BAD WEATHER IN ENGLAND.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11647, 29 July 1903, Page 8

BAD WEATHER IN ENGLAND.

FLOODS IN LONDON

United Press Association—By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright.

LONDON. July 27

A high tide, in conjunction with the heavy rainfall, caused serious floods in London. Seve-ral Sunday newspapers did not publish until the afternoon.

Writing on June 19th. our London correspondent said it lutd then been raining for ten days. For sixty hours the continuity was entirely unbroken. "Of the prevalent mud and filth, and discomfort in the London streets,'" he remarks, "I need say nothing. The effect on trade has been simply disastrous, und the London tradesmen,- especially the West End drapers and milliners, weep bitterly, refusing to be comforted. Ascot, which is just over, proved a ghastly tragedy. One paper solemnly asserts "that £100,000 worth of fresh millinery perished iv the first heavy shower. Many Royal and public functions liad to be indefinitely postponed. London stands virtually iv the midst of a group of rivers—one large, the others small, but all addicted to mischievous Hooding at very short notice now that the drainage throughout the catchment area is so complete that the whole vast mass of storm water is precipitated almost immediately into the nearest stream. Arid so the Thames is flooded to an extent never exceeded even in a wet winter, and never before approached in the so-called summer season. The first eight days of the month were splendidly fine. Then on the morning of the 9th the deluge sot in, and to-day, the 19th, it is raining as liard und as steadily as if a drought were just breaking up. h\ the single week which ended last Monday the rainfall totalled 5_ inches, which is nearly an inch more titan has ever previously been recorded in the whole month of June in the wettest years. All the meadows and gardens along the Thames are deeply under water. In many riverside houses the water lias been for days up to the first floor ceilings, and the inmates liave been rescued with difficulty by boats. As for the destruction of live stock by drowning, und of crops and other property by swamping or sweeping away, its full extent will not be known for some time to come. All around the City proper the damage is heavy beyond precedent. But even in London'itself several of the leading railways liave been flooded to a depth of many feet, parts washed away, stations drenched with sewage overflows, and the engines forcing their way through raging torrents. As for the temperature, there was a difference of forty degrees between tiie midday temperature of j June Ist and that of June 11th. Laat _riday night there was a temporary lull in the rain -prepar-tory to tlte subsequent sixty hours' deluge, and then the thermometer fell to 38deg. in London, while in several places not far from the Metropolis there was a sharp frost with actual ice in the puddles! Who can wonder that sickness is prevalent in so many cases, or that it should take the form of pneumonia, bronchitis, pleurisy, rheumatisni, and neuralgia?"