Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1919 — HANGED FOR BURNING COAL [ARTICLE]

HANGED FOR BURNING COAL

There Wee • Time When Job of Looking After Production Would Have Been Sinecure. The present-day restrictions with regard to the use of coal would have seemed very mild to our ancestor*, remarks a writer lu London TR-Blta. There is do doubt that the use of what used to be called “sea coal” to distinguish It from charcoal had its drawbacks. Many look forward to the time when there will be no more smoky chimneys in Britain, when the atmosphere of London will be us clean as it must have been in the days of Good Queen Bess, and when a new building will not be begrimed with soot almost as soon as It is built. In the reign of Edward I the Inhabitants of London petitioned the king against the growing use of coal, declaring that it wan “a public nuisance, corrupting the air with Its stink ond smoke, to the great detriment of their health.** Whereui>on the king prohibited its use, offenders to be punished for a first offense by a fine and for a second to have their kilns and furnaces destroyed. The practice of using coal was at length made a capital offense and a man wns tried, condemned and hanged for burning coal in London. In those days the population of England probably «11«1 not exceed four or five million, and wood was plentiful and cheap from the vast forests that covered tens of thousands of square miles where now are great towns.