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

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