The Great Stink was an event in central London in July and August 1858

during which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human
waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River
Thames. The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing
and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The
miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, and
three outbreaks of cholera prior to the Great Stink were blamed on the
ongoing problems with the river.
The smell, and people's fears of its possible effects, prompted action from
the local and national administrators who had been looking at possible
solutions for the problem. The authorities accepted a proposal from the civil
engineer Joseph Bazalgette to move the effluent eastwards along a series of
interconnecting sewers that sloped towards outfalls beyond the metropolitan
area. Work on high-, mid- and low-level systems for the new Northern and
Southern Outfall Sewers began at the beginning of 1859 and lasted until
1875. To aid the drainage, pumping stations were placed to lift the sewage
from lower levels into higher pipes. Two of the more ornate stations, Abbey
Mills in Stratford and Crossness on the Erith Marshes, are listed for protection
by English Heritage. Bazalgette's plan introduced the three embankments to
London in which the sewers ranthe Victoria, Chelsea and Albert
Embankments.
Bazalgette's work ensured that sewage was no longer dumped onto the
shores of the Thames and brought an end to the cholera outbreaks; his
actions mean he probably saved more lives than any other Victorian official.
His sewer system operates into the 21st century, servicing a city that has
grown to over eight million. The historian Peter Ackroyd argues that
Bazalgette should be considered a London hero.
Brick sewers had been built in London from the 17th century when sections
of the Fleet and Walbrook rivers were covered for that purpose.[a] In the
century preceding 1856, over a hundred sewers were constructed in London,
and at that date the city had around 200,000 cesspits and 360 sewers. Some
of the cesspits leaked methane and other gases, which often caught fire and
exploded, leading to loss of life, while many of the sewers were in a poor
state of repair.[2] During the early 19th century improvements had been
undertaken in the supply of water to Londoners, and by 1858 many of the
city's medieval wooden water pipes were being replaced with iron ones. This,
combined with the introduction of flushing toilets and the rising of the city's
population from just under one million to three million,[b] led to more water
being flushed into the sewers, along with the associated effluent. The outfalls

from factories, slaughterhouses and other industrial activities put further

strain on the already failing system. Much of this outflow either overflowed,
or was discharged directly, into the Thames.[4][5]
The scientist Michael Faraday described the situation in a letter to The Times
in July 1855: shocked at the state of the Thames, he dropped pieces of white
paper into the river to "test the degree of opacity". His conclusion was that
"Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were
visible at the surface, even in water of this kind. ... The smell was very bad,
and common to the whole of the water; it was the same as that which now
comes up from the gully-holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time
a real sewer."[6] The smell from the river was so bad that in 1857 the
government poured chalk lime, chloride of lime and carbolic acid into the
waterway to ease the stench.[7][8]
The prevailing thought in Victorian healthcare concerning the transmission of
contagious diseases was the miasma theory, which held that most
communicable diseases were caused by the inhalation of contaminated air.
This contamination could take the form of the odour of rotting corpses or
sewage, but also rotting vegetation, or the exhaled breath of someone
already diseased.[9] Miasma was believed by most to be the vector of
transmission of cholera, which was on the rise in 19th-century Europe. The
disease was deeply feared by all, because of the speed with which it could
spread, and its high fatality rates.[10]
London's first major cholera epidemic struck in 1831, when the disease
claimed 6,536 victims. In 184849 there was a second outbreak in which
14,137 London residents died, and this was followed by a further outbreak in
185354 in which 10,738 died. During the second outbreak, John Snow, a
London-based physician, noticed that the rates of death were higher in those
areas supplied by the Lambeth and the Southwark and Vauxhall water
companies. In 1849 he published a paper, On the Mode of Communication of
Cholera, which posited the theory of the water-borne transmission of disease,
rather than the miasma theory; little attention was paid to the paper.[11][12]
Following the third cholera outbreak in 1854, Snow published an update to
his treatise, after he focused on the effects in Broad Street, Soho.[12] Snow
had removed the handle from the local water pump, thus preventing access
to the contaminated water, with a resulting fall in deaths. It was later
established that the well from which the water was drawn had a leaking
sewer running nearby.[12]
Local government
The civic infrastructure overseeing the management of London's sewers had
gone through several changes in the 19th century. In 1848 the Metropolitan
Commission of Sewers (MCS) was established at the urging of the social

reformer Edwin Chadwick and a Royal Commission.[13][14][c] The Commission

superseded seven of the eight authorities that had managed London's
sewers since the time of Henry VIII;[d] it was the first time that a unitary
power had full control over the capital's sanitation facilities. The Building Act
1844 had ensured that all new buildings had to be connected to a sewer, not
a cesspool, and the commission set about connecting cesspools to sewers, or
removing them altogether.[16] Because of the fear that the miasma from the
sewers would cause the spread of disease, Chadwick and his successor, the
pathologist John Simon, ensured that the sewers were regularly flushed
through, a policy that resulted in more sewage being discharged into the
Thames.[17]

Joseph Bazalgette in the 1870s

In August 1849 the MCS appointed Joseph Bazalgette to the position of
assistant surveyor. He had been working as a consultant engineer in the
railway industry until overwork had brought about a serious breakdown in his
health; his appointment to the commission was his first position on his return
to employment.[18] Working under the Chief Engineer, Frank Foster, he began
to develop a more systematic plan for the city's sewers. The stress of his
position was too much for Foster, and he died in 1852; Bazalgette was
promoted into his position, and continued refining and developing the plans
for the development of the sewerage system. The Metropolis Management
Act 1855 replaced the commission with the Metropolitan Board of Works
(MBW), which took control of the sewers.[18][19][e]
By June 1856 Bazalgette completed his definitive plans, which provided for
small, local sewers about 3 feet (0.9 m) in diameter to feed into a series of
larger sewers until they drained into main outflow pipes 11 feet (3.4 m) high.
A Northern and Southern Outfall Sewer were planned to manage the waste
for each side of the river.[21] London was mapped into high-, middle- and low-

level areas, with a main sewer servicing each; a series of pumping stations
was planned to remove the waste towards the east of the city. Bazalgette's
plan was based on that of Foster, but was larger in scale, and allowed for
more of a rise in population than Foster's from 3 to 4.5 million.[22][23]
Bazalgette submitted his plans to Sir Benjamin Hall, the First Commissioner
of Works.[f] Hall had reservations about the outfallsthe discharge points of a
waste outlets into other bodies of waterfrom the sewers, which he said
were still within the bounds of the capital, and were therefore unacceptable.
During the course of the ongoing discussions Bazalgette refined and
modified his plans, in line with Hall's demands. In December 1856 Hall
submitted the plans to a group of three consultant engineers, Captain
Douglas Strutt Galton of the Royal Engineers, James Simpson, an engineer
with two water companies, and Thomas Blackwood, the chief engineer on the
Kennet and Avon Canal. The trio reported back to Hall in July 1857 with
proposed changes to the positions of the outfall, which he passed on to the
MBW in October. The new proposed discharge points were to be open sewers,
running 15 miles (24 km) beyond the positions proposed by the Board; the
cost of their plans was to be over 5.4 million, considerably more than the
maximum estimate of Bazalgette's plan, which was 2.4 million.[25][g] In
February 1858 a general election saw the fall of Lord Palmerston's first
government, which was replaced by Lord Derby's second ministry; Lord John
Manners replaced Hall, and Benjamin Disraeli was appointed Leader of the
House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer.[27]
June to August 1858
Punch magazine's view of Father Thames, July 1858

A workman uses lime to disguise the smell of the Thames, reflecting the
actions of Parliament, who had dipped their curtains in lime chloride.

"Father Thames introducing his offspring to the fair city of London"; the
children are representative of diphtheria, scrofula and cholera.
By mid-1858 the problems with the Thames had been building for several
years. In his novel Little Dorritpublished as a serial between 1855 and 1857
Charles Dickens wrote that the Thames was "a deadly sewer ... in the place
of a fine, fresh river".[28] In a letter to a friend, Dickens said: "I can certify that
the offensive smells, even in that short whiff, have been of a most head-andstomach-distending nature",[29] while the social scientist and journalist
George Godwin wrote that "in parts the deposit is more than six feet deep"
on the Thames foreshore, and that "the whole of this is thickly impregnated
with impure matter".[30] In June 1858 the temperatures in the shade in
London averaged in the mid-30s C (9397 F)rising to 48 C (118 F) in
the sun.[7][31] Combined with an extended spell of dry weather, the level of
the Thames dropped and raw effluent from the sewers remained on the
banks of the river.[7] Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attempted to take a
pleasure cruise on the Thames, but returned to shore within a few minutes
because the smell was so terrible.[32] The press soon began calling the event
"The Great Stink";[33] the leading article in the City Press observed that
"Gentility of speech is at an endit stinks, and whoso once inhales the stink
can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it". [34]
A writer for The Standard concurred with the opinion. One of its reporters
described the river as a "pestiferous and typhus breeding abomination",[35]
while a second wrote that "the amount of poisonous gases which is thrown
off is proportionate to the increase of the sewage which is passed into the
stream".[36] The leading article in The Illustrated London News commented
that:
"We can colonise the remotest ends of the earth; we can conquer India; we
can pay the interest of the most enormous debt ever contracted; we can
spread our name, and our fame, and our fructifying wealth to every part of
the world; but we cannot clean the River Thames."[37]
By June the stench from the river had become so bad that business in
Parliament was affected, and the curtains on the river side of the building
were soaked in lime chloride to overcome the smell. The measure was not
successful, and discussions were held about possibly moving the business of

