UK, London

The Great Stink is an event that occurred in London in the summer of 1858. Hot summers and the lack of a centralized sewage system then led to the pollution of the Thames and surrounding areas with feces and waste. Diseases were rampant, and citizens fled London en masse. Parliament resigned.

Water supply and sanitation before the Great Stench

To late XVI for centuries, Londoners took water from wells, from the River Thames and its tributaries, as well as from large cisterns; for example, from a spring at Tyburn, water was carried through a lead pipe into a reservoir: Cheapside's Great Conduit. You had to pay for the use of water from the tanks, and overseers were appointed to ensure that traders and bakers would not use the water for free for commercial purposes.

Wealthy Londoners who lived near the pipelines that filled the tanks could obtain permission to pay to connect their homes to the water supply, but unauthorized connections were also common. Those who could not pay for connection received water from water tankers. In 1496, the latter created their own guild called the “Brotherhood of Water Carriers named after. St. Christopher."

In 1582, the Dutchman Pieter Maurice rented the north arch of London Bridge and installed a water wheel there for a pump that pumped water to several areas of London. In 1584 and 1701, 2 more wheels were added, operating until 1822.

In 1815, it was allowed to drain the sewer into the Thames, where the sewage of the entire city was discharged for 7 years. At the same time, they continued to take water from there for washing and cooking. In London there were more than 200 thousand sewage pits that were supposed to be cleaned regularly, but due to high prices this was done irregularly, which added a stench to the already not fragrant air of London.

Cholera was widespread throughout the 1840s. The reasons were not known; It was generally accepted that the disease was a consequence of inhaling air containing “miasmas.” Due to the prevalence of the airborne theory among Italian scientists, Philip Pacini's discovery of the causative agent of cholera in 1854 was completely ignored, and the bacteria were rediscovered thirty years later by Robert Koch. In 1854, London doctor John Snow, studying the causes of the epidemic in Soho, found that the disease was transmitted through drinking water, contaminated with sewage. This idea, however, was not supported in society. In 1848, several local authorities involved in sewerage issues were merged into the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission. The commission began cleaning out the old cesspools, which ultimately also led to the Great Stench.

Events before the Great Stench

The situation became worse with the replacement of potties with flush toilets, which increased the number of waste water. Sewage pits overflowed and their contents ended up in rainwater ditches. Mixing with the wastewater from factories and slaughterhouses, it ended up in the Thames.

In 1858 the weather was particularly hot. The Thames and its tributaries were overflowing with sewage, and the warm weather had caused it to bloom, creating such an odor that it affected the work of the House of Commons: curtains soaked in bleach had to be used, and its members decided to move to Hampton, the ships were about to be evacuated to Oxford. After heavy rains, the heat and summer humidity ended, which solved the problem. However, the House of Commons appointed a committee to report on the circumstances of the disaster and recommended that a plan be drawn up to prevent such problems in the future.

New sewer system

At the end of 1859, the Metropolitan Board of Works was created, which, despite numerous schemes to combat the epidemic, accepted the scheme proposed in 1859 by its own chief engineer, Joseph Bazalget. Over the next six years, key elements of London's sewer system were created and the Great Stench became a distant memory.

Although the new sewerage system was in place and water supplies gradually improved, it did not prevent epidemics in the 1860s in east London. However, a forensic investigation showed that the contaminated River Lee was filling the reservoirs of the Eastern Water Company. Measures taken led to the fact that it was last case cholera in London.

Recently, something disgusting was found in the sewers of London. A huge mass of mucus and rotting organic matter has clogged a large section of the ancient Victorian tunnels, which still function as sewers. But where did this vile growth come from in a city famous for its dungeons?

Vasily Makarov

Fatberg(eng. fatberg) are dense lumps of frozen mass consisting of fat, pads, disposable napkins, condoms, toilet paper and other household items that people continue to flush down the drain every day, despite numerous prohibitions. Such formations are the cause of most breakdowns and blockages of any old (and often new) city sewer system. Huge plugs of human waste completely clog the pipes, which eventually burst and spill fetid water onto the city streets. Recently, London sewerage workers discovered in the heart of the city a disgusting column of slime and rotting household hygiene items, which completely blocked a significant area of ​​​​very spacious sewer channels. But where did this strange formation come from?

