An Old Timey Podcast - 97: The Great Stink of 1858

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

By the mid-1800’s, the River Thames was essentially a massive sewer. People poured their waste into it. They also drank from it. That combination resulted in thousands of deaths. People weren’t sure what caused the deaths, but in the summer of 1858, when the temperatures rose and the water levels dropped, London stunk to high heaven. It took a lot of money, creativity, and an incredible act of civil engineering from Sir Joseph Bazalgette to fix the Great Stink. Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Norm pulled from: Ackroyd, Peter. London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012.“Cesspools and Sewers: Toilets in Dirty Old London.” Yale University Press, November 19, 2014. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2014/11/19/cesspools-and-sewers-toilets-in-dirty-old-london/.“Cholera in Victorian London | Science Museum.” https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/medicine/cholera-victorian-london.Contagion - CURIOSity Digital Exhibits. “Cholera Epidemics in the 19th Century.” March 26, 2020. https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/contagion/feature/cholera-epidemics-in-the-19th-century.Halliday, Stephen. The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis. The History Press, 2020.Historic UK. “The Victorian Workhouse.” https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Victorian-Workhouse/.“Joseph Bazalgette | The History of London.” December 21, 2024. https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/joseph-bazalgette/.“The Great Stink | The History of London.” January 20, 2025. https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/the-great-stink/.The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered, dir. History and Sewage: The Great Stink of 1858. 2018. 11:44. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD7nRrSH_VE.“The Smithsonian and the 19th Century Guano Trade: This Poop Is Crap.” May 25, 2017. https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/smithsonian-and-19th-century-guano-trade-poop-crap.Tulchinsky, Theodore H. “John Snow, Cholera, the Broad Street Pump; Waterborne Diseases Then and Now.” Case Studies in Public Health, 2018, 77–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-804571-8.00017-2.Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts!Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.

Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Norman Caruso. And I'm Kristen Caruso. And in this episode, I'll be talking about The Great Stink of London. Okay. Very good.

Very good. Okay. I wasn't expecting this reaction. No, I can't say anything. This is a topic that I know one sentence about because I was like, should I do this for a future episode? And now I am so glad I didn't do any research

because you are about to take this story and tell it like a pro. Like a pro, baby. That should be our slogan for an old-timey podcast. Like a pro, baby? Like a pro. Oh, you're thinking we're kind of sexy and rugged and like we're driving our trucks through mud

while we tell this podcast for it. That was an old truck slogan. Like Chevy Silverado. Like a rock. Yeah. Yeah. It really made me feel things. Oh, yeah.

we're going to talk about pickup trucks full of poop in this episode, Kristen. I don't think there will be... Okay, well, I'm not going to tell the story for you. Okay, tell me all about... Oh, wait, wait, wait, what am I saying? Yeah, you got a job to do? I do have a job to do. Folks, I did not prepare a Patreon plug, which is how the best plugs go.

So let's go on this journey together. Hey there, history ho. Why not support our small, sexy, independent podcast on Patreon for just $5. a month, you'll get our beefy back catalog of bonus episodes with video. They're ad-free and amusing. We've got a weirdly funny episode about the man who inspired D.B. Cooper. We've got one about a man who murdered Confederate pirates. Yarg! And ouch!

And we've got an episode where my dad tells us about a sexy kidnapper. It's too weird to miss. So support us on Patreon at patreon.com. slash old-timey podcast. That's patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. Thank you. Last week, we introduced a new segment of the show. It's for our pig butter investors on Patreon.

And we called it Slop. The Slop. At the end of each episode, we do some extra content. People didn't love the name. What? No, no one complained about the name. People complained about the name. Also, I realized, like, there's a lot of talk about AI Slop.

That's what makes it timely. Okay. Perfect. Well, then you know what? Hey, we're sticking with slop, okay? Yeah, we're not. It's not going anywhere, baby. Anyhow, sign up, won't you, at the $10 level on Patreon?

You get your slop. You get your monthly bonus episode with video. You get ad-free video episodes of every ding-dong episode of this very podcast. You also get a card and sticker. Yeah. And you get to play trivia with us. And 10% off all merch. Norm, we don't have merch.

One day. when we reach stock it'll be 10% off for you yeah let's plug the thing that people don't really use that's part of being a pig butter investor you're going to see the returns i promise you're going to be rich one day from this we guarantee it sort of okay norm uh tell us about this big stinky london oh christin i want to prepare you in the history hose this episode is disgusting It is disgusting. Just a few episodes ago, I had an episode where I said the word pus like 72 times. Can you compete with me?

This is up there. Actually, you know, I think your Puss episode was probably more disgusting. In my opinion, just because I think Puss is disgusting. There are so many people who are into Puss. Some people are really into it. But not Norm. Me personally, not really into Puss. I'm going to start this episode the way we start every episode.

Picture it! London, England, June of 1858. Kristen, the folks of London are... Feeling hot, hot, hot, hot. Oh, okay. Why? Because it's one of the hottest summers on record. Temperatures were reaching more than 100 degrees. Oh.

And in a time of no air conditioning, you'd be sweating your little Victorian ass off. Kristen, I want you to close your eyes. Let's set the scene. You wake up in the morning and you're beautiful... canopy bed made of beautiful dark mahogany. You're covered in sweat. Oh. From the intense heat outside.

You get up, you begin to get dressed. Am I allowed to open my eyes? No, no, no, no. Picture it. I'm still picturing it. You're starting to get dressed. You're putting on your bustle for that thick badonka donk. You're tightening the strings of your corset. And to get some air, you burst open the window from your second floor bedroom.

And then, wait a second. Is that fucked up smell in my crib, y'all? Flava Flava is here with me. He's here with me all the time, really. Yes. You can open your eyes. Did somebody die outside in the streets? Did my husband take a Mondo Duke and forget to flush?

Is the neighbor making broccoli and eggs for breakfast? The answer to all those questions is no. The offensive odor was actually coming from the major waterway running through London, the River Thames. the same river that provided London with its drinking water. Oh. During that heat wave of 1858, the water level of the river Thames dropped, and along the banks of the river were piles and piles of raw sewage, poop, and God knows what else. Wait, they drank from this river and they pooped in it?

Baking in the hot, hot sun. Answer me, Norman. That is correct. They were drinking, contaminated. sewage water. Oh, no. No one was safe from this disgusting foul smell, Kristen. Not even royalty.

That summer, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert tried to take a leisurely little cruise along the river. But after only a few minutes, Queen Victoria, with her face buried in flowers to mask the stench, demanded they go back to the palace. They called it the original poop cruise. Oh, yeah, there was a poop cruise. Yeah, it sounded terrible.

What happened on the first? on that cruise? Oh, gosh. I don't exactly remember. It was in like 2014 or something. That could be totally wrong. Bottom line was people were on a cruise. They were there for a good time. All of a sudden, everything went wrong with the cruise. You couldn't flush your toilet. Then all of a sudden, poop started shooting up out of it. They didn't have food. They didn't have drinking water. Just shit for days. Oh. And boy, oh boy. O'clock. Yuck. Yeah, I mean, it's going to get to that level in this episode. Okay. Now, luckily they're not stuck on a ship, but the river smells awful, just awful. The London press had an absolute field day with the whole ordeal, and they dubbed it The Great

Stink. An old-timey Tucker Carlson type might say, you used to be able to enjoy the river Thames on a hot summer day. Not anymore. New study shows that raw sewage is being dumped into the river, and now the river no longer smells good. Smells pretty bad. actually. What is going on? What happened? What can Londoners do to solve this problem? Well, don't you worry, old-timey Tucker Carlson, because that is what we will talk about today on this shitty episode of an old-timey podcast. Norm, I got to say, that Tucker Carlson impression was a little too good. You've got the white guy with the dark hair, with the glasses. You're just, I don't think he even has glasses. No glasses. But you've just got the look of a guy who believes those things. He's got the look.

He's got the look. Conservative white guy, being all rude. You know, I could, I could blend in at CPAC. Do you ever feel kind of sad that you're not part of the manosphere? And instead, you've got a little history podcast with your wife where you tell little jokes. No, I love having a history podcast with my wife. I like being a non-threatening boy. Okay, very good.

It's kind of my style. Kristen, how did the River Thames get so polluted? Why was London dumping their sewage into the same place they were drinking water? I love how I said that while you were taking a drink. Which looks like sewage, by the way. Those are the $10 tier. Kristen, why don't you show people what you're drinking here? I'm drinking a dirty Diet Coke, which tastes good, but it looks like it came from the River Thames in 1850, whatever.

