3-070-617 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Storm of Wind on Friday week: top of a house blown down in Burlington-street, Bond-street, 1881. 'The south of England, and especially the country a hundred miles round London, with the metropolitan district itself, seem to have felt its extreme violence; and a vast amount of damage has been done to buildings and plantations, while many persons, in different parts of the country, and a few in London, lost their lives from various injuries...The gale subsided on the Friday afternoon; but its effects were not fully known till Monday, as many lines of telegraph had been interrupted. We present Sketches of a few incidents of the havoc it caused in and near London and up the valley of the Thames...It seems, indeed, to have been a revolving storm, or cyclone, of vast circumference, having a diameter of not less than two hundred miles, covering nearly the whole of England, and connected with more extensive atmospheric disturbances beyond...The top storey of a house at the upper end of Old Burlington-street, Regent-street, the Burlington Arms, was completely blown off, falling into the street below, and smashing a four-wheeled cab that was standing at the door. The cabman had fortunately left the cab, and no person was hurt'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.