Latest / Ebbs of History / When The Thames Became a Stinking Nightmare
Transcript
- Jason: Histiography! Lessons we've learned today. Time for the Fun Fact Challenge! This day in History! speaker-1: Welcome to the ebbs of history, the show where we dive into the strangest, wildest, and sometimes downright creepiest stories the past has to offer. From dancing plagues to pirate queens, you'll laugh, you'll gasp, you'll even groan at my impeccable dad jokes. But most importantly, we'll learn how history is way cooler than your textbook ever told you. speaker-2: We're your history loving hosts, Zoe. speaker-0: Leslie. speaker-1: And I'm Jason and in every episode the three of us will take a quick trip through time and see what lessons we can still learn today. This is the ebbs of history. All right, we got some new going on So Zoe actually had some time in between her shows to record a podcast. it was at the exact same time that Gavin had a birthday party to attend. So here we are. We have ⁓ our almost new really two weeks in a row. ⁓ speaker-0: Is it a trend? Am I trending? No. No, mom. speaker-1: You're trendy. So how was everyone's week? speaker-2: Tiring. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Again, it was still hot because we're going through kind of a heat wave. speaker-1: Yeah, very much so. Imagine this. It's the summer of 1858 in London, one of the greatest cities in the world. But something is very, very wrong. The air is thick with a smell so disgusting that people are soaking their curtains in chemicals just to breathe. The government literally cannot function. Parliament members are gagging in their chambers. And all of this is coming from one place, the River Thames. Today, we are diving into the story of the great stink of London, a disaster so foul it finally forced the city to face a problem and had been dumping into the rivers for decades. ⁓ God. This is the story of how the worst summer ever led to one of the greatest engineering achievements in history. Now, so this is again at the request of mom. No popes. speaker-0: This is not gonna be fun. Thank you. Hearing about all these pokes, all old, popy white men. speaker-1: I changed the topic last minute. speaker-2: That's history. speaker-1: That's exactly right. And I know I lean towards the medieval time period just because that's my favorite. just... You're biased. Yeah, I'm totally biased and it's just way easier for me to study and research and... speaker-0: So annoying. If you have any topics you want to hear about, let us know. speaker-1: So we're in the mid 1800s now, so still in London though. We moved on. All right. Let me paint you the picture of London in the mid 1800s. The city is booming. The Industrial Revolution is in full swing and people are flooding in from the countryside looking for work in factories. By 1858, London has about two and a half million people crammed into its streets. It's one of the biggest, busiest, most important cities on earth. But here's the problem. Where do you think all those people are going to the bathroom? Any ideas? speaker-0: chamber pots. speaker-2: not where they're meant to be going. speaker-1: Well, not where we go today in modern times. That's for sure. Where do those chamber pots get put, Now, some of the fancier homes have these relatively inventions called flush toilets. ⁓ Sounds great, right? Yeah. Wrong. ⁓ Because those toilets do not to any kind of proper system. speaker-2: Not with me. speaker-0: on the street. speaker-1: They just flush everything into old drainage ditches called cesspits. ⁓ God. And those cesspits, they empty straight into the river Thames. So even with a flushable toilet, it's still going right into the Thames along with the chamber pots. speaker-0: Is that where the term cesspool comes from? speaker-1: No? No. I think it was called a cesspool before. What do you mean like in modern sense? A cesspool? Yeah, probably. Yeah. speaker-0: I need to get some air freshener in this house right now. speaker-1: And get this, the Thames is not just where London dumps its waste. It's also where London gets its drinking water. ⁓ my god. ⁓ speaker-0: ⁓ no! ⁓ speaker-1: People are literally drinking from the same river they're using as a giant toilet. It's a quick question. What do you think happens when you have two and a half million people all using the same river as both their bathroom and their kitchen sink? People get that's right. 100 percent. The river turns into a disease conveyor belt. Cholera, typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, parasites and a public health disaster with a very soggy villain. speaker-2: sick. speaker-0: Yes. That is disgusting. speaker-1: Human waste carries bacteria and viruses upstream, downstream, and straight into cooking pots, water jugs, and irrigation. The results usually massive outbreaks of waterborne disease, high child mortality, contaminated food supplies, foul smell, low oxygen, dying fish, a city stuck in a loop where sickness keeps feeding sickness. speaker-0: This just sounds awful. I mean they didn't say popes I know but they always say like what point of history would you want to go back to? Not this and now i'm like because I always think ⁓ london in like the 1800s. Nope. No, it sounds definitely speaker-1: Not London 1858, I you that much. speaker-0: and speaker-2: A bunch of work reforms were happening around this time as well. ⁓ The factory started and children were getting in working and everything. speaker-1: They started, That's right. In historical terms, that setup is basically an engraved invitation for cholera. For years, London had been dealing with the consequences. The river stinks. It's brown and thick with sewage and industrial waste. Fish are dying. But worse than the smell, disease is spreading like wildfire. Between 1831 and 1854, London suffers through three major cholera outbreaks and kills tens of thousands of people. Now, back then, most people believe in something called the miasma theory. They think diseases spread through bad air and foul smells. So when they smell that horrible stench coming off the Thames, they think the smell itself is what's making them sick. They're not completely wrong to be worried. The river absolutely is the problem. They're just wrong about how this disease spreads. It's not the smell that's killing the people. It's the contaminated water. That's right. Sound like your dad. It's not so much the heat is, the gosh darn humidity. speaker-2: He's the humility that gets you. speaker-1: There's actually this brilliant doctor named John Snow who figures this out. speaker-0: John Snow, like on... speaker-2: Is it John like, like John like French John or like John like American John? speaker-1: John with an H. ⁓ my gosh. a zombie prom reference, everybody. speaker-0: Johnny No 8? ⁓ huh. speaker-2: Crazy. Done, what was it? speaker-1: Guys, I wasn't able to say my joke because you guys started asking questions, but I was gonna say after Jon Snow who figures this out, he did know something. ⁓ See? You don't get that, Zoe, because you've never seen Game of Thrones. Great, speaker-0: That was a horrible dad joke. In order for to be a dad joke, children have to be able to understand the joke. And children should not be watching Game of Thrones. speaker-1: Alright, you got me there, but then if you just make it a good joke, period. Not a damn joke. speaker-0: No, it's not. speaker-2: It's not a good standalone. It's a good dad joke if it's a good standalone joke as well. speaker-1: Alright, Jon Snow, who knew something, he maps a cholera outbreak in 1854 and proves that the disease is spreading through polluted water from a single pump. But most people don't believe him. The miasma theory is too popular, too accepted, and Dr. Snow dies in 1858, right as things are about to get really, really bad. speaker-0: It's not gotten bad yet? speaker-1: No, it's not summer yet. now we've reached the summer of 1858. And let me tell you, it's hot. Temperatures are regularly hitting above 30 degrees Celsius. What do you guys think that is? ⁓ speaker-0: I ⁓ don't do like a number speaker-1: 86 degrees Fahrenheit and for London, that's super hot as you guys know They have no air conditioning there because it's not usually hot enough to actually need it, right? So 86 that's a hot summer day after day baking and heat the Thames it's at a low level because there's not been much rain people speaker-0: God. speaker-1: So all that sewage and waste that usually at least gets diluted a bit, it's just sitting there baking in the sun on exposed riverbanks, turning into thick bubbling sludge. Can we go back to the place? You asked for it. speaker-0: to Pope's, please. No, I'm sorry. speaker-1: The smell is unbelievable. Newspapers are calling it a pestilence of the air. People who can afford to are fleeing the city entirely. Those who stay are stuffing their windows with cloths soaked in chloride of lime, trying to desperately block out the stench. Nothing works. Can you imagine having to put a chemical soaked anything in our windows because the outside smelled so bad? speaker-0: could not even, I think I would leave. I would go to the country. speaker-1: Yeah, but if you can afford it, what you gonna do? Yeah. Just walk outside and just take a tent and sleep outside. Away from the city. That's what I do. know. Here's my favorite part