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The Great Stink: The Stench So Bad They Gave It A Name · Stuff You Should Know

0:04
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
0:07
Speaker 1: there's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there, and today we
0:11
Speaker 1: have guest producer Josh sitting in. Not me, another Josh,
0:15
Speaker 1: Another Josh. Josh. Yeah, you know what his nickname is, uh,
0:19
Speaker 1: little Josh, the great Stink. That is a terrible nickname, Chuck.
0:26
Speaker 1: We're just kidding, of course. Sorry, Josh, I'm I'm sorry
0:30
Speaker 1: for Chuck. Everyone knows I'm the great Stink. I don't
0:33
Speaker 1: know about that either. I've never once smelled you in
0:36
Speaker 1: the like more than decade that we've worked together. I've
0:40
Speaker 1: never known you to smell fouley. Wow. Alright, that means
0:43
Speaker 1: I'm doing my I'm keeping my distance. We've been close, buddy,
0:49
Speaker 1: and you still don't stink. Certainly not a great stink.
0:53
Speaker 1: But that's neither here nor there. We're not talking about
0:55
Speaker 1: a great stink yet, are we. No. I don't even
0:57
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, right, Actually, you don't even
1:00
Speaker 1: know what it is that you brought up. We we
1:05
Speaker 1: are talking to start, Chuck about a little city called
1:09
Speaker 1: London Town across the pond in Great Britain, the United Kingdom, England.
1:16
Speaker 1: That whole area over there, and um, London's been around
1:20
Speaker 1: a very long time. It's been around since at least
1:23
Speaker 1: the Romans kind of came and set up shop. Right. Yeah, Oh,
1:26
Speaker 1: by the way, since you brought that up. I hate
1:28
Speaker 1: to get sidetracked already, but my good friend Rob from
1:31
Speaker 1: college Rob Elsie, my roommate and one of the smartest
1:35
Speaker 1: guys I know, texted me the other day and said,
1:37
Speaker 1: by the way, Alexander the Great was neither Greek nor Roman.
1:41
Speaker 1: He was Macedonian. I saw somebody else emailed that in
1:44
Speaker 1: I was like, Greek still closer. Yeah, So anyway, shout
1:48
Speaker 1: out to Rob. Way to go Rob, real time corrections. Yes,
1:53
Speaker 1: that's the way to go, Rob. All right. So London
1:55
Speaker 1: has been around for a couple of years, is what
1:57
Speaker 1: you were saying it is, And it's kind of slowly
2:00
Speaker 1: grew and more and more people were like, Hey, I
2:02
Speaker 1: like the I like this town. There's a lot going
2:04
Speaker 1: on here. The fish and chips are great. Um, eventually
2:09
Speaker 1: it will produce uh, some pretty pretty neat people. I'm
2:12
Speaker 1: gonna settle down here. I couldn't think of a single
2:15
Speaker 1: London as an example, but you know, people, Mary Pop
2:20
Speaker 1: is going to show up eventually, thanks Chuck so um,
2:23
Speaker 1: people started settling and accumulating, and uh, it became like
2:27
Speaker 1: a pretty substantial city by the like sixteen hundreds, right.
2:33
Speaker 1: But then the nineteenth century came and all of a sudden,
2:37
Speaker 1: this is at the peak of the British Empire. Uh,
2:40
Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century came along and London just exploded
2:46
Speaker 1: in in population, in industry, um, right before and then
2:50
Speaker 1: during and then right after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Um,
2:54
Speaker 1: London really uh just grew as a result of that,
2:58
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden there was something like three
3:00
Speaker 1: million people living in London by like the eighteen fifties,
3:06
Speaker 1: which made it the most densely populated city on the
3:09
Speaker 1: planet from what I understand, at least the it had
3:11
Speaker 1: the largest population from what I understand. And you know
3:14
Speaker 1: what that means, Yes, that means if there's how many
3:18
Speaker 1: millions you said three million, three in eighteen fifty, that's
3:22
Speaker 1: three million butt holes. Yep, human butt holes are not
3:31
Speaker 1: just humans expelling things now, just three million humans. And
3:34
Speaker 1: then you've got horse butt holes and all sorts of
3:38
Speaker 1: other animal but holes, pig butt holes, and they're just
3:41
Speaker 1: all they're all pooping all the time. Right, pooping. Every
3:46
Speaker 1: once in a while they catch a food board all
3:47
Speaker 1: this and they'd start throwing up to there is a
3:50
Speaker 1: lot of tinkle coming out of other holes. Um, there's
3:54
Speaker 1: a lot of excrement that was being generated in London
3:58
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, and there had been for a
4:00
Speaker 1: very long time, but all of a sudden it reached
4:02
Speaker 1: like a critical mass. And up to this point London
4:07
Speaker 1: um enjoyed what we're called Roman sewards, which are basically
4:12
Speaker 1: just a ditch in the ground that were meant to
4:16
Speaker 1: collect rainwater. Right, And if you had to poop or
4:19
