“The Great Stink” – Swavesey and District History Society – March 2024 Meeting
More than 40 members and first timers heard Don Chiswell report on “The Great Stink”, during which he used several contemporary cartoons, notably from “Punch”. In the two centuries preceding 1800 Britain experienced tremendous change and emerged as the “First Industrial Nation”. The nineteenth century saw massive, continued growth in population, which rose from 10 million in 1800 to 16.9 million in 1851. This lead to rapid expansion of towns with consequent overcrowding. In 1841 St Giles Rookery had 1,095 people living in just 27 houses with the associated massive production of filth and disease.
Between 1831 and 1866, four cholera outbreaks struck England with deaths in hundreds of thousands. Greater London had a population of 2.5 million in 1850 but the death rate exceeded the birth rate. Sanitary conditions in crowded, poor areas of cities were squalid. Human waste piled up in courtyards and overflowed from basement cesspits into the gutters and waterways. The Devil’s acre in Westminster had 200,000 cesspits.
Following the second outbreak, the 1848 Public Health Act established a Central Board of Health but this had limited powers. Thus, London simply opted out because it meant unpopular, heavy taxes had to be levied. At the third serious outbreak in 1854, London physician John Snow investigated an area in Soho, and identified a baby at the upper end of the street as the first case and pinpointed how the family’s cesspool had leaked into Broad Street drinking water well. This discovery helped to confirm his research which proved that cholera is waterborne, not airborne. Around the same time Joseph Bazalgette, the Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, started to seriously address the problem.
In the summer of 1858, the “Great Stink” overwhelmed London. The hot weather exposed the rotting human effluent and industrial waste polluting the water of the Thames. Such was the overpowering smell from the river that a bill was rushed through Parliament, and became law in just 18 days, to provide the money to construct a massive new sewer scheme for London. Bazalgette was appointed specifically to take charge of the new sewers.
He designed an extensive underground system of sewers to funnel the waste far out of the main city, eventually dumping it eight miles downstream at high tide via pumping stations at Deptford and Abbey Mills. This involved building 1,100 miles of drains under London’s streets, to feed into 82 miles of new brick-lined sewers and carry the effluent to six “intercepting sewers”. Two of these sewers ran along the north and south banks of the Thames, to catch all the waste flowing downhill, giving an opportunity to build large new “embankments” along the river, encasing the sewer pipes. The Victoria Embankment was completed in 1870 and a new river wall was built out into the Thames, providing 37 acres of new land. The whole project was completed in 1875.
Next meeting-
16 April. The Workhouse and Poorhouse. 700 years of old and new Poor Laws. Colin Chapman.
