The Big Stink
The summer London smelled so bad Parliament almost dissolved
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Beschreibung
Travel back to 1858, when the Thames smelled so terrible that it forced the British government to finally build a sewer system.
"The Big Stink – The summer London smelled so bad Parliament almost dissolved" focuses on the summer of 1858. For centuries, Londoners dumped their waste directly into the Thames. In the heatwave of '58, the river fermented into a cloud of methane and hydrogen sulfide so thick it was called "The Great Stink."
Historian Arthur Pipe describes the crisis: The curtains of the House of Commons were soaked in chloride of lime to mask the smell, but MPs still fled the building retching. This olfactory assault finally forced the government to act. They hired engineer Joseph Bazalgette to build the massive sewer network that still serves London today.
"The Big Stink" is a smelly history of civilization. It illustrates that societies often ignore critical infrastructure problems until the consequences literally land on the doorstep of the ruling class. It is the story of how a terrible smell saved millions of lives from cholera.
Autor*in
Arthur Pipe
Author
Themen in »The Big Stink«
Great Stink London 1858 Joseph Bazalgette Cholera Public Health Engineering Urban Planning