Discourse, governance and legal actions

There is a broad literature on European and American urban environmental history addressing the issues of discourse and governance. The importance of discourses is frequently emphasized in connection with environmental campaigns. An environmental campaign is often promoted in the form of a discourse that defines a problem, its cause and its technological or scientific solutions. It should also be noted that an environmental campaign was often a matter of cultural politics, a battle to shift values embedded in everyday life.Footnote ¹

While discourse plays an important role in raising an issue and politicizing it, governance is key to solving the problem. Nineteenth-century developments of urban infrastructure such as water, sewage, gas and electricity improved urban environments, though sometimes with side-effects. These networks naturalized the new way of hygienic living. Though the solution of the air pollution problem did not involve extensive infrastructure, it needed an inspection system that was also a part of environmental governance. An inspection system needs a combination of technology and bureaucracy, such as technologies to gauge the amount of discharged noxious substances, inspectors who set thresholds and technologies to reduce the noxious substance. Although air pollution caused by coal smoke was difficult to abate even with environmental governance, due to the wide use of coal, technical difficulties in gauging and reducing pollutants and cultural obstacles, the effectiveness of environmental governance in maintaining the urban environment is undeniable.Footnote ²

This article examines the role of legal actions in urban environmental politics, not despite of but because of the significance of discourse and governance in urban environmental history. Legal historians have argued that English common law could not effectively address the impacts of industrialization including air and water pollution in the nineteenth century. Joel Brenner ascribes the failure to the shift of legal theory toward the protection of industrial interests, while John McLaren ascribes it to social obstacles such as the costs of lawsuits and the difficulty in establishing a clear link between pollutants and damage.Footnote ³ However, if comprehensive governance was usually a key to solve most types of environmental problems, it is probably inevitable that the courts played a limited role in it.

Recent works show that the courts contributed to the abatement of pollution to some extent, but they also suggest the limitation of the courts due to the lack of enforcement power. Leslie Tomory relates how the nuisance law was used to address the pollution problem caused by the early British gas industry. He shows that legal actions forced gas companies to modify the worst aspects of their pollution, but he also argues that the eventual failure in bringing about a real change was due to the lack of enforcement measures either in the form of administrative bureaucracy or harsh penalties imposed by the courts.Footnote ⁴ As for the latter possibility, it should be noted that massive fines were more likely to have encouraged relocation of pollution rather than offer permanent solutions when effective technologies to abate pollution were not available. Ben Pontin argues that common law nuisance injunctions had a zoning effect, for example, in the Tipping v. St Helens Smelting Co. action (1865), and also stimulated the development of technological solutions in Attorney General v. Birmingham Corporation (1858).Footnote ⁵ These works suggest that legal actions provided temporal remedies to individual pollution cases and sometimes worked as a stimulus for the invention of a more complete remedy.

Although the courts could not necessarily provide a complete solution, the role of legal actions cannot be dismissed as peripheral. Environmental campaigns and environmental governance both depended upon the participation of experts, journalists and politicians to be effective. Not all environmental problems could attract such attention, which meant that legal actions could be a real and sole option for those cases. This article, therefore, explores the role of courts in solving an urban environmental problem and its limitations, not within a legal context but within the larger framework of urban environmental politics.

Legislation and smoke consumption technology

In the late eighteenth century, steam engines started to be used in urban areas following James Watt's technological innovations, including improved fuel efficiency and rotary motion. The change in the air quality became notable in northern industrial towns in the early nineteenth century. In 1821, a Bill for Giving Greater Facility in the Prosecution and Abatement of Nuisances Arising from Furnaces Used in the Working of Steam Engines which had been brought by Michael Angel Taylor, MP, was passed (hereafter Taylor's Act). Michael Angelo Taylor (bap. 1757–1834) was a Whig politician, whose main achievement was the Metropolitan Paving Act (1817).Footnote ⁶ He was annoyed by London smoke at his house at Whitehall as well as during his walks at St James's Park and Hyde Park.Footnote ⁷ Following his speech at the House of Commons, the Select Committee on Steam Engines and Furnaces was set up. In the Select Committee, several inventors of smoke consumption apparatuses were called and provided descriptions of their inventions. Smoke consumption was a concept similar to complete combustion, and invented apparatuses were usually constructed to burn smoke at high temperature by regulating air and fuel feeding.Footnote ⁸

