Note 193 — PREDICTION.

One of the most effective prophecies against London, and which frightened for the time a very large number of its inhabitants, was that given out in the spring of 1750, after a slight shock of an earthquake was felt in London, and it was prophesied that another should occur which would destroy the town and all its inhabitants. All the roads were thronged with persons flying to the country a day or two before the threatened event; and they were all unmercifully ridiculed when the day passed over quietly. Walpole in one of his amusing letters speaks of a party who went “to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back—I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish!” Jokers who were out late amused themselves by bawling in the watchmen’s voice, “Past four o’clock, and a dreadful earthquake!” A pamphlet purporting to be “a full and true account” of this earthquake which never happened, was “printed for Tim Tremor, in Fleet-street, 1750,” and made the vehicle for much personal satire. Thus it is stated that the “Commissioners of Westminster-bridge have ordered this calamity to be entered in their books, as a glorious excuse for the next sinking pier;” and that the town received some comfort upon hearing that “the Inns of Court were all sunk, and several orders were given that no one should assist in bringing any one lawyer above ground.”