Great Cities: London's Great Stink
heralds a wonder of industrial world
By Emily Mann, The Guardian, adapted by Newsela staff on 05.20.16
Word Count 2,092
Level 1190L
Workers building the tunnels for Bazalgette's sewage system near Wick Lane. Photo: Wellcome Trust. MIDDLE: A cartoon
from 1858 shows a skeleton rowing along the Thames. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. BOTTOM: Victorian sewers are still in
use today but with a growing population in London, the Thames is under severe strain. Photo: Luke MacGregor/Reuters
Editor's Note: By the mid-1800s, the River Thames had been used as a dumping
ground for human excrement for centuries. At last, fear of its 'evil odour' led to
one of the greatest advancements in urban planning: Joseph Bazalgette's sewage
system.
In the steaming hot summer of 1858, there was a hideous stench of human waste
rising from the River Thames that was seeping through the honored halls of the
Houses of Parliament and was finally too much for Britain's politicians. Many fled
in fear of their lives to the countryside.
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
1
Clutching hankies to their noses, they were ready to abandon their newly built
House, which had been destroyed by the 1834 fire. The lawmakers agreed that
urgent action was needed to purify London of the "evil odor " that they believed to
be the cause of disease and death.
The outcome of the "Great Stink," as that summer's crisis was coined, was one of
history's most life-improving advances in city planning. It was a monumental
construction project driven by unsure science and political self-interest. However,
it still dramatically improved the public's health and laid the foundation for
modern London.
You'll see no sign of it on most maps of the capital or from a tour of the streets for
it is hidden beneath the city's surface. It is a wonder of the industrial world: the
vast Victorian sewerage system that still flows (and overflows) today.
Doubling Down As A Dumping Ground
London is, of course, an ancient city. However, according to the city's muchpublished biographer (and Londoner) Peter Ackroyd, the 19th century "was the
true century of change." By the mid-1800s, reform of the capital's sanitation, like
much else in the nation's political and social life, was long overdue.
For centuries, the "royal river" of celebrations, the city's main thoroughfare, had
doubled as a dumping ground for human, animal and industrial waste. As
London's population more than doubled between 1800 and 1850, making it by far
the largest in the world, the build-up of waste itself became a spectacle no one
wanted to see or smell.
With a lack of planned housing and infrastructure to support the crowded
population, increasingly filthy streams, ditches and very old drainage pipes all
bubbled into the River Thames, where the detritus litter simply bobbed up and
down with the tide. The use of new flushing toilets (sold to so many at the Great
Exhibition in 1851) only made things worse. Old cesspools overflowed forcing
ever more liquid waste into the river, which belched it back into the city at each
high water.
The River Thames Flowed Brown
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
2
The "silver Thames" remembered by earlier
poets had become, in the words of the Royal
Institution scientist Michael Faraday in
1855, "an opaque pale brown fluid."
Dropping pieces of white paper into the
river, Faraday found that they disappeared
from view before sinking an inch below the
surface. All too clear was the main
contaminant: "Near the bridges the
feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that
they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind," he wrote.
Faraday's report of the dire straits of "Father Thames" was echoed in numerous
editorial columns and cartoons. They scorned the once-majestic river's death into
the most polluted city waterway in the world. The British Empire was literally
rotting at the core.
"Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in the place of a
fine fresh river," Charles Dickens wrote in Little Dorrit (1855-57). The stinking
fumes alone, it was thought, could strike a man dead. What made the water
deadly, however, was that a great many Londoners were drinking it. It was piped
directly into their homes from the Thames. Even water pumped from outside the
city risked contamination with sewage. The wells still in use lay dangerously close
to leaking cesspools.
Cholera Was A Most-Feared Killer
In 1834, the humorist minister Sydney Smith vividly described the bad-tasting
truth: "He who drinks a tumbler of London water has literally in his stomach more
animated beings than there are men, women and children on the face of the
globe."
The result was waves of water-caused diseases such as dysentery, typhoid and the
most feared, cholera. For this "Victorian plague," as the historian Amanda J.
Thomas called it, had no known cure. Both poor and wealthy were not immune.
The first major cholera epidemic in Britain, in 1831-32, killed more than 6,000
Londoners. The second, in 1848-49, took more than 14,000. Another outbreak in
1853-54 claimed a further 10,000 lives.
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
3
With the bodies piling up, the people and the press pushed for change. The
working class basket-maker and poet Thomas Miller wrote in the Illustrated
London News: "Let us then agitate for pure air and pure water, and break through
the monopolies of water and sewer companies, as we would break down the door
of a house to rescue some fellow-creature from the flames that raged within. It
rests with ourselves to get rid of these evils."
