Prior to the 1900’s, London’s River Thames had been used for centuries as the city’s open sewer – a dumping ground for industrial, animal, and human wastes. As the city grew, the amount of raw sewage it produced grew exponentially. During the hot summer of 1858, London was literally brought to its knees by the overwhelming stench of its River Thames – The Great Stink. It’s vapors seeped throughout the streets, houses, and even into the hallowed halls of palaces and Parliament.
The city came to a standstill. People refused to leave their homes. Government and industry could barely function. Citizens demanded action! Clutching white handkerchiefs to their noses, Parliament grudgingly agreed an urgent solution was needed both to purify London’s “evil odour” and to quell its frequent cholera epidemics. The Great Stink led to one of the greatest advancements in urban engineering to date: Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s revolutionary Victorian Sewer System.
For centuries, the “Royal River” was an open sewer for London’s waste. As the city’s population doubled between 1800 and 1850 – so did its sewage. From 1831 onward, London also suffered through 3 cholera epidemics. Cholera is a disease caused by consuming fecal-contaminated water. What made London’s water lethal was that people were drinking it piped directly from the Thames! The result was waves of dysentery, typhoid and most of all cholera. The so-called “Victorian plague” had no cure – and even the wealthiest were not immune.
The cholera epidemic of 1853-1854 claimed over 10,000 lives.
In 1849 Dr. John Snow, a London physician, published a paper ‘On the Mode of Communication of Cholera‘, in which he theorized that cholera was waterborne. He described how “The wretched poor in Lambeth obtained their water by dipping a pail into the Thames.” When cholera struck in 1848, it was the poor people who suffered most. Over 1,500 of Lambeth’s waterfront population died. Snow calculated that its households were five times more likely to contract cholera than other districts.
However, the “Miasma Theory” that diseases were caused by foul air was still the medical belief. Five years later in 1854, Dr. Snow investigated a cholera epidemic in Soho. He deduced that the cause was contaminated drinking water from a Broad Street pump located just feet from a waste cesspool. Public health officials were gradually convinced and the pump handle removed. It was clear the reeking river correlated with the city’s health, and needed to be cleaned once and for all.
The scorching summer of 1858 finally brought things to a head. As the heat increased, the vast layers of waste in the Thames began to ferment in the sun. The result was a smell so disgusting and revolting it made people nauseous. It spawned accounts of “men struck down with the stench from the river banks.”
As London lacked any sewer infrastructure, increasingly filthy gutters and ditches all emptied into the Thames. Then the wastes simply bobbed to and fro on the river with the tides. The invention of the water closet (inside flush toilets) only made things worse, forcing ever more human ‘effluent’ into the river. Clear to all, the main contaminant was floating on the surface of the Thames: human feces
One of the most vocal critics was English chemist Michael Faraday.
He staunchly supported a complete reconstruction of London’s toxic river. In 1855, he sent a letter to the editor of The London Times -‘Observations on the Filth of the Thames.’ ‘The whole river was an opaque pale brown fluid. Father Thames was nothing more than a real sewer.’ It soon became the public’s rallying point, crying for the restoration of the Thames.
Members of Parliament knew that any action would be both expensive and disruptive. They held kerchiefs to their noses. They dousing the curtains of Parliament in a mixture of chloride and lime to mask the smell. When that didn’t work, they considered moving the entire government to the countryside. With the bodies of cholera victims piling up, the people and press pushed for change. The politicians finally were forced to act.
Benjamin Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, lamented how, “that noble river had become a Stygian pool, reeking with ineffable and unbearable horror.” He introduced legislation for the purification of the Thames and the main sewer drainage of London. Within a record 18 days, a bill was created, passed, and signed into law that would refurbish the entirety of the sewers and the River Thames.
The outcome of the “Great Stink” was one of history’s most advanced achievements in urban planning. It was a monumental construction project that dramatically improved the London sewers and well as public health. You’ll see no sign of it today from red double-decker tour buses, but hidden beneath the city streets stretches a wonder of the industrial world – the vast Victorian sewers that still flow today.
The newly formed Metropolitan Board of Works was empowered to raise £3M and start work immediately on rescuing the Thames. Responsibility for the solution fell upon the shoulders of Joseph Bazalgette, Chief Engineer of the Board of Works. He had spent several years drawing up plans for an ambitious new sewer system and at last got the go-ahead to begin construction.
Bazalgette’s ambitious plan proposed a network of main sewers, running eastward, parallel to the river, which would take both rain and waste. The sewers would then conduct it to the “outfalls” on the northern and southern sides of the Thames estuary. From there, the tides would take it well beyond the city, from where it would flow more easily out to sea.
Parliament approved expenditure of £2,500,000 (£300 million today).
The network included 82 miles of huge new sewers, some larger than the new underground train tunnels, also under construction at time. Pumping stations were built at Chelsea, Deptford, Abbey Mills and Crossness to force wastes to the eastern outfalls. These stations were architecturally marvels, cathedral-like in their design, dimensions and ornamentation. There were symbolic of the grandeur of the Victorian age. This remarkable feat of engineering replaced over 150 miles of old sewers and constructed over 1,000 miles of new ones, requiring 318 million bricks.
The plan would also include the construction of controversial embankments along the Thames – the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea embankments. London’s embankments were designed not only to carry sewer tunnels, but also to cleanse the river by narrowing and strengthening its flow through city center. The high embankments also acted as a flood defense. It is on the Victoria Embankment that a monument to the engineer, Joseph Bazalgette [knighted in 1875] may be found.
Embanking the river was unpopular at the time. Many houses, warehouses and businesses with river frontages lost their access to the Thames. In some areas whole stretches of the waterfront, including streets and wharfs, were demolished with the loss of entire communities. Lower Fore Street in Lambeth was completely torn down and replaced by the Albert Embankment.
Despite the costs, Bazalgette’s new sewerage system proved a success. It succeeded in removing the smell of raw sewage from the Thames in London. According to the London Observer, “every penny spent is sunk in a good cause.” The work almost immediately proved its worth. In 1866, most of London was spared from a cholera epidemic which hit the lower East End, the only section yet to be connected to the new sewer system.
What was impressive about Bazalgette’s design was both its simplicity and foresight. A classic piece of Victorian over-engineering, the new system was planned to accommodate a population growth of 50%, from 3 to 4.5 million. Within 30 years of its completion, the city’s population had in fact doubled again, reaching 6 million. So with these monumental changes, The Great Stink slowly began to dissipate and Londoners breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
It’s testament to the quality of design and construction that this 19th century system remained the backbone of London’s sewers in the 20th century as well. But the backbone is now severely strained. With an ever expanding population, dramatic storms due to climate change, and the loss of green space to soak up run-off, the Thames is once again at risk.
Today, Bazalgette’s Victorian sewers struggle to cope with the wastes created by a modern London. Millions of tons of raw sewage are once again spilling into the Thames. To remedy this, construction of a new ‘mega’ sewer was undertaken. The mission of the Thames Tideway Scheme echoes that of Bazalgette over 160 years earlier: “… to clean up our river for the good of the city, its wildlife and you.“
Construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel – or “Super Sewer” – began in 2016 with completion delayed until in 2025 due to the COVID pandemic. One of the largest civil engineering projects the United Kingdom has ever seen, the tunnel is a “visionary work of modern times in the spirit of Bazalgette”.
Sir Joseph Bazalgette shared some wisdom based on his own experiences during the Great Stink: “Individuals are apt to look after their own interests first, and to forget the general effect upon the public. It is necessary that there should be somebody to watch the public interests,” – wise words indeed.