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The Great Stink

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the terrible stench of sewage in the Thames in central London in the hot summer of 1858 and the work of Joseph Bazalgette to fix it.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the stench from the River Thames in the hot summer of 1858 and how it appalled and terrified Londoners living and working beside it, including those in the new Houses of Parliament which were still under construction. There had been an outbreak of cholera a few years before in which tens of thousands had died, and a popular theory held that foul smells were linked to diseases. The source of the problem was that London's sewage, once carted off to fertilise fields had recently, thanks to the modern flushing systems, started to flow into the river and, thanks to the ebb and flow of the tides, was staying there and warming in the summer sun. The engineer Joseph Bazalgette was given the task to build huge new sewers to intercept the waste, a vast network, so changing the look of London and helping ensure there were no further cholera outbreaks from contaminated water.

The image above is from Punch, July 10th 1858 and it has this caption: The 'Silent Highway'-Man. "Your Money or your Life!"

With

Rosemary Ashton
Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London

Stephen Halliday
Author of β€˜The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis’

And

Paul Dobraszczyk
Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London

Available now

50 minutes

Last on

Thu 29 Dec 2022 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS








READING LIST

Peter Ackroyd, London Under (Chatto & Windus, 2011)

Rosemary Ashton, One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli and the Great Stink of 1858 (Yale University Press, 2017)

Paul Dobraszczyk, London’s Sewers (Shire Publications, 2014)

Stephen Halliday, The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis (History Press, 2001)

Stephen Halliday, The Great Filth: The War against Disease in Victorian England (Sutton, 2007)

Stephen Halliday, An Underground Guide to Sewers: or Down, Through and Out in Paris, London, New York, &c (Thames and Hudson, 2019)

Henry Mayhew (ed. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst), London Labour and the London Poor (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Donald J. Olsen, The Growth of Victorian London (HarperCollins, 1976)

Paul Talling, London's Lost Rivers (Random House Books, 2011)


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Broadcasts

  • Thu 29 Dec 2022 09:00
  • Thu 29 Dec 2022 21:30

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