The apparatus of Josiah Parkes, a Warwick worsted manufacturer, especially impressed Taylor, and its trial was conducted at the Brewery of Barclay and Co. in Southwark in the presence of several politicians.Footnote ⁹ Its success greatly encouraged the passage of Taylor's Act. The direct goal of the act was to encourage urban inhabitants to start a lawsuit, by making proprietors of steam engines and large furnaces pay the cost of lawsuits when the proprietors lost the cases. However, the unwritten goal was to force manufacturers to introduce smoke consumption technology.Footnote ¹⁰ It was assumed that the technology would solve the problem, and the courts were expected to guarantee its introduction to factories.

Taylor's Act was not the first legislation concerning smoke. A clause on smoke was inserted into the 1792 Manchester and Salford Police Act, one of the improvement acts. The clause stated that manufacturers should construct high chimneys to disperse smoke and build fire-places that consumed smoke. This clause was made following James Watt's patent on a smoke-consuming furnace in 1785.Footnote ¹¹ After the 1792 Manchester and Salford Police Act, similar clauses on smoke abatement were included in other towns’ improvement acts such as Bradford (1803), Birmingham (1812), Glasgow (1814), Belfast (1816) and Sheffield (1818), but it seems that it was only Manchester that took action to abate smoke before Taylor's Act. In 1801, ten cotton spinning factory owners were prosecuted at the Court Leet and were fined £100 each.Footnote ¹² However, the number of cases and the amount of fines decreased from the following year. The initial enthusiasm was not maintained.Footnote ¹³

As with the Manchester and Salford Police Act, Taylor's Act, which was the first national legislation concerning smoke abatement, triggered court cases in some towns, especially in Yorkshire.Footnote ¹⁴ In addition, most industrial towns had at least one or two manufacturers who introduced the technology in the 1820s.Footnote ¹⁵ London water companies, which were prominent users of large steam engines in London, installed the technology and avoided prosecution.Footnote ¹⁶ These social impacts of Taylor's Act have not been examined by researchers. Eric Ashby and Mary Anderson write that ‘the new law may have had some visible effect’ locally, based on Josiah Parkes’ remark in the 1840s. Parkes’ testimony that Taylor's Act ‘frightened the manufacturers . . . into the adoption of [his] plan’ seems to have been the only evidence to show the effect of the act, and other air pollution historians generally evaluate it as ‘so weak’.Footnote ¹⁷ This article, however, explores one of the consequences of Taylor's Act utilizing a legal record and newspaper articles.

Although steam engine proprietors who caused smoke nuisance were the obvious targets for Taylor's Act, it also triggered another set of lawsuits in London that involved both smoke and noise nuisances. It was difficult to solve smoke nuisance, but it was even more difficult to solve noise nuisance. Peter Payer examines the modern ‘antinoise campaign’ in Vienna between 1870 and 1914 and shows that its solution involved technologies such as suspensions for vehicles and rubber tyres, the restructuring of physical urban space and changes in cultural perceptions of noise.Footnote ¹⁸ Urban environmental governance is needed to address comprehensively the noise problems, but the 1820s was too early to expect easily available remedies for noise nuisance.

This article examines smoke and noise nuisance in London in the 1820s, focusing especially on printers. Although the steam press was part of the improvement that made printed material widely available in terms of class and national geography, this article focuses on its side-effects.Footnote ¹⁹ It will provide a picture of London smoke and noise nuisance cases in the 1820s using the detailed legal records of the Duke of Northumberland v. Clowes, a printer, as well as newspaper articles on other cases.

