A Search for The National Smoke Abatement Society

On the 60th Anniversary of the first Clean Air Act 1956 I wrote a paper entitled Smoky Law and the Clean Air Act - 60 Years On. This outlined my own small contribution to this Act, having received a research grant in 1948 at Sheffield University under Professor R J Sarjant from the Sheffield and Rotherham District Committee of the National Smoke Abatement Society. This was for work on the special local problem of the need for a smoke laden atmosphere in the annealing of tool steels. At this time all industrial centres/cities had such a Committee. These Committees, together with the then Institute of Fuel, were the main activists in the field of smoke abatement and I never heard any mention of the Coal Smoke Abatement Society.

After I had written my paper, I asked the Librarian of the Institute to search for any reference to the National Smoke Abatement Society. He found very little but referred me to Environmental Protection UK who had written a short history of their origin. They state that their founder was the Coal Smoke Abatement Society which was formed in 1898 in London and then said that this early Society was responsible for the enactment of the Public Health (Smoke Abatement) Act of 1926 and also the first Clean Air Act of 1956. They also infer that after these two Acts, the Coal Smoke Abatement Society became the National Clean Air Society. There is no mention of the National Smoke Abatement Society.

From my own life experience, I have concluded that the National Smoke Abatement Society must have been formed when the above 1926 Act came into force nationally. Finally, the Institute Librarian reported that it was the National Smoke Abatement Society that changed its name in 1958 into the National Clean Air Society, and this Society then took the country through two further Clean Air Acts in 1968 and 1993 and an Environmental Act in 1995 when the Environment Agency was formed. Then in 2007 Environmental Protection UK was formed. 

A preview of the papers that were presented at a joint meeting of the Yorkshire Section of the Institute of Fuel and the National Smoke Abatement Society in Sheffield on 20th February 1946 stated that the main office of the Society was at Chandos House, Buckingham Gate, London, SW1.

A study of the previous occupants of this apparently prestigious property from 20 years earlier to 1926 when the first national Public Health Act was passed might reveal to be when the Coal Smoke Abatement Society gave way to the National Smoke Abatement Society.  This suggestion would resolve the above differences that I have with the Environmental Protection UK history.