The Great Stink of 1858

By the 1840s, London faced a sanitation crisis. One summer the stench of the Thames drove Parliament to soak their curtains in lime, an experience that led to funding for a modern sewer system. Tune in to learn about modern toilets, germ theory and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chalk reporting. And before
the holidays, we recorded an episode on a few of
the great underground cities of the world, and a lot

(00:22):
of folks have written in since then suggesting other city
we knew that would happen, cities that we had missed
um but one in particular was actually already on our
list for a full length episode about underground world of London.
And London, of course has many potential underground stories, but
the one that we're going to be covering today stems

(00:44):
from a popular listener suggestion in its own right, and
that is the Great Stink. And you might be wondering
if that is a metaphor for something, and we're here
to tell you no, it is not. It actually refers
to a particularly warm Victoria in summer when the stench
of London sewage filled Thames got very, very bad. So

(01:06):
this podcast is about a bad smell. So the stink, though,
you know, we're not going to just talk about it.
If that was all it was, people remembered it being
a particularly stinky summer. Some pretty major changes came because
it just got that bad. Um. Some radical improvements to
an outdated sewer network, some public health improvements, um. And

(01:29):
it also helped change the face of nineteenth century London
and put into place systems that actually last to this day,
something I found particularly remarkable about this story. But first
let's just be frank. Yes, the waste issue in nineteenth
century London had a lot of components, industrial chemicals, lie
from the city's many laundries, butchered animals, all things that

(01:53):
make for a stinky river with no fish and no birds.
But the big issue was human waste. So before we
get to the great stink and and talk about how
that came about, we really have to discuss how people
handled their business, should we say, leading up to the
Victorian era and during that era. So according to Smithsonian's

(02:13):
Past Imperfect blog, London has actually had a sewage system
since Roman times, and it was added to of course,
it was expanded during the medieval period, but pretty hephazardly.
The sewers were built and presided over by different districts
in the city, so there was no uniformity between them.
There was certainly no grand plan. There was no map

(02:34):
even of like your city's entire sewer system. More seweries
were added on in the seventeenth century, but this network
is haphazard as it was wasn't even meant for waste
in the first place. It was it was for storms
who were runoff, even though we have to assume due
to the medieval habit of dumping your chamber pot out

(02:55):
the window or into the gutter, or simply going outside
probably ensured there was some waste in the sewer system,
but that was not its intention. It was for runoff,
and of course that rain water could safely enter the
urban tributaries of the Thames, which side note here to
a lot of those are now called the lost Rivers

(03:15):
according to the Council for British Archaeology, because they're not
rivers anymore. They're not tributaries of the Thames. There underground
covered sewers that lead to it. So okay, you're probably wondering, though,
what actually happened to Londoner's waist. If it didn't hit
the sewers well, most made it into suspits which were

(03:37):
hidden under or behind homes, and these suspits they'd be
filled gradually with the contents of chamber pots. So when
your suspit was full, you'd simply hire a night soil
man who would come out with a cart and load
up the contents to be used north of the city
as an agricultural fertilizer. But it's easy to see why
this system eventually went wrong. Yeah, for one thing, cesspits.

(04:01):
You know, it's not the it's not a modern system
like you might have um now if you weren't connected
to the sewer network. They leaked sometimes and they would
send raw waste into the ground water and eventually mix
in with the Thames, which was where Londoners drew their
water from. So that's problem number one. But the big
problem came with the city growing too much, too fast

(04:26):
right again. According to the Council for British Archaeology, London's
population exploded from not even one million people in eighteen
o one to nearly three million in eighteen sixty one.
Outlined villages were absorbed by the city, farmland or green
space was built up and packed with new residents, and
all the problems of overcrowding, including unsafe housing, pollution, over

(04:48):
full cemeteries, all those things just became worse, and even
well before that eighteen sixty one population figure, there are
already more than two hundred thousand cesspits in London by
eighteen ten, so certainly getting to the point where too
many suspits too empty to cart out of town to

(05:08):
use as fertilizer in a safe way, not like a
gross dumping ground sort of way, no pun intended. Um.
So yeah, clearly, clearly things were getting out of hand.
And around the same time that the suspit count was
starting to creep beyond two hundred thousand and the population
was still steadily climbing, London sewage system had another major blow,

(05:30):
and that was the adoption of the flushing toilet and
UH last summer, just as a side note to to
this um information about the flushing toilet UM, I read
Lucy Worsley's book about the history of the home last summer.
It's called If Walls Could Talk, and it's filled with
all sorts of interesting details about the rooms of the