though. The Houses of Parliament, the literal seat of the British government, sits right on the banks of the Thames. And the members of Parliament, those powerful men who run an empire, they're trying to work but they can't. The smell is invading the building. They're gagging. They're covering their faces with handkerchiefs. Some of them are literally running outside to vomit. They tried They lime-soaked curtains over the windows. They considered actually moving the entire government out of London to a different city. Can you imagine? ⁓ The Empire ruling a quarter of the globe at the time, and they can't even meet in their own capital because it smells too bad. So what would you do if you were a member of parliament and you physically couldn't work because the building smelled so bad? speaker-0: Well, I would think I would try to find out where the smell was coming from and stop it. speaker-1: You mean, actually do something? speaker-2: I would go. I not want to work there anymore. speaker-1: You do what politicians so often do when a problem climbs through the window and grabs them by the throat. You act. The Great Stink does something that years of cholera outbreaks and public health warnings couldn't do. It forces the politicians to actually act. Because now it's not just the poor people in crowded neighborhoods dying of disease. ⁓ it's affecting the politicians personally. They can't ignore it anymore. Enter hero, Joseph Bazalgette. How English is that name? ⁓ speaker-0: quite. speaker-2: pretty English. speaker-1: He's a civil engineer and has been trying for years to convince London's leaders that they need a real sewer system. Not just ditches that dump into the river, but an actual network of underground pipes that can carry waste far away from the city, downriver, where it can be treated and disposed of properly. But building something like that would be expensive. Like, really expensive. And for years the politicians have been saying, ⁓ maybe later, we'll get to it, it's not that urgent. Well, guess what suddenly becomes urgent when you can't breathe in your own office. Benjamin Disraeli, who later became prime proposes a bill to fund Baselgett's sewer system. And the amazing part is that the bill authorized spending three million pounds, an absolutely massive amount of money for the time. That's about 375 million pounds today. It passes through How do you think it took for this act to ⁓ give this money to pass through parliament? A day. speaker-0: An hour? ⁓ my god! speaker-1: 18 days. 18 days is extraordinarily fast for any type of- ⁓ speaker-0: I thought they would want to like fix it. speaker-1: Well, that is them fixing it. That's for some context, important bills usually take months or years to pass even back then. The Great Stink was so bad that it accomplished in two weeks what public health advocates have been trying to do for decades. So Basil Gett gets to work and the system he designs is absolutely revolutionary. He builds 82 miles of main sewers, brick lined tunnels that run deep underground. These connect to over 1,100 miles of smaller street sewers. The whole system works by gravity, flowing downhill from all over London to pumping stations on the eastern outskirts of the city. The construction takes years. Thousands of workers dig tunnels under the streets. They're working in dangerous conditions, cramped spaces, dealing with caverns and floods. But slowly, neighborhood by neighborhood, London gets its new sewer system. a feat of amazing foresight, Bazalgette doesn't just build the system for London of 1858. He starts thinking ahead. He looks at London's population, calculates how much it might grow, and then he takes that number and doubles it just to be safe. He built sewers that can handle way more waste than London was producing at that time. And you know what? He was right to do that because London did keep growing and growing. And those sewers that he built in the 1860s, they're still in use today. More than 160 years later, sewage still flows through Joseph Basil Goetz tunnels. speaker-0: So you said it took them years to build the sewers. What did they do while they were building it? Did they stop dumping the water? speaker-1: No, they probably just kept on going. Kept on doing that. Yeah. I mean, what else can you do? There is no other system at that time. They were doing it out of necessity, really. speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: For a long time, historians focused on the event as a story about government finally responding to a crisis, about how sometimes it takes a disaster to force change. And that's true, but more recent historians have started asking deeper