1858, baby. Looks like it's part Coca-Cola, part poop. And, you know, up to you to decide what it is. It does kind of look like sewage. But it is delicious. How did the River Thames become the River Flemms? Well, in order to understand it, Chris, and you have to take a look back at the history of sanitation in London.

Where did people get water? How did they dispose of waste? Was it really wise to have two servings of sticky toffee pudding without owning a toilet? Oh, that sounds so good. Not the, yeah, you know which part. Oh, it sounds so good to take a big dump. Oh, to shit in a bowl. Oh, I'm having shit in days.

Sticky toffee pudding? Not really my thing, sorry. I love sticky toffee pudding. We all do. Okay, now, your last episode, everyone went out and bought Oreos afterward. This will be a sign. If it's not too gross, then people will go out and get themselves sticky toffee pudding. If it's very, very gross, then, you know.

Honestly, after this episode, I just want people when they're sitting on the toilet to just appreciate our modern sanitation system. Yeah. That's all I'll say. When you're on the toilet, think of Norm telling you this story. Right. And think, what a great guy. Right. And if you have to strain, it's not ready yet.

Okay? Little advice from me, Normie C. Now, I know some of you out there might find this boring and frankly, a little disgusting. But trust me, I do think history hose will find this very interesting. And Kristen, our story begins in the era of the Romans. It was the Romans who founded London. But back then it was called Lundinium. Hmm.

Hmm. And those Romans sure were smart, Kristen. The Romans were one of several ancient civilizations that created infrastructures in their towns. So all around Lundian, aka London, the Romans were Leyen pipe. I'm about to bust. These clay pipes brought fresh water from the River Thames to public fountains, wells, and bathhouses. And citizens could grab a bucket and use that water for drinking, bathing, cooking, cleaning, whatever their heart desired. Now, if you were rich, you could hire a water carrier to bring you fresh water on a schedule.

And in Latin, these water carriers were called Culliganus Homo. Hey, Culligan, man. That's a joke, by the way. Oh, oh, Culligan. It's a Culligan joke. Culligan Homo. I'm sorry. I know.

Oh, my gosh. That was a little too high brow. It was. I apologize. Just stick to poop humor. Just strictly poop humor, please. Okay, we'll cue in more fart sounds. Okay.

Okay, so that's how people got their drinking water. But what about all their waste? How did our ancestors get rid of their pee and poo? Kristen, you went to Italy with your family back in the day. Did you ever see an old Roman public toilet? I do not remember. That was a very long time ago. Well, it's very iconic.

Didn't know if you remembered seeing one. I'm sorry. My main memory is my loser family. We were at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And I wanted to do one of those fun photos. where you either act like you're holding it up or you lean with it. And they were like, oh, that's boring, that's dumb. But I made them do it.

And guess what? That photo is in my office to this day. And it's a great photo so they can all suck it. Maybe I'll post it on social media. You should. No, it's a sweet photo. Most people don't tell their family members to suck it. Well, the Pitts family is different.

Okay, so a Roman public toilet It is basically a room with rows of toilets Well, more like a hole in a platform Okay And it's where people could sit down and do their business Water running underneath would take that waste And dump it into the nearest waterway And Roman toilets were kind of a social hangout

I mean, we're talking like 20 holes in a room Where people just walk in and they do their business No, it wasn't a social hangout Yes, it was a social hangout. Kind of like where you got the news of the day. No. Hey, how was your day, Maximus? Well, kind of shitty, to be honest.

My boss was really pissing me off. What do you think? I hate this. Why would they do this? Kristen, it was the beginnings of modern civilization. Okay, we're learning the ropes, okay? Okay. Okay.

This is like when people talk on cell phones in public restrooms. So I don't think we've evolved enough, frankly. People do that? Yes. Yes. I've never experienced this. Talk on their cell phone. Yes.

In a public toilet. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I am disgusted. I mean, can you imagine going to a Roman public toilet and there's no stalls? It's just an open room with holes. Here's the thing. I can understand that a little bit. Like if that's just how it is, what I don't understand is socializing with other people while I'm doing my business. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you see the new episode of Love is blind? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, there's public toilets. But, you know, you always have the option to just do your business at home, like in a pot. And then you dump it out into the street or in a drain. You know, public toilets were revolutionary.

But who, boy, they were really gross and they were really unsanitary. And over time, people realize, you know, I think I prefer using the bathroom alone at my house. Yeah. And with the shift of potty time going to the homes, a new method was needed to dispose of waste efficiently. And by the Middle Ages, Londoners had shifted to using the cesspool. Kristen, are you familiar with cesspools? I know there are things we don't like. Tell me more.

Yeah. Yeah. Good word association, Kristen. Thank you. It was an old-timey septic tank, basically. It's like an underground pit that people had near their homes, or even in their basements, to collect waste, like from an outhouse. So just imagine you're eating a hearty breakfast of oatmeal and prunes,

and you wash it down with a pot of coffee. In a matter of minutes, you'll be sprinting for your outhouse, fighting for your life as your bowels empty out into the cesspool. Cesspools were a convenient way to deal with waste, but you might be wondering, what happens when the cesspool fills up? Yeah. Great question. Don't worry. People thought of that.

And it created an entire industry. There was an old-timey job called nightsoil men. So for a small fee, they'd swing by your house with a cart, and they would empty out your cesspool. Oh, God. And then they would transport your waste to farms just outside of the city. Okay. So it could be used as manure to grow the fruits and vegetables you buy at the market. I don't want to know that, but I am behind it 100%.

The freshest ingredients. Now that's what I call organic. Needless to say, raking up shit wasn't exactly a tushy job. This might be a hot take, but emptying out cesspools was kind of gross. Sadly, children were often employed to do this kind of work. But not only was this job gross, it was dangerous. In the year 1326, a night soil man known as Richard the Raker accidentally fell into a cesspool and, quote, drowned monstrously. For a long time, cesspools were the solution to London's waste management.

By the beginning of the 19th century, London had about 200,000. cesspools. And the sewers were reserved strictly for rainwater, which would empty into nearby waterways, like the River Thames. In fact, during that time, it was actually illegal to dump waste into the sewer. You're looking at the camera. I am, because we all know what's about to happen. Oh, what's going to happen? People just waited until the dead of night or when no one was around and they took their poop soup and they just dumped it down the drains and, you know, who's policing this?

Okay, that's a great observation, Kristen, because yes, it was illegal to dump waste into the sewer. But it still happened. Sewer dumping was kind of like jaywalking. Yeah. You're not supposed to do it. Right. People did it all the time.

But even then, this sanitation system that London had resulted in the River Thames being relatively clean. And that was a good thing because that was where most Londoners got their drinking water. But then a series of events changed everything. During the first half of the 19th century, London's population grew significantly. In 1801, there were around 1 million people living in London. By 1861, there were 3 million. So that's a massive leap for that time.

And as more and more people arrived and the city grew and grew, cesspools were becoming more of a problem than a solution. It's hard to imagine why. Wouldn't everyone love to have a pit full of pee and poo on their property? So what was wrong with cesspools? Well, for one, they leaked. Cesspools were usually constructed with loose stone and brick. Oh, my.

They weren't really designed to retain liquid. For example, piss is a type of liquid. Yes, thank you, Norm. The thinking was, well, the pee will just kind of soak into the ground and disappear. And true, sometimes piss did do that. But other times, it made its way into nearby drinking wells, or maybe nearby creeks or rivers, or even inside your neighbor's home. Another major issue was emptying out the cesspools. You know, that cost money.

And if you were poor, maybe you'd. didn't want to spend your last shilling on emptying out the cesspool. Oftentimes, residents would dig their cesspools deeper and deeper so they would hold more and more shit. But the deeper you go, the more risk of contaminating wells and waterways. Oh, my God. This is so gross. I told you. So anyway, many poor residents, they just let their cesspool overflow.

Yeah. And I don't think I need to explain why that was bad. But just in case, here's an example, Kristen. In 1660, English writer Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary, quote, Going down to my cellar, I put my feet into a great heap of turds. Oh. By which I find that Mr. Turner's house of office is full and comes into my cellar. A great heap of turds is an amazing phrase.

Incredible phrase for a 17th century writer, Mr. Sam. Peeps and I challenge any of the history I was in our Discord to change your username to a great heap of turds. I will tip my cap to thee. Okay. I'm so excited I got to use that sound in this episode. Overflowing cesspools were a major contribution to extremely unsanitary, poor neighborhoods in London, where disease was rampant. Another major issue was that the human waste industry was collapsing. Nightsoil men were only paid three shillings for a day's work.

Adjust for inflation, they made 20 pounds. Yeah, no thank you. So like 20 bucks? That's not exactly a lucrative career. And getting human waste to the farms was also getting harder because as the city got bigger and bigger, the farms got further and further away. Plus, farmers, they didn't really want human. human feces anymore.

There was a new product that worked way better, and it was called guano. Guano is basically solidified bird droppings. They're cheap, they're plentiful, and they were way more effective than human turds in agriculture. Some of us intellectuals already knew that from Ace Ventura, so. Do you talk about guano? He sure did, Norm. Tell me more.

I don't remember this. Why don't you watch a film every once in a while? Oh, coming from you? When are you talking about guano? Many times, Norman, it's like you have... The first Ace Ventura, the second one. Second. Of course it's the second.

Yes. Did you see that the rhino prop from Ace Ventura 2 recently went up for auction and it sold for $60,000? You told me this last night and you were like, imagine owning that. Just imagine. I don't know if you've ever seen stars in a man's eyes. But I did. Last night when Norm talked of what it might be like to own such a classic piece of cinema. I mean, you and Kyla love that movie.

We loved, loved, loved that movie. Imagine if you had the rhino prop in the corner of your office. I think that that would be the start of every day. I would birth myself out of that rhino's ass. Man. Completely nude, obviously. Obviously. All right.

So, Kristen. Yeah, the human turd industry is collapsing as we speak. Okay. Overflowing cesspools. I don't like the Beanie Baby industry. Yes, it's exactly like the Beanie Baby industry. I thought I was shit in gold here. Exactly.

Much like the human feces industry, the Beanie baby industry also collapsed. You've got overflowing cesspools. You have turds in basements. You have the collapse of the human poo market. There's got to be a better way. And so the government put their best and brightest minds together, and they came up with a solution. Let's just dump all of our waste into the river Thames. That could not have been their idea.

By that point, they had centuries of evidence that that was a bad idea. From where? The Romans weren't drinking and shitting out of the same pots. They knew. No, the Romans were. Oh. I mean, waste was dumped into the river, but water was also drawn from there, too. Okay, okay.

but less population, fewer turds in the drinking water. Okay, I get it. You got to think the river Thames is constantly flowing. But so are Londoners buttholes, so that's the problem. Hey, okay. That's pretty good. But the thing about it, the river's constantly flowing. And so the thought is, well, the sewage is going to flow out the sea.

And then fresh water will come in. Yeah, but are we, are we, do we have a turd dropping station down the lane? A turd dropping station? Well, yeah, if we're waiting for the turds to be washed away, and I just want to make sure that my neighbor up the street isn't dropping his turds and I'm going out for my fresh drinking water down the street. And, you know. Well, you know what I'm saying. Right. But you also have to.

I'm going to explain more, okay? Please do. They're going to dump all the waste into the River Thames. It seems like the perfect solution because the city could begin phasing out. cesspools, because cesspools were becoming a real problem, okay? They were starting to get gross. This cesspool is gross.

So any new construction, they would have to hook into the sewer system. And when waste was emptied out into the River Thames, it would just flow out to sea. Plus, London had all these water companies and the water companies were like, oh, well, we can set up, like, filters

and, like, it'll filter out the poo and, like, it'll be fine. Now, please keep in mind, germs had not been invented yet. Sure. They look at the water. It looks clear. Therefore, it must be fine to drink, right?

Sounds right to me. Mm-hmm. And so in 1815, London officially lifted its ban of dumping waste into the sewers. Little did they know, a Poonami was brewing. For the first five years, everything seemed hunky-dory. Sewage was dumped into the River Thames. drinking water was pulled from the River Thames. People were going with the flow.

But after five years, there was evidence of trouble. During that time, one way to gauge the health of a waterway was to log how many fish were caught. So in 1816, one year after sewage could be dumped into the Thames, a fisherman caught 14 salmon in one session. That's pretty good. Okay. Four years later in 1820, at that very same spot, fishermen couldn't catch a damn thing. Oh. The government also observed, huh, any of you guys notice that there aren't as many fishermen these days?

Were they all dying? They weren't dying. They just couldn't catch any fish. And so they quit. Yeah. The number of fishermen in the trade had been cut in half since 1800. By 1827, writer John Wright was one of the first to comment on how gross the drinking water in London had become.

He wrote that he drank, quote, a fluid saturated with the impurities of 50,000 homes. Oh. A dilute solution of animal and vegetable substances in a state of putrefaction. Oh. Offensive to the sight, disgusting to the imagination, and destructive to the health. But hey, whoa, hey, maybe John writes, overreacting a little bit. Because, you know, those water companies, the ones taking water.

from the River Thames and selling it to people, they claim the water was just fine. They were like, hey, well, look, the water's clear. I don't see anything wrong with this water. What do you mean put it under a microscope? I don't even know what that is. This water looks fine. In fact, I'm quite parched, and I would like to have a drink. I was just going to say, I want to Aaron Brockovich these people.

I want to be like, oh, yeah, I had this water brought in special for you. From the River Thames. Yes, that's a great scene. Yes, here's a fresh glass of water from the River Thames. Oh, what's that stench? It's coming from this pitcher. Said one engineer, quote, The impregnating ingredients of the Thames are as perfectly harmless as any spring water of the purest kind in common life.

Indeed, there is probably not a spring which are so pure as Thames water. Did you say impregnating ingredients? Yeah, that's the quote. Impregnating. Well, for what it's worth, Kristen. What? You can't just look at me and laugh. I'm not...

I'm just thinking there's a TLC show there. What? I thought I was pregnant, and then you're just pregnant with turds from the Everton's. Turns out I was drinking. And they're like, hey, aren't you just pooping? You know, then the show gets canceled. Yeah. Okay.

I can see it. Yeah. I mean, TLC has some wild shows. Yeah. Well, you know, that one would flame out fast, but still, I like the idea. Kristen, for what it's worth, the government, aka Parliament, they did look into possibly getting drinking water from another source. You know, maybe they could pump fresh water into the city from another waterway, like the Wondel River or the new river. But then they got the bill for that work.

Woof! 1.1 million pounds? Just for inflation, 169 million pounds. Very expensive. Well, I guess that was too expensive because ultimately nothing happened with that plan. Oh. Hey, not so fun fact, Kristen. Guess what the number one cause of death in all of human history is?

Eat in turds. Close. Drinking contaminated water. Eatin turds. I should have said drinking turds. All throughout history, mankind has wondered, can I eat these turds? And we keep paying the price. And on their death that they say,

I guess not. Guess not, but Yolo. And wouldn't you know it, things really took a turn for the worst when in 1831. What? You love puns so much. Why didn't you say took a turd for the worst? Okay.

Let me retake it then. No, the moment is gone. It's been flushed away. All credit to Kristen. And wouldn't you know what? Things really took a turd for. the worse, when in 1831, London experienced its first cholera outbreak. Oh, that's not funny.

Yeah, it's not, is it? Yeah. Kristen, you familiar with cholera? No, but I know it's bad. Oh, it's bad. I'm sorry, I can't stop laughing. And what, the turd joke? Yes, it was my own joke, and I laughed just as hard when you said it.

I'm sorry. I, okay, cholera. Colora, serious illness. Nothing to laugh about. It's a severe diarrhea infection. Don't laugh. It's not funny. No.

So you get the infected diarrhea yourself? Or is it because you drank infected diarrhea? It's because you drank infected diarrhea. You shouldn't have drank that? They didn't mean to, Kristen. Is this why people drank so much alcohol back in the day? I mean, it was safe. Yeah.

It was safer than water. Okay. Colora is caused by the bacteria Vibrio coleri, and it primarily spreads when bacteria from an infected person's feces gets into drinking water. So, you have a city that has leaking, overflowing cesspools, getting into people's homes and water wells. You have raw sewage being dumped into the River Thames where people also get drinking water. And so naturally, cholera became a really big problem in London during this time. During the 1831 outbreak, more than 6,000 London residents died from cholera. Stop smiling.

I'm no, no, I'm not smiling. I'm not. What is it? I'm not, I'm not smiling. I'm keeping it together because that is very sad. You keep thinking about that turd joke, don't you? I am like, this is like I've got the church giggles. I see.

And Norm, you're a demon spawn from hell. You didn't grow up with the church. and the Lord, but I sure did. And every now and then you get the church giggles. I get the church giggles. I understand. Oh, my. I went to Catholic Church between the ages of five and eight.

So, yeah, I got the church giggles. I know what you're talking about. Okay. Mm-hmm. The connection between cholera and drinking water, it might seem obvious today. But back then, the disease was very misunderstood. One newspaper article stated, quote, What is cholera?

Is it a fungus? An insect? A my asthma? An electrical disturbance? A deficiency of ozone. A morbid off scouring of the intestinal canal? We know nothing. We are at sea in a whirlpool of conjecture.

That would be really scary. Yeah, to have this disease that's killing everybody and like we don't know what's causing it or how it spreads. I mean, it kind of reminds me of when COVID first came out. And it was like we had no idea what was going on. Yeah, yeah. We had to like... We were wearing gloves to the grocery store, afraid to touch the mail. Like, yeah.

Yep. Yep. And by that, I mean the hot dudes. So it was a real sad time for everybody. Don't touch the hunks. We don't know if this is coming from the hunks. By far the most popular theory was the miasmic theory, which stated that diseases like cholera spread through bad air. Bad air from rotting organisms.

overcrowded urban areas and polluted water. Some scientists took the miasmic theory to extreme levels. One professor theorized that a butcher's wife was obese because she kept breathing in the odor of beef. I love it. Isn't that ridiculous? No, I love it. You just imagine the baker smelling donuts. Yeah, quit sniffing these donuts.

She's just got a nose plug. It's litany season. Kristen, we have seen the miasmic theory before here on an old-timey podcast. In our JCPenney series, Mr. James Cash Penny himself was advised by his doctor to go somewhere with dry, clean air to recover from an illness. Well, it's funny. I mean, they're not totally wrong either. No. I mean, having clean fresh air is a good thing for your health. Well, and what you're essentially advising someone to do is to get away from these highly populated areas where people's turrets. are just floating all around you.

They're getting to the right answer, but their logic is all wrong. If they show their work, we're going to have to be like, nope, we're going to dock you points. I didn't write this part down, but the whole miasmic theory thing, they even did a study that was like,

hmm, we are seeing the closer you live to the River Thames, which is the lowest elevation in London, the worst the cholera is. but people who live at higher elevations, they don't get cholera as much. So it's got to be the elevation of the air as well. Yeah. When it's like, no, it's because they're closer to the River Thames. They're drinking the water from the River Thames.

Yeah. But we're going to get into that later. Okay. Even famous nurse Florence Nightingale, known for greatly improving sanitation in hospitals, was a strong believer in the miasmic theory. Future topic? When I was growing up in Scotland, Florence Nightingale was like the Clara Barton of the UK, the famous nurse, you know.

I've got to be honest. I think she sounds boring as hell. I don't know much about her. I'm sorry. That future topic will be all you. How dare you, Kristen. I'm sure she's fascinating. Our British history hoes are flabbergasted, bamboozled by your opinion on Florence Nightingale.

I don't know. It's just I remember being a little girl in elementary school when it was like, here are some women you can look up to in history. There were just a smattering, and one of them was Florence Nightingale who had a name like a nursery rhyme. And, you know, she made people get shots or something. I don't know. I didn't much care for it. Okay, okay. Well, maybe I'll make you suffer through that series. Thank you. So yeah, most people believed it was the awful smells that were spreading cholera. something had to be done. And so the government started taking action.

They set up a commission to study London's unsanitary conditions and try to come up with a solution. An influential philosopher and social reformer named Edwin Chadwick was tasked with leading this investigation. Ever heard of Edwin Chadwick? No. He's an interesting fella, very polarizing figure. Okay. Possible future topic. All right.

But for now, just know that an interesting. 1842, he wrote a scathing report on the sanitary conditions of the poor working class of London. And he called it, report on the sanitary condition of the laboring population of Great Britain. All right. Chadwick highlighted the deplorable conditions people were living in. There were reports of basements filled with three feet of pure shit. Outdated drainage systems like cesspools built with poor workmanship. A local government that lacked.

the urgency and the authority to fix many of the problems. These terrible living conditions caused all sorts of consequences. Immorality. Homelessness. Wait, what? Disease. How did it cause immorality? Edwin Chadwick, you know, he reported on the horrible conditions poor people were living in,

but he was also anti-poor. He thought it was a moral failure. if you were poor. So is he saying this is how they're living? Let's get rid of all of them. They are the problem. It's them? No, it's like we need to do something to help them.

But it's not so much as like, let's give them a handout. It's like, let's make being poor so bad that people don't want to be poor anymore. Well, it sounds pretty bad already. Yeah. Three feet of shit in the basement. And I don't know if I'd call it a handout. That's what people are dealing with. That's why this guy's polarizing, okay?

Okay. Okay. Now I'll get into it a tiny bit because I don't want to fear too off topic. But Edwin Chadwick's report was influential. So using data, he proved a link between poverty and disease. He advocated for preventative measures such as fix the damn sewers. But he was polarizing because he also thought poverty was a moral failing. Chadwick was the chief architect of poor laws.

So it made seeking help during this time as difficult as possible. And it was to deter people from being poor. He came up with the Victorian Workhouse System. You familiar with that? No, I'm fast. See, fuck Florence Nightingale. No offense. I want to know more about this guy.

You want this to be a future topic? Yes. Okay, you know Charles Dickens' book, Oliver Twist? Yes. It is a critique of the Workhouse System. Okay. Yeah. Edwin Chadwick was also kind of an authoritarian.

He thought democratically elected governments made things move way too slow. He was like, let's just get some guys in here who know what they're doing and give them complete control of everything. Let's get shit done. What could go wrong? But for this story, Kristen, the great stink,

what you need to know is that Edwin Chadwick believed the bad smells from the outdated, inefficient sewer system were getting people sick and putting more people into poverty and that the government really needed to fix it. Okay, so is he thinking people are getting sick, therefore they're not working, and that's a problem? Okay, all right, I'm understanding him more. And totally agreeing.

Hot sizzling take. This is what makes this story even more interesting because inadvertently, by addressing the bad smells of the sewers, London was also going to fix the actual problem, which was contaminated drinking water. Edwin Chadwick's report could not have come at a better time. The sewage problems of London grew worse and worse. One writer commented, quote, The Thames is now made a great cesspool

instead of each person having one of his or her own. Even Charles Dickens weighed in on London's sewage problem. In a weekly magazine, he highlighted his very best. visit to the Grand Junction Water Company, where he asked engineers about taking water from the same river where sewage was dumped. And the engineer was like, oh, the water's actually totally fine. It's the pipes in people's houses that are dirty. Uh-huh. In 1848, another cholera outbreak took the lives of 14,000 Londoners. Wow. Scientists continued to stress the urgency of cleaning up the air. But one man, an anesthesiologist named Dr. John Snow, thought differently. After that 1848

cholera outbreak, he wrote a report entitled, On the Mode of Communication of Colora, that basically said, hey, guys, is it possible that cholera is spread by contaminated water, and that maybe all this sewage in the River Thames is causing the problem? The scientific community collectively replied. You know nothing, John Snow. Well, he tried. But don't worry, Dr. John Snow was filled with determination

to solve this cholera problem. More on that later. Meanwhile, the population of London kept growing. By 1850, two million people were living in the city. Waste continued to be dumped into the River Thames or old dilapidated cesspools.

The infrastructure was completely inadequate. When it rained, the sewers backed up, causing waste to come back into people's homes. Standards of living dropped considerably. Things didn't get any better when this newfangled invention called the Toilet made its way into London homes. Fun fact. Wow.

During this time, Kristen, there is a big-time player in the toilet biz named Thomas Crapper. No. Yes, I'm not kidding. Thomas Crapper. Shockingly, the word crap does not come. from his last name. I was going to say, I thought he was like, he made such a mark on this industry. I know.

But I do feel like I've heard people say, I'm going to go sit on the crapper. Of course you have. And Thomas Crapper made toilets back then. So it's like, does it come from there? Yes. Let's decide it does. Okay. Now you're probably thinking, wow, a toilet.

I have one of those. I use it all the time. They're great. How could that? possibly make things worse in London? Well, the problem was toilets use a lot of water to get waste out of your house. And that becomes a problem when your city's sewer system can't handle that volume of liquid. From 1850 to 1856, water usage doubled in London because of toilets. Sewers backed up even more now. Some people emptied their toilets into cesspools, which again,

were not built to retain liquid. In fact, toilet. became such a problem, several towns and cities in the UK banned them because they were putting too much of a strain on the sewer system. But don't worry, Kristen, you're in luck. Yeah. Because the government is finally going to address the sewage problem, because in 1847, they formed the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. This new organization quickly took action, so they started closing cesspools. They forced houses to connect to the sewer system.

Even when some people were like, but my freedom. Yeah. I need my sis-poo. No, you know that people said that. Yeah. Well, it was a big problem. Yeah. The commission also finally had the authority to issue fines for poor workmanship or not following

plumbing codes. But they still had to tackle their biggest problem, which was an insufficient sewer system that kept dumping sewage into the River Thames. between March and May of 1848, 29,000 cubic yards of sewage was dumped into the River Thames. If you want a visualization of that, that's 14,500 pickup trucks,

full of shit. Ew. I did not want a visual of that. Well, when I say 29,000 cubic yards... When you said that, I literally thought, I'm glad I don't know what that means. Sorry to ruin. your ignorance.

Uh-huh. Thank you. From September of 1848 to February of 1849, 80,000 cubic yards of sewage were dumped into the River Thames. For reference, that's if an entire football field, end zone to end zone, was completely covered in 14 feet of shit. Oh, my God. So, yeah, London needed to fix this problem.

So it's like if the cowboys were playing her. Hey, yeah. Yeah, we love a good Dallas Cowboys choking. So yeah, London needs to fix this problem, and they need to fix it fast. But wow, progress was really slow. Kristen, would you like to guess what the big holdup was? Why was the government dragging their heels on fixing infrastructure? Because it was expensive.

Yes. You've done it. Thank you. Money. Money, money, money, money. Money. Parliament was basically like, hey, don't come to us for any money. You got to fix this problem using the money you collect from sewer rates.

And so an old idea reared its ugly head, Kristen. I just spat. Reared its ugly head. You're just queuing me up for some jokes here, Norman. And I'm a mature, serious woman. Reared its ugly behind. Go ahead. I was thinking it kind of turtle-headed out a little.

Don't worry about what I was thinking. Just continue your story. An old idea reared its ugly head. We've got to make money selling sewage. I mean, we are shitting out gold here, Kristen. I bet if we sold all of the sewage from London, it could potentially be as much money as taxing Scotland, Ireland, and England combined. Who wants to buy your shit?

Farmers! No, they don't. I know. But bear with me. Okay. Also, have you ever heard of supply and demand? You've got so much supply and like no demand. Oh, we'll get to that.

We'll get to that. Also, how is Parliament pushing this off on someone else? This is ridiculous. Well, Kristen, this is going to shock you. But some politicians in Parliament were wealthy. And maybe they lived in nice neighborhoods of London that maybe didn't get their water from the River Thames. Maybe they had a private well or a well that got. water from a different waterway.

Maybe this problem didn't really affect them that much. You know what should have happened? Somebody needed to go take a dump in their wells and then bring the problem home to them. And then it's an issue. Yeah. Well, you know, I guess I'll time travel and give somebody that idea. But in the meantime, go ahead and tell the rest of this story. Okay.

So the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers is like, yeah, maybe there's a way to like sell shit to people. One newspaper editor wrote, quote, I believe that we are wholly in the dark as to the mine of wealth, which may be worked in connection with sewage manure. Wealth, which is unjustifiably day by day, suffered to run to waste, whilst we are expending large sums in the purchase of foreign manure to enable us to produce the food of the people. So basically, that guy is like, we need to quit buying guano from South America. We need to start buying our own shit. This shit right here was made in London. This is pure London shit.

And so the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers invited engineers from all over the country to submit their ideas for getting sewage out of London and sold to farmers in the countryside. Would you like to hear some of these hair-brained schemes, Kristen? Okay, here's one. Let's build giant cast-iron holding tanks on each side of the River Thames.

And inside the tanks will have filters that separate liquids and solids. And then we'll add a bunch of lime, not the fruit, the chemical. We're not making Moscow mules here. We're going to add a bunch of lime and that lime is going to stabilize the sewage and then we can squish it into blocks

quote of any shape or size best fitted for conveying to any part of the empire. What do you think? I love any shape or size. It feels like a real jello, migglers moment for poo. It's like a balloon animal. Hi, I requested a starfish shape, and this is just a boring rectangle.

This is a cube? This is a cube, and it smells terrible. I wanted a little weiner dog. And I wanted a sword. Yeah, that one's not going to work. How about this one? Let's sail in some giant barges into the River Thames and just dump the sewage onto the barges.

and then the barges will haul it out to sea. So you're just going to get a boat out there with a couple of large strainers and just strain this shit out, put it on the poop deck, huh? I'm kind of made for it. You got it. And then just sail off to sea with it. Go out to the North Sea and dump it into the North Sea. Boy, it's like these folks have never heard of diarrhea.

Oh, you're saying that wouldn't really fall through the filter. Yeah, and also. You know, we can't catch every turn. Okay. Your standards are way too high. Your standards are too high for this filter system, Kristen. You think we're going to capture every turd? No.

But, you know, for that one turd you do capture, it makes all the difference. Wow. You know, one time I saw someone sailing down the river, and there were just turds all around them, and they were picking them up. And I said, why? Why are you doing that? There are so many turds right here.

You can't save them all. And they scooped up one. Put it next to them in their boat. And they said, ah. But for that one, I made all the difference. What the hell are you talking about? I'm sorry, I'm just inspiring people. Okay.

So is it the moral, like, well, at least I saved one? Have you really never heard that story? about the starfish. No. And tossing the starfish back. No. Let me look. What?

Starfish. Norman. What? That was an amazing joke I made. Oh, wow. Pat yourself on the back. The story is called the Star Thrower. It's a 26-page essay that was published in 1969.

All right. I'm going to read you part of it. And you tell me how amazing this joke was. Okay. An old man had a habit of early morning walks on the beach. One day after a storm, he saw a human figure in the distance moving like a dancer. As he came closer, he saw that it was a young woman and she was not dancing, but was reaching down to the sand, picking up a starfish, and very gently throwing them into the ocean.

Young lady, he asked, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean? The sun is up and the tide is going out. and if I do not throw them in, they will die. But young lady, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it? You cannot possibly make a difference. The young woman listened politely, paused, and then bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it into the sea, past the breaking wave, saying, it made a difference for that one. The old man looked at the young woman inquisitively and thought about what she had done.

inspired he joined her throwing starfish back into the seat soon others joined and all the starfish were saved so your joke is there are men on the barge picking up turds from the river Thames and one guy is

is questioning yeah there's so many turds you'll never make a difference but this one will make a difference for this turd this turd. Okay. That's disgusting. I am inspired. Well, great. I'm glad this story has inspired you. So what do you think of the idea of sailing in a bunch of barges, dumping all the turds onto the barges, and then going out to sea and dumping them? Well, Norm, I think I just told you that the pessimist in me says it's not going to make a big enough difference. But on the other hand,

I do you think it makes a difference for a couple turns? A couple of turns. Yeah, that plan was denied, okay? Okay. They said this isn't going to work. They wanted to save all the turns, okay? No, I get it. I get it.

We all do. They're like, we should really keep this underground, okay? Because the barges are going to smell bad. Sure. Okay, so let's keep. keep it underground. We're going to build an underground railroad system and the sewage will be dumped into the train carts and then a compressor will squeeze all the turds down into cubes. God, they love squeezing them. Oh, it's efficient, you know. It's like, you know, vacuum sealing,

your clothes when you're packing. Sure, sure. Okay. And then we're going to transport the turd cubes to the farms. Kristen, what do you think? I mean, I don't know. I'm not into turd cubes as an idea. Yeah. Hell no. To the no, no, no. Yeah, to the no. Yeah, that didn't work either. Engineers from the Commission of Sewers had to read through 137 different plans for selling human waste to farmers.

But none of them were good. They were either way too complicated. They cost way too much money. Or they were just plain crazy. One plan was described as, quote, a long, unconnected, unintelligible paper. I mean, when you're dealing with people thinking about how to take human poo and sell it to farmers for money, you got to think there's a lot of people submitting plans that are just like, we want to get rich.

