Certainly, the term "pea-souper" was common when I was at school
Those last pea-soupers in London in the ‘50s! I had forgotten them until reading your post Rhuby, then it all came back. I recall in the early 1950s that there were evenings (late afternoon really – but it was dark by 3.30 anyway) in winter when we had to be escorted home by the teachers and on each intersection there were large, greasy black Aladdin’s lamp type of oil lamps set down on the pavement with a flaring oily flame coming out of the spout. These were not to help pedestrians but to assist the bus drivers; the buses crawled along the kerb with the conductor walking in front shouting instructions to the driver who literally could not see the kerb or the electric street lamps overhead. It all seemed exciting then, the groups of us children all well wrapped up with scarves over our mouths, heading off in different directions into the gloom shouting and chattering, seeing the orange glow of an oil lamp in front of us and being upon it practically before we knew we were there; your group diminished in size as kids gradually reached their homes and were dropped off. On the way vehicles would appear from the murk, usually with drivers who were lost and asking directions – I hope, but doubt, that our multiple and varied responses were of help!
Incidentally an expression on rain from those days was “Its raining stair-rods” for that heavy vertical rain that comes down in straight lines. You don’t hear that now, but then you don’t see stair-rods now either.
