Latest / Ridiculous History / What was the 'Great Stink' of London?

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What was the 'Great Stink' of London? · Ridiculous History

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. I've got to
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: say right now, my co host and I are you know,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: we're we're dressed pretty well, were dressed comfortably, and we're
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: sitting in a studio that has some great air conditioning.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: My name is Ben, Ben, my name is Noah, which
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: you know. And well, what's that? What's that stank? What's
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: that stink? What do we put some stink on it?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean you you mentioned the air conditioning,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: but it's feeling a little stagnant in here today. Um,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and I'm wondering was it you? It was No, it
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't me. But we do share this studio
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: with other people. Perhaps it is I who have dealt
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: it for I smell. This is something that has very
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: little to do it today's episode. But it's an interesting question.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It's got as much to do today's episode is anything. No, no, no.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: What I'm about to bring up when have you noticed
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: perhaps you know or you our super producer Casey Pegram.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, have you guys ever noticed when you
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: walk into a room, you'll you'll sense a smell and
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: it may be very good. It may be very bad,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: but then within a matter of a few seconds or minutes,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: it's sort of dissipates and you don't notice it. Does
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: that happen to you? You know? It's true. If I have, like,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: for example, let's say I haven't done laundry in a
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: couple of days, and I have the laundry basket in
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: my room, it's sort of you know, uh, becomes the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: base level of the smell of the room. But if
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I've stayed overnight somewhere else, hubba hubba, and then I
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: come back the next day, I'm like, oh, laundry days,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I'm what unfresh? Hell? Is this? Right? So we know
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: that this is a phenomenon that a lot of us
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: have experienced. But the fact remains that some smells are
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: so strong that you you don't forget them now, or
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: you can't you can't teach your nose to ignore them.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: And today's episode is about a stink that was far
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: beyond what you would normally consider smelling what either I
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: or Ben half dealt for debate, and and likely far
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: beyond what we have smelled. What what we're talking about
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: here is something called the Great Stink of London. So
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: someone got upset about something. Is that you're saying they
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: made a fuss. Oh, if only there were fusses involved, right,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: there were, there were fusses involved, and the city was
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: in crisis. But also literally it was a stink, a stench,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a greek and the asthma. Here we go, of feces,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: cooking smells, think of think of city smells, you know,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: New York City, for example. Think of the way it
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: smells walking down the street, The way you can pass
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: through so many different aromas as you travel, right, Like
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: one corner might smell like boiled peanuts, and then you
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: get hot dogs, and then you get dog crap, and
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: then you know you're in and stale beer. We'll think
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: about that. But combined with stagnant, rotting feces buried in
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: open pits, and also livestock corpses right from the butchery,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: possibly dead bodies due to disease outbreaks ni cholera. Right
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: like we covered in our previous episode on London's Train
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: for the Dead, they were literally piling bodies upon one
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: another because there was not room in the you know,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: in the conventional cemeteries or morgues. So what we're saying
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: with old due respect to the great city of London,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: is that it used to be filthy? Yeah? I mean
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: those those uh delightful little street urchins in Oliver. You know,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: there's no way they could have done those sweet dance moves,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: you know, with that's with that funk in the air,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: they would have fallen over dead from just pure hyperventilating exhaustion.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: And we're talking about the eighteen hundreds. But this all
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: kind of came to ahead, didn't it been in a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: particular summer. Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. Noal in the
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: infamous and uh stinch ridden summer of eighteen fifty eight,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: London was I don't want to say paralyzed, but maybe
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: traumatized as a fair word, by a pervasive smell that
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: was flooding the streets and wasn't moving from the town. Uh.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: The temperature was around grease fahrenheit or thirty two degrees celsius.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And what people noticed was that this smell was not
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: class based. It didn't matter if you were wealthy or
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: if you were poor, or if you lived in a
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: particular neighborhood. Anything near, especially anything near the tims, was
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: going to stink. And there wasn't much you could do
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: about it, and part of the problem goes into the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: skyrocketing urban growth at the time, absolutely and the lack
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: of a municipal sewer system. Yeah, I mean, as we're saying,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: they did have sort of storm drain type situations that
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: would essentially drain rain runoff back out into the river.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: But with that overflow of human bodies, a live, live ones,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: that poop that was all becoming waste, human waste, that
