CHRISTY: THE MID-ESSEX WIND-RUSH AND WHIRL-WIND. 141
quake was in progress. One resident likened the sound of the
wind to that of ten thousand torn cats screaming in unison!
Mr. Williams describes it as an exceedingly loud screeching hiss,
which increased steadily in intensity and then ceased suddenly.
The storm came and passed so quickly and unexpectedly that
many residents in the village seem able to remember little of it
beside the prodigious noise it made.
As to the time at which it struck the village, reports differ.
An occupant of the old Rectory puts it at 1.3 p.m. Mr. Williams
tells me he believes it was nearly 1.10. Probably the true time
was between these two extremes. At all events, practically the
entire population was indoors, either because of the wet weather
or because it was the hour for the mid-day meal. Owing to
this, no single person sustained bodily injury. Had many people
been about, cases of injury must inevitably have been numerous.
As things were, many, especially women, were much upset ner-
vously and some had to receive medical treatment. A number
of pigs were, however, hurt or liberated, owing to the demolition
of their styes.
As to the duration of the storm, too, testimony differs. All
those who were in it say that it was very brief. Some say it
lasted several minutes; which I doubt. Others, including Mr.
Williams, put the duration at no more than ninety seconds.
Miss Mabel Usborne and Mr. Herbert Waters both estimate its
duration as less than a minute. The former tells me she believes
that, if the wind-pressure had lasted five minutes, her house
(which suffered badly, as mentioned already) would not have
remained standing at all.
One feature of the storm was the amount of dust and dirt it
carried. After it had passed, all the windows on its path looked
as though they had not been cleaned for years. In one case,
where one pane only in a window had been broken, the violence
of the wind carried a stream of dust through this into the room,
depositing some of it in the shape of "a straight black line right
"across the white ceiling" and the rest on the dinner-table.
Some who happened to look out of their windows during the
passage of the storm described the scene as unparalleled, by
reason of the falling trees, roofs, and chimney-stacks; the
shower of bricks, slates, tiles, and broken window-glass; and
the whirl of dust and mud. In many cases, the corrugated iron