One hundred years ago
When we spoke,last week of the hope of a mild winter having vanished, we did not anticipate the horrors of this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday fell a snow-storm such as has not visited England for ten years, blocking all the railways, keeping some trains waiting outside London for the whole of Tuesday night, putting an end altogether for nearly 24 hours to carriage locomotion, and leaving London still with little ramparts of snow running along all its streets, and the intervening space so slippery with the freezing particles adhering to the stones or wood, that only vehicles with, two horses can get about safely at all. A watchman was even frozen to death on Tuesday night in the Gray's Inn Road. Everyone you meet is half-smiling to himself, and has some absurd adventure to relate of passing the night in railway-stations or in immovable carriages or trains.
Spectator, 22 January 1881
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