A London mansion and a printer

London had often been associated with smoke from the seventeenth century. Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle, wrote that her husband was pleased to see the smoke of London when he returned from his exile in 1660 and arrived at Greenwich.Footnote ²⁰ In the 1620s and 1630s, several brewers in Westminster were asked and sometimes forced into a bond not to use coal. In 1661, John Evelyn's pamphlet on London smoke, Fumifugium, was published, in which he described how the health of the king and of Londoners’, house interiors and vegetation were all affected by London smoke. Evelyn proposed remedies including the removal of polluting trades from London and planting fragrant plants.Footnote ²¹ However, there is no evidence that serious attempts to abate smoke were made in eighteenth-century London, and this suggests that Taylor's Act and the lawsuits in the 1820s were the first major efforts to abate smoke nuisance since the seventeenth century.

After the passage of Taylor's Act, some steam engine owners in London were taken to the courts. In June 1823, the trial against Symonds and Walker, cotton manufacturers in Goodman's Fields, took place at the Court of King's Bench. After they were convicted, they put in affidavits claiming that ‘they had used every exertion in their power to abate the nuisance’ including the introduction of a patent steam consumer.Footnote ²² In April 1824, Campion and Green, vinegar manufacturers in Charles Square in the parish of St Leonard, whose steam engine and the purifying process of volatile spirits caused nuisance, were indicted, again at the Court of King's Bench. The verdict was that they were guilty of nuisance.Footnote ²³ Before the enactment of Taylor's Act, similar nuisance cases were rarely reported, and this suggests that these lawsuits were influenced by the passage of the act.

In June 1824, the first case against a printer, the Duke of Northumberland v. Clowes, took place, in the Court of Common Pleas on this occasion. William Clowes carried on his printing business in Northumberland Court, which adjoined Northumberland House in Charing Cross. Charing Cross was one of the key crossroads of London where three main roads, Whitehall, the Strand and Cockspur Street converged. In the Strand and its extension into Fleet Street, printers and publishers were concentrated, including the leading London newspapers’ offices. The Strand was an opulent and fashionable shopping street, mainly selling luxury goods. Although part of the area was regarded as less fashionable, redevelopment was going on in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century and it was changing into a more sophisticated junction.Footnote ²⁴

Northumberland House, which was sometimes termed a palace, was originally built in the early seventeenth century and was a rare remaining example of the old aristocratic mansions in the Strand.Footnote ²⁵ It consisted of a quadrangle and wings in the south (Figure 1). The north front of the quadrangle was mainly used by servants, and the south front was for grand rooms for the duke and his family because the area was quiet, away from the Strand's traffic. The west wing was for the large gallery/ball room. The eastern two wings were stables. A huge garden was on the south side of the mansion expanding toward the Thames.

Figure 1

Charles Barry (c. 1851) Northymberland Hovse, plan of the principal floor, from Sy: B.XV.2.1.1–3, The Archives of the Duke of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle. (The north front is at the bottom of the plan.)

After the second duke's death in 1817, his son, Hugh Percy (1785–1847), succeeded to the dukedom and to great wealth. As with many other sons of aristocrats, he was elected as an MP between 1806 and 1812 and then sat in the House of Lords. He was a Tory, though he occasionally voted with the opposition, including for the abolition of West Indian slavery.Footnote ²⁶ It was this third duke who was the plaintiff against Clowes, a printer. However, his personal involvement with this private nuisance case was very limited. Annoyance felt by the duke was not discussed during the trial, and the real actors of the nuisance case were the duke's servants and employees. About half of the duke's witnesses were chosen from these people. Most of the other witnesses were employed during the refurbishment of Northumberland House between 1818 and 1824. Exceptions were a brother of the duchess and two engineers who were convened to provide expert opinion on pumps and steam engines.Footnote ²⁷