government to Oxford or St Albans.[38] The Examiner reported that Disraeli,

on attending one of the committee rooms, left shortly afterwards with the
other members of the committee, "with a mass of papers in one hand, and
with his pocket handkerchief applied to his nose" because the smell was so
bad.[39] The disruption to its legislative work led to questions being raised in
the House of Commons. According to Hansard, the Member of Parliament
(MP) John Brady informed Manners that members were unable to use either
the Committee Rooms or the Library because of the stench, and asked the
minister "if the noble Lord has taken any measures for mitigating the
effluvium and discontinuing the nuisance". Manners replied that the Thames
was not under his jurisdiction.[40] Four days later a second MP said to Manners
that "By a perverse ingenuity, one of the noblest of rivers has been changed
into a cesspool, and I wish to ask whether Her Majesty's Government intend
to take any steps to remedy the evil?" Manners pointed out "that Her
Majesty's Government have nothing whatever to do with the state of the
Thames".[41] The satirical magazine Punch commented that "The one
absorbing topic in both Houses of Parliament ... was the Conspiracy to Poison
question. Of the guilt of that old offender, Father Thames, there was the most
ample evidence".[42]
At the height of the stink, between 200 and 250 tons of lime were being used
near the mouths of the sewers that discharged into the Thames, and men
were employed spreading lime onto the Thames foreshore at low tide; the
cost was 1,500 per week.[43][h] On 15 June Disraeli tabled the Metropolis
Local Management Amendment Bill, a proposed amendment to the 1855 Act;
in the opening debate he called the Thames "a Stygian pool, reeking with
ineffable and intolerable horrors".[44] The Bill put the responsibility to clear up
the Thames on the MBW, and stated that "as far as may be possible" the
sewerage outlets should not be within the boundaries of London; it also
allowed the Board to borrow 3 million, which was to be repaid from a
3 pence levy on all London households for the next forty years. The terms
favoured Bazalgette's original 1856 plan, and overcame Hall's objection to it.
[45][46]
The leading article in The Times observed that "Parliament was all but
compelled to legislate upon the great London nuisance by the force of sheer
stench".[47] The bill was debated in late July and was passed into law on 2
August.
Construction

Construction of the sewers in 1859, near Old Ford, Bow in East London
Bazalgette's plans for the 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of additional street sewers
(collecting both effluent and rainwater), which would feed into 82 miles
(132 km) of main interconnecting sewers, were put out to tender between
1859 and 1865. Four hundred draftsmen worked on the detailed plans and
sectional views for the first phase of the building process.[49][50] There were
several engineering challenges to be overcome, particularly the fact that
parts of Londonincluding the area around Lambeth and Pimlicolie below
the high-water mark.[51] Bazalgette's plan for the low-level areas was to lift
the sewage from low-lying sewers at key points into the mid- and high-level
sewers, which would then drain with the aid of gravity, out towards the
eastern outfalls at a gradient of 2 feet per mile (38 cm/km).[50][52]
Bazalgette was a proponent of the use of Portland cement, a material
stronger than standard cement, but with a weakness when over-heated. To
overcome the problem he instituted a quality control system to test batches
of cement, that is described by the historian Stephen Halliday as both
"elaborate" and "draconian". The results were fed back to the manufacturers,
who altered their production processes to further improve the product. One
of the cement manufacturers commented that the MBW were the first public
body to use such testing processes.[53] The progress of Bazalgette's works
was reported favourably in the press. Paul Dobraszczyk, the architectural
historian, describes the coverage as presenting many of the workers "in a
positive, even heroic, light",[54] and in 1861 The Observer described the
progress on the sewers as "the most expensive and wonderful work of
modern times".[55] Construction costs were so high that in July 1863 an
additional 1.2 million was lent to the MBW to cover the cost of the work.[56]

