Smoke Of London Research Articles

Evaluation of the London Smoking Cessation Transformation Programme: a time-series analysis.

Background and aimNational social marketing campaigns have been shown to promote smoking cessation in England. There is reason to believe that regional and city‐wide campaigns can play a valuable role in reducing smoking prevalence over and above any national tobacco control activity. This study aimed to assess the impact of the London Smoking Cessation Transformation Programme, a multi‐component citywide smoking cessation programme, on quit attempts and quit success rates.Design and SettingInterrupted time–series analyses, using Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and generalized additive models (GAM) of population trends in the difference between monthly quit attempts and quit success rates among smokers who made a quit attempt in London versus the rest of England before and during the first year of the programme.ParticipantsA total of 55 528 past‐year adult smokers who participated in a monthly series of nationally representative cross‐sectional surveys in England between November 2006 and August 2018. Twelve and a half per cent of smokers lived in London (intervention region) and 87.5% lived in the rest of England (control region).MeasurementsMonthly prevalence of quit attempts and quit success rates among smokers who made a quit attempt.FindingsThe monthly difference in prevalence of quit attempts in London compared with the rest of England increased by 9.59% [95% confidence interval (CI) = 4.35–14.83, P < 0.001] from a mean of 0.04% pre‐intervention to 9.63% post‐intervention. The observed increase in success rates among those who tried was not statistically significant (B = 4.72; 95% CI = –2.68 to 12.11, P = 0.21); Bayes factors indicated that these data were insensitive. GAM analyses confirmed these results.ConclusionThe promotion of the London Smoking Cessation Transformation Programme during September 2017 was associated with a significant increase in quit attempts compared with the rest of England. The results were inconclusive regarding an effect on quit success among those who tried.

Evaluation of the London Smoking Cessation Transformation Programme: a time series analysis

BackgroundIn 2017, a citywide smoking cessation campaign, the London Smoking Cessation Transformation Programme, was launched in London, UK, to boost quitting rates. The campaign involved use of mass media and online marketing, an online portal and a dedicated telephone helpline. This study examined whether the campaign resulted in an increase in quit attempts and in the success rate among smokers who tried to quit in the first year of operation. MethodsThe programme began in September, 2017. We used data from 55 528 past-year adult smokers who participated in a monthly series of nationally representative cross-sectional surveys in England between November 2006, and August 2018. 12·5% of smokers lived in London (intervention region) and 87·5% in the rest of England (control region). We did interrupted time-series analyses, using Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average and Generalised Additive Models (GAM), to model population trends in the difference between monthly quit attempts and quit success rates among smokers who made a quit attempt in London versus the rest of England before and during the first year of the programme. Data were weighted to match the population in England. Ethics approval for the Smoking Toolkit Study was granted by the UCL Ethics Committee (ID 2808/005) and participants provided fully informed consent. FindingsThe monthly difference in prevalence of quit attempts in London compared with the rest of England increased by 9·59% (95% CI 4·35–14·83, p<0·0001) from a mean of 0·04% pre-intervention to 9·63% post-intervention. The observed increase in success rates among those who tried was not significant (4·72% [–2·68 to 12·11], p=0·21); Bayes factors indicated these data were insensitive. GAM analyses confirmed these results, showing a significant step-level change in the monthly prevalence of quit attempts from before to after the intervention that was 1·52 times larger in London than the rest of England (OR 1·52, 95% CI 1·21–1·91, p<0·0001), but no significant difference in change in success of quit attempts (1·22, 0·71–2·10, p=0·48). InterpretationThe promotion of the London Smoking Cessation Transformation Programme during September 2017 was associated with a significant increase in quit attempts compared with the rest of England. This finding supports the view that media campaigns and cessation support can work together to improve quitting rates in large population groups. The programme could provide a blueprint for similar initiatives in other major cities in the UK or overseas. FundingCancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council.

William M. Cavert, The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City

William M. Cavert, <i>The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City</i>

The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. By William M. Cavert. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Edited by John Morrill et al.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xx+274. $99.99 (cloth); $80.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. By William M. Cavert. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Edited by John Morrill et al.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xx+274. $99.99 (cloth); $80.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).Fredrik Albritton JonssonFredrik Albritton JonssonUniversity of Chicago Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 90, Number 4December 2018 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/700143 Views: 98Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. By William M. Cavert

The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. By William M. Cavert

William M. Cavert. The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. xx + 274 pp., figs., bibl., index. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. £64.99 (cloth).