Speaker 1: p or um vomit or something like that, and you
4:22
Speaker 1: were a human in your house, you probably had a cesspool,
4:27
Speaker 1: which was basically a pit in the basement. Sometimes, if
4:31
Speaker 1: you were fancy, you might have like a sister or
4:33
Speaker 1: a canister or something like that, and you would go
4:35
Speaker 1: pooper vomit or p into this hole. And then the
4:38
Speaker 1: hope was that the whole was big enough and your
4:41
Speaker 1: family was small enough in number that the pooper p
4:45
Speaker 1: your vomit would would decay and get absorbed into the
4:49
Speaker 1: surrounding ground faster than you could fill it up. That
4:54
Speaker 1: was that was how they dealt with with um surface
4:58
Speaker 1: water and sewage. Then you had a hole that you
5:00
Speaker 1: pooped and puked and from impeded. And then you had
5:04
Speaker 1: rain ditches conveying rainwater to the to the Thames is
5:10
Speaker 1: where the rainwater was supposed to end up. But it
5:13
Speaker 1: wasn't just rainwater was it that ended up in the Thames? No,
5:16
Speaker 1: I mean these I mean I don't think we can
5:19
Speaker 1: just breaze past these cesspools. They were purposely designed to
5:23
Speaker 1: overflow into the streets. Eventually, yes, they figured out that, yeah,
5:28
Speaker 1: we're getting to the point where we have enough people
5:30
Speaker 1: that that ore are cesspools are not decaying fast enough
5:35
Speaker 1: that they're starting to overflow. Yeah. And if you lived
5:38
Speaker 1: if you were poor and lived on like the basement
5:41
Speaker 1: or the ground floor of an apartment building or something, um,
5:45
Speaker 1: you might very well see the stuff seeping into your household. Uh.
5:49
Speaker 1: Sometimes if that's if like someone's gone or if it's
5:52
Speaker 1: an empty building, that stuff would build up and methane
5:56
Speaker 1: would become trapped in there and there would be literal
5:58
Speaker 1: explosions for the trap methane of people's pooh poop explosion. Yeah,
6:05
Speaker 1: it was really really bad. And then when you talk
6:07
Speaker 1: about the Thames, river. The Thames is a tide way,
6:11
Speaker 1: so that means that the tides affect the water flow
6:15
Speaker 1: and so it's not like sewage. You know, they were
6:17
Speaker 1: thought like, let's just send it out to the sea
6:19
Speaker 1: and it's all good. But what it would would happen
6:23
Speaker 1: is stuff would just kind of slash back and forth
6:26
Speaker 1: because of the tides. And the end result was the
6:29
Speaker 1: Thames River was and when I say disgusting, I mean
6:34
Speaker 1: capital D disgusting, Yes, dangerously disgusting Capital D dangerously too. Yeah,
6:42
Speaker 1: so um, chuck, it was. I don't know how they
6:44
Speaker 1: didn't realize that where London was on the Thames was
6:48
Speaker 1: what's called the tide way, so it is affected by
6:50
Speaker 1: the tide. And not only is it affected by the tide,
6:52
Speaker 1: meaning when the tide rises, the um the estuary and
6:57
Speaker 1: the sea basically comes up into London, but there's also
7:00
Speaker 1: still water coming from the headwaters of the Thames. So
7:04
Speaker 1: at high tide sometimes the Thames would overflow its banks
7:08
Speaker 1: it would get so high. Right, So not only did
7:11
Speaker 1: you have the Thames itself just basically turning into like
7:15
Speaker 1: a washing machine on the agitation cycle, stewing and mixing
7:19
Speaker 1: up garbage and remains because there are a lot of
7:24
Speaker 1: dead human and animal bodies and it's much all yeah,
7:29
Speaker 1: all that sewage, everything that people didn't want anymore, they
7:33
Speaker 1: just put into the Thames. But unfortunately it wasn't carried
7:35
Speaker 1: out to the seat. It was just kind of mixed together,
7:37
Speaker 1: and it would be mixed together and kind of turned
7:39
Speaker 1: into a solution that was suspended in the in the water,
7:44
Speaker 1: and then eventually some of that would settle to the
7:47
Speaker 1: to the bottom. But you have hundreds and hundreds of
7:50
Speaker 1: years of waste just cycling right outside of London, and
7:54
Speaker 1: like you said, eventually by the by the the nineteenth century,
7:58
Speaker 1: apparently it really turned earned starting in about eighteen thirty.
8:02
Speaker 1: They found records that as as late as eighteen hundred
8:06
Speaker 1: people were still um catching and eating salmon out of
8:09
Speaker 1: the Thames. By by eight well it was okay back then,
8:13
Speaker 1: it was fine that by eighteen thirties something had changed
8:17
Speaker 1: that that it had just again reached that critical mass
8:20
Speaker 1: kind of like um, jeverson that South park where um
8:24
Speaker 1: they go to the water park and like there there
8:28
Speaker 1: there's like some scientists who realizes that the the p
8:32
Speaker 1: to water ratio is about to hit a tipping point.
8:35
Speaker 1: And once it tips past that point, everything's going to
8:38
Speaker 1: turn into p um and it happens, and it's disgusting.