(05:50):
modern home UM. But one of the most interesting facts
in that bathroom section was that the flushing toilet was
not a recent invention. I mean, you're you're probably thinking, okay,
this is we're talking about the early nineteenth century, right now,
that sounds about when you would imagine the flushing toilet
to have been invented. Britain's first flushing toilet that really
came about in Elizabethan time. That was really surprising to me. Yeah,

(06:15):
it was actually invented by a man named Sir John
Harrington and installed in his home and in one of
Elizabeth's palaces. But these cistern connected chamber pots had some
design flaws and didn't really catch on. Some of the
problems were stink producing d pipes, daily water priming, lots
of water use, and leaks, and they were only occasionally

(06:36):
installed because of that, always in fine homes, and most
folks continued the portable chamber pot system instead. But by
the early nineteenth century, redesigns plus the right PR power
behind the right PR guys promoting these things made the
flushing toilet or water closet whichever way you want to
refer to it finally take off. And unfortunately though, the

(06:58):
waste disposal method of water closet, which is obviously very
water intensive, didn't mesh well with the suspit set up.
There was just too much stuff there. Yeah, I mean,
we don't need to go into the grizzly details here,
but you can imagine. I mean, if you have a
system that's set up for mostly solid waste, suddenly it's
um not so solid anymore. It's not going to work

(07:20):
very well as night soil and as something that is
portable anymore. It's just sewage. It's just gross, and there's
way too much of it in London. So people began
to connect their drains to the city sewer system, the
same sewer system that was meant for storm water and
that drained into the Thames. So by eighteen fifteen it

(07:41):
was permissible to do so. By eighteen forty eight it
was mandatory you had to connect your drains. The Metropolitan
Commission of Sewers even ordered that all the suspits be closed,
so there wasn't another option. So of course there were
some problems with this. Uh. For one thing, a hard
rain mean that your storm sewer connected drains now backed

(08:04):
up with raw sewage into your home, which is really
terrible and I don't want to talk about them anymore.
But the bigger problem was that all of those old
sewer systems did drain into the Thames where Londoners, as
we keep on saying driving this point home got their
water from. According to the Smithsonian, by the eighteen forties
the Thames saw more than one fifty million tons of

(08:27):
waste jumped into it. So problems, problems to say the least. Unfortunately, though,
it wasn't until the eighteen fifties that people really began
to understand germ theory and that diseases like cholera were
contracted through contaminated water. And I think you and Katie
covered kind of a related topic to this, right, yeah,

(08:48):
one very closely related the story of Dr John Snow
and his ghost map, and um, it just had to
do with the cholera outbreaks that London experienced in the
eighteen hundreds and in his attempts to discover what was
really behind him. I mean, just to give you some
figures here, These are serious outbreaks of disease. The first

(09:10):
major outbreak was in eighteen eighty two one people died
in Great Britain. Uh, the next outbreak in eighteen forty
eight and nine, fifty four thousand died. And in the
third outbreak in eighteen fifty three and four, again thirty
one thousand people died in Great Britain. Many of them Londoners,

(09:31):
and Snow made his discovery his his discovery that cholera
was something that could be um transported through water, and
that you could drink water that looked perfectly clean and
and catch this this disease from it. Uh. It seems
pretty obvious to us now, but it ran completely contrary

(09:52):
to the popular scientific thought of the time, yea, so
much so that it took Snow years to convince the
piers that cholera was contracted through water. Instead, most people
believe that diseases were spread through bad air or miasma.
So a disease filled swum didn't necessarily need clearly separated
sewage and water systems, It just needed better air. Kind

(10:15):
of ventilation system in there would protect you from contracting
cholera even if you were drinking this gross Thames water um.
So this incorrect belief, though ironically, made the idea of
an updated, really super connected throughout London sewer system a
little bit dangerous sounding, because if you think about it

(10:36):
from that perspective, drains bad air spreading. Could your homes
drains be allowing bad air and from the other part
of the city, from other parts of the cities of
Lucy Worsley again even talks about people keeping plugs on
their drains at all times so that nothing would come
give them cholera from it. The belief in my asthma, though,

(10:59):
which lasted long after snows debunking of it, unfortunately, it
makes the eventual Great Stink seem all the more significant
and probably all the more terrifying for people. Right. It
was eighteen fifty eight in London, and London had experienced
its hottest summer on record. The stench of the Thames
became completely unbearable. For those who were by the river,

