CURIOSITIES:MURPHY'S ALMANAC for 1838 had this entry for January 20th: "Fair, and probably the lowest degree of winter temperature." How right the Cork-born Patrick Murphy was. So cold was it in England that the Thames froze over and, as the late Brendan McWilliams wrote in his "Weather Eye", "the gentry played cricket on village ponds".
Murphy had left his native city for London in 1822 and, believing that changes in the weather were related to the movement of the moon and the planets, published a number of books developing his theories. In 1838 came The Weather Almanac on Scientific Principles, showing the State of the Weather for Every Day of the Year 1838.
He got it right for January 20th, became a publishing phenomenon overnight, his book rapidly went through 45 editions and Murphy made the immense profit of £3,000. But he was wrong more often than he was right for the rest of the year. As McWilliams wrote: “His predictions were partially right on 168 days but entirely wrong for the remaining 197 days.” Although Murphy’s career in publishing collapsed, for a generation the intense cold of 1838 was known as “Murphy’s Winter”.
Some weeks after Brendan's piece appeared, I came across a Comic Almanackfor 1839 in Ludlow in Shropshire. The illustration at the head of this column is from that book, and it tops a splendid poem: Al-Maniac Day – A Rush for the Murphies.
“Mysterious Murphy, whose transcendent skill
Makes hail, rain, vapour,
Come forth obsequious to your will, –
At least on paper, –
Tell us what famous college
Bestow’d your wondrous knowledge!
Perchance your learned sconce found it at once;
Perhaps by degree of TCD.
Some say the Prince of Evil has been too civil,
And that, in change for all your knowledge
boasted,
You’re doomed, – like other Murphies – to be
roasted.
Some think, like me for one,
You’ve kissed the Blarney Stone;
But though your blumders make a pretty rout,
Sure, if you’re right, by second sight,
You may well be, at first, a little out.”
And it ends, having – like the great reading public – seen through the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo of this son of Cork:
“Ah! me, I sought the throngs in Beulah’s bowers,
Seduced from home by your fair fiction,
But found none out, amid the drizzling showers,
Save my sad self and your prediction.
Now if again the weather’s care you take on,
Don’t try your flam on,
But if you wish to save your bacon,
Give us less gammon.”
For a few days, though, Murphy had been on the pig’s back!