THE WINTER of 1837-38 was unremarkable at first. Normal temperatures in November 1837 gave way to a cool spell in early December followed by a mild interlude that lasted for the remainder of the month. The Christmas weather, as can often happen, was noticeable only for its pleasantness.
January, however, saw the onset of a mini Ice Age. On New Year's Day the thermometer dropped sharply, and temperatures continued exceptionally low for several weeks to make January and February 1838 the coldest in living memory.
There were frequent bouts of snow, the Thames was frozen over, and the gentry played cricket on a frozen pond in Tunbridge Wells. It was the most vicious cold snap for a generation, and for many years afterwards it was recalled as "Murphy's Winter".
Patrick Murphy was not, as one might suspect, an Irishman of note, but an English dilettante of the sciences who in 1837 produced a magnum opus with the grandiose title The Weather Almanac - on Scientific Principles, showing the State of the Weather for Every Day of the Year of 1838.
He was not the first, and not indeed the last, to attempt the prodigious feat of giving a day by day forecast for a whole year. Nor do we know much about his methodology, but it may well have owed something to the advice given by a contemporary sceptic on these matters:
If you would make a
Weather Almanac
Attend to what I say,
Throw frost, wind, rain and snow into a sack,
And draw out one per day.
Should frost come out in-
stead of rain
Or rain instead of snow,
Your customer must dip again,
The first dip was "no go",
But if you chance to dip alright
You've managed matters well.
Print ten editions before night,
They all are sure to sell.
Murphy had a lucky dip for his day in 1838. His prediction for January 20th was "Fair, and probably the lowest degree of winter temperature" - and by happy chance it turned out to be one of the coldest days ever to be experienced in the south of England, with the thermometer dropping to -20C in London.
Murphy became famous, and indeed wealthy, overnight: his 1838 Almanac ran to 45 editions, and customers mobbed his publishers to obtain their copies of the book. Although Patrick Murphy never managed the same measure of success again, or indeed the same volume of sales, he at least achieved a minor place in history as the eponym of "Murphy's Winter".