Flush and Forget
A Podcast Of Unnecessary Detail
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The London Sewage System
In the 1830s, London's population exploded and people dumped their waste into rainwater drainage systems. This created open sewers full of human effluent flowing through the streets and into the river Thames. The first cholera outbreak in 1831 saw 5,000 people die but they didn't immediately connect that this was caused by the open sewers. Flushing toilets introduced to the public in 1851 caught on like a toilet on fire,. And this is when we hit the boiling hot summer of 1858, that big stink.
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