The Great Stink

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Michael Faraday giving his card to Father Thames, caricature commenting on a letter of Faraday's on the state of the river in the Times in Summer 1855

The Great Stink or The Big Stink was a time in the summer of 1858 during which the smell of untreated sewage almost overwhelmed people in central London, England.

Part of the problem was due to the introduction of flush toilets, replacing the chamber-pots that most Londoners had used. These dramatically increased the volume of water and waste that was now poured into existing cesspits. These often overflowed into street drains originally designed to cope with rainwater, but now also used to carry outfalls from factories, slaughterhouses and other activities, contaminating the city before emptying into the River Thames.

Cholera became widespread during the 1840s (not least because many people believed the disease was due to air-borne "miasma"; no one then realised that the disease was water-borne — that discovery was not made until 1854 by London physician Dr John Snow after an epidemic centred in Soho), and sanitation reform soon became a high priority. Bringing together several separate local bodies concerned with sewers, the consolidated Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was established in 1848; it surveyed London's antiquated sewerage system and set about ridding the capital of an estimated 200,000 cesspits — an objective later accelerated by the "Great Stink".

In 1858, the summer was unusually hot. The Thames and many of its urban tributaries were overflowing with sewage; the warm weather encouraged bacteria to thrive and the resulting smell was so overwhelming that it affected the work of the House of Commons (countermeasures included draping curtains soaked in chloride of lime, while members considered relocating upstream to Hampton Court) and the law courts (plans were made to evacuate to Oxford and St Albans). Heavy rain finally broke the hot and humid summer and the immediate crisis ended. However, a House of Commons select committee was appointed to report on the Stink and recommend how to put an end to the problem.

By this time, the consolidated Commission had been superseded (at the end of 1855) by the Metropolitan Board of Works, and despite numerous different schemes for "merciful abatement of the epidemic that ravaged the Metropolis", the MBW finally accepted a scheme proposed in 1859 by its own chief engineer, Joseph Bazalgette. Over the next six years, the key elements of the London Sewerage System were created and the "Great Stink" became a distant memory.

John Martin was also occupied with schemes for the improvement of London, and published various pamphlets and plans dealing with the metropolitan water supply, sewerage, dock and railway systems (his 1834 plans for London's sewerage system anticipated by some 25 years the 1859 proposals of Joseph Bazalgette to create intercepting sewers complete with walkways along both banks of the River Thames).

A fictionalized version of the Great Stink is a major plot point in the steampunk novel The Difference Engine.

[edit] References

• Trench, R. and Hillman, E. (1984) London Under London: A subterranean guide (London: John Murray).
• Halliday, S. (1999) The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis

[edit] External links

• The Great Stink at Crossness.org.uk
• The Great Stink in Victorian fiction (audio link!)