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: of brainwater. It was waste water here because you know,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: some people, the wealthier people had you know, privs or
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: there were even flush toilets, we'll get into that a
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: little later, and poor people especially and that you know
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: there it wasn't even two poor people rich people divide.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: They didn't have a sewer system, so that waste had
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: to go somewhere, and that somewhere were these cess pits,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: of which there were in the neighborhood of two hundred
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: thousand in London alone. London is a sprawling metropolis, yes, yeah,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: a sprawling at this point dirty metropolis. Did an article
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: called Solving the Great Stink, which we will not read
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the full headline yet because it contains spoilers, right, so
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: for now it's just the article named Solving the Great
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Stink by Ellam Morton, and in this uh Morton introduces
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: readers to one of the coolest names you and I
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: have found in the course of our research. Right, because
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: these these cess pits are filling up with fecal matter, right,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: and there's only so much room in your average cess
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: pit six ft six ft in case that comes up
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: on your next blind day, six ft of of pooh
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: potential there that might be important to your tender conversation. Yeah,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: so there's a definitive amount, there's a threshold, and at
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: some point these pits need to be emptied out. It's
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: literally a dirty job and someone has to do it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: And that's where we learn about the night Men. Oh yes, yes,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: we are always sunny in Philadelphia fans here, Casey, are
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you a fan of that show? Yeah, we got a
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: definitive nod. Yeah it was emphatic. That wasn't one of
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: his phoned in nods. But these night Men were real
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: people who had a very demanding job. They had to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: go into these cess pits, working under the cover of
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: darkness and empty these things physically. So this is hard
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: physical labor. And the stinch isn't just inconvenient at this point,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: it's dangerous. Yeah, and these night men armed with nothing
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: but buckets, rope and go get her attitude, I guess,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: would you know, and enter these pits? Um, And yeah,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: that smell was actually physically damaging. It could give you cough,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: It could actually cause you know, burning of your eyes, um,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: you know, watering of the eyes, like all kinds of
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: you can get infections, you know, I mean it was
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: it was really really bad. It was just and especially
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: when they're kind of down in it like that. You know,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: this was not not a job for the faint of heart.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: These were kind of heroes in a way. They were heroes,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and they were also working against nigh impossible odds. No
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: matter how assiduously or regularly they emptied these cess pits,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: what was opennions. There were just too many people adding
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: to the waste and they could barely contain it. And
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: let's say they weren't able to empty all the sesspits completely, right,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: it's very likely at this time, and what happens is
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: that these cesspits start baking under the high summer temperatures. Yeah,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: that's right. Um, the sun would get up to around
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: a hundred and eighteen degrees during the summer, which is
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: like West coast desert temperatures, you know, and you think
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: about that baking putrefying cesspit um, not to mention that
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: it would leach into the soil, into the groundwater or
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: whatever and then make its way into the Thames, which
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: was London's primary supply of drinking water. Yes, I'm so
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: glad you mentioned that, because we found something that surprised us.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: So I don't want to speak for both of us,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: but I was surprised that that surprised us when it
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: came to the history of medicine at the time. Because
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: you know, we we mentioned briefly in our episode on
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: London's Train for the Dead that there were outbreaks of
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: cholera in London, but we we'd like to give you
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: a little more detail there to to set the stage,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: because this wasn't just an occasional one person is sick
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: in one neighborhood thing, right, No, no, um. Around forty
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: thousand people died of cholera in London alone between eighteen
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: thirty one and eighteen sixty six. And the thing was
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: nobody knew, not only did they not know what caused it,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: they had absolutely no idea how to treat it. And
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the prevailing theory of the time was this thing called
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: miasma theory that even you know, medical luminaries like Florence
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Nightingale were all about, Yeah, and this is the notion
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: that you got cholera from the from the funk alone.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: The smell like, if you can smell it, that means
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: that you are in an invisible cloud of disease known
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: as miasthma. Felt it right, there you go, there you go.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: But that was clearly Now that we have the benefit
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: of looking back in time, it was clearly not the case,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: but it was widely believed by luminaries of the age.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: There was a fellow named Edwin Chadwick who wrote a