History of London sewers

In Victorian London, only the squares and main streets were spacious enough: in the rest of the city, houses were stuck together very closely, and sewage was sometimes poured directly into the streets

The city on the Thames has never been a model of cleanliness and until the 19th century it was deservedly considered one of the dirtiest cities in Europe. The main source of water for the townspeople was, of course, the river: back in 1582, construction began on a water wheel pumping water from the river, and the wealthiest Londoners even installed personal waterworks to their estates. TO 19th century the city water supply became publicly accessible, and flush toilets appeared in houses, the sewage of which ultimately ended up in the same Thames. At first, the river dealt with human waste and dissolved impurities in its waters, carrying them away from the city. However, London's population continued to grow, and drains and cesspools became increasingly difficult to clean. The authorities solved the problem simply - they directed absolutely all sewer outlets directly into the Thames. It would have been wise to make them much further down the river, but the drain was open within the city!

Of course, after this the river waters became cloudy in just a few months. It became increasingly difficult to take water from it and use it for domestic needs: the river became so dirty that it literally exuded a fetid miasma. In the summer of 1855, the Thames overflowed its banks, leaving huge amount half-decomposed sewage. Historically, the period after this is called " Great stench": this level of pollution provoked an outbreak of typhoid and cholera, and a mass pestilence began. The city is empty.

The beginning of a wonderful era

A real underground river runs through London's sewers, which the townspeople call the Fleet.

At the end of the year, when heavy rains cleared the shores and the epidemic gradually subsided, the Italian architect Joseph Bazalgetti won a competition to build a new, improved sewer system. With the help of five main intercepting collectors (three on the left bank of the river and two on the right), he solved several problems at once. Firstly, now sewage entered the river much lower downstream, and the water within the city became much cleaner. Secondly, since diversion systems, to save time and money, were built directly in the bed of the Thames, fencing off part of it with caissons, solid stone embankments appeared in the city, and the flow noticeably accelerated. By the way, it was then that a revolutionary system for its time was used for laying bricks on cement mortar- before that they were placed on lime, which, as you know, does not tolerate moisture well. The cement mass, invented in Yorkshire back in 1824, was mixed with sand and large pebbles - a kind of concrete was obtained. Until now, the old masonry practically does not crack, and it is difficult to crush it even with the help of modern jackhammers.

Without sewerage there would be no famous embankments from which tourists and locals admire the black waters of the Thames in the evenings.

Hollywood films often like to show sewers as a system of vast, light tunnels lined with brick and filled with only slightly turbid water. Of course, real sewers are much less picturesque, but it was the London system of underground canals that came closest to this standard and is still considered one of the most beautiful underground structures of the world. Even now, these 150-year-old buildings are doing their job properly: two tunnels collect water and send it to the main treatment plants in Beckton and Plumstead. In some places, due to the increase in the amount of water, the diameter of the tunnels reaches 3.5 meters - such a system is not afraid of any flood.

Our days

Fatberg in all his glory

Alas, over the course of a century and a half, sewerage has reached the peak of its efficiency and is increasingly coping with the tasks assigned to it. In 2013, cleanup workers discovered a huge fatberg in Kingston - more than 12 tons of fat and mucus covering a rotting organic-synthetic mess. But even this find pales in comparison with what was found the other day in Whitechapel: a real column of stinking waste grew in the sewer, weighing about 130 tons! It currently blocks a 250-metre long section of Victorian sewer, an area twice the length of a football field. This is the largest fatberg in history, and all the efforts of city utilities have been dedicated to cleaning it. Matt Rimmer, chief executive of Thames Water, said the column was "hard as concrete" and industrial water cannons were being used to remove it. A team of 8 workers removes 20-30 tonnes of material per day, which is then transported to a recycling station in Stratford.