8:42
Speaker 1: That's all kind of what happened to the eighteen thirties
8:44
Speaker 1: to the Thames. It reached a critical point and tipped
8:47
Speaker 1: into just like that dangerously disgusting vat of water that
8:52
Speaker 1: was just hanging around in London at the time. Yeah. So, uh,
8:57
Speaker 1: there's a very famous scientist named Michael Faraday who made
9:00
Speaker 1: his name in UH in other realms of science, but
9:03
Speaker 1: he actually worked for the Royal Institution UH in eighteen
9:06
Speaker 1: fifty five when he basically started doing an investigation. He
9:12
Speaker 1: went down to that river like got in it in
9:15
Speaker 1: a boat, I would imagine, UH, and did various tests
9:19
Speaker 1: and you know, recorded a bunch of stuff. And then
9:22
Speaker 1: one of his tests was like he would drop white
9:24
Speaker 1: paper in there and he said, after this paper gets
9:28
Speaker 1: in like an inch below the surface, you can't even
9:31
Speaker 1: see it, and like poop is basically like bubbling up
9:35
Speaker 1: to the surface, Like you can see human excrement on
9:38
Speaker 1: the surface down here. Yeah, like where where the time
9:41
Speaker 1: the attempts is flowing past, like the structure of a
9:44
Speaker 1: bridge that is jutting out of the water and it's
9:47
Speaker 1: it's being cut up by that bridge. The flow is
9:50
Speaker 1: it's roiling up this muck and disgusting stuff is just
9:54
Speaker 1: roiling up in clouds. That he said, we're visible even
9:57
Speaker 1: in this this opaque of a water. And he wrote
10:00
Speaker 1: all this stuff up into an article letter I guess
10:04
Speaker 1: that he sent to the Times newspaper, uh that he
10:07
Speaker 1: called Observations on the Filth of the Thames. And this
10:11
Speaker 1: was in eighteen fifty five, I think it was published.
10:14
Speaker 1: And um, he basically says, if we just keep going
10:17
Speaker 1: this way, we should not be surprised if um, something
10:21
Speaker 1: really bad happens, like a hot spell comes along and
10:24
Speaker 1: reminds us that we really missed a chance to do
10:27
Speaker 1: something about this, and it's now too late. So that's
10:30
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five, and that's faaraday. At the same time,
10:34
Speaker 1: there's another thing going on kind of off to the side,
10:37
Speaker 1: where a um, a scientist named John Snow who actually
10:41
Speaker 1: knew a lot. It turns out he um was that
10:47
Speaker 1: was a Game of Thrones joke. Yeah, didn't somebody say, like,
10:51
Speaker 1: you know nothing, John Snow? I think, but I think
10:56
Speaker 1: that might have been first season. But anyway, but did
11:00
Speaker 1: make an impact. I think somebody said, you know nothing,
11:03
Speaker 1: John Snow. I don't know. I just saw it on
11:05
Speaker 1: Twitter years back, right they said red wedding. I don't know.
11:10
Speaker 1: They just just say red wedding. That's it. Um. So,
11:16
Speaker 1: this John Snow guy, I think he had an H
11:18
Speaker 1: in his name, which was his parents put in to
11:20
Speaker 1: differentiate him from the Game of Thrones cat is um.
11:24
Speaker 1: He He was basically one of the world's first epidemiologists
11:29
Speaker 1: and he's working feverishly at the time because there was
11:31
Speaker 1: something called the Victorian plague, which is cholera, and cholera
11:36
Speaker 1: was a water borne illness that you did not want.
11:40
Speaker 1: You could literally vomit and poop yourself to death in
11:45
Speaker 1: a matter of hours. You would lose so much um
11:49
Speaker 1: how you would dehydrate that quickly. And so John Snow
11:54
Speaker 1: was like, there's a caller outbreak, and I suspect it's
11:57
Speaker 1: in the water. But he went against a grain at
12:00
Speaker 1: the time because during the eighteen fifties, Chuck, everyone thought
12:05
Speaker 1: that you caught diseases from the smell of things. It
12:10
Speaker 1: was called the miasma theory. That's right. People thought that,
12:14
Speaker 1: and they thought that possibly that's where even cholera was
12:17
Speaker 1: coming from UH, and cholera was was nothing new. UH.
