Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society How Filthy Were the Victorians?
Jan 30, 2026
Lee Jackson, historian of Victorian urban life and author of Dirty Old London, explains Victorian sanitation and public toilets. He discusses the rise of the sanitary question, clashes between miasma and germ theory, and how flush toilets and sewers reshaped cities. He also covers burial crises, public baths, class gaps in bathing, and the political crisis that built modern sewers.
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Sanitation As A Victorian Cultural Lens
- Victorians framed public health as a sanitary question rather than modern 'hygiene' tied to germ theory.
- Sanitation became a cultural lens like today's environmentalism, shaping policy and everyday choices.
Cholera Pushed Sanitary Reform
- Cholera's arrival in the 1830s forced Victorians to confront urban disease despite lacking germ theory.
- Miasma (bad air) dominated thinking and still led to major public-health projects like sewers.
Right Solutions, Wrong Reasons
- Miasma theory linked bad smells to disease, which plausibly motivated removing cesspools and sewage from populated areas.
- Those remedies (sewers) happened to solve waterborne disease even if the reasoning was wrong.