William M. Cavert. The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. xx + 274 pp., figs., bibl., index. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. £64.99 (cloth).

The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. By William M. Cavert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xxx + 274 pp. Graphs, notes, and index. Cloth $99.99.

<i>The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City</i>. By William M. Cavert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xxx + 274 pp. Graphs, notes, and index. Cloth $99.99.

William M. Cavert. The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City.

William M. Cavert. The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City.

William M. Cavert , The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xix + 279 pp. 3 figures. Bibliography. £64.99 hbk.

William M. Cavert , The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xix + 279 pp. 3 figures. Bibliography. £64.99 hbk.

The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. William M. Cavert. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xx + 274 pp. $99.99.

The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City. William M. Cavert. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xx + 274 pp. $99.99. - Volume 70 Issue 3

Review of 'The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City'

Review of 'The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City'

The Letterbooks of John Evelyn ed. by Douglas D.C. Chambers and David Galbraith (review)

Douglas D.C. Chambers and David Galbraith, eds. The Letterbooks of John Evelyn. Two volumes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 1328 pp. $195. John Evelyn had all the qualifications to be a virtuoso, being a rich gentleman, with a powerful and enquiring mind, who enjoyed the social life of Restoration London. It was as a virtuoso and public servant that his peers knew him: they read his books and pamphlets on tree-planting, gardening, engraving, the study of commemorative medals, and the smoke of London and met him on committees, at dinner parties, and at the Royal Society. In the nineteenth century, the diary that he kept from his youth in the 1630s to his death in 1706 was rediscovered and published. It is not as vivid and personal as the diary that his friend Samuel Pepys kept in the 1660s, but it is an impressive sustained self-portrait and a major historical resource. The definitive edition of Evelyn's diary appeared in 1955 in six volumes, edited by the independent scholar Esmond de Beer, with a learned commentary and a stupendous index. The British Library includes two large volumes into which he copied a selection of his outgoing correspondence, comprising 810 letters written between 1644 and 1698. Like the diary, these letter books were compiled toward the end of Evelyn's life as a self-portrait for posterity. They are the subject of the edition under review here. This edition has its origins in a plan to edit the whole of Evelyn's correspondence, formed by Douglas Chambers more than twenty years ago. The result of this plan would have been comparable to great modern editions such as those of the correspondence of John Locke (by Esmond de Beer again, 3648 letters in eight volumes, 1976 to 1989) and of Robert Boyle (by Michael Hunter and others, over two thousand letters in six volumes, 2001). Chambers soon decided that an edition of the letter books would be more practicable than one of the entire correspondence of Evelyn. This was very reasonable decision: Evelyn's own selection of the letters by which he wanted to be represented does call for treatment as a work in itself. He worked on this project until 2004. Ill health then forced him to suspend work; some of his project materials were lost in a fire, but enough essential materials were preserved for his Toronto colleague David Galbraith to take the project up in 2008 and to complete it. The first thing to say about this edition is that it makes a very large, and very important, primary text available for the first time. (Selected letters of Evelyn's were published in nineteenth-century editions of his diary, and his correspondence with Pepys was edited by Guy de la Bedoyere in 1997, but most of the letters published here are new, and they have never before been presented as the unit which Evelyn intended them to be.) Its publication is a landmark in our understanding of Evelyn and of his context. The diary only told half the story of Evelyn and his interests, and the letters naturally tell much more, because a diary presents its writer to some extent in isolation and letters present the writer in connection with other people. So, we see Evelyn in action as a virtuoso, learning, arguing, and advising: the introduction notes well that the natural philosopher John Beale, to whom Evelyn wrote a number of important letters, is not mentioned in the diary (xxxii). We see him as a social networker, engaged in the intricate lifelong rhetorical process of cultivating and exploiting relationships with powerful men and women. We see him as a man of feeling avant la lettre: the diary is a source for his spiritual love affair with Margaret Blagge, his consternation at her marriage to the politician Sidney Godolphin, and his intense grief after her death after childbirth, but this story is only completed by reading Evelyn's long series of letters to Sidney Godolphin, one on every anniversary of Margaret's death, quoting again and again from a letter which Sidney had written early in his bereavement. …

