Plans for London's sewers
Sewer-1-18581 - .PDF file.
It took a big stink to bring about change to London’s sewers
In the summer of 1858, the ’Great Stink’ of London had become so overpowering that it drove members of Parliament from the chambers of the House of Commons. It’s no surprise then that a bill was rushed through Parliament in 18 days to fund the construction of a new sewer system.
The Engineer reported on the results of the Royal Commission, which was appointed to investigate the best way of dealing with London’s growing waste problem.
’To avoid the exposure of deposited matter and from the processes necessary for its manufacture into solid manure, the reservoirs are proposed to be detached lengths of large sewers,’ the article said.
The design was an attempt to replace the open sewer system where waste was dumped in the Thames, resulting in cholera outbreaks and an overwhelming stench. It centred on detached embankments between Southwark and Vauxhall bridges that would act as reservoirs for waste.
The article continued: ’The sewage in these reservoirs should be always deodorised and they would have no external openings in the shape of gullies for the emission of foul air, nor would offensive smells be allowed to escape from them.’
The sewage was proposed to be pumped away through pipes connecting the reservoirs to the sea. The commission estimated the total cost of the improvements to be £3.3m, adding that they would also improve transport and reactional activities.
The Metropolitan Board of Works’ chief engineer, Joseph Bazalgette, was responsible for designing and building the huge system of intercepting sewers, which is still in use today.
The sewers were indeed a great example of brilliant civil engineering. The victorians certainly made some of the biggest progress step-changes ever. The last 50 years have seen the UK become a short-term view economy; as demonstrated by the pathetic attempts to get PFI to fund nuclear power stations, roads and rails, and don’t mention Carillion!
You are correct Mike – if you plot a graph of ‘length of life’ against ‘date’, the notable improvements in ‘length of life’ in UK towns occur following improvements in sanitation and/or provision of clean drinking water. (Strangely, there aren’t such large improvements following mass immunisation!) I suspect that this has much to do with the huge loss of ‘children under 3 years’ that you get with poor sanitation, etc.
Thank you Graham. Prevention is surely much better than cure.
Noted your immunisation statistic: very interesting, did not know this.
Presumably the advent of soap in regular use -for bodies and clothes- was a factor as well!
I am assured by those with Ecclesiastical knowledge that the original reason for the screens-later gilded and decorated- in churches was to keep separate the ‘learned’ (clerics) from the ‘lay’ (lower orders) so that the diseases and dirt (and smell) of the latter would not contaminate the former. Indeed the concept of ‘Sunday best’ clothes -worn to Church and then replaced by working clothes for the rest of the week- probably played a part in this. It certainly was a great benefit to the nascent textile industry at the start of the so-called Industrial Revolution.