Until 1815, the public sewers were not for sewage. They existed purely to take rainwater to the Thames. But when you flush it, what you send around the S-bend is a small quantity of fertilizer and a much larger quantity of water. The Great Exhibition was one of the chief culprits in making the water closet. George Jennings offered to put his water closets in the pavilions providing that he could charge a penny for their use. That's where the spend a penny comes from, isn't it? Exactly.
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 ‘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