The intention of Jonathan Raine, the duke's legal advisor, was to claim the damage caused by the steam engine to the property of the duke, with the evidence provided by servants and refurbishment contractors. The installation of the steam engine occurred around September 1823 when the family was staying at their residence in Northumberland, Alnwick Castle. The ducal family arrived in London in March 1824, and the trial took place in June. The witnesses who attended the trial were all male, including Joseph Morris, the head of the servants in Northumberland House for more than 35 years, a clerk of Morris’ office, and a private secretary to the duke. Other relatively high-status witnesses were the clerk of the works at Northumberland House during its refurbishment and his father, the superintendent of the refurbishment.Footnote ²⁸ Other witnesses were mainly chosen from gardeners, porters and stable boys. Craftsmen who had been employed for the refurbishment, including three bricklayers, a carpenter, an upholsterer and an artist who repaired paintings, also provided evidence. In addition, the duke's lawyers collected testimonies from other servants and neighbours in a ‘Brief for the Plaintiff on the Reference’ submitted after the trial. New witnesses included an under-butler and five female witnesses, mainly maids.Footnote ²⁹ These testimonies by servants are useful in reconstructing a picture of how nuisances were perceived by social classes which are otherwise under-represented in the historical records.Footnote ³⁰

William Clowes’ premises were located in the south end of Northumberland Court, a small court adjoining Northumberland House. Clowes’ premises adjoined the duke's stable directly and were near the south-east corner of the quadrangle. Clowes started his printing business in 1803 at No. 20 Villiers Street, financed by his mother's cousin, who was one of the principal contractors to the government for the supply of stationery and printing.Footnote ³¹ Clowes was highly successful in building his printing business in a relatively short time. In 1807, he needed to enlarge his premises and moved to No. 7 Northumberland Court. Though he experienced a fire in 1815, he decided not to move elsewhere because of his work for the government.Footnote ³² However, in terms of his domestic life, his family moved to a town house on Parliament Street, and a few years later, he bought a country house in Surrey. In addition to his printing office, Clowes opened a bookshop in Charing Cross around 1815. In a letter Clowes sent to the duke before the trial, Clowes wrote that he was an employer of ‘nearly two hundred hard working and industrious persons’.Footnote ³³

In 1823, Clowes bought the house next to No. 7 Northumberland Court and enlarged the premises to install a steam press. The steam press was first used for printing the 29 November 1814 issue of The Times. The Times reported that their machine could print no less than 11,000 sheets in one hour.Footnote ³⁴ The number of steam presses in London did not increase very rapidly; there were only eight steam presses by 1820, and nearly all were used by newspapers.Footnote ³⁵ The steam engine introduced by Clowes was 2 h.p., not a large one but a normal size for a steam press.Footnote ³⁶ This engine caused three different sorts of nuisances to Northumberland House: noise, smoke and the shortage of water supply.

The noise nuisance

Noise was one of the main nuisances claimed by the duke's side. The noise was mainly heard in the immediate vicinity of Clowes’ printing office. Michael Heim, porter at the stable yard, and John Walker, a gardener, were the ones who were most annoyed by the steam engine because their bedroom in the stable adjoined Clowes’ premises. When the engine first operated, Heim could not sleep at all because it worked from seven on a Saturday night to seven the following morning. The frequency of such an experience was about once a week.Footnote ³⁷ Testimonies by three female witnesses show that the laundry, the room below Heim and Walker's bedroom, was also affected by the noise.Footnote ³⁸ The steam engine also disturbed the sleep of William Grant, an under-butler. He had his bed in a pantry in a basement floor, under the ante-dining room.Footnote ³⁹

The south side of the quadrangle, the quieter area away from the traffic, was the area for the ducal family. The duke and the duchess usually used the ante-dining roomFootnote ⁴⁰ and the room above, the ante-drawing room, during the evening and at dinner time when they did not have large parties. Robert Henry Clive, brother of the duchess, frequently visited the couple. He stated that the noise was ‘enough to induce [him] to stop the conversation which [he] was engaged in’ and ‘cause during conversation a remark to be made that “the steam engine is at work”’, though it was not loud enough to prevent people from hearing one another.Footnote ⁴¹ Considering that none of the witnesses said that the noise was loud enough to disturb conversation, the extent of the noise seems to have been sufficient to be annoying when a person was alone and trying to rest.

