![]() ![]() ![]() Sewage cleaners beneath Lower Thames Street, 1974 Many of these had once been open streams, and " lost rivers" like the Fleet were brick-lined and covered over to become huge, hidden flows of waste. The plan involved building 1,100 miles of drains under London's streets, to feed into 82 miles of new brick-lined sewers, and carry the effluent to six "intercepting sewers". The new system would funnel the waste far downstream of the main city of London, eventually dumping it into the Thames Estuary at high tide. Bazalgette's plan was for an extensive underground system of sewers, joining up the patchwork of existing municipal drains. Parliament initially offered £2.5 million, somewhere between £240 million and over a billion pounds in today's values.īazalgette carefully reviewed 137 different proposals to handle the poo problem. ![]() Joseph William Bazalgette was the Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and had been hired specifically to take charge of the new sewers. The Times newspaper said that Members of Parliament had been "forced by sheer stench" to solve the sewer issue.Ĭollection of the National Portrait Gallery. It is no surprise that a bill was rushed through Parliament and became law in just 18 days, to provide more money to construct a massive new sewer scheme for London. Such was the overpowering smell from the Thames, the curtains of the Houses of Parliament were soaked in chloride of lime in a vain effort to block out the smell. It was believed that the smell itself, or "miasma", spread these plagues, and those who could afford to fled the stinking city. Water-borne diseases like cholera and typhoid fever swept through the population. The hot weather exposed the rotting human effluent and industrial waste polluting the water of the Thames. The summer of 1858 saw the "Great Stink" overwhelm London. The Metropolitan Board of Works had wanted to improve London's sewers for years, but didn't have enough money. Most of the inhabitant's faeces and urine was eventually dumped into the Thames, which also served as a source of water for drinking and washing. The increasing use of the flush toilet only made things worse, letting wealthy families dump their poo straight into the river. For centuries, the city had depended on a patchwork system of local waste disposal, relying on night-soil collectors who would empty local cesspits, and on the city's old rivers, like the Fleet and the Tyburn, now little more than open sewers. By the middle of the 19th century, the streets of London ran with human filth. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |