As the Thames bubbles in the heat, ministers confront the greatest challenge of the age, namely a very large bill and a very small window.
LONDON, England (Wayback) – Members of Parliament announced on Tuesday that they had solved the smell coming from the Thames by hanging curtains over the windows, soaking the curtains in chemicals, and then leaving the building. A spokesman for the House said the measures were “robust, reasonable, and largely ineffective.”
The smell, which has been described by witnesses as “indescribable” and then described at length, rises from the river each day as the heat climbs. Temperatures that summer reached about 94.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to make a river of sewage smell like a river of sewage.
A Summer to Remember
Londoners have lived beside their waste for years. The population has grown, the pipes have not, and the Thames has become the nation’s most popular dumping ground, though few would say so at a dinner party. Cholera and typhoid spread quickly that summer, and many people blamed the smell itself, which they called the miasma.
The theory of the day held that bad air was the cause of disease. The theory had one drawback, which is that it was wrong, and one advantage, which is that the air really was bad. Experts argued that if the stink could kill, someone would have noticed by now. They are still arguing.
The Curtain Strategy
Parliament’s first response was practical and bold. As one history site records, the government doused the curtains of the Houses of Parliament in chloride of lime. The result was a chamber that smelled of river and chemicals at the same time, a combination that Members described as “worse than either on its own.”
A Member who requested anonymity explained the logic. “The river is outside,” he said. “The curtains are inside. If you put something between the river and the room, then the river is no longer in the room. That is a basic principle of government.” Asked whether the smell had left the room, he said it was “negotiating.”
Other organisations proved less patient. The law courts at Westminster, according to the account of one researcher, were adjourned, unable to work through the stink, which makes this the only recorded occasion on which a smell has halted British justice. Barristers were reported to be pleased with the interruption, as it meant they could bill for the delay.
The Press Weighs In
Newspapers took the matter seriously. The City Press wrote that gentility of speech is at an end, which is the Victorian way of saying that everyone has started swearing. Benjamin Disraeli is reported to have called the river a “Stygian pool,” a phrase that history students may use in any essay about the nineteenth century to impress an examiner.
The cartoonists were less restrained. Illustrations of the Thames as a river of death became so popular that one newspaper vendor was heard to say he had sold out of every paper that contained a drawing of a skeleton in a boat.
The Expert Nobody Heard
The government had been warned. Years earlier, the scientist Michael Faraday had investigated the river and reported on its condition, and even that was not enough to kick the government into action. Ministers were reportedly impressed with the report, and filed it carefully in a drawer with the other things they intended to read.
The doctor John Snow, who argued that disease came from contaminated water and not from bad air, died in 1858, the year of the stink. His arguments were largely dismissed, which is a polite way of saying that he was right and that nobody wanted to hear it.
Enter the Engineer
The solution came from a chief engineer named Joseph Bazalgette, who had a plan and, more importantly, a government that suddenly wanted one. His scheme called for 82 miles of intercepting sewers and 1,100 miles of street sewers, along with pumping stations that would lift the waste to be carried away downstream. Parliament, forced to act by the sheer power of its collective gag reflex, funded the plan. A cynic might say that this is what happens when a Member can smell the bill.
The project was enormous. According to one account, Bazalgette’s sewers took almost 20 years to complete, and he was knighted for his efforts in 1874. The new embankments along the Thames gave London a handsome riverside, which proves that sometimes the best way to get a promenade is to have a catastrophe first.
A Note for Students of Modern Farming
Anyone who thinks sewage is only a Victorian problem should consider that the fertiliser trade is full of strong opinions. A farm.fm report observes that fertilizer now costs more than the land, and a Victorian cabinet minister, had he known, would have been thrilled to learn that the stuff in the Thames was once worth something. Instead, he flushed it.
The Lesson
The Great Stink is taught to 13 to 24 year olds as a lesson in public health, engineering and politics. The lesson most students take away is that governments act when the problem reaches their own nose. The second lesson is that curtains do not work.
Readers who enjoy the longer view of London’s disasters can find more at the London satire pages at the London Prat, where the smell has been complained about since 1961 and has never fully been solved.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/