And we will come up with the craziest way possible. Well, you're asking ideas from just about anybody, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a problem right there. It's like if everyone can submit, you've got to know you're not going to get all winners. The other thing is like, did anyone ask the farmers, hey, would you like a giant cube of shit? Because I feel like the farmers would just say, no, not interested.

Yeah, the farmers really liked the guano. Yeah, they like that foreign shit. Guano, guano worked pretty well. Ultimately, the commission concluded, quote, a large class of persons are so persuaded of the vast value of the sewage of the metropolis that they only await an opportunity of putting their schemes into practical operation. Solid manure cannot be manufactured from town sewage with profitable results. And if you're curious, why your excrement just isn't worth anything.

The problem is there's just so much water in sewage, okay? and before it can be useful for agriculture, all of that water has to be removed. It's a very expensive process. And even if you could find a way to make it easier, would human waste really be worth that much? But I do have an idea that I'd like to submit for this brainstorming. Well, let's hear your idea. Salad spinner. Giant salad spinner.

Put the sewage in a giant salad spinner. Okay. You said it's too much water. So like a big turbine. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. You know, that's not a bad idea. Thank you.

Yeah. Not bad. I feel like the, the, the turbs would really get caught in the turbine fan and maybe there would be some issues there. I'm not saying it's great. Uh-huh. Well, I've got three shillings for anyone who wants the job of cleaning out the clogs. Clean the turbine fans. I'll pay you three shillings.

The problem is people just don't want to work anymore. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They just want to sit around and be poor and chill in their sess pools. God. It's cesspool weather, baby. Summertime. So even if you could find a way to make the process of removing water from waste easier,

would human waste really be worth that much money? One chemist argued he could extract 125,000 tons of dry manure from London sewers and sell it at a profit of 190,000 pounds. He ran the numbers. He tested it out on a much, much smaller scale in the town of Cardiff. And he was like, look, this is going to make London tons of money. And so Parliament asked him some questions. And they asked him a very obvious question.

And they said, hey, if we produced 125,000 tons of dry manure, wouldn't that significantly lower the cost? of dry manure. And therefore your calculations about profit are like completely wrong. Yes. And the chemist was like, huh, yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right. The chemist was like, I am not an economist, okay?

I'm not a mathematician. I'm just a guy with a dream, a dream of selling turds to farmers. That's right. The Metropolitan Commission of Sewers finally decided to move their engineering plans in-house. They asked their chief engineer, Frank Ford. to just come up with something himself. And so he did. Frank Forster said, okay, let's forget about trying to collect sewage and sell it.

Let's build an intercepting sewer system along each side of the River Thames. It's going to capture all of the surface water. It's going to capture all of the human waste from homes. And then, using gravity, it's going to flow miles outside of London. and then we will dump it into the river Thames, where it will hopefully flow out to sea. And then we're going to have a clean river in the city and there's going to be no more bad smells.

What do you think? I mean, I don't know how this stuff works. I mean, that sounds better than some of the other ideas. Yeah, so Frank Forster's plan was easily the best idea up to that point. And so the commission of sewers approved it and they started construction. But, who, they were not prepared to do this job at all, Kristen. workers ran into major roads that could not be worked around. They accidentally damaged houses during construction.

And it looks like the elevation goes up here. So how is gravity going to take the sewage down from this point? A turd pile up. And oh, we actually need to buy property from people in order to lay the sewer here. So the bigger problem was that construction costs were severely underestimated. it was going to cost four times the original estimate. And so when the commission of sewers pleaded with Parliament for more money, they were like, oh, you need how much?

A couple million pounds? Eh, well, I mean, is the sewage issue really that bad? Someone has to poop in their wells. That's the only way. Exactly. And that's why the great stink is going to change everything, Kristen. Okay. Sadly, the project came to a screeching halt,

and things got even more complicated. when in April of 1852, chief engineer Frank Forster died. Newspapers blamed the stressful job of fixing London sewers. Yeah, probably wasn't the stress that got him, but all right. What do you think got him? The poop, Norm, I think the poop got him. They described Frank Forster's role as giving him, quote,

harassing fatigues and anxieties of official duties. It was a thankless office. How dare you laugh at this poor man? No, no, I admire that he tried to do some stuff. It does seem... He do do some stuff. Yeah, it does seem highly foreseeable that they would run into problems like, oh, there's a house right here. Like, I'm kind of like, did they just start this idea with no real plan?

They didn't even look down the road. Well, you know, you kind of fly by the seat of your pants or you can plan it out, you know, we each have our own way of working. Mm-hmm. Plotters or pansers. What are you? The hope of the London sewer system now rested in the hands of Frank Forster's young assistant, the 33-year-old Joseph Basiljet. By the end of his life, Joseph Basilgett would be known as one of the greatest civil engineers of all time. Wow.

So who was this mysterious man? Here's a brief recap. Joseph Basilgett was a short king, only 5'6. He had been an engineer most of his life. I bet that was tall back then, so you can't even call him a short time. Okay, sure. He was a tall king in the 19th century. When he was a teenager, he apprenticed with a notable engineer named Sir John McNeil. How do I know he was notable? He has his very own Wikipedia page, Kristen, and a plaque in London.

Okay. Under Sir John McNeil, Joseph Basilgett learned about roads, bridges, railways, land drainage, land reclamation, and more. In 1838, Joseph Basiljit graduated from the institution of civil engineers, And four years later, he set up his own private civil engineering practice in London. In 1845, he married Maria Coe, and together they had 11 children. Good God. I'm about to bust. No kidding.

Obviously, his ability to have kids was never questioned, but neither was his engineering abilities. He was well respected in the engineering industry and was frequently called on to testify in court as an expert witness. Basil Jett had a reputation for being extremely meticulous. He had a sharp eye for details. He was also a very anxious man. He always wanted several rounds of planning, testing, and quality checks before proceeding. Honestly, anxiety might be a good problem to have as an engineer. I agree.

The problem with the first guy was he didn't have enough anxiety. He was like, I've just got a dream for a poop shoot. Let's go. Seemed that way. Joseph Basiljad was extremely. patient yet persistent. Qualities that would serve him well when dealing with government bureaucracy. In 1847, Joseph Basilgett was feeling extremely overworked in his private practice, and he suffered a nervous breakdown.

He took the next two years off, but by 1849, he was ready to work again, and so he took the job as assistant chief engineer of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. And now in 1852, he was the new head honcho. Joseph Basiljette's first few years on the job were pretty rough. Kristen because in 1853, another cholera outbreak took the lives of more than 10,000 Londoners. Good grief. Dr. John Snow, who was dismissed years earlier by the scientific community, came back once again and was like, hey guys, I really think that cholera is transmitted from contaminated water and not bad air. And this time, he had data to prove it.

Dr. John Snow pointed out that many of these cholera deaths occurred in a specific area around Broad Street. And most people on that street drank from one specific water pump. And oh, would you look at that? That water pump was located right next to a leaking sewer. Yeah. Dr. Snow had managed to convince local authorities to shut down the Broad Street pump, which helped end that cholera outbreak. But even with that overwhelming evidence, the scientific community was still skeptical of Dr. John Snow. Unbelievable.

I think at a certain point, it's like if finding a solution to the problem that you have named feels just insurmountable, it's just much easier to dismiss somebody. So you're saying, like trying to fix that problem seems so daunting that you're just going to deny? Yeah. It's so daunting. It would be so expensive. It feels impossible. And so let's just believe something else. It's easier to just believe you're wrong. You know what it is? It's like a disaster movie when someone's like, this comet is heading for Earth. We have to do something. And the government's like or the scientists are like, that's nonsense. That comment's not going to hit us. We're fine. And then, you know, it actually turns out the comet is coming. And then they have to scramble. at the end of the movie to figure out what to do. Basically, yeah. This is a disaster movie. Yeah. Why has no one made this?

It's too stinky. Poonami. Oh. I came here to see Poon Annie. I wore my trench coat in front of my whole loom for nothing. I hid my lube in this sprite can for no reason. Didn't even get a chub. I did think it was weird.

The AMC was showing Poo Nanny. on a Tuesday. The myasmic theory was still way too popular to be overtaken. Even Joseph Basilgett believed in the miasmic theory. His priority was getting those nasty smells out of people's homes.

Moving forward, though, it was clear the commission of sewers would need more power to get this project completed because they have to deal with private property. They have to deal with roads. They have to deal with bridges.