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: report on the sanitary condition of the laboring population of
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Great Britain in eighteen forty two, and he argued exactly this.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: He argued that noxious smells were responsible for disease and
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the real problem, he said, with cholera and these other outbreaks,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: was a matter of ventilation. And he said in a
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Parliamentary committee meeting in eighteen forty six, all smell is
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: if it be intense, immediate acute disease and eventually we
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: may say that by depressing the system and rendering it
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: susceptible to the action of other causes, all smell is disease,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: which is a pretty pretty bold and definitive statement, especially
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: considering that it's you know, not true. No, it's it's
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: not true. And then, like I said, they didn't know
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: how to treat it either. So treatments ranged from opiates
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to things like blood letting, bleeding, people burning their skin. Um.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I'm getting some of these facts from a really cool
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: article called ten Amazing Facts about the Cholera and the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Great Stink of London from five Minute History. Um. And
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: then there's some more gentle cures, some more homeopathic things
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: like using camphor or a syrup of tomato. Uh. Some
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: of these came from a book called T. J. Ritter's
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Mother's Remedies, and those are more like folkloric kind of
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: homeopathic remedies. But none of this stuff worked. The opiates
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: probably made you feel better, I guess, because you're super high,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: But I guess jin might do the same thing for people.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: This is very true. And the thing I want to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: mention here to jump off what you said about that
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: if you contain the smell, you can contain the spread
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of the contamination. That is, couldn't be farther from the truth,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: especially in the way that they were trying to contain
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: the smell by dumping all of this waste into their
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: water supply. They were trying to get it out of
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: their vicinity, but it was coming back to them in
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: the way that was actually infecting them because cholera it's
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: water born, yes, yeah, and also just pollution general. One
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: very important thing about putting waste into the Thames is
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: that it is tidal, which means, for instance, if you
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: took the corpse of a horse that you have for
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: some reason, and you threw it in the Tims right
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: as the tide is going out, then tide comes back
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: in and the water remains contaminated. But because they were
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: so focused on the idea that smell was the cause
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and the indicator of this, you know, this epidemic and
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: this outbreak, they did not focus on a point that
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Noel just raised there, which is the drinking water. We've
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: mentioned this a couple of times already, and we are
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: not alone. There's a character, a real person, sorry, and
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: an enthusiologist at the time named John Snow spelled the
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: same way. It's the game of thrones. Guy, did he
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: know nothing? It turns out he knew at least one
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: What was that? One thing? That was? One thing is
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: that he is, according to death and miasma and Victorian London,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: an obstinate belief. You can see the idea there by.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: A lecturer named Stephen Holiday Snow had a very important contribution.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: He argued that polluted water, rather than air, was the
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: principal cause of cholera epidemics, and no other experts believed
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: for some time. He got a he got a their
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: version of the cool story bro treatment. So Snow wasn't
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: just you know, holding a glass of water to the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: light and looking at it and saying, hey, I think
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: that's a turret in there or something. What he was
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: doing was mapping out pollution free water sites, polluted water sites,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: and the spread of disease, specifically cholera. In eighteen fifty seven,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: he showed that the number of deaths from cholera among
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: customers at the Southwark Water Company was six times higher
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: than among customers of the Lambeth Water Company, and he
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: attributed this difference to the fact that the Lambeth Company
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: drew its water from Tim's didn't above the Teddington lock
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: where there was no danger from sewage in the tideway.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: So because they were drinking you know, non sewage riddled water,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: they were less likely to get colera. Genius. I mean,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I'm kidding, but at the time it was a mystery
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: and it was still ignored. But but allay not lost
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: because there was progress in terms of sanitation. Right Like
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: earlier you had mentioned that not everybody was just um,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I don't squatting by the roadside. Yeah, no, there were
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: definitely different um calibers of restroom facilities. In fact, it
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: wasn't until doing the research for this episode that I
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: discovered many of you may already know this, that the
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: flush the flush toilets were a thing in this period
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: in Victorian England. They were quite ornate. In fact, Um
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I found some images of flush toilets in that article
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: I mentioned from five minute History, and they look more