There were many sources of noise in Georgian towns such as traffic, street hawkers, animals and workshops. However, wealthy people had more chances to escape from noise because of their access to greater space and solid building materials.Footnote ⁴² The micro-geography of noise in Northumberland House shows that street noise was taken into consideration over room allotment before the installation of the steam press, and after the installation, it was the servants who were most affected by noise. Heim's and Walker's bedroom was not moved elsewhere, and it shows that the susceptibility to noise was unevenly distributed even within one household.

Soot annoyance

The amount of smoke emitted by the steam press was described as great as a large brewery's smoke by two witnesses.Footnote ⁴³ The soot fell like ‘a small shower of snow’.Footnote ⁴⁴ The soot on the courtyard was ‘similar to seeing a room after a Chimney had been just swept’, and it was possible to write a name with a finger on it.Footnote ⁴⁵ A little soot had accumulated on the courtyard before the erection of the engine, but ‘not in such large quantities’.Footnote ⁴⁶

The area most affected by the soot and smoke was the outside of the buildings, especially the garden. Eighteenth-century gardeners sometimes wrote about damage to their plants caused by London smoke. William Curtis, a botanist, closed his London Botanic Garden in Lambeth in 1789, and one of the main causes was the damage to plants by London smoke.Footnote ⁴⁷ Books on gardening sometimes referred to smoke when providing instructions in the care of plants. Philip Miller wrote in his Gardeners Dictionary that ‘[the common Spruce Fir] will grow likewise in almost any Soil or Situation in England, provided it be not within the Reach of the Smoke of great Cities ’.Footnote ⁴⁸

Despite the presence of London smoke, witnesses claimed that plants in the garden of Northumberland House used to flourish before the erection of the engine. It was after its erection that smoke and soot started to hinder the growth of plants. Some plants were even killed. The obvious evidence of the damage to the garden was the difference between vegetation sheltered and unsheltered by a wall. Leaves of unsheltered trees and shrubs including lime, sycamore, holly and laurel were sickly.Footnote ⁴⁹ Gardeners had to wash away the soot that was damaging the plants, using a watering engine, which was a pipe with holes, a very basic structure to sprinkle water.Footnote ⁵⁰ James Reeves, a gardener, gave evidence that the gardeners ‘had considerable more work to do in watering and washing the Plants in consequence than before the smoke covered them with blacks in this way – It has obliged them to work an hour or 2 later in the Eveng.’Footnote ⁵¹ Another inconvenience caused by the soot was the effect it had on laundry. William Webb, who worked at the stable, stated that when he washed his white livery breeches and hung them to dry over night, they were covered by soot the following morning.Footnote ⁵²

Despite the inconvenience that was caused to servants, the direct claim made by the duke's side in the case was the damage to the duke's property. For example, it was claimed that the exterior wall of Northumberland House had changed its colour.Footnote ⁵³ However, due to the absence of indoor servants as witnesses, examinations at the court gave the impression that the inside of the building was unaffected by the soot. A screen attached to the lantern of the grand staircase attracted some attention during the trial, and the examination of witnesses gave the impression that the screen effectively blocked soot from entering the grand staircase.Footnote ⁵⁴ Although other windows did not have such a convenient device, they were usually shut after Clowes started to operate his steam press. The duke's lawyers obviously tried to confute the impression that the inside of the building was not damaged, by submitting testimonies from indoor servants after the trial. According to George Druid, an upholsterer, the grand staircase ‘required sweeping every two days’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Similarly, Mary Finney claimed that the ante-dining room and large dining room were very much covered with smoke. The furniture was safe because it was kept covered up, but otherwise it would have been spoilt.Footnote ⁵⁶ Just as large-scale smoke nuisance later in the century imposed special labour burdens on women and industrial workers, it was the servants at Northumberland House who were most affected by smoke.Footnote ⁵⁷

Clowes started to use coke and adopted a smoke consumer to abate the smoke nuisance. The amount of smoke was greatly reduced to the level of ordinary chimney smoke, possibly except for the occasions when they fired the furnace.Footnote ⁵⁸ John Walker, a gardener, was in charge of the record keeping of the time black smoke issued from Clowes’ chimney, and Figure 2 shows the result. It perfectly shows the pattern of smoke issued from a steam engine chimney with a smoke consumption apparatus. Although the black smoke issued usually for only a few minutes, the engine worked sometimes six days a week.

