-tipped wings, were exceptionally producing second broods in the warm weather. There was almost certain to be a bumper crop of early mushrooms, the Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times announced to its readers – just as long as some heavy rains came to break the heat. And such downpours were indeed delivered as the summer reached its peak. In August, Preston in Lancashire saw the heaviest shower ever noted, when 32 mm of rain fell in just five minutes.

London’s fashionable men responded to the heat by discarding the customary waistcoats that were worn in the summer months in favour of a new craze for colourful bandanas or cummerbunds. Women, meanwhile, could take to the beach in the swimming suits that were now available for them, with their long knickerbocker legs and tabard tops. By October that year these were publicized further in the hit musical A Gaiety Girl, in which the female chorus was clad entirely in bathing attire.

But the heat had its tragic consequences too. Businesses began to suffer, not least the West End theatres. After calls by the public for the installation of electric fans to cool the insufferably hot auditoria, twenty-three venues eventually just closed. Far more serious than loss of business was loss of life. London’s mortality rates increased significantly over the previous year. And there were sad accidents too – none more awful, perhaps, than the tale of young Emil Goth. This eleven-year-old boy took tickets at the Jubilee Public Baths in Betts Street in London’s East End. That August the baths were swamped by hot working men who wanted to cool off, and the newspapers reported that consequently the officials supervising the bathing establishment were ‘taxed to their utmost’ – so taxed indeed that they failed to notice that on closure of the baths one day an exhausted Emil removed his own hot, sweaty clothes and jumped into the pool. He was unaware that the large, nine-inch drain had just been opened to empty the pool. The huge amount of water pouring into the drain took Emil with it, sucking him down into the great underwater pipe, where his tiny body lodged in its bend. He had drowned long before anyone was able to extricate him.

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