Contaminated Water Causes Cholera
Investigating cholera's spread in Soho in 1854, the physician Dr. John Snow
deduced that the cause was contaminated water. His evidence included the 70
workers in the local brewery who only drank beer and all survived. Yet public
health officials were slow to be convinced. The "miasma" or "bad air theory" that
diseases were caused by harmful smells in the air was believed to be the cause.
The well-meaning social reformer Edwin Chadwick, sure that "all smell is disease"
pushed for flushing the sewers into the Thames. The effect was more ill than
good.
His arguments largely ignored, Dr. Snow died in 1858 at the height of the Great
Stink. The bad air event did not unleash a new outbreak of disease. If the miasma
or bad air were deadly, the Great Stink surely would have killed thousands.
By overpowering the politicians in the Houses of Parliament, though, the stench
still proved a catalyst for change. Those that feared the smell were at least right
about one thing: the reeking river did relate to the city's health and needed to be
cleaned.
MPs met behind curtains soaked with chloride of lime to mask the fumes. In the
heatwave of 1858, the stagnating open sewer outside Westminster's windows
boiled under the scorching sun. Just a few years earlier, Faraday warned them
that they could not ignore the state of the Thames and will be punished when "a
hot season give us sad proof of the folly of our carelessness."
Big Stink Helps Raise Money For Sanitation
Benjamin Disraeli, the Tory leader in the Commons and eventual prime minister,
lamented how "that noble river" had become a hellish "Stygian pool reeking with
ineffable and unbearable horror." He introduced legislation to clean the Thames
and the main drainage system of the city.
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
4
In the past, London had lacked the power or the money required to address such
an extensive problem of sanitation. However, now the recently formed
Metropolitan Board of Works was empowered to raise 3 million pounds and
instructed to start work without further delay. The board's chief engineer, Joseph
Bazalgette, had already spent several exasperating years drawing up plans for an
ambitious new sanitation system. Each plan was swiftly shelved. At last, he got
the go-ahead to begin construction.
Stephen Halliday, author of The Great Stink of London, explains: "Bazalgette's
plan, which was modified in some details as construction progressed, proposed a
network of main sewers, running parallel to the river, which would intercept both
surface water and waste, conducting them to the outfalls at Barking on the
northern side of the Thames and Crossness, near Plumstead, on the southern
side." These combined sewers moved rainwater and overflowing river water
downstream. It would be sent well beyond the built-up city to the east. From there
it would flow more easily out to sea.
The network included 82 miles of new sewers. The great underground boulevards
were, in some places, larger than the underground train tunnels then under
construction. Tipped down about 2 feet per mile, the main drainage sewers used
gravity to move the waste downstream. Smaller sewers were egg-shaped
(narrower at the bottom than the top) to help the flow.
Shape Of Embankments Helps The Sewage Flow
Pumping stations were built at Chelsea, Deptford, Abbey Mills and Crossness to
raise up sewage from low-lying areas so it could flow down and away. The latter
two especially were architecturally magnificent because they looked like
cathedrals. Symbolic of the grandeur of the entire project, they proudly
announced their role made London look more holy.
The scheme also involved the huge challenge of embanking the Thames. They
created the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea embankments. Bazalgette had experience
draining land to make it more useful when he worked as a railway engineer. So
London's embankments were designed not only to carry tunnels (including the
underground railway) but also to help cleanse the river by narrowing and
strengthening its flow through the city's center.
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
5
Halliday notes that while the embankments were Bazalgette's "most conspicuous
works" for which he received the greatest credit, it is on Victoria Embankment
that a monument to the engineer, who was knighted in 1875, may be found. He
himself regarded the main drainage as his greatest achievement: "It was certainly
a very troublesome job," Bazalgette reflected. "It was tremendously hard work."
The hard work of thousands of laborers overseen by Bazalgette inspired the artist
Ford Madox Brown as he painted Work, a large canvas completed in 1865. In the
same year, the main drainage works were opened at Crossness by the Prince of
Wales, though the construction continued for another decade. Brown's image is
bursting with activity as rich and poor, young and old, country and city depend on
the industrious workmen at the center, building an enlightened tunnel below
ground.
Framed by forearms, tools and bricks – a building material that Bazalgette's
project employed – are carried into the depths in such large amounts that prices
went up, along with the wages of bricklayers that rose from 5 to 6 shillings a day.