Southern drainage system

The octagon room at Crossness Pumping Station, Belvedere, Kent

Edward, Prince of Wales, opening the Crossness works, 1865
The southern system, across the less populated suburbs of London, was the
smaller and easier part of the system to build. Three main sewers ran from
Putney, Wandsworth and Norwood until they linked together in Deptford. At
that point a pumping station lifted the effluent 21 feet (6.4 m) into the main
outflow sewer, which ran to the Crossness Pumping Station on the Erith
Marshes, where it was discharged into the Thames at high tide.[57] The newly
built station at Crossness was designed by Bazalgette and a consultant
engineer, Charles Henry Driver, a proponent of the use of cast iron as a
building material.[58] The building was in a Romanesque style and the interior
contains architectural cast ironwork which English Heritage describe as
important.[59] The power for pumping the large amount of sewage was
provided by four massive beam engines, named Victoria, Prince Consort,
Albert Edward and Alexandra, which were manufactured by James Watt and
Co.[59][60][61]
The station was opened in April 1865 by the Prince of Walesthe future King
Edward VIIwho officially started the engines.[62] The ceremony, which was
attended by other members of royalty, MPs, the Lord Mayor of London and
the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, was followed by a dinner for 500
within the building.[63] The ceremony marked the completion of construction
of the Southern Outfall Sewers, and the beginning of their operation.[64]

Map of London showing the main, intercepting, storm relief and outfall
sewers. The route of Bazalgette's sewers is shown in heavy black.[65][66]
With the successful completion of the southern outflow, one of the board
members of the MBW, an MP named Miller, proposed a bonus for Bazalgette.
The board agreed, and were prepared to pay the engineer 6,000three
times his annual salarywith an additional 4,000 to be shared among his
three assistants. Although the idea was subsequently dropped following
criticism, Halliday observes that the large amounts discussed "at a time
when parsimony was the dominant characteristic of public expenditure is a
firm indication of the depth of public interest and approval that appears to
have characterised the work."[67][i]
Northern drainage system
Work began on the system on 31 January 1859,[18] but the builders
encountered numerous problems in construction, including a labourers' strike
in 185960, hard frosts in winter, and heavier than normal rainfall. The rain
was so heavy in June 1862 that an accident occurred at the works re-building
the Fleet sewer. The deep excavations were running parallel to the
excavation of a cutting at Clerkenwell for the Metropolitan Railway (now the
Metropolitan line), and the 8 12 ft (2.6 m) wall dividing the two trenches
collapsed, spilling the waters of the Fleet onto Victoria Street, damaging the
gas and water mains.[68][69] The northern side of the Thames was the more
populous, housing two-thirds of London's population, and the works had to
proceed through congested streets and overcome such urban hurdles as
canals, bridges and railway lines.[70]
The high-level sewerthe most northern of the worksran from Hampstead
Heath to Stoke Newington and across Victoria Park, where it joined with the
eastern end of the mid-level sewer. The mid-level sewer began in the west at
Bayswater and ran along Oxford Street, through Clerkenwell and Bethnal

Green, before the connection. This combined main sewer ran to the Abbey
Mills Pumping Station in Stratford, where it was joined by the eastern end of
the low-level sewer. The pumps at Abbey Mills lifted the effluent from the
low-level sewer 36 feet (11 m) into the main sewer. This main sewer ran 5
miles (8 km)along what is now known as the Greenwayto the outfall at
Beckton.[17][71]

Thames Embankment under construction in 1865

A cross section of the Thames Embankment, showing the sewers running

next to the river side
Like the Crossness Pumping Station, Abbey Mills was a joint design by
Bazalgette and Driver. Above the centre of the engine-house was an ornate
dome that, Dobraszczyk considers, gives the building a "superficial
resemblance ... to a Byzantine church".[72] The architectural historian
Nikolaus Pevsner, in his Buildings of England, thought the building showed
"exciting architecture applied to the most foul purposes"; he went on to
describe it as "an unorthodox mix, vaguely Italian Gothic in style but with
tiers of Byzantine windows and a central octagonal lantern that adds a
gracious Russian flavour".[73]
To provide the drainage for the low-level sewers, in February 1864 Bazalgette
began building three embankments along the shores of the Thames. On the
northern side he built the Victoria Embankment, which runs from

Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge, and the Chelsea Embankment, running