12:21
Speaker 1: There was an epidemic in the eighteen thirties that killed
12:25
Speaker 1: more than six thousand people. There was a second outbreak
12:28
Speaker 1: kind of shortly before this in the late forties that
12:30
Speaker 1: killed fourteen thousand, So that's twenty and then between fifty
12:34
Speaker 1: three and fifty four another ten. So that's thirty thousand
12:37
Speaker 1: Londoners UH killed by cholera. And there are miasthmus that think, yeah,
12:44
Speaker 1: it's from it's from smelling this stuff in the air, right,
12:48
Speaker 1: so people are trying to like treat the air. They
12:50
Speaker 1: poured something called um calcium of chloride of lime, which
12:56
Speaker 1: amounts to basically pool chlorine today into the Thames, like
13:01
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of this stuff
13:04
Speaker 1: to try to cover up the stench. That didn't work
13:06
Speaker 1: and actually has made the Thames more toxic. But John
13:09
Speaker 1: Snow is running around, He's like, no, no, there's there's
13:11
Speaker 1: some other method of transmission. It has nothing to do
13:14
Speaker 1: with the smell. Smells just a byproduct. And he actually
13:17
Speaker 1: did a an an outbreak map of cholera and traced
13:22
Speaker 1: it back to a particular well a public well that
13:26
Speaker 1: had been dug unbeknownst to the well diggers, within about
13:30
Speaker 1: um three or four feet of an abandoned cess pool
13:35
Speaker 1: that had been built over and forgotten, and that the
13:38
Speaker 1: cess pool that contained color laden fecal bacteria um into
13:44
Speaker 1: the the the public well was making people sick, and
13:49
Speaker 1: John Snow figured it out, and he's considered one of
13:52
Speaker 1: the early earliest epidemiologists as a result. All right, let's
13:56
Speaker 1: take a break and uh, I need to go wash
14:00
Speaker 1: my hands, and then we'll come back and talk about
14:03
Speaker 1: what happened in the summer of eighteen fifty eight right
14:05
Speaker 1: after this. All right, so the times is in bad shape.
14:33
Speaker 1: A few very smart people realize this. They're trying to
14:36
Speaker 1: raise a little hay about it. Nothing much is happening.
14:39
Speaker 1: People are getting cholera. Poor people are dying. But because
14:44
Speaker 1: you know, I was about to say, because as Britain,
14:46
Speaker 1: but a lot of countries back then may have handled
14:48
Speaker 1: this the same way. Uh it really until it hit
14:51
Speaker 1: kind of the the politicians and the rich and the
14:54
Speaker 1: famous is when things really are going to change. And
14:57
Speaker 1: in the summer of eighteen fifty eight, eat wave is
15:01
Speaker 1: what really really changed things. Because the heat combined with
15:06
Speaker 1: the the what was going on in that river really
15:10
Speaker 1: made what was called the Great stinkh Capital g Capital
15:14
Speaker 1: s in London. And it was happening all up and
15:18
Speaker 1: down the Thims, but it was happening very close to where,
15:22
Speaker 1: uh what was it Westminster where the politicians yeah, huddled
15:26
Speaker 1: and uh and made their little rules and they couldn't
15:29
Speaker 1: they basically couldn't go to work. They were like, you
15:31
Speaker 1: know what, this is starting to affect our government. We're
15:35
Speaker 1: using scented handkerchiefs. Uh, none of this is working. So
15:40
Speaker 1: like we finally it took that to be able to
15:44
Speaker 1: it be like in America, if you know, there was
15:46
Speaker 1: something going on and no one reacted until like poop
15:49
Speaker 1: was flowing up the steps of the White House basically right, basically,
15:53
Speaker 1: and the the the irony of the whole thing is
15:55
Speaker 1: that had it not been for um, the persistence of
16:00
Speaker 1: myasthma theory of disease, Parliament might have not actually ended
16:05
Speaker 1: up acting because so you have to, you have to
16:07
Speaker 1: put yourself in this. So this stink is so bad
16:11
Speaker 1: that we're talking about it a hundred and fifty or
16:15
Speaker 1: sixty years later, right, That's how bad it was it
16:18
Speaker 1: was a legendarily bad offensive stench. And not only was
16:25
Speaker 1: it a terrible, wretching smell of supposedly people miles away
16:29
Speaker 1: would catch scent of it and throw up, like just
16:32
Speaker 1: throw up where they were standing. It was that bad.
16:34
Speaker 1: Because again we're talking hundreds of years of human waste
16:39
Speaker 1: and animal waste and um and decaying bodies and just
16:43
Speaker 1: all sorts of nastiness and destines. Like you know what
16:46
Speaker 1: they did with this, you know, when they were like
16:48
Speaker 1: preparing animals for slaughter. It went to the same place exactly.
16:52
Speaker 1: And again, this is hundreds of years of this stuff,
16:54
Speaker 1: and the Thames has um slowed to a trickle because
16:57
Speaker 1: it's a dry spell, and now because of this heat wave,
17:01
Speaker 1: it's cooking. The Thames is cooking, all this nasty stuff
17:04
Speaker 1: is cooking and the stench is coming off. So on
17:07
Speaker 1: top of it being that bad of a smell, you
17:11
Speaker 1: also have to put yourself in the position of the
17:12
Speaker 1: people who are living at the time, who believed that
17:15
Speaker 1: smells cause disease, that cholera and typhus and malaria are caused,
17:20
Speaker 1: like if you smell it, you may have just caught it.
17:23
Speaker 1: So they are terrified of this. But had john snow
17:26
Speaker 1: had people listened to him and realized that no, you
17:29
Speaker 1: get it from actually drinking the water, which is what
17:32
Speaker 1: they're doing right. But Parliament may not have acted because
17:36
Speaker 1: Parliament and some of the wealthier people in London they
17:39
Speaker 1: got their water from like north of the city, um
17:43
Speaker 1: piped in through aqueducts, so they had clean drinking water.