looking at who is affected most by the terrible conditions before the Great Stink. Spoiler alert, it's the poor people. The wealthy could escape to their country homes, but the poor couldn't. Historians are also examining how the miasma theory, despite being wrong, actually helped push for public health improvements. hadn't believed air made them sick, would they have cared as much about cleaning up the Thames? And finally, modern historians point out that Basil gets solution, while revolutionary for London, just moved the problem downstream. For years after the sewers were built, communities downriver had to deal with London's waste being dumped into their areas. It took more decades to develop proper treatment facilities, so the story is more complicated than one heroic engineer solving it. So, ⁓ what we learn the great stink of London? speaker-2: I was kind of thinking what the older historians were thinking, like how just because it affects the politicians, now they're finally acting on it. I don't know, just like a made up example, If politicians in power in America had to pay for gas, they would be complaining because they can't afford it. Because if they didn't have all their money, they would be complaining because they can't afford the rising gas prices. But it doesn't affect them, so it doesn't matter. speaker-1: Agreed. I've got a couple things. ignoring problems doesn't just make them go away, right? It just makes them worse. London had warning signs for decades. Cholera outbreaks, polluted river, public health experts sounding the alarm. But it took the problem literally stinking up parliament before leaders acted. Can you name kind of what on what you were saying, Zoe, can you name some problems we face today that we're putting off until they become an impossible to ignore? speaker-0: I'm sure you do. Global warming. speaker-1: That is number one on my list that I have here. Global warming, 100%. speaker-2: rising inflation all across the world. ⁓ everything going up. doesn't matter where you are. speaker-1: Affordable housing kind of falls into that, yeah. Aging infrastructure. I mean, what did it take in Minnesota for a bridge to collapse and people to die for them to fix the infrastructure there? And it happened in Pennsylvania not too long after that, in Baltimore. And it's happening all the time and it's still a problem. But. speaker-0: but our politicians need new jets. speaker-1: They need new jets to fly to Italy to celebrate a hockey game. just yeah, there's other problems in this world that we should be focusing on and we won't until it becomes an actual problem for the people that have the power to do something. And finally, thinking ahead pays off, right? Bazalgette thought ahead. He doubled what he thought was going to be. He took the number of people he thought was going to be in London, you know, in the very, very far future, and then doubled that just in case. And here we are today, they're still using that exact same thing, which is just amazing because London is one of the world's, you know, biggest cities, most populated cities. Time to test you on what you've learned today. Yeah, ⁓ Zoe, you haven't the one that mom did with Gavin last week. ⁓ But Gavin was the like, he knows when to hit that trigger and say locked in because mom could not beat him to the punch. ⁓ speaker-0: No, I'm not good at this. speaker-2: keep score. speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: And she takes better notes than Gavin does too, so watch out. Yeah. Alright, you guys know the rules. Let me finish the question, right mom? She got disqualified on one of the questions because she locked in before I finished. speaker-2: I hope that Gavin wants to get eliminated. speaker-1: He's a 12 year old boy. rules are different for an adult. ⁓ speaker-2: forward I that we've learned today. speaker-1: Whoa, you're getting snarky. Someone is tired. Let me finish the question and then you can lock Best of Question one. What year did the Great Stink happen? ⁓ Zoe. speaker-2: 1858 speaker-1: It was during the hot summer months of July and two. What was the name of the engineer who designed London's revolutionary sewer system? Locked in. ⁓ think mom had that. ⁓ do. ⁓ you think, ⁓ do you think Zoey got it first? ⁓ speaker-2: Kidding, mom right? speaker-0: That's okay. I she started first because my brain doesn't work. speaker-1: Go ahead speaker-0: Yes. speaker-2: Joseph Bazalaga. speaker-1: oooo ⁓ speaker-2: Jon Snow. ⁓ speaker-0: ⁓ is it Josel? Joseph? I'll say Joseph Basil get because this I wrote it speaker-1: I can't. bezel get. speaker-2: like a speaker-1: ass but it was a t you said basil gath that is not closing up yes