A whole bunch of stuff to get these sewers installed. So in 1856, the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was swallowed up into the Metropolitan Board of Works. Joseph Basilgett was hired on as chief engineer, and from there, he came up with a new plan to fix the sewer system. So Joseph Basilgett, he kind of built off the plan of Frank Forster. He proposed intercepting sewers on either side of the River Thames, and these sewers would intercept everything. surface water, rain, sewage, pee, poo, you name it, it'll take it. The northern sewer would run to an outfall near the small town of barking, about 12 miles away,

and it would dump into the River Thames there. The southern sewer would run to an outfall near the small town of Plumstead, again, about 12 miles away, and it would dump into the River Thames there, and most of the sewage would get there via gravity. But, you know, those areas where the elevation got higher, Joseph Vasiljet proposed installing pumping stations to lift the sewage up and over. In total, the intercepting sewers would be 82 miles long, buried 20 to 26 feet below the surface.

Kristen, you might hear that plan and think, you mean to tell me they're still dumping shit into the river just further down? That's right. But back in the day, those outfalls were pretty rural areas. Not many people lived there. And the thought was any sewage would quickly flow out of those areas and into the sea. Joseph Basilgett submitted these plans in 1856, but government bureaucracy delayed any action.

Sir Benjamin Hall, the head commissioner of the Board of Works, and who Big Ben was named after, by the way. He looked at the plan and he was like, nope, nope, absolutely nothing. can be dumped into the river Thames, not even further downstream. We must prevent, quote, all or any part of the sewage of the metropolis from flowing or passing into the Thames in or near the metropolis. Plan denied. It's kind of like letting perfect be the enemy of good in this situation. Joseph Basiljet was persistent, though.

And he was like, okay, if you want that, it's going to get really expensive. Yeah. That's going to be insanely expensive. When the Metropolitan Board of Works appealed to Parliament for more money, they, quote, did not respond sympathetically. Basically, they were like, tough shit. Literally, you'll have to find that money for yourselves. But, Kristen, nothing will get things moving faster in government than a problem affecting politicians personally. And that is how we arrive at The Great Stink.

All right. In June of 1858, London experienced their hottest summer on record up to that point. The water levels of the River Thames dropped. Raw sewage piled up on the banks of the river, baking in the hot sun. The smell was absolutely atrocious. The hallways and offices of the Palace of Westminster, located right on the banks of the River Thames, by the way, filled with the stench of the river. On June 18th, the Times newspaper gleefully reported on this situation.

They said, quote, Parliament was all but compelled to legislate upon the Great London nuisance by the force of sheer stench. The intense heat had driven our legislators from those portions of their buildings which overlooked the river. A few members bent upon investigating the matter to its very depth, ventured into the library. But they were instantaneously driven to retreat, each man with a handkerchief to his nose. We are heartily glad of it. Politicians tried everything to hide the smell. Workers were soaking window curtains in chloride of lime, but nothing worked.

There was even talk of temporarily moving Parliament to another building. Oh, wow. Mm-hmm. The sense of urgency was made even greater because expert scientists and doctors, believers in the miasmic theory, consulted Parliament. And they're like, ah, this stench will kill you. you all. Calora, typhus fever, malaria, you are doomed. I love it. Okay. And Kristen, wouldn't you know it, now Parliament was really, really interested in getting those sewers fixed. These assholes. The Observer newspaper wrote, quote, the Thames, which had become more and more

heavily used as a sewer, finally made its point by stinking out the Commons Committee. Parliament asked the Metropolitan Board of Works to, quote, preserve the health of the members of the two House of Parliament from being destroyed by the present pestilential condition of the River Thames. But the Metropolitan Board of Works was like, hey, we tried to fix this issue, but you guys kept getting in the way or just not giving us any money. And Parliament was like, okay, you need more power, you got it. You need more money, you got it. And so on August 2nd, 1858, Parliament passed the Metropolis Local Management Amendment Act. The Metropolitan Board of Works now had complete power of the sewage situation. Parliament could no longer veto anything, and the board received 3 million pounds to fix the sewers. Just for inflation, they got about 500 million pounds.

And that whole thing about you can't dump into the River Thames no matter what, they changed the wordage. So now they said, the sewage had to be dumped, quote, as far as may be practical. Okay. London's fate now lied in the hands of Joseph Baseljet.

So let's talk about what he did. I'm not going to get too technical on this because this is some serious civil engineering stuff, Kristen. If you want the details, I highly recommend the book, The Great Stink of London by Stephen Halliday. Joseph Basilgett knew the complex project that lay ahead. So there's buildings, there's roads, there's bridges, there's difficult terrain blocking the way.

And so one of his first brilliant moves was to build embankments. Familiar with embankments? No. Okay. The city is going to reclaim land from the River Thames on either side of it. And they're going to build concrete embankments. I don't think you're supposed to use the word in the definition of it, but we all know what you mean. Yeah, so basically a man-made concrete bank of the river.

Yeah. Okay. And the sewer is going to run underground of that embankment. So that's a major construction project. 30 million cubic feet of dirt would have to be removed to get those embankments built. For reference, Kristen, a 30-story skyscraper made entirely of dirt. I am shocked that you gave us that visual. I was about to pounce on you for giving us only visuals of poo.

Well done, Norman. Thank you. Joseph Basilgett wanted these embankments in sewers to stand the test of time, and so he proposed that they make them with a new material called Portland Cement. Portland Cement was awesome because water didn't seem to affect its durability. In fact, the cement got harder as it got wetter. I'm about to bust. Sounds too good to be true.

But Portland cement was expensive. It was harder to manufacture. It hadn't really been used in major construction projects. But Kristen Joseph Basilgett was a planner. He had his assistants carry out multiple rounds of testing, and those test results proved that building the sewers and the embankments with Portland cement would ensure that they would last for a long-ass time. Parliament approved any additional funding, and over time, London reclaimed 52 acres of land from the River Thames. Now, because they did this, it shrunk the width of the river, but that provided some additional benefits because when the river gets smaller, the water flow increases, which helps move any residual sewage and filth down the river and out to sea. Those embankments were a game changer, Kristen. As author Stephen Halliday pointed out, quote, no other civil engineering project has solved so many problems simultaneously. So thanks to those embankments, the city was able to run their service. sewer pipe. When electricity came to London, they were able to run their electrical wire through

the embankments. They ran gas lines for the embankments. London's underground railway system was run through those embankments. And then on top of the embankments, the city built parks and walkways, and they filled it with trees and cast iron lamps and beautiful views of the River Thames. Wow. And that beats the previous view, which was piles of mud and shit. Uh-huh. Those embankments are still around today. No, I'm picturing them right now, yeah. Well, yeah, you've been to London.

Yes. Have you walked the embankments? I sure did. Yeah. They're beautiful. Yeah. Iconic part of London. All thanks to Joseph Basiljit.

Or in a way, all thanks to those turd pile-ups. Yeah, sure. Yeah, definitely. Let's hear it for the tur. Let's give the turd a hand. Construction of the new intercepting sewer system carried on from 1858 well into the 1860s. Slowly but surely, London's sewage problems were being fixed. Most of the sewer system was installed by tunneling underground.

This was slower, it was more expensive, it was also dangerous, but it was also much less disruptive to the public. The official opening ceremony of the sewers took place on April 4, 1865, attending was the Prince of Wales, members of Parliament, the mayor of London, and more. Joseph Basilgett got super nerdy. He gleefully explained how everything worked while giving a tour of the sewers and the pump stations. Now, the sewer, it wasn't 100% complete. Not everybody had been hooked up to it yet, but it was partially operational and like it was working. Yeah.

But then, just as Londoners thought their sewage problems were over, another cholera outbreak struck the city. In 1866, more than 5,000 people succumbed to cholera. Now, that was lower than previous outbreaks. It was still a lot of death. Londoners were confused. They said, wait a second, I thought we had a new sewer system. This was supposed to stop cholera.

What's going on? Authorities were a little puzzled, too. And so they investigated the cholera outbreak. And here's what they learned. over 90% of the deaths came from the east end of the city, and that part of London had not yet been hooked up into the sewer system. There we go. Authorities also learned that all of those victims got their water from one company,

the East London Water Company. When questioned, the water company was like, well, it's definitely not our problem because we filter our water. Customers called bullshit. It. Some people testified they had found literal eels in their pipes. Oh my God. Further investigations revealed that the East London Water Company was not filtering their water, and they were sourcing it from a contaminated waterway.

