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Anois agus arís: Murphy’s Winter — January 1838 By PETER BERRESFORD ELLIS
One of the coldest days ever recorded in London was when the thermometer dropped to 14 degrees below zero. It happened on January 20, 1838.
It was so cold that the Thames was completely frozen over and people were crossing the river on the ice at Hammersmith and even downstream as far as the Tower of London. The great ships at London Dock, at Blackwall and Greenwich and even at Gravesend were unable to move, being locked in the ice at many places.
Newspapers reported that at Lewisham a man was found frozen to death on the road and his death was only remarked upon because he had been out walking at the time when hypothermia overcame him. Thousands of poor in the London slums and those without any shelter or heat also died.
The more robust citizens found entertainment from the unbelievable weather conditions. At Maidstone a sheep was roasted on the ice over the river Medway, a sight that attracted hundreds of spectators.
The Thames became a fairground with games being organized on the ice, with skittle matches, and beer, spirits and other refreshments being sold to the spectators.
The extreme weather continued into February. A newspaper reported that an elderly Irishman,
traveling from Dublin to Liverpool by ferry, a crossing which took three days because of the weather, had extreme frostbite in both feet having had to remain on deck during this period.
He had, said the account, “with some generosity, offered his cloak to a female similarly circumstanced.” He was removed to a Liverpool hospital where he was recovering and his feet had been saved from amputation.
At the lake in Eridge Park, Tunbridge Wells, a new form of cricket was played in which the players all wore skates.
It was a winter to be remembered in history and it is remembered as `Murphy's Winter'.
Patrick Murphy, an astrologer and meteorologist from Cork, had predicted the weather extremes a year previously and now made the grand sum of £3,000 from his almanac — a fortune in those days. He arrived in London in 1822 as a refugee from another of the great artificial famines inflicted on Ireland by the absentee landlords.
As William Cobbett, in his newspaper Political Register, July, 1822, noted: “The food is there; but those who have it in their possession will not give it without the money. And we know that the food is there; for since this famine has been declared in Parliament, thousands of quarters of corn have been imported every week from Ireland to England.”
Reports indicate a quarter of a million died in this particular `famine'. Murphy was one of the lucky tens of thousands who fled Ireland.
Alas, we know little of his background and where he studied his art. The last faculty of astrology, at Salamanca in Spain, where there was also an Irish College, had been closed in 1770. One of Salamanca's most famous Irish graduate astrologers was Father Manus O'Donnell SJ of Donegal who wrote a book in Irish on aspects of medical astrology in 1694. It was published in a bilingual version in London in 1915 as `An Irish Corpus Astronomiae'.
Patrick Murphy's first known publication in 1825 was `An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of Miasmata'. In 1830 he came out with `Rudiments of the Primary Forces of Gravity, Magnetism and Electricity'. In 1834 he produced `The Anatomy of the Seasons'. Two years later he published `Meteorology considered in its connection with astronomy'.
He was now producing almanacs — books of tables of days, weeks, months to which were added astronomical, astrological, historical and other data. He wrote on the solar system, on gravity and even made some study of electricity.
But in 1837 he had brought out a special `Weather Almanack on Scientific Principles, showing the State of the Weather for every day of the year 1838'. He based his work on the phases of the moon correlating them with weather changes owing more to his astrology than the modern understanding of meteorology.
This became a best seller and is said to have run to 45 editions with Murphy making his £3,000 from sales.
He had successfully predicted the January extreme of temperature and became a celebrity. It was not long before that winter became known far and wide as `Murphy's Winter'.
From that day forward, the day to day changes in the weather were eagerly followed and compared to the predictions that he had made in 1837.
His success was made more telling because no one had initially believed that January was going to be cold. December had been a very mild month. The fall in a couple of days from the mild temperatures to the harsh temperatures that froze the River Thames was a dramatic one. But how good was he?
Those who analyzed his almanac found that his predictions were partially right on 188 days but entirely wrong on 197 days for 1838.
Murphy produced `Weather Tables' almanacs for 1839 and subsequent years until 1844 (for 1845). He certainly earned a living but, unfortunately, the money he made was squandered on the commodity markets and in a very short period he lost most of his small fortune by unsuccessfully speculating in grain prices. He died in London in 1847.
So was Murphy worthy of being perpetuated in history for his moment of fame?
One modern meteorologist maintains that his predictions (`extraordinary', as one newspaper of the day maintained) could have been worked out by a close examination of winters in southern England.
Perhaps, but no such empirical data was available when Murphy made his predictions and he was correct to pinpoint January 20 as the day the temperature would fall so drastically.
Cold days usually occur from November to March, but a safe guess for a really low temperature would not be around the end of January, but more at the start of the winter period.
No one seems to remember Patrick Murphy today. There is an Irish Astrological Association whose luminaries have not heard of him. The main histories of astrology do not mention him. Sic transit gloria mundi.
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