Netflix's The Crown has covered many of history's most shocking events, including The Great Smog of London, but the horrors unfolding under the 1950s London fog were far bleaker in real life. Across its four seasons to date, The Crown has garnered widespread critical acclaim by depicting major historical events with poise and accuracy. Yet despite its reputation, The Crown barely scratched the surface of London's Great Smog, and there are multiple horrifying reasons why its true events are not common knowledge.
In The Crown season 1, the city of London is plunged into a dark cloud of sooty smoke known as The Great Smog of 1952. This unbreathable smog was caused by a sudden drop in temperature trapping pollutants in the air, which formed a thick layer, suffocating London for five days and claiming at least 4000 lives according to the Met Office. The horror and extreme death toll of this tragedy depicted in The Crown sparked discussion in 2016 as to why The Great Smog was not better known in contemporary culture at the time, uncovering horrifying facts regarding 1950s London.
In short, the Great Smog was downplayed in London largely thanks to an active serial killer at the time. John Reginald Christie, a Notting Hill resident, was one of the UK's most prolific serial killers, killing at least eight women between 1943 and 1953. According to Radio Times, Christie, who hid the bodies of his victims in the walls of his home and under the floorboards of his home, was finally arrested and sentenced to death in 1953 - gripping the public's attention. In addition, the prime minister at the time, Winston Churchill, sought to downplay the Great Smog and used Christie's horrific crimes to divert attention away from the deadly soot falling from the sky.
Though unmentioned in The Crown, Christie's ten-year spree caused mass panic in the media in the years leading up to his arrest, particularly considering that Christie's neighbor, Tim Evans, had been executed for killing his own wife and child before Christie confessed to the murders. With these killings occurring as the smog built over London, the media chose to prioritize their serial killer story over the smog enveloping the city - as a human threat seemed far more tangible than a cloud of deadly smoke descending from the heavens. However, the terrifying fact that Christie asphyxiated his victims provides an eerie comparison to the smog that asphyxiated London, with the media at the time considering his crimes against humanity the lesser of two evils.
As a result, with public attention diverted, the real-life Winston Churchill had ample opportunity to continue his plan to systematically downplay the severity of the air pollution, insisting the Great Smog was "just fog." The Crown depicts Prime Minister Churchill (John Lithgow) expressing his concern for the growing "unrest in Egypt" and the importance of defending the Suez Canal during his audience with Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy), with the Queen the first of the two to mention the "weather" in 1952. In this way, The Crown comments on the government's negligence and avoidance of the severity of the fog, with Churchill belittling the Queen as though her worry is excessive and unnecessary. Only when Churchill himself visited the hospitals to see the thousands of people impacted by the smog that the severity of the situation was acknowledged and immediate action was taken.
The Crown also illustrated the monarchy's growing concern for the "inner-city power stations that [Churchill's] party was building," providing historical insight that air pollution in London had been a major issue for some time. This further clarifies why Londoners and London-based media outlets did not react with more panic - with the media happy to play into Churchill's "just fog" narrative. In this way, it is clear why the true history surrounding The Crown's Great Smog depiction is not better-known, considering governmental negligence and a brutal serial killer combined to give London's residents a harrowing five days in early December 1952.
The Crown season 5 will premiere in November 2022.