(11:21):
it was practically suffocating. The best accounts of the stink
come from Members of Parliament who were holed up riverside,
and according to the Council for British Archaeology on June seven,
one MP complained quote, it was a notorious fact that
honorable gentlemen sitting in the committee rooms and in the
library were utterly unable to remain there in consequence of

(11:42):
the stench which arose from the river. Eleven days later,
the Times of London reported that quote A few members
bent on investigating the matter to its very depth. I
like that it's eleven day Right rights point ventured into
the library, but they were instantaneously even to retreat, each
man with a handkerchief to his nose, and most famously,

(12:05):
the MP's attempted to block the smell by soaking the
curtains and chloride of lime, but that didn't even help
a bit. Now it was it was out of the
league of chloride of lime and um. Interestingly, there had
been a body established to handle the sewer problems. It
wasn't like people were just ignoring this issue. Year after years,

(12:27):
the population grew and things got worse and worse. The
Metropolitan Board of Works had been set up, but unfortunately
nobody had bothered to see that. The Board of Works
had funding to complete massive public works projects like building
a new sewer system. But now with the members of
Parliament suffocating in their chambers and graphing handkerchiefs to their

(12:49):
noses and soaking their curtains and lime, things got fast
tracked prioritized. So by July eight a bill passed granting
the Board of Works power to barrow and levy money
for an updated sewer system. So they were finally and
moving into the future. Yes, Over the next seven years,
the Board of Works and Chief engineer Joseph basil Jet

(13:12):
developed a system that totally the waste of London outside
of town and away from the river that ran through
the city's heart. As a testament to its design, much
of that system is still used today. Yeah, a point
we we made earlier. That's one of the more impressive
aspects of this story. According to Port Cities London, basil
Jet's plan did run contrary to a lot of the

(13:35):
ideas of the day. Are a lot of the possible
solutions for for this issue, which at the time ran
more towards still used still building a sewer system, but
instead of pumping it outside of town towards the river,
pumping it outside of town and still using it as
fertilizer kind of in the old night soil way. But

(13:56):
basil Jet realized that this was an inefficient idea. There
were just too many people in the city, there was
too much sewage, and the agricultural areas were of course
getting further and further away as the city grew. So
his idea was to continue dumping the sewage into the Thames,
but to do so away from the city, uh downstream

(14:18):
from where people in London at least got their water.
The first major part of his plan involved intercepting sewers,
and these ran along both sides of the river, connecting
to the old sewers that once drained right into the river,
and from there the intercepting sewers carried their contents east
by gravity to one of two pumping stations, one on

(14:38):
either side, and these raised the sewage to outfall sewers
that would then carry the contents off to reservoirs. At
high tide, the outfalls would be emptied into the Thames
down river of London. So the outfall sewers and the
reservoirs were just huge. The reservoirs are a little again
kind of horrifying to think about, but the outfall sewers

(14:59):
just of you some numbers on these. The northern outfall
sewer was more than four miles long, the southern outfall
sewer ran almost entirely underground. And uh, these are still
considered impressive engineering feats. Even even if they were built today,
they would still be in that league. Um Basil Jett
was also able to accomplish a lot of this this work,

(15:23):
uh in a very tucked away, sort of out of
sight manner. You know, these weren't just all sewers running
in clear sight. And the way he was able to
do that was by building embankments along the Marshy River
banks of the Thames, and that's probably the most visible
reminder of his work. You don't see a lot of sewers,
of course, but uh, the park like embankments in London,

(15:47):
UH meant that central streets didn't have to be torn up,
buildings didn't have to be torn up to build these
massive sewer pipes. It reclaimed land that was was not
being used, and it also hid new parts of the
London Underground the Metropolitan Railway at the time. You know,
if you're tearing all this up and laying pipes in

(16:10):
lay a tube station in as well. So according to Worsley,
basil Jets work resulted in more than one thousand miles
of sewer. It also used about three D eighteen million bricks,
and it allowed for the widespread adoption of the flushing
toilet just as an aside. The eighteen fifty one Great
Exhibition also helped with that too. Though many people got

(16:31):
out to the exhibition to try to flush a toilet
for the first time, they just you know, while they
were out seeing the other marvels at the Great Exhibition.
The facilities happened to include flushing toilets, and they got
to try them for the first time see how one
of them works, since probably not too many people were
going to Elizabeth's old old palace. Uh. One of the