17:46
Speaker 1: It was the lower classes that were drinking the water
17:48
Speaker 1: drawn straight from the Thames, so they were drinking the
17:51
Speaker 1: same water that they were throwing their waste into. Because
17:55
Speaker 1: they didn't realize that there was such thing as um
17:58
Speaker 1: the oral equal oral transmission of water borne illnesses. Everybody
18:03
Speaker 1: thought it was just the stench. Yea. So parliaments uh
18:08
Speaker 1: notoriously very slow to get anything done, like a lot
18:11
Speaker 1: of governments. Uh. And then it took about, uh what
18:16
Speaker 1: eighteen days, which was super fast. I think it was
18:18
Speaker 1: a record. Yeah, I think so too. And they created
18:22
Speaker 1: a bill past this bill and signed it into law
18:25
Speaker 1: that basically said we need to basically re redo the
18:30
Speaker 1: river here. I don't know what it's gonna take. Um.
18:32
Speaker 1: I don't even think they knew how much it was
18:34
Speaker 1: gonna cost at the time, but they knew that the
18:36
Speaker 1: great stink had to stop right. So um. Again, this
18:41
Speaker 1: was after it kind of like you said, the poop
18:44
Speaker 1: just piled up at their doorstep, right. But they had fortunately,
18:49
Speaker 1: just like a couple of years before, I think maybe
18:52
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five, they created a new department UM. Up
18:56
Speaker 1: to this time, like the water works and the UM,
19:00
Speaker 1: I think the sewage works were privately held. But Parliament
19:04
Speaker 1: had just recently created a new department called the Metropolitan
19:09
Speaker 1: Board of Works, and they had UM designated a chief
19:14
Speaker 1: engineer by the name of Joseph H. Basil Get. Isn't
19:20
Speaker 1: that how you would say it? Sure, we're going with
19:22
Speaker 1: basil Get, then chuck if you're on board with that.
19:25
Speaker 1: So Joseph basil Get would turn out to be one
19:28
Speaker 1: of the most celebrated engineers in Western history. And he
19:33
Speaker 1: just so happened to have kind of gotten on the
19:35
Speaker 1: Michael Faraday trolley and been like, yes, we need to
19:38
Speaker 1: do something about the Thames. And the solution is a sewer.
19:42
Speaker 1: It's a modernized sewer. So he had spent years already
19:45
Speaker 1: drawing up plans and trying to get them implemented to
19:48
Speaker 1: no avail, and now all of a sudden, out of nowhere.
19:52
Speaker 1: Within eighteen days of this, the great stink developing, the
19:56
Speaker 1: Parliament says, hey, Basil get go, get your plans. We're
20:00
Speaker 1: gonna put him into uh. You go raise some money,
20:03
Speaker 1: say about three million dollars, which is like I think
20:07
Speaker 1: four d and thirty million dollars today three million pounds um,
20:11
Speaker 1: and get to work as fast as you can. Yeah.
20:13
Speaker 1: Before this, the UH, they didn't even have, like before
20:17
Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Board of Works, they didn't even have a
20:21
Speaker 1: a group that was even funded to tackle anything like this.
20:24
Speaker 1: And then once they even had the Metropolitan Board, it
20:27
Speaker 1: wasn't really funded yet. So that's why they had to
20:30
Speaker 1: go out and raise money. So the hiring of Basil
20:32
Speaker 1: Gat was Basil Gat. Basil Gette is the Italian. No
20:38
Speaker 1: I think his family originated in revolutionary France, so let's
20:41
Speaker 1: say Basil get Yeah, so the hiring of him was
20:44
Speaker 1: fortuitous because he knew what he was doing. Um, he
20:47
Speaker 1: was definitely the guy to come in and take care
20:49
Speaker 1: of this and his plan, like it was so revolutionary
20:55
Speaker 1: that it's still in its simplicity though that it's still
20:58
Speaker 1: sort of the basis for how things work aday all
21:00
Speaker 1: these years later. Yeah, No, I mean, not only was
21:02
Speaker 1: the revolutionary, was that well built as well, Like it's
21:05
Speaker 1: it's the that sewer built in from like eighteen fifty
21:09
Speaker 1: eight to I think the eighteen seventies forms the backbone
21:13
Speaker 1: of London's metropolitan sewer system. Still to this day. It
21:17
Speaker 1: was that well made. Oh yeah, So he's like, here's
21:20
Speaker 1: what we'll do. He says, We're gonna catch this water, uh,
21:23
Speaker 1: and the waste like you know, rain water and stuff,
21:25
Speaker 1: surface water before it gets to the river. And everyone said,
21:29
Speaker 1: good start, and he said, and then then we're gonna
21:33
Speaker 1: just reroute it. Basically, we're gonna run it parallel to
21:36
Speaker 1: the river and uh, combine these sewers together and divert
21:41
Speaker 1: this stuff downstream. And again the plan those sadly is
21:46
Speaker 1: still to divert it out to the sea, but just
21:48
Speaker 1: not to the sea such that it would wash right
21:52
Speaker 1: back in with the tides exactly. And and most importantly
21:56
Speaker 1: where where it dumped out into the Thames was way
21:59
Speaker 1: below the populated area, so it was out of sight,
22:03
Speaker 1: out of mind, but it was still I mean, is
22:06
Speaker 1: that that is definitely a mark against it, But with
22:10
Speaker 1: considering what he had to work with, it was quite revolutionary.