Every month, Thames Water spends around £1 million ($1,328,000) clearing clogs like these from London's sewers. The company launched the Bin it-Don't Block It awareness campaign, warning that certain personal care items should not be thrown into the toilet. Perhaps some frivolous citizens would do well to take at least one look into London's dungeons and realize the seriousness of their behavior.

Over the course of the 19th century, London transformed from a city with medieval ideas about sanitation and hygiene into what we consider a civilized city. It is quite possible that in a couple of hundred years, or even earlier, the current ideas about civilization will seem terrible.

By 1842, according to the census, there were 1,945,000 people in London, and probably more if you include those who did not seek to catch the eye of officials.
The Thames stank. The main component was human waste. In previous centuries, the Thames truly “flowed brightly,” and salmon and swan were found in it. People who cleared cesspools sold human excrement as useful fertilizer for nurseries and farms outside London. Sometimes a chamber pot would be emptied from a window onto unlucky passers-by or onto the street, its contents added to a varied mishmash of dead dogs, horse and cow manure, and rotting vegetables. The rain washed most of it into the Thames.

In older parts of London, houses stood on the edge of mud lakes. ...in aristocratic areas "there was a lot of damage in the sewer pipes, where harmful substances, in many places the pipes were clogged, and the smell was terrible, even inside, in the houses of high society.
Another component of the bouquet of street scents was animal excrement. All over London, cows were kept in barns in terrible conditions that made it impossible to clean them. Cows, sheep, calves and pigs sold at Smithfield Market passed through the streets of London, leaving about 40,000 tons of manure a year along the way.
...The slums poisoned the dirty alleys behind the most fashionable shops and houses with their stench. But the first place undoubtedly belonged to Bermondsey, on the south bank of the Thames opposite the Tower of London. Leather was tanned here, a long, skilled process that involved, among other things, dog excrement. (It is possible that Schweik, who earned money by collecting dog poop, in the original “dog poop,” also handed it over to tanners. Those who, like us, were in Marrakech in the quarter where leather is processed, will remember the sharp unpleasant smell.)
When water closets became commonplace, the Victorians should first of all congratulate themselves on their breakthrough in cleaning up the London area. By 1857 the number of water closets had reached 200,000, properly replacing pit cesspools and emptying directly into the Thames through sewer pipes. The result, somewhat delayed but inevitable, was the Great Stench of 1858. In June, the Thames stank so strongly that being in the chambers overlooking the river in the Palace of Westminster became not only unbearable, but also dangerous.
Londoners began to realize that governing the city through medieval parish councils was unsustainable in nineteenth-century conditions, and in 1845 the First London Metropolitan Board of Town Works was created. For the first time, sewerage was seen as a citywide problem. Fortunately, Joseph Bazalgette joined the commission in 1849...

Broad vision, organizational energy and engineering genius made the impossible possible. Old sewer pipes were laid to the Thames or one of its many tributaries. Bazalget, figuratively speaking, took a pen and drew straight lines... approximately parallel to the river, perpendicular to the old sewers and tributaries of the Thames. These lines reached the river much further downstream, far beyond the boundaries of the then development. ...The entire project, valued at £3 million, was achieved through private investment and government funding, took five years. ...Work on "intercepting" sewer pipes" began in February 1859 and continued throughout London, discouraging traffic but somewhat alleviating previous odors. ...By November 1861 about 1,000 men were working on the northern mean level and it was making rapid progress. In most cases, tunnels laid under streets, dug up and filled in, sometimes 30 feet below ground level.

The official opening of the Crossness Pumping Station by the Prince of Wales was enthusiastically reported in the Illustrated London News on April 15, 1865. The Prince arrived on the royal barge from the Palace of Westminster, accompanied by two archbishops, two princes, two dukes, two earls, several fortunate members of parliament and other dignitaries...His Royal Highness and his entourage were shown the engine room and boiler room, and were shown into an adit where sewer pipes were laid..Visitors were given a unique opportunity to walk in a huge reservoir, illuminated by a myriad of multi-colored lights, which would very soon be filled with sewage. Then the prince turned the handle in the engine room and the station started working.
Pumping station in Crossness. Almost a palace.