19th Century System Is Backbone For 21st Century London
According to the Observer newspaper,
"every penny spent is sunk in a good cause"
in the creation of this "most extensive and
wonderful work of modern times." And the
work almost immediately proved its worth:
in 1866, most of London was spared from a
cholera outbreak which hit part of the East
End, the only section not yet connected to
the new system.
"What was extraordinary about Bazalgette's scheme was both its simplicity and
level of foresight," writes Paul Dobraszczyk in his book, London's Sewers. A
classic piece of Victorian over-engineering, the infrastructure was planned to
accommodate a population growth of 50 percent, from 3 million to 4.5 million.
Within 30 years of its completion, the city's population had in fact doubled again,
reaching 6 million. It is testament to the quality of design and construction that,
with improvements and additions, the 19th-century system remains the backbone
of London's sewers in the 21st century.
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
6
But the backbone is now severely strained, as a still-expanding population,
dramatic downpours associated with climate change and the loss of green spaces
to soak up the excess means the Thames is once again at risk.
Bazalgette planned for extreme weather with overflows into the river, to prevent
the flooding of homes and streets. Those overflows are now being used more than
ever – around 50 times a year – dumping raw sewage under the noses of presentday MPs in Westminster.
History Is Repeating Itself
Martin Baggs, the outgoing chief executive of Thames Water, has been upfront
about the challenges. "They say that history repeats itself: 150 years ago the
River Thames was polluted; that's where we are again today. Was it acceptable
150 years ago? No, it wasn't. Is it acceptable today? No, it's not. We've got to do
something about it."
Construction of the company's solution, the Thames Tideway Tunnel – or "super
sewer" – is due to begin this year, for completion in 2023. One of the largest civil
engineering projects the country has ever seen, and not without controversy, the
tunnel is a "visionary work of modern times," in Ackroyd's view, "in the spirit of
Bazalgette."
Hopefully Ackroyd is right. That great engineer shared some wise words based on
his own experiences of re-planning London: "Private individuals are apt to look
after their own interests first, and to forget the general effect upon the public. It
is necessary that there should be somebody to watch the public interests."
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
7
Quiz
1
2
Which of the following sentences from the article BEST develops a central idea of it?
(A)
The outcome of the “Great Stink,” as that summer’s crisis was coined, was one
of history’s most life-improving advances in city planning.
(B)
The working class basket-maker and poet Thomas Miller wrote in the Illustrated
London News: “Let us then agitate for pure air and pure water, and break
through the monopolies of water and sewer companies, as we would break
down the door of a house to rescue some fellow-creature from the flames that
raged within."
(C)
The well-meaning social reformer Edwin Chadwick, sure that “all smell is
disease” pushed for flushing the sewers into the Thames.
(D)
Halliday notes that while the embankments were Bazalgette’s “most
conspicuous works” for which he received the greatest credit, it is on Victoria
Embankment that a monument to the engineer, who was knighted in 1875, may
be found.
Read the sentence below from the section "Doubling Down As A Dumping Ground" .
As London’s population more than doubled between 1800 and 1850,
making it by far the largest in the world, the build-up of waste itself
became a spectacle no one wanted to see or smell.
Which BEST explains how this sentence supports a main idea of the article?
(A)
The sentence emphasizes that the size of London was affected by the city's
waste problems.
(B)
The sentence hints that there would be little problem with waste if London's
population had remained constant.
(C)
The sentence emphasizes how much of a problem the accumulation of waste
had become in London.
(D)
The sentence hints that the new arrivals to London were the cause of the waste
problem.
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
8
3
4
The article develops the idea of the 19th-century "Great Stink" in London in each of the following
ways EXCEPT:
(A)
by identifying the different sources of waste in the Thames River
(B)
by including quotes from people who lived during that time
(C)
by describing health outcomes that occurred at that time
(D)
by explaining how people were dying because of harmful smells in the air
Which sentence from the article helps to develop the idea that London's sewage problem had
existed prior to the "Great Stink"?
(A)
The “silver Thames” remembered by earlier poets had become, in the words of
the Royal Institution scientist Michael Faraday in 1855, “an opaque pale brown
fluid."
(B)
“Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in the place of
a fine fresh river,” Charles Dickens wrote in Little Dorrit (1855-57).
(C)
The board’s chief engineer, Joseph Bazalgette, had already spent several
exasperating years drawing up plans for an ambitious new sanitation system.
(D)
Pumping stations were built at Chelsea, Deptford, Abbey Mills and Crossness to
raise up sewage from low-lying areas so it could flow down and away.
This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
9