22:14
Speaker 1: The idea of catching all this stuff and moving it
22:17
Speaker 1: away from the city to keep the Thames clean. Right,
22:21
Speaker 1: all right, So let's take another break and we'll come
22:23
Speaker 1: back and talk more about basil Gets plan that actually
22:27
Speaker 1: worked right after this. So Chuck Um, you said, like,
22:53
Speaker 1: the main part of basil Gets plan was, um to
22:57
Speaker 1: basically build a subtranean sewer that rampare a little to
23:00
Speaker 1: the Thames. That was big. I saw somewhere else miles.
23:06
Speaker 1: I don't know where they got that, but let's go
23:07
Speaker 1: with eighty two miles because it sounds much much more realistic.
23:12
Speaker 1: But um that that in parts were big enough to
23:15
Speaker 1: build it to to run a train through. And in fact,
23:19
Speaker 1: some of these underground sewer tunnels they're like, well, it's
23:22
Speaker 1: also build the underground subway system at the same time. Um.
23:26
Speaker 1: So it was a massive project. And those use gravity.
23:29
Speaker 1: They had like a two ft drop per mile, which
23:32
Speaker 1: is a pretty good drop, so they would conduct the
23:34
Speaker 1: sewage and rainwater down down towards the Thames, but not
23:39
Speaker 1: at the times using gravity. And then smaller ones were
23:41
Speaker 1: egg shaped so that they they were narrower at the bottom,
23:45
Speaker 1: so that would kind of get the flow going even
23:47
Speaker 1: faster too. So, um, that's like the main part, that's
23:52
Speaker 1: the bulk of of this project, but it's certainly not
23:54
Speaker 1: the whole thing by a long shot, No, not at all.
23:59
Speaker 1: So they uh realized that they were like, you know,
24:02
Speaker 1: even if you build a house that runs on gravity,
24:05
Speaker 1: there might be low lying areas of your sewage pipe
24:09
Speaker 1: that eventually calls you problems. I've been through this myself.
24:12
Speaker 1: It's no fun. No one wants to deal with poop,
24:15
Speaker 1: whether it's Victorian London or modern day Atlanta. And so
24:20
Speaker 1: like today, you have to pump that stuff out. So
24:23
Speaker 1: they built these giant pumping stations, a few different ones,
24:27
Speaker 1: um Crossness, Abbey Mills, Chelsea and Deptford. And they made
24:32
Speaker 1: these things really nice looking, which was probably a pretty
24:35
Speaker 1: good move. Um, especially Abbey Mills and Crossness really really
24:40
Speaker 1: lovely buildings. They kind of look like cathedrals, which is
24:44
Speaker 1: ironic because they were pumping out poop the whole time. Uh.
24:49
Speaker 1: And it was this was really key there because like
24:51
Speaker 1: I said, this low lying you've got to take care
24:53
Speaker 1: of all of the problem or else it's just gonna
24:56
Speaker 1: like magnify, you know. So it wasn't good enough just
24:59
Speaker 1: to be like, let's get it out, not worry about
25:02
Speaker 1: the low levels or the low lying areas. So they
25:05
Speaker 1: really had to pump it all out. Yeah, So so
25:08
Speaker 1: they built these beautiful pumping stations. One of the other
25:11
Speaker 1: things that they did was they reclaimed a tremendous amount
25:14
Speaker 1: of land from the Thames. At the time that the
25:17
Speaker 1: Thames just had natural banks, right like the river just
25:20
Speaker 1: kind of came up to the city and that was
25:23
Speaker 1: where you stopped, or that's where the building started. Um
25:27
Speaker 1: what they did was they built massive embankments that were
25:32
Speaker 1: but they were started with sea walls and then we're
25:35
Speaker 1: filled in that contained the sewers, contained the subway tunnels.
25:39
Speaker 1: That was just basically extending the city out into the Thames.
25:43
Speaker 1: And it did one thing. It gave you a lot
25:45
Speaker 1: more space. It also covered up the tunnels. But it
25:49
Speaker 1: also very wisely um brought the banks of the Thames
25:54
Speaker 1: closer together in those stretches through the city. So the
25:57
Speaker 1: Thames went from wider to narrower, which had the effect
26:01
Speaker 1: of increasing its flow through London. It used to flow
26:05
Speaker 1: much more slowly than it does now. But one of
26:08
Speaker 1: the ways that they kind of make sure that all
26:10
Speaker 1: that stuff washes through London and gets out to the sea.
26:14
Speaker 1: Is by bringing the banks closer together to narrow it
26:17
Speaker 1: to UM push the same amount of volume of water
26:21
Speaker 1: through a narrower spot, which speeds the whole thing up. Yeah.
26:24
Speaker 1: So if you go to the Victoria embankment today, UM.
26:28
Speaker 1: Basil Get actually was knighted in eighteen seventy five because
26:32
Speaker 1: of these achievements that he made as an engineer, and
26:35
Speaker 1: that's where you're going to find the monument to him, UM.