(16:52):
starkest signs though, I mean, those are impressive numbers, of course,
But one of the starkest signs of basil Jets success
was London's fourth and final major color outbreak, which took
place in eighteen sixty six. It was mostly limited to
the east end of London, which was the one part
of town that hadn't yet been hooked up to the

(17:13):
new sewer system, so clearly John Snow's ideas about how
colors spread bore out with that, and also basil Jet's
ideas about santation um. Still, though on that subject, sewage
was still, of course flowing directly into the towns just
east of London. There was still no sewage treatment in place, um,

(17:36):
something that's a little striking to to consider, and things
got bad pretty pretty quickly. I mean, why wouldn't they
Near the outfalls, mud banks of sewage started to pile up. Um.
Sometimes there would be so much waste being discharged into
the river that waiting for high tide to just whisk
it all away didn't really work anymore. And um, the

(17:59):
every thing would come back up river. So that problem
didn't go unnoticed forever, though obviously by the eighteen seventies,
a terrible accident is what finally put it on the map.
A pleasure steamer called the Princess Alice was hit by
a coal ship and broken in half. The wreck occurred
near Beckton, which was one of the sewage reservoir sites,
and though few people died in the accident, six fifty

(18:22):
died overall, most by drowning in caustic sewage water and sludge.
In seven treatment plants began filtering out sledge from liquid.
The liquids still went into the river, while the sludge
was trudged out to see on special ships where it
was dumped at a spot called the Black Deep. And

(18:42):
this fact, maybe this takes the cake, is the most surprising.
This went on until yeah, that is startling. Um now
it is just in case you're interested in how things
played out since then. Now about half of it is burned.
We're talking about London specifically, half is burned half has
turned into agricultural fertilizer pellets. Uh, kind of going back

(19:06):
to the old night soil tradition. Also interesting to the
like Beckton and the other the other spots are still
major waste processing areas, so these their tradition of that
has has continued into the twenty one century. Um. So understandably,
this is a pretty wild story and it was certainly

(19:27):
a strange one to research, with all sorts of weird
things I came across, like mentions of mythical sewer pigs
and queen rats. Um. But one of the strangest aspects
and I just couldn't go without bringing it up here
at the end, were the lives of so called tash
ers and uh. The Smithsonian piece we mentioned a few

(19:49):
times by Mike Dash covered the life of these sewer hunters,
who were documented by Henry Mayhew Man who wrote some
vignettes on Victoria in London Life. But they were basically
guys who would go into the sewers illegally and search
out useful items that may have gotten lost them. Um.

(20:11):
It could be anything from a piece of rope to
something like a treasure, you know, lost piece of silverware
coins that have been dropped on the street and then
swept into the gutter. And uh, they were able to
make a pretty decent working class living doing this, as
terrible as it may sound, Yeah, well, older toshers would

(20:31):
know the invisible crannies where things tended to accumulate, and
teams would even sometimes enter with hooks and hoes to
unearth their fine. So they probably came up with a
good bit of stuff. He knew where to look. There
were dangers too, though, as you might imagine, flooded storm sewers,
high tide torrents from legit sewage workers opening up sluices,

(20:52):
and maybe most horrifying of all, at least according to
Mayhew's Tasha Interviews, hordes of rats that would attack you
and us you were in a group, So again, I
don't want to talk about that one anymore. One final note, though,
the Great Stink got a little nod this past summer
when the Lindon Dungeon added a nose statue to the

(21:14):
Millennium Bridge that's the pedestrian bridge that crosses the towns,
to commemorate the summer of the Stinky River, and of course,
to promote its own exhibit on the subject that I
looked up some pictures of it. It is very strange.
I hope it's not just photoshop. Quite a quite a
strange site. Yeah, it's kind of funny, and I mean

(21:36):
just talking about toilet history in general is and kind
of has a humorous aspect to it. But it's not
to belittle at all the significance of the impact of
this event on public health. Yeah, and I think that's
what makes this a fascinating topic. I do feel a
little bit like I'm in third grade and we're talking
toilet Yeah. But but yeah, the cholera, the sanitation and um,

(22:02):
the sanitation reforms of Victorian London have always kind of
fascinated me. So I hadn't learned too much about this
aspect of it, I think. Um, I've I've read more
about the housing tenements, slums, um, the masma and the
air all of that. Um, so it was neat to

(22:22):
to back some of that up with this below ground
aspect of the story. So hopefully people got something out
of it as well, and we're able to make it
pass some of the more unsavory I hope you don't
listen during lunch story. Yes, yes, agreed. For this week's