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: like like fine China than than something you would squat
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: on to relieve yourself. And they had those nice pull
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: handles on the chain you know that that are up top. Um.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: All that technology was around because it was actually invented
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: by a guy named Sir John Harrington. He came up
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: with the original does lie for the flush toilet and
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at it right here on Historic UK dot
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: com an article called the Throne of Sir John Harrington
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: by Ellen Casteloh, and the illustration of his design is
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: very very much similar to what we still have today.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: It's got that that p trap at the bottom so
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: that water doesn't stagnate or you know, the smell doesn't go. Well,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: that's what it is. That it creates a layer of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: water in that crook because that's what guards against the smell.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And it has sort of a bomber kind of situation,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: very similar, a little more crude. But the middle class
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: love these things. They still do. Yeah, I'm pretty pro
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: sanitation myself. And now the new thing is the Japanese toilet.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: They haven't improved on the flush part. Now, it's just
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the stuff that it does to your butt. It's like
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a whole experience though It's say, it's not just a
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: biday function. It will play music for you, you know,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and choose the direction of rotation of the water temperature.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know about the temperature. Yeah, no, I've
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I've I've had the the privilege of sitting upon quite
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: a quite delightful one. And yeah, you can go clockwise counterclockwise.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: It's more like a massage chair than it is um elavatory.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: But I digress. So the flush toilet was huge among
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the middle class who could afford it. And you know,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the middle class that they weren't mega wealthy, but they
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: were like merchants or merchants could afford the finer things,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: you know, ish because you know, the gap between rich
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: and poor was quite why the fact there was a
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: middle class at all, you know, they were head and
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: tails above the very poor people. So even that gap
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: was massive, but the gaps in the middle class and
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the aristocracy also massive. But these toilets were flushing practically
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: into the streets or like into these pits, right yeah,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: because there was no sewer system. It's kind of like
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: having a phone that doesn't connect to a network, except
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: instead of the sounds of your voice through a phone line,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's excrement. Parliament passed this law called
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the Nuisances Removal and Diseases Prevention Act Um, which also
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: went by the Cholera Bill, and it encouraged people to
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: keep their homes as spotlessly clean as possible to help
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: get rid of the smell. So the idea of this
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: flush toilet was that it would carry the waste away
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: from your home, you know, like we know, it went somewhere,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: and uh, it actually made things way worse, right, because
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: there was still not a There was still not a
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: decent transit system. There was not a purification system of
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: any sort. And as we mentioned before, since the tends
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: is title, what goes around comes back, you know, not
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: pet cemetery style, but still in a very disturbing way.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like I'm always just trying to work pet
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: cemetery in the references. You know, that movie ruined me, right, man,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Man, I promise I at least won't do
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: the accent. But perhaps I'm being unfair because they did
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: have something like a transit system for this, sort of
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a proto sewer, but it just went to the river, right, Yeah,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: like I said, it was it was kind of more
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: designed to deal with the overflow from rain, you know, stormwater,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and that was and then it would just bring it
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: back out to the river, but it was not designed
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: to deal with uh, six feet of of human stink, yeah, exactly.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And the thing is because of that cholera bill and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the notion that if we carry the stink away, were
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: less likely to get this fatal disease. People flushed their
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: toilets way more than they should, and they flushed out
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: that proto sewer way more than they should, which led
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: to much more sewage going out into the river and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: then back into the Yeah, so gross. So this this
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: also comes to a head. We've got cholera, we've got
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: other diseases, we've got increasingly panic public sectors. And this
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: comes to a head in Parliament where in eighteen fifty
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: eight and this time they are so affected by the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: smell that they cannot stay in the building. And they're
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: taking these desperate mcgever like measures to try to keep
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the smell out, like what they use a lime chloride
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: or a chloride of lime and apply it to the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: curtains by the windows, like soak the curtains and this stuff,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: no dice, It didn't work. Now didn't work well. Poop
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: rose by any other name, still smells like poop ben. Yes, yeah,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: And they said we cannot We have no idea what
