Great Stink
The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, and three outbreaks of cholera before the Great Stink were blamed on the ongoing problems with the river.
The smell, and fears of its possible effects, prompted action by the national and local administrators who had been considering possible solutions to the problem. The authorities accepted a proposal from the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to move the effluent eastwards along a series of interconnecting sewers that sloped towards outfalls beyond the metropolitan area. Work on high-, mid- and low-level systems for the new Northern and Southern Outfall Sewers started at the beginning of 1859 and lasted until 1875. To aid the drainage, pumping stations were built to lift the sewage from lower levels into higher pipes. Two of the more ornate stations, Abbey Mills in Stratford and Crossness on the Erith Marshes, with architectural designs by the consultant engineer, Charles Driver, are listed for protection by English Heritage. Bazalgette's plan introduced the three embankments to London in which the sewers ran: the Victoria, Chelsea and Albert Embankments.
Bazalgette's work ensured that sewage was no longer dumped onto the shores of the Thames and brought an end to the cholera outbreaks; his actions are thought to have saved more lives than the efforts of any other Victorian official. His sewer system operates into the 21st century, servicing a city that has grown to a population of over nine million. The historian Peter Ackroyd argues that Bazalgette should be considered a hero of London.
Background
Brick sewers had been built in London from the 17th century when sections of the Fleet and Walbrook rivers were covered for that purpose. In the century preceding 1856, over a hundred sewers were constructed in London, and at that date the city had around 200,000 cesspits and 360 sewers. Some cesspits leaked methane and other gases, which often caught fire and exploded, while many of the sewers were in a poor state of repair. During the early 19th century improvements had been undertaken in the supply of water to Londoners, and by 1858 many of the city's medieval wooden water pipes were being replaced with iron ones. This, combined with the introduction of flushing toilets and the rising of the city's population from just under one million to three million, led to more water being flushed into the sewers, along with the associated effluent. The outfalls from factories, slaughterhouses and other industrial activities put further strain on the already failing system. Much of this outflow either overflowed, or discharged directly, into the Thames.The scientist Michael Faraday described the situation in a letter to The Times in July 1855: shocked at the state of the Thames, he dropped pieces of white paper into the river to "test the degree of opacity". His conclusion was that "Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind. ... The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water; it was the same as that which now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time a real sewer." The smell from the river was so bad that in 1857 the government poured chalk lime, chloride of lime and carbolic acid into the river to ease the stench.
The prevailing thought in Victorian healthcare concerning the transmission of contagious diseases was the miasma theory, which held that most communicable diseases were caused by the inhalation of contaminated air. This contamination could take the form of the odour of rotting corpses or sewage, but also rotting vegetation, or the exhaled breath of someone already diseased. Miasma was believed by most to be the vector of transmission of cholera, which was on the rise in 19th-century Europe. The disease was deeply feared by all, because of the speed with which it could spread, and its high fatality rates.
London's first major cholera epidemic struck in 1831 when the disease claimed 6,536 victims. In 1848–49 there was a second outbreak in which 14,137 London residents died, and this was followed by a further outbreak in 1853–54 in which 10,738 died. During the second outbreak, John Snow, a London-based physician, noticed that the rates of death were higher in those areas supplied by the Lambeth and the Southwark and Vauxhall water companies. In 1849 he published a paper, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, which posited the theory of the water-borne transmission of disease, rather than the miasma theory; little attention was paid to the paper. Following the third cholera outbreak in 1854, Snow published an update to his treatise, after he focused on the effects in Broad Street, Soho. Snow had removed the handle from the local water pump, thus preventing access to the contaminated water, with a resulting fall in deaths. It was later established that a leaking sewer ran near the well from which the water was drawn.
Local government
The civic infrastructure overseeing the management of London's sewers had gone through several changes in the 19th century. In 1848 the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was established at the urging of the social reformer Edwin Chadwick and a Royal Commission. The Commission superseded seven of the eight authorities that had managed London's sewers since the time of Henry VIII; it was the first time that a unitary power had full control over the capital's sanitation facilities. The Building Act 1844 had ensured that all new buildings had to be connected to a sewer, not a cesspool, and the commission set about connecting cesspools to sewers, or removing them altogether. Because of the fear that the miasma from the sewers would cause the spread of disease, Chadwick and his successor, the pathologist John Simon, ensured that the sewers were regularly flushed through, a policy that resulted in more sewage being discharged into the Thames.In August 1849 the MCS appointed Joseph Bazalgette to the position of assistant surveyor. He had been working as a consultant engineer in the railway industry until overwork had brought about a serious breakdown in his health; his appointment to the commission was his first position on his return to employment. Working under the chief engineer, Frank Foster, he began to develop a more systematic plan for the city's sewers. The stress of the position was too much for Foster and he died in 1852; Bazalgette was promoted into his position, and continued refining and developing the plans for the development of the sewerage system. The Metropolis Management Act 1855 replaced the commission with the Metropolitan Board of Works, which took control of the sewers.
