This feature first appeared in Jul 2023 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. It's part of our series on how the Londoners of the past imagined the city's future. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.
London, April 1750. The city was emptying. Great crowds mustered on the slopes of Hampstead and Highgate. Coaches of the affluent sped out along the turnpikes, while the poor walked up into the hills or pitched tents in the fields of Camden or Islington. Not since the Great Fire, nearly a century before, had the capital seen such an exodus.
London was doomed. A charismatic prophet had said as much. The city’s buildings would topple in a terrible earthquake. Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s would crumble. Many lives would be lost. The calamity was forecast for 4 April 1750, so the prophet said. People read the pamphlets. People believed. People fled.
Prophecies of doom were ten a penny in earlier times. Any unusual occurrence, such as an eclipse, a powerful storm or even a beached whale, might signal a disaster. Yet nothing seems to have spooked the populace like the scare of April 1750. To understand why this prediction had such potency, we must take our time machine back another two months…
London Twice-a-Tremor
Just after noon on 8 February 1750 London was shaken by the strongest earthquake in living memory. The shock was felt from Richmond to Greenwich, and most keenly in the villages to the north. A house collapsed near Snow Hill — opposite where, today, you will find City Thameslink station — badly injuring a woman inside. Chimneys were thrown down in Limehouse, Leadenhall Street and Paradise Row in Stoke Newington. In an age when people knew little of earthquakes, it must have been terrifying.
And then it happened again. Exactly four weeks later.
In the early hours of 8 March, three tremors struck the capital. This time the quakes were longer, more violent, and were felt as far away as Croydon and Epping. As one account put it, “People ran from their houses and beds almost naked, being in a great consternation at this unusual visitation”.
We are handed a small number of insights from the newspapers of the time. A lady of Piccadilly who’d amassed a prized collection of fine China had it all dashed to pieces. Great stones plummeted from Hawksmoor’s recently completed towers at Westminster Abbey. Chimneys fell in Bermondsey Street and Saffron Hill. Lightning and balls of fire were reported to the west of the city — phenomena often associated with earthquakes and still somewhat mysterious to this day. The bells of London tolled without human agency. In a superstitious age, this was potent stuff.
The Bishop of London, Thomas Sherlock, wasted no time in attributing the two quakes to divine intervention. A few days after the tremors, he wrote a sprawling 4,000-word letter, widely published and distributed among the poor, in which he advised his flock to repent their sins or suffer almighty wrath. In the Bishop’s eyes, London was a city overflowing with sin. Let the earthquakes serve as warning, he crackled, for worse is to come if you do not mend your ways.
The scare was heightened by a persuasive bit of numerology. The first quake had hit London on 8 February. The second, stronger tremor had come exactly four weeks later on 8 March. Could a third, more devastating calamity strike the city after another four weeks?
London empties
One man in particular seems to have spread the message of numerical doom. His name is not usually given in contemporary accounts (though one source gives it as Mitchell). He seems to have been a soldier or lifeguard-man, possibly of Swiss background. Using zealous rhetoric and widespread pamphleteering, he stoked up fears already kindled by Bishop Sherlock and other preachers. Most specifically, he predicted the ruin of the city on the evening of 4-5 April, four weeks after the last earthquake. Many believed him.
The day of the dread deliverance arrived. The roads out of London were clogged with the greatest number of evacuees in living memory. A print of the time shows the crush on the roads, as the credulous hordes made haste to escape. The lifeguard-man can be seen to the rear of the cartoon, dispensing his prophecies and urging people on.
Hampstead and Highgate were destinations of choice. Both had plenty of open space and, crucially, excellent vantage points from which to witness the fall of London. Others took to the parks, or waited out the terrors on the river, away from the fall of masonry. People of wealth spent the night in their carriages.
One of the best accounts can be found in the 5 April diary entry of preacher Charles Wesley (brother of the cleric John). “Yesterday I saw the Westminster end of the town full of coaches, and crowds flying out of the reach of divine justice, with astonishing precipitation. Their panic was caused by a poor madman's prophecy: last night they were all to be swallowed up. The vulgar were in almost as great consternation as their betters. Most of them watched all night: multitudes in the fields and open places: several in their coaches. Many removed their goods. London looked like a sacked city. A lady, just stepping into her coach to escape, dropped down dead. Many came all night knocking at the Foundery-door [the Wesleys’ base], and begging admittance for God's sake.”
(The lady who died getting into her coach is the only known victim of the non-earthquake. Her name is provided in several newspaper records as a Mrs Sweetland, wife of a linen draper of Leadenhall Street.)