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: what we can do here. They could barely gather their will.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: It's enough to hold a meeting, and there are there
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: are anecdotes you can see where one of the people
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: who's in charge of cleanliness in the building says that
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: he can no longer be responsible for what's happening. How
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: can you be expected to pontificate when you know your
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: nostrils are filled with this overwhelming foul smell. I want
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to add one little thing to you. Mentioned um John
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Snow figuring out that the cholera was water born. There
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: was another dude that had an interesting role to play
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: a little a little scientist with the name of Michael Faraday,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: who you may know from the TV show Lost Right
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: or the Faraday came that that more. Um, no spoilers
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: though for lost on Ridiculous History that we burned that
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: bridge on our other show. It's true. But Faraday, there's
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: a great quote from him from that five minute history
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: article where he did some tests, He took some samples, um,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and he described the situation as such, near the bridges,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense they were
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: visible at the surface. The whole river was for the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: time a real sewer. Michael Faraday. Feculence, God, that's a
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: beautiful word. Really, it's a horrific thing. So Parliament realized
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: that they could not ignore this. They couldn't keep the
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: stereotypical stiff upper lip of the aristocracy. They had to
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: fix this problem. Was it was affecting them directly. I mean,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you could argue this is the kind of thing that's
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: easy for politicians to get behind. Um hey, because this
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: there's nothing controversial about wanting to get rid of this problem.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: This is affecting everyone. People are dying by the thousands,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and the Prince had to cancel his pleasure cruise on
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the Thames. What's a young monarch to do? Oh boy,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: things got serious, Ben, Yes, yes, you're absolutely correct with end.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Because there had been plans in place for a comprehensive
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: sewage system or sewer edge system. We have to say
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: it that way, right edge. We absolutely have to say
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: it that way. Yes, yes, with that accent. This plan
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: had been proposed by a fellow named Joseph basil Get
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and he had been pitching this for a little while.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: But finally, due to the great Stink, Parliament approved a
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: bill to combat this, and it took them less than
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: eighteen days, which is actually pretty fast. For imagine that
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: though I mean, if you're gonna get something done quick,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: let's stop the feces from flowing through our streets freely. Yeah,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: we have to emphasize its stank the entire time. And
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: you know it's it's like one long fart joke. Yeah. Yeah,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: that's that's kind of what this episode is. Um, this guy,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Basil gat was a civil engineer, right right, He was
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a civil engineer who played a vital role in honestly
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: saving the city. That's that's not hyperbolee for us to
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: describe it this way. In an article called Construction of
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: London's Victorian Sewers the Vital role of Joseph basil Gett,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: an author named G. C. Cook gives us a brief introduction. So,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Joseph Basilguette was born in eighteen nineteen. At the time,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: he was the Chief Municipal Engineer to the Metropolitan Board
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: of Works or m b W. And when Parliament was
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: passing the blame or trying to pass the buck to
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: see who who they could scapegoat for this or who
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: they could blame for it, members of Parliament directly said,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: you know, this is the job of the Metropolitan Board
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: of Works, not us. These guys. And so he finally
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: got some attention to his elaborate planned sewerage system and
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: had three objectives one waste disposal to land drainage and
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: three introduction of a safe water supply system. And that
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: made it a you know, that was a big difference
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: in comparison to earlier plans or existing infrastructure. And this
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: man was a wizard because he actually added a fourth thing,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: which was beautification. Would have thought that putting in a
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: sewer would actually make London like look prettier. There were
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of things that came from this job that
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: added a lot of wow factor to the city, like
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the embankments on the sides of the Thames. So let's
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: let's set this scene before basil Gets projects. The embankments
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: were disgusting. There's mudd and poop everywhere, filthy dead bodies
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: caked with awful oh f F A L. So what happened, Well,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: what happened, Ben, is that Basil Get employed four hundred
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: draftsmen to draw up the plans for his sewer system.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: This is a huge, huge project, um And in that
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: five minute history article, which I really recommend you checking out,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: it's it's fantastic that we've pulled some things from it,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: but a lot of stuff we have not mentioned. Um
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: bassl Gut was quoted as saying, well, we're only going
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: to do this once, and there's always the unforeseen. So
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: he doubled his measurements for the size of the pipes
