VERIFIEDPRIMARY
A journey underground
James Hain Friswell
CLM-UNDERGROUND-001 · VERIFIED
No smell of damp on the first Underground
Describing the first journey along the whole of London's not yet finished Metropolitan Railway, made by invited guests in August 1862, James Hain Friswell wrote that Gower Street station had no smell of damp or confined air and that the air stayed dry and pleasant on that hot day.
One writer's impression of a new line on a single summer journey before it opened; it does not describe the line in regular service.
The statement the claim rests on was found word for word in the text of the cited page or chapter of the digitised source, fetched from the named service, and an editor read that whole text against every part of the claim. The passage is cited by its locator; SmellBook does not reproduce the passage. Source text from Wikisource (proofread transcription).
- A journey underground, p. 362 Printed page 362 is image 370 of the digitised volume, in the issue of 20 September 1862.
Time described: 1862-09-20. The passage states no time; the source's publication date is used as the latest possible time it describes. Checked 2026-10-05.
active · reviewed 2026-10-02 · corrections 0
CANONICAL PROFILES1
SUPPORTING SOURCES1
Permanent identifier smellbook:claim:no-smell-of-damp-on-the-first-underground · Graph record (JSON)
Dataset history Not yet in a dataset release; it will appear in the next one.