The Poisoned Thames
When the smell of a river forced parliament to act
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Beschreibung
Smell the history of 1858 London, when a river of filth forced the government to build the modern sewer.
"The Poisoned Thames – When the smell of a river forced parliament to act" is a sensory history of the summer of 1858, known as "The Great Stink." London, the capital of the most powerful empire on earth, was brought to its knees by the stench of its own waste. The river Thames had become an open sewer, and the heatwave made the air so foul that Parliament had to soak their curtains in chloride of lime just to continue debating.
Author Henry Thorne details the crisis that finally overcame bureaucratic inertia. He champions the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette, who designed the massive underground sewer network that still serves London today. The book illustrates the race against cholera and the engineering triumph that saved millions of lives.
"The Poisoned Thames" is a story about infrastructure as the backbone of civilization. It shows that sometimes, things have to get absolutely unbearable before governments are willing to invest in the invisible systems that keep us alive.
Autor*in
Henry Thorne
Author
Themen in »The Poisoned Thames«
The Great Stink Victorian London Sanitation Joseph Bazalgette Engineering Public Health Urban History