from Millbank to the Cadogan Pier at Chelsea. The southern side contains the
Albert Embankment, from the Lambeth end of Westminster Bridge to
Vauxhall.[74] He ran the sewers along the banks of the Thames, building up
walls on the foreshore, running the sewer pipes inside and infilling around
them.[75] The works claimed over 52 acres (21 ha) of land from the Thames;
the Victoria Embankment had the added benefit of relieving the congestion
on the pre-existing roads between Westminster and City.[70][76] The cost of
building the embankments was estimated at 1.71 million, of which
450,000 was used for purchasing the necessary river-front properties, which
tended to be for light industrial use.[77][78][j] The Embankment project was seen
as being nationally important and, with the Queen unable to attend because
of illness, the Victoria Embankment was opened by the Prince of Wales in July
1870.[79][77] The Albert Embankment had been completed in November 1869,
while the Chelsea Embankment was opened in July 1874.[80][81]
Bazalgette considered the Embankment project "one of the most difficult and
intricate things the ... [MBW] have had to do",[18] and shortly after the
Chelsea Embankment was opened, he was knighted.[82] In 1875 the work on
the western drainage was completed, and the system became operational.[18]
[83]
The building work had required 318 million bricks and 880,000 cubic yards
(670,000 m3) of concrete and mortar; the final cost was approximately
6.5 million.[84][85][k]
Legacy

Bazalgette as the "Sewer Snake", Punch, 1883[86]

In 1866 there was a further cholera outbreak in London that claimed 5,596
lives, although it was confined to an area of the East End between Aldgate
and Bow.[87] At the time that was a part of London which had not been
connected to Bazalgette's system, and 93 per cent of the fatalities occurred
within the region. The fault lay with the East London Water Company, who
discharged their sewage half a mile (805 m) downstream from their
reservoir: the sewage was being carried upstream into the reservoir on the
incoming tide, contaminating the area's drinking water. The outbreak, and
the diagnosis of its causes, led to the acceptance that cholera was waterborne, not transmitted by miasma. The Lancet, relating details of the
investigation into the incident by Dr William Farr, stated that his report "will
render irresistible the conclusions at which he has arrived in regard to the
influence of the water-supply in causation of the epidemic." It was the last
outbreak of the disease in the capital.[88]
In 1878 a Thames pleasure-steamer, the SS Princess Alice, collided with the
collier Bywell Castle and sank, causing over 650 deaths. The accident took
place close to the outfalls and questions were raised in the British press over
whether the sewage was responsible for some of the deaths.[89] In the 1880s
further fears over possible health concerns because of the outfalls led to the
MBW purifying sewage at Crossness and Beckton, rather than dumping the
untreated waste into the river,[90] and a series of six sludge boats were
ordered to ship effluent into the North Sea for dumping. The first boat
commissioned was named the SS Bazalgette, which remained in service until
December 1998, when the dumping stopped, and an incinerator was used to
dispose of the waste.[91] The sewers were expanded in the late 19th century
and again in the early 20th century.[84] The drainage network is, as of 2015,
managed by Thames Water, and is used by up to eight million people a day.
The company states that "the system is struggling to cope with the demands
of 21st-century London".[92]
Crossness Pumping Station remained in use until the mid-1950s when it was
replaced. The engines were too large to remove and were left in situ,
although they fell into a state of disrepair. The station itself became a grade I
listed building with the Ministry of Public Building and Works in June 1970
(since replaced by English Heritage).[59][l] The building and its engines are, as
of 2015, under restoration by the Crossness Engines Trust. The president of
the trust is the British television producer Peter Bazalgette, the great-greatgrandson of Joseph.[94][95] As of 2015 part of the Abbey Mill facility continues

to operate as a sewage pumping station.[96][97] The building's large double

chimneys were removed during the Second World War following fears that
they could be used by the Luftwaffe as landmarks for navigation,[98] and the
building became a grade II* listed building with the Ministry of Works in
November 1974.[99]
The provision of an integrated and fully functioning sewer system for the
capital, together with the associated drop in cholera cases, led the historian
John Doxat to state that Bazalgette "probably did more good, and saved
more lives, than any single Victorian official".[100] Bazalgette continued to
work at the MBW until 1889, during which time he replaced three of London's
bridges: Putney in 1886, Hammersmith in 1887 and Battersea in 1890. He
was appointed president of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in 1884,
and in 1901 a monument commemorating his life was opened on the Victoria
Embankment.[18][4][m] When he died in March 1891, his obituarist in The
Illustrated London News wrote that Bazalgette's "two great titles to fame are
that he beautified London and drained it",[102] while Sir John Coode, the
president of ICE at the time, said that Bazalgette's work "will ever remain as
monuments to his skill and professional ability".[18] The obituarist for The
Times opined that "when the New Zealander comes to London a thousand
years hence ... the magnificent solidity and the faultless symmetry of the
great granite blocks which form the wall of the Thames-embankment will still
remain." He continued, "the great sewer that runs beneath Londoners ... has
added some 20 years to their chance of life".[103] The historian Peter Ackroyd,
in his history of subterranean London, considers that "with [John] Nash and
[Christopher] Wren, Bazalgette enters the pantheon of London heroes"
because of his work, particularly the building of the Victoria and Albert
Embankments