Hmm. Maybe that Dr. John Snow guy was right. Maybe cholera does spread from contaminated water. You know something, John Snow. Unfortunately, they couldn't thank the man himself, Dr. John Snow, had died back in 1858 from a stroke. He would never get to see his breakthrough research become mainstream. That 1866 cholera outbreak investigation was part of a much larger shift around the world to how the scientific community understood and prevented cholera,

that treating the water, not the air, was the real solution. after 1866, and with Joseph Basil Jets intercepting sewers complete, London never experienced another caller outbreak. Wow. And that wasn't the only good news, Kristen. In 1867, the Metropolitan Board of Works reported large quantities of fish had returned to the River Thames. In that summer, the sewer system passed its first big test with flying colors. In one night, London received a record-breaking 3.25 inches of rain. A lot of people don't know that she wrote this song just for this moment.

That's right. She was thinking about the new London sewer system. 3.25 inches of rain in one night, that is one-eighth of London's annual rainfall in one night. Could the new intercepting sewer system handle all of? of it. No problem at all, baby. The new sewer system carried all that rain away. Let's go over the list. Colora outbreaks gone. Check. No more sewer overflow. Check. The fish are back. Check. The public praised the efforts and work of the man behind it all, Joseph Basiljet. One newspaper wrote, To Mr. Basilgett, no tribute of praise can be undeserved. Every

penny spent is sunk in a good cause. I really love this story because I feel like it is people using money for the good of everybody in London. Yeah. Joseph Basiljad definitely deserved the praise. Many have claimed that his work saved more Londoners lives than any other Victorian official. Well, definitely.

As a reward in 1869, the Metropolitan Board of Works gave him a 6,000 pound bonus that was three times his annual salary. Just for inflation, he got like a million pounds. He probably deserved way more, but okay. The board also said, hey, you've been working really hard. Why don't you take a three-month vacation? Joseph Bazelgett was back at work a month later. By 1872, the effects of the new drainage system were apparent.

A report revealed that the death rate in London was one of the lowest in the world, despite the city being one of the largest in the world. In 1874, the final embankment, which was named the Chelsea Embankment, was completed, and to reward his work, Joseph Basilgett was knighted. That Sir Joseph Basilgett to you. Sir Joseph Basilgett always downplayed his embankment work. For him, the sewer system was far more important and way more challenging. He said the embankments, quote, wasn't anything like such a job as the drainage.

We would sometimes spend weeks in drawing out plans and then suddenly come across some railway or canal that upset everything, and we had to begin all over again. It was tremendously hard work. Meanwhile, London's population continued to grow at a very fast rate, much faster than Basil Jett had estimated. You know, when he designed that new sewer system, he accounted for like a 25% population growth.

That was a little low. It was more like a 50% population growth. And when more and more people move to a city, it expands further and further out. And soon enough, those rural outfall areas where all the sewage was dumping into the river Thames, all of a sudden, that's a large suburb of London now. And folks began to wonder, did we just kick the can down the road? Well, after September 3rd, 1878, they no longer had to wonder that. They definitely had kicked the can down the road.

on that day, a steamer named the Princess Alice collided with another ship and sank near one of those sewage outfall areas. Oh, God. More than 700 people died in that horrific tragedy. Future topic, by the way. Okay. And as bodies were recovered from the River Thames,

rescuers noted how fast some of them had decomposed. Many were covered in sludge. It was clear that the River Thames was badly polluted by the outfalls. While many hoped the sewage would just flow out to sea, the tides would often push sewage back up the river. This had potential to be the Great Stink 2.0. But Joseph Basilgett and the Metropolitan Board of Works quickly stepped in, and rather than build

more sewers to carry the sludge all the way out to sea, they came up with a faster solution. What do you think it is, Kristen? Well, so this is a situation where the tides are bringing them back in after a storm. right? So if I were like an old man out on my morning walk, I might see. Okay, it's funny you're making that joke because you know what they did? They did that. They took the turts by hand and threw them out from beyond the time.

Basically. They dumped sewage onto barges and took it out to the North Sea. Yeah. Yeah. A great idea. And pretty damn inspiring. turd, we'll save a thousand. Yeah.

In 1887, the first fleet of barges transported pressed sewage out of the river Thames, and one of the boats was appropriately named the SS Basiljet. Honestly, that idea of boats carrying out sewage is ridiculous to me. I guess

I just don't know much about the sanitation industry, because I hear that, I'm just like, that's crazy. It's a crazy idea. But get this. London used that barge system until 1998. Wow. Yeah.

Now, today, they mostly incinerate the sewage at a treatment plant, which is a way better idea. In 1883, German bacteriologist Robert Cook isolated the cholera bacteria and confirmed what Dr. John Snow knew the whole time. The whole time? The whole time. The whole time! The whole time! That cholera is transmitted.

through contaminated water. By 1896, cholera was considered a, quote, exotic disease. Oh. And by exotic, they really meant, this is really only affecting poor people in third world countries now. Because even today, Kristen, the World Health Organization estimates that at least 20,000 people die every year from cholera, mostly in Africa or the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1889 at the age of 70, Sir Joseph Basilgett finally retired. His stressful days of being the chief engineer of London were finally over. Sadly, he didn't have much time to enjoy his freedom.

He died less than two years later in 1891. It was a sad day for the city of London, but they would ensure Sir Joseph Basilgett would never be forgotten. Plag alert! Plag alert, 10 years after his death in 1901, the city put up a monument to Sir Joseph Basiljit. Baseljet located at one of his greatest achievements, the Victoria Embankment on the north side of the River Thames. A plaque reads, Sir Joseph Basilgett, engineer of the London main drainage system and of this embankment.

You know, recently, London just completed a major renovation to their sewer system. So, here's the deal. Back when Joseph Basiljad designed the intercepting sewers, he installed a failsafe, which was like, hey, if the sewer is ever at risk, of overflowing, it's just going to dump into the river Thames right there. Yeah. We do not want this coming back into people's homes.

Right. So that was happening maybe a little too frequently. Uh-huh. London began construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel to alleviate sewer overflow and it was completed just last year

in 2025. It's pretty incredible that Joseph Basiljet's sewer is still an operation in some form in London. In fact, many of Joseph Basiljett's works, including railways, bridges, parks, embankments, and streets,

are still in use in London today. But I think the Times newspaper summed up his accomplishments best when it wrote in his obituary back in 1891. Of the great sewer that runs beneath, Londoners know that its existence has added some 20 years to their chance of life. And to think, all that it took was a great stink. And that, Kristen, is the story of the great stink.

Norm, that was a surprisingly inspiring story. Yeah? Yeah, that was really good. Thanks. And gross. Sorry if we got a little too civil engineering nerdy there at the end, but I find that stuff interesting. We prefer turdy on this podcast, but we allowed you to get nerdy. A little nerdy-turdy.

For a good cause. A nerdy-turdy episode. Oh. I just love the idea of, you know, Feeling hot, hot. Tirds baking in the sun in London. I don't love that idea. That sounds terrible.

Folks, we just wrapped up our segment of the Slop. If you are not on the $10 Patreon tier, you are missing out on some reality TV talk. Yeah, everyone, we just, well, I just went the F off on the show, Age of Attraction. It's on Netflix. It's disgusting. you don't need to watch it, I assure you. But yeah, if you want to know whether I liked it or not, because I know it's a real mystery.

Kristen's review of Age of Attraction. First of all, Norm loved it. No. Well, you're giving away the content for free. I'm sorry. You have to stop. Okay, okay. My one-word review is boring.

Boring. It is interesting when something can be both gross and boring. You wouldn't think it could be. Yeah. But sometimes... It is. It is. It is.

And it's called Age of Attraction. Mm-hmm. All right. Norm, you know what they say about history, hoes. We always cite our sources. That's right. For this episode, I got my information from the books. The Great Stink of London, Sir Joseph Basilgett and the cleansing of the Victorian capital by Stephen Halliday.

London Under, the secret history beneath the streets by Peter Ackroyd. And some excellent articles from the website, The History of London. check the show notes for a full list of sources. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to an old-timey podcast. Please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts, and while you're at it, subscribe. Support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash old-timey podcast.

Join the Reddit community, R-slash-old-timey podcast. Follow us on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram at Old-Timey Podcast. You can also follow us individually on Instagram. She is the beautiful Kristen Pitts-Karuso. I go by a gaming historian, and until next time, Tulao, Tata, and Cheerio. Goodbye.