26:38
Speaker 1: And he he was very funny, like if you ever
26:40
Speaker 1: read any interviews with him, he just kind of talks
26:43
Speaker 1: about what what a drag it was to do that
26:46
Speaker 1: job and how hard it was. Um, just sort of
26:49
Speaker 1: in a very understated English way. Um. But that's where
26:52
Speaker 1: the monument is. And by eighteen sixty six it was
26:57
Speaker 1: evident that this plan was working because there was another
27:00
Speaker 1: cholera outbreak UM, and the only part of London that
27:04
Speaker 1: was really hit hard was the East End, which was
27:07
Speaker 1: the only section of London that wasn't connected to the
27:10
Speaker 1: sewer system. So they realized this, this is obviously working.
27:15
Speaker 1: It's going to stop this disease. UM. It's clearly not
27:18
Speaker 1: just airborne. So that that proved that correct too. Yeah,
27:22
Speaker 1: it definitely supported I think Louis Pasture by that time
27:25
Speaker 1: had formed his germ theory that Joseph Lister was really
27:28
Speaker 1: starting to demonstrate it in the seventies. So yeah, it
27:31
Speaker 1: was pretty um, pretty pretty evident that that. You know that,
27:36
Speaker 1: and I think the microscope really kind of showed like, yeah,
27:38
Speaker 1: there's there are such things as germs that whole myasthma
27:41
Speaker 1: theories out the window. Yeah. But uh, basil Gett was
27:44
Speaker 1: really smart because he was like he had foresight. He
27:48
Speaker 1: wasn't like, let me just solve this problem, like London
27:50
Speaker 1: has this many people and so just let me, let
27:53
Speaker 1: me build this thing to handle this many people. He
27:56
Speaker 1: built it with that on on the future and said, uh,
27:59
Speaker 1: you know, let's build it to accommodate a population growth
28:02
Speaker 1: of and um that happened within thirty years, London's population
28:09
Speaker 1: doubled again. But because of the fore side of basil
28:12
Speaker 1: get Um that things still remain pretty strong. At the time,
28:16
Speaker 1: it did, I mean think about that, right. So he
28:18
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, we'll make it so that four and
28:20
Speaker 1: a half million people can use this thing and it'll
28:23
Speaker 1: do just fine. He must have thought it would take
28:26
Speaker 1: forever to get to that number, and they reached six
28:28
Speaker 1: million in thirty years. That's crazy, that's a crazy amount
28:31
Speaker 1: of population growth. And yet still basil gets designed worked
28:36
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons it worked was because he
28:38
Speaker 1: had a fail safe and I guess it was a
28:41
Speaker 1: I guess you would call it a fail safe. But
28:44
Speaker 1: so if there were a lot of water that suddenly
28:48
Speaker 1: hit in the form of like rain or something like that,
28:51
Speaker 1: like a flash flood. Remember, the sewers connected sewage and
28:56
Speaker 1: rain water, so you didn't want the sewers overflowing into
28:58
Speaker 1: the streets because that would sewage was overflowing in the streets. Right.
29:03
Speaker 1: What he designed were um basically outfalls or overflows, so
29:08
Speaker 1: that if there are a sudden large amount of rainwater
29:11
Speaker 1: entered the sewers, it would be directed to spew into
29:15
Speaker 1: the Thames, which is not not the greatest thing you
29:18
Speaker 1: wanted to happen, but it would happen infrequently enough because
29:21
Speaker 1: the sewers were so big that um it was an
29:24
Speaker 1: acceptable fail safe, right, And it worked, And that's why
29:28
Speaker 1: we added more and more and more Londoners using the
29:31
Speaker 1: same sewer system because it had those outflows. Well, unfortunately
29:35
Speaker 1: now I've reached the point, thanks to things like climate
29:38
Speaker 1: change and the fact that it's creeping up on ten
29:41
Speaker 1: million Londoners, that the sewer system is now fairly routinely
29:45
Speaker 1: discharging raw sewage and storm water anytime heavy rain comes along.
29:51
Speaker 1: And don't get anybody started on the fatbirds either, because
29:54
Speaker 1: those are just making the problems even worse. So now
29:58
Speaker 1: there there has to be another update and they're working
30:01
Speaker 1: on that right now too. Yeah, but London still uh,
30:03
Speaker 1: I mean, the Tyms is known as the cleanest river
30:06
Speaker 1: that runs through a major city despite this, Yeah, much
30:11
Speaker 1: because of the work of Basil get Um. But this
30:15
Speaker 1: is a problem that these fifty overflows happening every year
30:19
Speaker 1: no one's happy about. So they've they're underway, I think
30:22
Speaker 1: started a couple of years ago in two thousand and sixteen.