Figure 2

The account of black smoke from Clowes’ chimney, 18 June – 21 July 1824. The time indicates when black smoke started to issue and the number indicates how long it lasted (mins.). Based on AC/DNC, BPR, 31–2.

Water shortage

Another key nuisance caused by the steam engine was water shortage. When Clowes erected the steam engine, he dug a well to supply water for his boiler. This caused a water shortage in the duke's well, especially after the steam engine had been working all night. Because of the inconvenience, Northumberland House entered into a contract with the New River Waterworks for water supply.Footnote ⁵⁹ After hearing similar testimonies from several witnesses, the judge confirmed that the water shortage was caused by Clowes’ steam engine. However, because the duke's well was relatively new, dug in 1818, it was judged that the water right had not been established for the duke.Footnote ⁶⁰ Although the phenomenon of a well going dry due to the erection of a steam engine was not reported in other smoke nuisance court cases, according to Joseph Spicer, a well digger, there were at least three other similar cases.Footnote ⁶¹ The introduction of steam engines evidently caused a shortage of water resources in a number of places.

An arrogant profit-maker? Remedies adopted

The first that the Northumberland House household knew about the introduction of the steam engine was when the servants heard the noise, whereupon Joseph Morris wrote a letter to the duke asking for his instructions. He received an answer from Jonathan Raine, who was a legal advisor of the duke and happened to be at Alnwick Castle at the time. The letter shows that the duke had no intention of tolerating its annoyance and was already considering the possibility of prosecution.Footnote ⁶²

After Clowes was notified that his steam engine was causing a nuisance, he tried almost every possible remedy to abate them except for the removal of the steam engine. The first communication between the duke's side and Clowes’ side was between Morris and Clowes. Morris informed Clowes of the extent of the nuisances by showing him the places where the noise was distinctly heard. Clowes proposed a remedy of putting ‘other windows at the back of the Duke's windows’, which were implemented as double windows.Footnote ⁶³ However, this caused trouble because Clowes attached the additional windows to the windows of Northumberland House without notification. After the duke's household realized that Clowes had fastened down the duke's windows and that they could not open them anymore, Clowes was asked to remove them.Footnote ⁶⁴ According to Morris, the double windows were not effective in any case: the noise was abated ‘in a very small degree’.Footnote ⁶⁵

Clowes needed to abate not only noise but also the smoke and soot. It seems that Clowes tried three different remedies: a smoke consumer, coke and a higher chimney. The first remedy taken by Clowes concerning smoke was a smoke consumer, which was installed soon after he was informed of the complaint. It is not known whose smoke consumer Clowes installed, nor its structure. As we have already seen, it appears that the amount of smoke was greatly reduced to as much as ordinary chimney smoke, except for when they fired the furnace.Footnote ⁶⁶ Another remedy, the use of coke, started in February, and was also effective.Footnote ⁶⁷ However, the duke's side demanded a more permanent remedy as it was feared that Clowes might resume using coal after the trial. Whether a higher chimney was actually erected or not, and if so, when, is a little uncertain because the only evidence referring to the chimney was from the duke's witnesses. According to Joseph Morris, the chimney was raised higher and the number of flues through which smoke issued was increased from one to four or five about six weeks before the trial.Footnote ⁶⁸ The alteration seems to have been effective to some extent.Footnote ⁶⁹