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: should be based on the calculations he had done. And wow,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: what do you know in the sixties, if he had
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: done it based on his original calculations, the sewer would
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: have overflowed. Smart guy, very smart guy, very exacting. But
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: let's just set the scene for what the scope of
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: this project was. For Trender draftsman to just lay out
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the plans um it was eighty two miles long of
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: the main part the main sewer system, eleven miles of
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: street I guess runoff areas. And then there were these
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: massive or nate pumping stations and these are beautiful. These
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: these look like religious structures. And then they had water
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: treatments in an as well. But yeah, do the pumping
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: stations are a thing to behold. And there are two
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: that you can still see today, one at crossness Um.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: And they had steam pumps that were named after they
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: had really fancy names. My note here says fancy pants
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: pump names which were Victoria, Prince Consort, Albert Edward and Alexandria,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: which were all members of the British royal family at
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the time. UM. And then there's another one called Abbey Mills,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: and both of them have these ornate Byzantine architecture designs.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: They look like some sort of temple or something that's insane.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: And apparently one of them you can rent out today,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the Crossness Station, which is on the South Bank in Bexley.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it is for what it's for product launches.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: That's one of the uses, right, Yeah, there's an official
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: website for this, and they recommend that you give it
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a shot for product launches, Shakespearean theater productions, UM or
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: making viral videos. That's the one that surprised me as well.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Who sets out and says, all right, we're going to
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: make this viral video. It's time to uh, time to
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: book the location. It'd be cool for a music video,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: you know, like I said, it's gorgeous. It would be
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: a great setting for an action film or a thriller. Yeah,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: because you know, you don't you don't even see where
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: the original intent was that they're just these insanely huge
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: structures because the pumps themselves were underneath the floor of
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: the building itself. So when you go in, it's like
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: just this gorgeous space and very high ceilings, very high ceilings,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of intri kates marble, I want to say,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: and like tile work and stuff, and you don't really see,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: um the guts of what it's actually doing. And we
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: would love to hear from you if you have visited here. Now.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: The problem wasn't solved automatically, because I think you can
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: tell friends and neighbors from the scope of this erration.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: It took several years for this to be completed, right,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: and so you know, Rome was not built in a day.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Neither was Basiligat's dream system. But as they were building
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: this system, they noticed that there were advantages to populations
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: and neighborhoods that were hooked up to it, and they
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: started to pay more attention to John Snow's previously dismissed
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: belief about contamination in water. And when we say years,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: we mean what what was it nearly a decade? Over
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a decade. Over a decade they opened it officially unofficially,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know. In eighteen sixty five, Edward, Prince of Wales,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: had a like a ribbon cutting ceremony, but it wasn't
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: going to be finished for ten more years from that
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: point right exactly. And as this construction was occurring, there
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: were people in parts of London that were not part
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: of this system that we're still drinking contaminated water, encountering
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: to sease, encountering cholera. And in eighteen sixty six London
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: had another cholera epidemic. But people noticed this epidemic occurred
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: in an area that was not yet protected by Basil
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: gats sewerage system was in the East end, right spot on.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: And this caught the attention of someone named William far
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: who noted that the eighteen sixty six epidemic was confined
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: to a small area of Whitechapel and said that his
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: inquiries showed the East London Water Company's reservoirs have been contaminated.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: And he wrote, only a very robust scientific witness would
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: have dared to drink a glass of water of the river.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: The elements influencing mortality which has undergone the greatest change
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: in recent times is the system of drainage. So finally
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Basil gat begins to get his due, as does your
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: man John Snow. Basil guy definitely got his, dude. He
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: was knighted for his efforts in eighteen seventy five. And
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: there's a great quote from John Dosat, who is an
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: author and historian. Um It says basil Gat probably did
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: more good and saved more lives than any single Victorian official.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Uh And based on what we're seeing here that that
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: seems to be very likely entirely true. And there's one
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: other fascinating note that we would like to end today's
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: show on, which is that although the experts were arguing
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: in favor for years about this concept of miasthma, it
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: sounds like the the common public and especially the satiristic