30:26
Speaker 1: The Tideway Tunnel Scheme UM, also known as the super Sewer,
30:31
Speaker 1: should be completed in two thousand twenty three. And what
30:35
Speaker 1: their goal basically is are these overflows that are, like
30:39
Speaker 1: I said, around fifty times a year, to get those
30:41
Speaker 1: down to no more than four every year, which is
30:45
Speaker 1: good quarterly dump, quarterly overflow, all right, not bad. That
30:49
Speaker 1: beats almost once a week. Yeah, you could just make
30:53
Speaker 1: it like a national holiday and everybody can leave town
30:55
Speaker 1: if you could schedule it. Yeah. So they've been working
30:57
Speaker 1: on this for a while and it's um. I mean,
31:00
Speaker 1: it's one of the biggest civil engineering projects in the
31:02
Speaker 1: world probably yeah, or history maybe it. Um. What's funny
31:08
Speaker 1: about it is that, like so basil Get created the
31:11
Speaker 1: sewer to catch the sewage before it reached the Thames.
31:14
Speaker 1: They're creating this super sewer, the tideway tunnel to catch
31:19
Speaker 1: the overflow from basil Gets sewers before it reaches the Thames. Yes,
31:23
Speaker 1: so his system is still the foundation. Yeah, I mean
31:26
Speaker 1: they've definitely added to it and and improved on it. They
31:29
Speaker 1: I guess sometime in the twentieth century stopped just pumping
31:33
Speaker 1: raw sewage into the Thames and started treating it instead.
31:36
Speaker 1: And then they still discharge the treated water into the Thames,
31:39
Speaker 1: but it's now going through a treatment process that wasn't
31:41
Speaker 1: there before. But yeah, but that that thing designed by
31:44
Speaker 1: Basil Get this made of bricks, like three hundred something
31:48
Speaker 1: million bricks um is still the foundation of this sewer
31:53
Speaker 1: system in London. Pretty amazing. I think so too, man,
31:57
Speaker 1: all because of the Great stink of eighteen fifty because
32:00
Speaker 1: of a heat wave that came through and cooked several
32:03
Speaker 1: hundred years of poop and pea and vomit and dead bodies.
32:06
Speaker 1: This makes me want to do, uh, maybe a short
32:08
Speaker 1: stuff on the when the Kiaga River and accurate or
32:13
Speaker 1: in Ohio burned rivers on fire. That's not a good sign. No,
32:19
Speaker 1: it's not Port Cleveland. Everybody just kind of hung their
32:23
Speaker 1: head like, yeah, yeah, totally, yeah, Okay, we'll be a
32:28
Speaker 1: good short stuff. I think I agree, chuck uh. In
32:31
Speaker 1: the meantime, while we're whipping up that short stuff for you,
32:34
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the Great Stink,
32:36
Speaker 1: head on over to um the Internet and read up
32:40
Speaker 1: on it because there's plenty of great articles, including some
32:42
Speaker 1: of the ones we used today. And since I said that, everybody,
32:46
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. Uh. Hey, guys, started listening
32:52
Speaker 1: to stuff you should know sometime last summer. Have been
32:54
Speaker 1: hooked ever since. I've been working my way back through
32:57
Speaker 1: the catalog and probably listened to a couple of hundred.
33:00
Speaker 1: Listen to some of the other shows you guys talk about,
33:02
Speaker 1: but they feel too scripted. Your show is really well done,
33:05
Speaker 1: educational and entertaining thank you love Andrew, No kidding, there's
33:09
Speaker 1: more uh. In a few different episodes, you guys use
33:12
Speaker 1: the word yankee a lot. Uh. New England Vampires for
33:16
Speaker 1: one Monument removal come to mind. Um. And by the way,
33:20
Speaker 1: if we use yankee, were either quoting or like our
33:24
Speaker 1: tongue is in our cheek. We're not like really saying yankee. No,
33:27
Speaker 1: it's like loving if any no one really says that.
33:30
Speaker 1: I mean there are people that still say that anger, yeah,
33:33
Speaker 1: but they're read knecks. Um. I'm from New England and
33:37
Speaker 1: have lived all over New England and I'm still in
33:40
Speaker 1: New England. I wanted to share with you all my
33:42
Speaker 1: favorite definition of yankee if you're from the South. And
33:46
Speaker 1: by the way, I should preface this by saying I
33:47
Speaker 1: don't get it. If you're from the South, a yankee
33:51
Speaker 1: is someone from the North. If you're from the North,
33:53
Speaker 1: a yankee is someone from New England. If you're from
33:56
Speaker 1: New England, a yankee is someone from Vermont who eat
34:00
Speaker 1: it's pie for breakfast with a knife. M Do you
34:03
Speaker 1: get that? No? I think. Um. What Andrew doesn't realize
34:07
Speaker 1: is that the person who told him that is insane
34:11
Speaker 1: and that the only person who gets it as the
34:12
Speaker 1: person who told them that. Well, he said, this comes
34:15
Speaker 1: from an old timey farmer in Vermont that I used
34:17
Speaker 1: to work for. So wait pie with a knife and
34:21
Speaker 1: left himself a lot. Glad you got out of there live, Andrew. Thanks,
34:25
Speaker 1: Thanks Andrew. If anyone out there can shed some light
34:29
Speaker 1: on Andrew's farmers friends joke, we'd love to know, you
34:34
Speaker 1: can get in touch with us. Go to stuff you
34:36
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com and check out our social links there. Uh,
34:39
Speaker 1: and you can also just send us a good old
34:41
Speaker 1: fashioned email. To Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
34:45
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
34:52
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com