Clowes tried almost all measures to abate the nuisances, especially noise and smoke. It shows that Clowes was willing to abate the nuisances caused by his steam engine as far as remedies were available. The fact that Clowes started to use coke in February after he received a notice of action on a plea of trespass suggests that he was desperate to avoid the trial. However, this case involved three sorts of nuisances, and it was almost impossible to abate all nuisances. Since Taylor's parliamentary campaign, smoke and soot could be abated to some extent, if not perfectly. However, the other two nuisances were not easily remedied. As for the use of groundwater, arranging a water supply from the water companies could have been one solution. However, the quality and quantity of water supply from water companies may have been unsatisfactory during this period.Footnote ⁷⁰ Noise was more problematic because it had no effective solution other than distance. Noise nuisance and water shortage had to be solved outside the framework of Taylor's Act.

At the end of the trial, it was decided that the verdict was for the plaintiff with damages of £1,000, an exceptionally large amount among nuisance cases. However, both sides agreed to arbitration, and the duke paid Clowes £15,000 to move from Northumberland Court to Lambeth.Footnote ⁷¹ This case was solved by removing the polluting trade to the industrial area. Segregation of polluting trades was one of the possible measures to control the urban environment, especially when technological remedies were not available.

A steam press and a printer as a polluter

Because of the involvement of the duke as a plaintiff, the case was easily interpreted as a class issue. For example, The Examiner, a highbrow 16-page weekly radical newspaper, criticized it as an example of aristocratic ridiculousness and oppression.Footnote ⁷² Indeed, it is probably fair to say that the aristocratic reasoning used by the duke's side was fairly provocative at first. The ‘Brief for the Plaintiff’, submitted before the trial, stated that the outcome of the case would influence the future segregation of industry from residential areas with implications for the aristocracy.Footnote ⁷³ However, the duke's lawyer certainly realized the danger that these statements could present. In the same document, it was stated that Clowes’ lawyer, John Singleton Copley, ‘will no doubt commence by describing this action as an attempt at oppression on the part of a rich and powerful nobleman against a poor humble individual’.Footnote ⁷⁴ Copley, later Baron Lyndhurst, was competent enough to be appointed the attorney general in 1824.Footnote ⁷⁵ Copley described the case as class conflict just as the duke's lawyers had feared, and The Examiner adopted Copley's argument in its articles. However, in hindsight, it was not the only case on steam press nuisance in the 1820s.

In 1825, two more printers in the Strand and Fleet Street were taken to the court. In the case of Salmon v. Bensley, the worst part of the nuisances was the noise. Thomas Bensley owned two engines, and the noise ‘continued with little intermission through the 24 hours, with the exception of Sunday’.Footnote ⁷⁶ As for the smoke, it was claimed that although the smoke issued from the high chimney and it did not fill the plaintiff's rooms immediately, ‘the blacks . . . were beaten down the lower chimnies by the wind, and covered his furniture’.Footnote ⁷⁷ The printing premises were at Bolt Court, Fleet Street, and, in defence of Bentley, it was claimed that it was an industrial area in the immediate neighbourhood of gas-works in Dorset Street as well as several other workshops that had steam engines.Footnote ⁷⁸ Though polluting industries were located around the area, residents did not necessarily tolerate nuisances.

The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff in the case Salmon v. Bensley, but with nominal damages of 1s. Lord chief justice of the King's Bench Charles Abbott stated that although a verdict for the plaintiff would destroy an important and useful establishment, a person who suffered from a nuisance had a right to complain. Abbott further argued that in this case, the defendant only needed ‘to remove the engine further from the plaintiff's house’ and his business would not be destroyed.Footnote ⁷⁹ Thomas Bensley obviously moved from the premises after the trial because another printer, Mills, moved into the premises and was taken to court for nuisances caused by steam presses again in 1828.Footnote ⁸⁰ This suggests that the prosecution of nuisances could sometimes remove the polluting trade from its neighbourhood, but it did not guarantee the removal of all similar trades.