(22:42):
Listener Mail segment, we have a few postcards to share.
The first one is from listener Amanda, and she says,
Sarah Dablina, this postcard comes to you from Punta Kana,
Although a very tourist driven place, I'm excited to tell
you that there's a shipwreck right off its coast. I
know how fascinated you guys are. The ship it's self
was called the Astraun I hope I'm saying that correctly,

(23:03):
and it was bringing corn to Cuba in nine eight
until a bad storm broke it apart. I was able
to see its pieces from a helicopter tour. Yep, it's
still there. Thank you for that, Amanda. It's a very
pretty pretty pictures on the front which we were there. Um.
We also got a postcard from listener Audrey, who sent
another beautiful winter more wintry sort of postcard from Patagonia,

(23:26):
and she even said that today I listened to your
podcast in the strangest and coolest place I've ever been,
on top of a glacier in Patagonia, so that's really neat.
Another cool, more old fashioned postcard. I actually think it
might be an antique postcard, uh that we got from
Shanti and it's just a nice little horse. A guy

(23:49):
had fun pictures for the desk. We also got some books,
didn't we We did. I guess my admission of paying
two dollars and fifty cents for Amazon book moved several listeners,
which we really appreciate. But we came back from the
holidays and had several boxes lined up with book contributions
from people, which is so kind of you, guys. Michael

(24:12):
sent us a book on Lafayette, which I thought was
was pretty cool. I mean, of course it was sent
before our episode on on our double Agent spy who
worked for Lafayette aired, but more to read on him.
And then also our listener Hillary, who you guys know
for sending postcards from her travels around the world, she

(24:33):
sent us a book on her favorite violinist, Mon Powell,
plus some CDs that we really look forward to listening
to those. Unfortunately, though, Sarah, I think we're going to
have to listen to those c d s separately, or
we'll have to have some sort of listening party on
our own time. Yea, because I am going to be
leaving how stuff works to take another opportunity, which I'm

(24:55):
really excited about. It's something I've been looking forward to
for a while, so I'm happy to be able to
do that, but very sad to be leaving house to
works and discovery and and you in this podcast. That's
probably the saddest part of all, because I've really enjoyed
getting to know you. First of all, it's probably been
the best part of working on this podcast. We worked

(25:16):
together before, but didn't really know each other that well, so,
you know, getting that friendship and out of it and
just being able to learn so much about history over
the past couple of years has been amazing. And I am,
of course so happy for you and really excited for you,
but I will miss you so much. And yes, I mean,
of course the best thing is, um having gotten to

(25:38):
make friends with you over the past few years we've
been posting together, UM, But also, I mean, really from
day one, I have been in awe of your ability
to pick out the most obscure, interesting topics, And sometimes
you tell me what you're gonna be researching, and I
just wonder where on earth you here about that. I'll

(26:00):
never tell you, know, Deblina must have secret stores. You
guys um, but it's been so amazing getting to work
with you and you just exposing me to so many
of those stories too than well likewise, I mean I've
learned so much from working with you. I know, this
is like turning into a love fest that Seriously, you're

(26:20):
smart and you you really carry this podcast. So it's
been a pleasure to to learn from you and work
with you. Can miss you, Debilina. I will miss you too,
but luckily we still live in the same town, so
we do not as much as we'll miss I mean,
I'll definitely miss the fans. See what we can cook
up together. Yeah, we'll see what we can cook up.

(26:40):
So um, it's still um. You know, I'm sure the
podcast will be continuing in some form. Stay tuned, you know,
things are in the works. So um look social media
listening in. There will be updates. We'll catch you guys
up to what's going to go down. Until then, I
just want to say go bye to all listeners of

(27:01):
this podcast. I have so enjoyed getting to know all
of you as well over the last couple of years,
and there are so many I mean, obviously we'll get
a lot of critiques, which is you expect from doing
this sort of thing anyway. But we also just to
get so many kind notes from people. It's really moving
and I'm starting to get choked up now, so I
better stop along those lines. But just to hear from

(27:23):
people who listen to this podcast all over the world
and the different ways that they use it in their lives. Um,
It's it's been all inspiring and humbling all at the
same time. UM So I guess that's it. Just thank
you to all of you for listening, and uh, you know,
maybe I'll get the chance to talk to you again
in the future and I'll second that too, So bye

(27:48):
bye guys. Um and don't forget to check out all
the great content we have on our site and look
it up at www. Dot how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Works dot com. M