all right tied up even with the gimme for you speaker-0: Yeah, I tried to get you to win that one. speaker-1: Question three. I'm gonna raise my hand like this when I finish the question because it's kind of a long one. I don't want you guys to start early. speaker-2: I don't have a problem. speaker-1: How long did it take for parliament to pass the bill funding the new sewer system after the great stink started? Ho-ho! Just 18 days. is incredibly fast for such an expensive and important piece of legislation. The smell was so bad the politicians suddenly became very motivated to act quickly. speaker-2: in. speaker-0: Wow speaker-1: is April ⁓ ⁓ on this day in 1513, while trying to find the Fountain of Youth, Spanish explorer Juan Pons de Leon became the first European to set foot in Florida, claiming the land for Spain. He named it La Florida because he arrived during the Easter season, known as ⁓ Florida in Spanish. speaker-2: That's first thing I thought of. speaker-1: So speaker-0: hell of a drug. You can cut that. speaker-1: This is a family podcast. You just swore on a family podcast. speaker-0: was just saying, Taylor Swift on a podcast. speaker-1: April 2nd, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, bringing the United States into World War I. Wilson had tried to keep America neutral, but German submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram convinced him that joining the war was necessary. speaker-0: So you're telling me that the president actually went to Congress to declare war? speaker-2: That doesn't happen nowadays. We go to Twitter. speaker-1: This is speaker-0: I believe it's called true social speaker-2: social acts. speaker-1: Congress voted to declare war just two days later on April. speaker-0: Good for Congress. speaker-1: Zoe, do you know what the Zimmerman Telegram is? speaker-2: It was basically Germany to Mexico saying, hey, if you join us and fight against America, you'll get Texas back. And I'm not even in APUSH yet. I'm in EHAP. And I earned it. speaker-1: That is correct. And we ⁓ intercepted that message and it was uncontrovertible truth that Mexico was probably going to join in and then we'd have a war here on our shores also. speaker-2: because normally US is protected because it's not, because it's like locked by water. normally there's no fighting actually on our land. We just send troops to Europe, but we send troops to wherever needed. But if Mexico said yes, it would be troops. speaker-1: Finally, and because there have been no mentions of popes in our actual story today, on April 2nd, 2005, Pope John Paul II died at the age of 84 after serving as pope for 26 years. He the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first from a Slavic country. Do you know what country he was from? speaker-0: Go. speaker-2: Slavic. I'm just gonna guess Sweden. That's not Slavic, that's Nordic. ⁓ Czech Republic. speaker-1: Poland. His papacy was marked by extensive travel, efforts to improve Catholic relations with other faiths, and playing a role in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. people pay. speaker-2: I couldn't say it when I had my Pope episode. Like I couldn't say it. Even though I knew how to say it. It's just like reading the word, it actually like, it's different. You actually have to read it, it's like that's not how it's supposed to be spelled. speaker-1: The Great Stink of London teaches us that sometimes the worst disasters can lead to the greatest progress. When the River Thames became so unbearably foul in the summer of 1858 that it literally shut down the government, it finally forced London to confront a problem it had been ignoring for decades. Joseph Bazalgette's revolutionary solar system did not just clean up the river. It transformed public health, saved countless lives, and set a new standard for urban infrastructure that still serves London today. The next time we face a problem that seems overwhelming, we can remember that even the stinkiest challenges can lead to solutions that last for generations. That's it for this episode. Thanks for traveling through time with us on Ebs of History. If you like today's story, share it with a teacher, a friend, or your family on Instagram at Ebs of History. If you have any show ideas, corrections, or questions, can contact us at questions at ebsofhistory.com. speaker-0: signing off. This has been your co-hosts, Leslie. speaker-1: Zoe and me, Jason, reminding you that history is not just about the dates and battles, it's about the people, curiosity, and the weird, wonderful choices that shape our world. Until next time, keep wondering, keep laughing, and keep learning through the ebbs of history.