The other printer who was accused of nuisances was the proprietor of The Morning Chronicle and The Observer, William Innell Clement. The printing office was located on the Strand. He introduced a 2 h.p. steam engine in the summer of 1824. The plaintiff, a linen draper, and his family were prevented from sleeping by its noise, especially when The Observer was printed at night.Footnote ⁸¹ As with Clowes, the defendant ‘did every thing in his power to remove the evil complained of’.Footnote ⁸² The printing machinery was removed to the basement and relieved most neighbours from the noise except the plaintiff. To abate the smoke nuisance, Clement installed a smoke consumer. Clement also tried to remove the source of complaint by buying the plaintiff's house but they could not agree on the price. The verdict was for the plaintiff with £60 damages.Footnote ⁸³

These lawsuits reveal that the introduction of the steam press changed the printing industry into a polluting one, which could not be carried on in residential areas, especially where wealthy people lived. Environmental problems are often caused by structural changes in infrastructure, production and lifestyle, and the introduction of the steam press was no exception.Footnote ⁸⁴ However, there is no evidence that the nuisances caused by the steam press were problematized as a structural problem at the time. Rather, each case was solved in the courts as an isolated event. The Duke of Northumberland v. Clowes shows that an environmental problem could be unfocused due to other cultural narratives such as class conflicts in a single court case. The impression of the case on contemporary audiences differs according to context, as it was the only case against a printer, or one out of four other cases against printers in the 1820s.

Unplanned consequences of Taylor's Act: smiths’ nuisances

In addition to printers, London newspapers show that several smiths were prosecuted for nuisances in the 1820s. Blacksmiths were traditionally blamed for smoke, noise and long working hours as early as medieval times.Footnote ⁸⁵ Smiths in the 1820s were still blamed for similar nuisances. The reported court cases show that the characteristics of smiths’ nuisances were similar to printers’ nuisances.

In 1824, Rawlins, a whitesmith, was taken to the Court of King's Bench having erected his forge around Christmas 1823 in Pimlico. His neighbour, a surveyor, was the plaintiff and claimed that the noise of hammers started at six in the morning and lasted until seven at night. The smoke was also a nuisance, but it had been abated before the trial. The verdict was for the defendant because it was proved that the nuisances, especially noise, were not so serious that the lodgers of the neighbouring houses had to move out. In addition, although the plaintiff claimed that Rawlins was a blacksmith, he was actually a whitesmith, a trade generally considered less polluting.Footnote ⁸⁶

In the case of Cocks v. Peachy in 1827, a similar combination of smoke and noise was seen. The contested place was the fashionable area of Princes Street, Hanover Square. A smith and founder, Peachy, erected his forge and a foundry, and the plaintiff, a music-seller, was annoyed by hammering noise from four in the morning to ten at night, sometimes until twelve at night. In addition, the iron-loaded carts were extremely noisy. The trade also caused smoke nuisance. As with most other defendants of smoke nuisance cases in London, Peachy made efforts to abate the nuisances. According to witnesses, the problems of smoke and soot were greatly solved by the use of coke instead of coal, in addition to the use of cowls on the flues to prevent soot from escaping. As for the noise, Peachy ‘erected two wooden fenders to prevent his carts from striking against the plaintiff's walls’.Footnote ⁸⁷ Still, the verdict was for the plaintiff, with damages of 40s. Two similar cases followed in 1828. One was between an ironmonger in St James's and a plaintiff who kept a lodging house, and the other was between ‘gas apparatus filters and brass manufacturers’ and a plaintiff, a rope and bed-sacking manufacturer in Grafton Street, Soho. In both cases, noise and smoke were the problems and the verdict was for the plaintiff, with damages of 1s.Footnote ⁸⁸

Smoke nuisance caused by smiths was not within the purview of Taylor's Act because its target was smoke engine furnaces. However, court cases against smiths were rarely reported before Taylor's Act enactment, and it suggests that the above-mentioned cases were triggered by Taylor's Act. Taylor's Act encouraged previously latent smoke and noise nuisances to develop into legal actions despite their irrelevance to the act.