It is important to note that fear may not have been the only factor behind the exodus. The masses were also caught up in a sense of shared adventure. Whether or not the prophecy came true, those leaving London would feel part of something bigger than themselves. Many folk, originally sceptical of the warning, ventured out at the behest of friends and neighbours — some tempted by the opportunity for mischief, merrymaking and sexual encounter, never to be dismissed as a motive force, in any age.
Such a side-effect was noted in Windsor. Hundreds had fled from London to the town, and the inns were full of confused, excited people. The gathering inevitably led to revelry. At one point, a group of overzealous dancers caused such a noise that “the people in the house concluded it was an earthquake; and giving the alarm, the town emptied presently, and the fields around were crowded all night”. People even fled abroad. Reports from Ostend, Ghent, Bruges, Calais and elsewhere in Flanders and France suggested a daily influx of wealthy Brits wary of earthquakes.
As with any good story, it got better with the retelling. Later Victorian accounts are full of exaggeration and fabrication. The Morning Advertiser of 10 March 1842, for example, spoke of half London’s population fleeing, which seems very unlikely. Kennington Common was apparently “Crowded with a dense mass of persons, some under tents, some covered in carts and wagons, but the greater part on the bare ground, all anxiously looking towards St. Paul’s, for one of the Life Guardsman’s predictions was, that before the earthquake the dome of that splendid building was to fall in.” In truth, we do not know how many people fled the putative destruction. Clearly, though, this was one of the biggest false panics in London’s history.
Of course, London did not fall, and nor did St Paul’s. Thousands of weary souls safely made their way back home, dazed with a mix of relief and disappointment.
Some trepidation lingered until 8 April — after the ‘four week’ prophecy proved false, some speculated that the earthquake dates of 8 February and 8 March might instead presage an 8 April shock. But two data points do not a trend make, and the predicted third earthquake never came. The masses were widely mocked in the press for their ready belief in the doom-monger. As for our false prophet, it seems he was immediately declared insane and sent to an asylum.
A Victorian replay
Yet history had not quite finished with the mysterious lifeguard-man. The tale was handed down through the decades before resurfacing, in garbled form, in 1842. Pamphlets doing the rounds at that time recounted how a man named Osborne had predicted the destruction of London by earthquake on 16 April 1742. This not coming to pass, the embarrassed Osborne realised that he’d made a mistake of a century, and the real calamity would come on 16 March 1842. The name and date might have gone through the mangle, but this was clearly a bastardised version of the events of 1750.
The story, conflated with several other portents and prophecies, seems to have taken particular hold within the Irish community, clustered around St Giles and Seven Dials, and in the East End. Their numbers had recently swollen, with many working as navvies on London’s growing rail network. The forecast date of 16 March was the eve of St Patrick’s Day, which may have been a deliberate choice by the anonymous pamphleteers. Whatever, press reports from the time suggest that large numbers of Irish had returned home in advance of the date, or fled to safer ground, as the evening of the 16 March drew in.
The scare might have started with the Irish poor, but they had no monopoly on credulity, and those of all classes joined in the flight. The Thames shore was “Thronged by crowds of decently attired people of both sexes,” all awaiting steam boats down to Gravesend and other out-of-town destinations. The roads and railways were also uncommonly busy. The Morning Chronicle notes how “Brighton has reaped some advantage from the much-dreaded earthquake, as numbers of families of the middle and upper classes have recently arrived to avoid the consequences.”
Once again, Hampstead and Highgate were choice destinations, while according to The Times, Primrose Hill “…was also selected as a famous spot for viewing the demolition of the leviathan city.” As chance would have it, a storm blew in at 6pm, leading many to believe that the apocalypse had begun.
All who fled were wasting their time, and no quake was forthcoming. Perhaps it had been postponed till Good Friday, mused a sceptical Punch. “If the affair should not come off on that day, it may be looked for on the 1st of April !!” Once again, believers were widely mocked in the press, in prose and poem.
SOME idle rumours are afloat,
And silly folks are jolting,
Because they won't get swallowed up,
From London they are bolting.
Some foolish fellow prophecied,
Which makes old women's hearts ache,
That on the seventeenth of March
They are going to meet an earthquake. (etc.)
Such scare stories seem to have waned after that. The Victorian age is characterised by the growth of critical thinking and a decrease in superstition. London would be partly evacuated again in wartime, but this time for good reason. Never again would a charlatan or false prophet scare a large number of Londoners up into the hills.
With the rise of social media, the spread of “fake news”, and a growing fear of existential threats, I’m obliged to conclude: “Not yet, anyway.”
Note on sources: To aid the flow of the story, I’ve left out individual citations, but most of the quotes and details are readily found in the British Newspaper Archive with a simple search (subscription required). A typical account of the 1750 panic can be found here, while the 1842 episode is summarised here.