By June 1856 Bazalgette completed his definitive plans, which provided for small, local sewers about in diameter to feed into a series of larger sewers until they drained into main outflow pipes high. A Northern and Southern Outfall Sewer were planned to manage the waste for each side of the river. London was mapped into high-, middle- and low-level areas, with a main sewer servicing each; a series of pumping stations was planned to remove the waste towards the east of the city. Bazalgette's plan was based on that of Foster, but was larger in scale, and allowed for more of a rise in population than Foster's – from 3 to 4.5 million. Bazalgette submitted his plans to Sir Benjamin Hall, the First Commissioner of Works. Hall had reservations about the outfalls—the discharge points of waste outlets into other bodies of water—from the sewers, which he said were still within the bounds of the capital, and were therefore unacceptable. During the ongoing discussions, Bazalgette refined and modified his plans, in line with Hall's demands. In December 1856 Hall submitted the plans to a group of three consultant engineers, Captain Douglas Strutt Galton of the Royal Engineers, James Simpson, an engineer with two water companies, and Thomas Blackwood, the chief engineer on the Kennet and Avon Canal. The trio reported back to Hall in July 1857 with proposed changes to the positions of the outfall, which he passed on to the MBW in October. The new proposed discharge points were to be open sewers, running beyond the positions proposed by the board; the cost of their plans was to be over £5.4 million, considerably more than the maximum estimate of Bazalgette's plan, which was £2.4 million. In February 1858 a general election saw the fall of Lord Palmerston's Whig government, which was replaced by Lord Derby's second Conservative ministry; Lord John Manners replaced Hall, and Benjamin Disraeli was appointed Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
June to August 1858
By mid-1858 the problems with the Thames had been building for several years. In his novel Little Dorrit—published as a serial between 1855 and 1857—Charles Dickens wrote that the Thames was "a deadly sewer ... in the place of a fine, fresh river". In a letter to a friend, Dickens said: "I can certify that the offensive smells, even in that short whiff, have been of a most head-and-stomach-distending nature", while the social scientist and journalist George Godwin wrote that "in parts the deposit is more than six feet deep" on the Thames foreshore, and that "the whole of this is thickly impregnated with impure matter". In June 1858 the temperatures in the shade in London averaged —rising to in the sun. Combined with an extended spell of dry weather, the level of the Thames dropped and raw effluent from the sewers remained on the banks of the river. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attempted to take a pleasure cruise on the Thames, but returned to shore within a few minutes because the smell was so terrible. The press soon began calling the event "The Great Stink"; the leading article in the City Press observed that "Gentility of speech is at an end—it stinks, and whoso once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it". A writer for The Standard concurred with the opinion. One of its reporters described the river as a "pestiferous and typhus breeding abomination", while a second wrote that "the amount of poisonous gases which is thrown off is proportionate to the increase of the sewage which is passed into the stream". The leading article in The Illustrated London News commented that:By June the stench from the river had become so bad that business in Parliament was affected, and the curtains on the river side of the building were soaked in lime chloride to overcome the smell. The measure was not successful, and discussions were held about possibly moving the business of government to Oxford or St Albans. The Examiner reported that Disraeli, on attending one of the committee rooms, left shortly afterwards with the other members of the committee, "with a mass of papers in one hand, and with his pocket handkerchief applied to his nose" because the smell was so bad. The disruption to its legislative work led to questions being raised in the House of Commons. According to Hansard, the Member of Parliament John Brady informed Manners that members were unable to use either the Committee Rooms or the Library because of the stench, and asked the minister "if the noble Lord has taken any measures for mitigating the effluvium and discontinuing the nuisance". Manners replied that the Thames was not under his jurisdiction. Four days later a second MP said to Manners that "By a perverse ingenuity, one of the noblest of rivers has been changed into a cesspool, and I wish to ask whether Her Majesty's Government intend to take any steps to remedy the evil?" Manners pointed out "that Her Majesty's Government have nothing whatever to do with the state of the Thames". The satirical magazine Punch commented that "The one absorbing topic in both Houses of Parliament ... was the Conspiracy to Poison question. Of the guilt of that old offender, Father Thames, there was the most ample evidence".
At the height of the stink, of lime were being used near the mouths of the sewers that discharged into the Thames, and men were employed spreading lime onto the Thames foreshore at low tide; the cost was £1,500 per week. On 15 June Disraeli tabled the Metropolis Local Management Amendment Bill, a proposed amendment to the 1855 Act; in the opening debate he called the Thames "a Stygian pool, reeking with ineffable and intolerable horrors". The Bill put the responsibility to clear up the Thames on the MBW, and stated that "as far as may be possible" the sewerage outlets should not be within the boundaries of London; it also allowed the Board to borrow £3 million, which was to be repaid from a three-penny levy on all London households for the next forty years. The terms favoured Bazalgette's original 1856 plan, and overcame Hall's objection to it. The leading article in The Times observed that "Parliament was all but compelled to legislate upon the great London nuisance by the force of sheer stench". The bill was debated in late July and was passed into law on 2 August.