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: cartoonists of the time, we're on board with the idea
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: of water contamination way earlier than the you know, those
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: stiff collars up in Parliament. We see, especially in Punch
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: cartoons of the time, that there's a clear association with
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: health and contamination of water. That's right. There was a
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: really popular satirical magazine called Punch or the London sharavari
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Um that came out starting in eighteen forty one and
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: was hugely influential for its political cartoons, and it does
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: an incredible job of a chronicling this whole situation over
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the years with a fictional deity by the name of
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: old Father Thames, Yes, the Spirit of the River, the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: spirit of the River and pre stinc he is portrayed
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: as this very stately, typically nude, bearded Zeus like figure.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: As it turns out, there's a lot of archaeological evidence
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: that there were river worshippers in the area. There were
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of Bronze Age artifacts recovered from the River
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Christian pre Christian times that were seen as being offerings
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to some sort of river deity. Um in eighteen fifty
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: seven there was this kind of shield that was pulled
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: up and there was like horned helmets that were found.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: A lot of these things are on display um in
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the British Museum. But this idea of Father Thames, he
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: was sort of this bearded, usually nude Zeus like figure
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: surrounded by sea creatures, almost like a like a king
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Triton from the Whotle Mermaid or something like that, but
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: you know, with but with no pats. And this began
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to change as the river became increasingly contaminated. Boy did
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: it ever, um, Father Thames that started being portrayed much
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: more as some sort of uh terrifying David Lynch in hobo. Um.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: There's one that keeps popping up, uh. This this comic
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: called Father Thames introducing his offspring to fair City of London,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: and it has this horrifying creature with matted, black tar
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: covered beard and hair emerging from the river with this
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: kind of shriveled, emaciated mermaid creature and a very skinny,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: malnourished child and like a zombie kind of thing coming
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: crawling out of the water. So it was it was
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: really this is not really funny satire. It's much more
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: disturbing than that. Um and that continued. But here's the
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: happy ending for a Father Thames when all came around,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: when the sewer system was fully in place. There's a
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: comic from eight four that shows Father Thames as a dapper,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: upscale gentleman with a top hat and a coat, holding
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: a trident and doffing his cap to a gentleman with
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Swan's bathing in the background, and the caption is Father
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Thames is him self again, which is a beautiful note
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: to end the story of London's Great Stink and the
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: innovations that arose from this crisis. We do also want
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: to mention, of course, that the problem of river pollution
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: across the planet has not by any means been solved. Unfortunately,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: you can see various instances of incredibly vital river sources
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: being incredibly and some might even add irredeemably polluted, such
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: as the Ganga Ganjis in India, the Mississippi River here
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: in the United States, and on and on. The good
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: news is, however, that nowadays, thanks in large part to
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the efforts of people like John Snow, people like Basil
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: gat and more, we as a species are aware of
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: the supreme importance of sanitation, and hopefully, if you are
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: lucky enough to live near a river, lessons learned from
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: this strange episode of history have been applied to keep
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: your river safe and clean. That's going to wrap it
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: up for us today, folks. As always, we would like
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: to thank our super producer, Casey Pegram, and we'd like
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: to thank Alex Williams for composing our soundtrack. And we'd
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: also like to thank regular contributor Candice Gibson, who wrote
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: The Great Stink of London, for how stuff works, um,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: But most importantly, we'd like to thank you, and you
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: can contact us directly via Instagram the friends cerinal I
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: started a friend stir side note, I probably should run
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: that past Casey, but he seems okay with it. The
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: social media team is going to have a fit. Yes,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: yes they will have a fit, but check out our
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: friends turn now. They're still dogging us to make that
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Pinterest and I told them no, dice. You can also
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: find us, of course, on on Twitter and Facebook if
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't mention that earlier. But what do you do
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: if you say I have a great idea for an episode,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: I'd like to tell you about my experience living near
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: the river, but I don't want to go for all
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: that hooplah and brew ha ha of the social media
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: communication route. We have a another way for you to
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: reach us directly. Yeah, it's caught an email and it's
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: ridiculous at how stuffworks dot com, Um, and we hope
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: that you come back and hang with us next time
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: for another episode of ridiculous history.