In Karst Country, and: In the Deer Wallows

In Karst Country, and: In the Deer Wallows William Kelley Woolfitt (bio) In Karst Country Footnotes 1. Bats feasting in the stubble-fields on nights of swelter, mosquito-drone, sheets thrown back. 2. Under our back pasture, flow paths and rimstone pools, chambers branching and sponge-like and ramiform—a world where the sun and other luminaries are fables, where the flowers are stones. 3. That world coming near, breathing on us, in these fields rumpled and laced with ridges, fissures, sink-holes, and caverns. 4. Bats as emissaries, messages poured from bottles. 5. Bats unfurling like a parchment that’s both sturdy and delicate, both translucent and dark, “nearly of a London smoke color . . . deepening into blackness,” as Graceanna Lewis observes. Furless, their wing membranes are “so beautifully crimped by lines of blood-vessels . . . as to remind one of the India crape dresses our mothers used to wear.” 6. Bats threatened by our smoke, our filth. Isaac Weld recalls that Madison’s Cave was “covered with soot from . . . the pine torches” carried by the men who gave tours; its petrifactions were smoke-blackened. When Weld emerged, his “hands and clothes were smutted all over.” 7. The abandon of eating peaches, juice all over our faces. The pleasures of tasting, of savoring. Squirrels harvesting a mast-tree, bats eating moths. And water that gnaws stone. And neighbors who come for corn-shuckings or fodder-pulls, for loaded plates, stomping feet. [End Page 169] In the Deer Wallows Footnotes 1. Boy fleeing his chores, his father who peels a switch from the sarvisberry tree. 2. Apt to vanish when he’s sent to grub and seed, his truck-patch like those A. G. Bradley saw in the Blue Ridge: “small clearings . . . where scanty crops of corn, oats, or tobacco struggled with weeds and briars in stump-strewn enclosures, or beneath the giant skeletons of what had once been living trees, killed by girdling.” 3. Wishing to slip from sight, or grasp, or memory. Like a wooer’s note and ambrotype. Like flint knappers, mica crescents, spat-out bones, button-shanks from a soldier’s coat. 4. He eyes the earth for what’s keepable. Goes to his pallet, to brush meetings and the whipping-oak, with a walnut, or pebble, or dead bee in his fist. [End Page 170] William Kelley Woolfitt William Kelley Woolfitt is the author of two forthcoming books of poetry, Beauty Strip (Texas Review Press, 2014) and Charles of the Desert (Paraclete Press, 2016). His poems have appeared in the Threepenny Review, the Cincinnati Review, River Styx, and Radar Poetry. He teaches at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. Copyright © 2014 Center for Literary Publishing

"Puffs of Smoke, Puffs of Praise": Reconsidering John Evelyn’s Fumifugium (1661)

John Evelyn’s Fumifugium; or, The Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated (1661) is an example both of how books considered as objects might illuminate the practice of printing in seventeenth-century England, and of how the initial significance of a book’s content can be misjudged when its status as a manufactured object is overlooked. An examination of the printing context of Fumifugium reveals that it was written and printed on the heels of the Restoration to gain favour with King Charles II and, while that purpose seemed to have been realized, its contents were less significant even at the time than a puff of the London smoke Evelyn wanted to dissipate. Only much later (and outside of its intended context of the court of Charles II) has this piece been lauded for what Evelyn actually said in it about the nature of air and its pollution.

The politics of London air John Evelyn's Fumifugium and the Restoration

ABSTRACTHistorians have commonly described John Evelyn's pamphlet about London smoke pollution, Fumifugium, as a precocious example of environmental concern. This paper argues that such an interpretation is too simple. Evelyn's proposals are shown to be closely related to political allegory and the panegyrics written to welcome the newly restored Charles II. However, the paper also shows that Fumifugium was not simply a literary conceit; rather it exemplified the mid-seventeenth-century Ėnglish interest in the properties of air that is visible in both the Hartlib circle and the early Royal Society.

