The Great Stink of London

Day 167 / 365

Every cricket fan is fed up with the weather in England right now, with the rains washing off a lot of matches. But England has seen worse day’s weather wise. One such event was the Great Stink of 1858

What happened?

During the start of the 19th century, the sewer systems in London were in extremely poor shape. Some cesspits there would leak methane gas and would even explode at times, causing fires and deaths. A lot of this rotten waste ended up in the Thames river. This waste started building up and because of the hot weather during summer, caused an unbearable smell that spread throughout the city.

The author Charles Dickens in his novel ‘Little Dorrit’, described the Thames as — “a deadly sewer … in the place of a fine, fresh river”

The Fix

All Parliament representatives were eventually forced out of their homes outside of London to convene and solve the issue. Much to the citizen’s amusement, Parliament was held in their building on the bank of the River Thames, resulting in one of the fastest Parliament decisions ever made to reform the London sewer system.

And the guy that designed the system did such a great job, that most of the system is still in place and functional to this day!

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — The year without summer