A Calendar of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1821–1882

Abstract Charles Darwin's correspondence is extremely important for the study of his intellectual development, and for the history of science in the 19th century generally. During the voyage of the {itBeagle} (1831–1836), the letters and specimens which Darwin sent to his mentor John Henslow established his reputation amongst British scientists as an outstanding naturalist. His health deteriorated markedly after the voyage, and in 1842 he moved from the noise and smoke of London to the rural peace of Down, where he spent the remaining 40 years of his life. From his sick-bed he corresponded extensively with scientists and other people all over the world, very many of whom were pleased to assist Darwin by providing him with information or specimens for his researches. He did get a standard acknowledgement form printed, but he rarely used it—he personally replied with courtesy to most of his correspondents. When he was not well enough to write then he would dictate to his wife or his sons, and when he was too ill to dictate, then they wrote letters on his behalf. Darwin was a man of great charm and courtesy as well as scientific distinction, and even during his lifetime some people treasured letters from him as precious relics. Many hundreds ofletters from Darwin have been published in a remarkable variety of publications ever since 1835, but there was clearly need for a comprehensive edition of Darwin's correspondence.

The Impact of British Domestic Air Pollution Legislation

Fifteen years have elapsed since the British Parliament enacted legislation designed to curb air pollution. The 1956 Clean Air Act appeared seven years in advance of comparable American legislation and well before the quality of the environment became a matter of world-wide concern. In view of the fact that Queen Elizabeth I had complained about smoke pollution in London, or that nineteenth-century novelists had penned vivid portraits of London's smoke and fog, the 1956 Act should perhaps be viewed as being at least a century late in appearing. Nevertheless, the Act did mark a distinctive policy innovation, particularly with regard to those provisions relating to smoke pollution from domestic sources. An analysis of the impact of those provisions will be the subject of this paper.

Notes from Abroad

The Royal Greenwich Observatory, which has marked the prime meridian since 1884, has fallen victim to civilization and, early next year, will be moved to a haunted castle at longitude 20′25″ East. This step is necessary because of the London smoke and fog, which have become so severe as to limit the observations that can be made from the old site at Greenwich. Hurstmonceux Castle, the new location, is about sixty miles southeast of London, dates from the fifteenth century, and is complete with moat, ghost, and 45 000 square feet of ground plan. The historic Airy transit, through which zero longitude passes by definition, is to remain on exhibit at Greenwich although all of the other instruments will be moved. A new 100-inch reflecting telescope, scheduled for completion in 1957, will also be installed at Hurstmonceux.

Sir Frederick W. Moore

By the death on August 23 of Sir Frederick Moore, Ireland has lost her premier horticulturist and Britain a very eminent student and grower of plants. He was born ninety two years ago in the house in the Botanic Garden at Glasnevin. He studied in Dublin and Leyden, was engaged in practical gardening in Begium ; and succeeded to the keepership at Glasnewin on the death of his father, Dr. David Moore, also a noteworthy horticulturist and an energetic field botanist as well. At Glasnevin Sir Frederick lived and worked until his retirement after forty three years service. The collections at Glasnevin, already notable, were added to greatly during his long term of office, and a higl standard of culture was attained. Handicapped neither by the smoke of London nor the cold winds of Edinburgh, Glasnevin became an important centre of horticulture. Not that conditions were ideal there—"a droughty, draughty gravel-ridge"was the way Sir Frederick described the place to me more than fifty years ago ; but his skill and knowledge succeeded in minimizing these disadvantages, and he showed a wise generosity in distributing difficult or half-hardy plants among the many Irish gardens more favourably situated, which rival in climate and soil those of Devon or Cornwall. He neither travelled much nor wrote much, and did no collecting in foreign lands, but devoted himself to the cultivation of the plants which he acquired from every part of the world. He was a horticulturist essentially, with an honoured name wherever rare or interesting plants are grown, and was ever ready to help with practical advice. Endowed with great physical and mental vigour almost to the end, he was a tower of strength in all matters relating to gardening and horticulture.

THE SPECTACLE INDUSTRY

The professional detachment of the ophthalmologist from the commercial and technical phases of the spectacle industry may well be replaced by a wider outlook. Perhaps this traditional attitude has been subtly fostered by the commercial interests involved to forestall unwelcome criticism. Though the scientific contributions of the leading concerns are worthy of serious study, the industry still has certain tendencies toward mystery, pretense and commercialism which the profession should be alert to penetrate. The absurd claims made in the advertising of tinted glasses and various patented lenses have been adequately exposed by Jackson,¹Coblentz²and Cowan.³Said Jackson: "When tinted glasses are necessary, London Smoke Nos. 1, 2, and 3 are better than many that are said by their makers to perform miracles. The `soft light' of a cathedral is a poor light for ordinary purposes."⁴Coblentz stated: "Lenses in which