Perhaps Bazalgette was tired of all his wonderful work being hidden from public view, and he decided to take the last opportunity to express his artistic soul and impress the public. The Abbey Mills pumping station, where the northern upper and middle sewer levels connected, was a building that Coldridge's Kubla Khan would have felt at home in, with minarets and the like. ("Kubla Khan" is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coldridge, published in 1816, translated by Konstantin Balmont.)

Now let's talk about Victorian toilets. Oddly enough, these were not always water closets. In 1860, the Reverend Henry Mole, probably inspired by a passage in Deuteronomy (“Besides your weapon, you shall have a shovel; and when you sit outside the camp, dig a hole with it, and cover up your excrement with it again”), invented an earthen toilet that deserved To tell you more about it. Behind the seat there was a box with clean dry soil, so that it could be dried freely in the kitchen in the stove, a round hole was made in the middle. with a metal bowl reinforced under it, another smaller hole was made inside under the right hand, with a handle to pour earth from the box into the reservoir under the seat. The earthen toilet was easy to maintain and repair, easy to clean, and the floor under it could be swept and washed.

But still, earthen toilets were replaced by water closets. Visitors to the World's Fair who first used Mr. Jennings' device gave it glowing reviews. In 1861, Thomas Krepper began selling his water closets with the slogan: “One press - and a reliable release.” His closet with elastic valve, costing 3 pounds 9 shillings 6 pence, was completely worth the price. A two-gallon cistern suspended from above was sold with a "device to prevent excess flow of water", "internal valves to muffle noise in the pipes" and "a copper chain with a porcelain handle"... And all this for 1 pound 1 shilling 6 pence.

When you read Victorian London, looking out the window at the vegetable garden, some things are perceived closely. Once upon a time our neighbors were a couple of old men who fertilized their beds with the contents of their own cesspool and believed that this best fertilizers. The respected Victorian gardener J. Loudon gave similar advice on caring for an English garden:
"The most valuable organic fertilizer are human feces, followed by manure rich in ammonia and nitrogen... every home should have a facility for collecting liquid feces in two adjacent containers and then diluting them with water. Where urine cannot be collected, the best substitute is excrement and water..."
And this is called Victorian hypocrisy! These are not empty calls for recycling, but sober advice. It remains unclear when gardeners stopped collecting urine for the garden, but hasty visits to the compost heap in the decorous twilight are still practiced. All this brings us back to the idea of ​​the advantages of an earthen closet over a water one.

“I tore some white cards into pieces, wet them so that they would sink easily, and at each place where the ship landed, I lowered them into the water. The water was so cloudy that when submerged a finger's width on a bright, sunny day, they were completely indistinguishable. The smell from the river was such that it seemed like we were floating through an open sewer.”

Three years later, during a hot summer, the sewer leaked into the river, heading towards the city center. After low tide, the bank of the Thames was completely covered with a layer of feces, which quickly decomposed in the sun, making life in the city impossible due to the terrible stench.

Covering their noses with handkerchiefs soaked in rose water, members of the English Parliament, whose building stands on the banks of the Thames, passed a decree in record time (just 18 days) and allocated money for the construction of a water supply system and a new sewer system in London.

The "Great Stench of London" in the summer of 1858 finally forced the government to act, although it was not the only cause. Another was to prevent the periodic outbreaks of cholera epidemics. IN XIX century, cholera was rightfully considered the most terrible disease: it spread with lightning speed, claiming thousands of lives in a matter of days, while doctors did not know how to help patients.

Until the middle of the century, cholera outbreaks were associated with bad air, until in 1854 the English doctor John Snow came to the conclusion that it was not the stench, but the sewage that caused it, that was the true cause of the disease. During the cholera epidemic in Soho (1854), Snow made a street map to identify the epicenter of the infection. From questioning the residents, it became clear that those who took water from the pump fell ill, while those who drank beer remained healthy.

It turned out that at this point, wastewater from the London sewer system had leaked into the city water supply. John Snow ordered the lever to be removed from the column, and the epidemic subsided. In the same year, Italian researcher Filippo Pacini published a description of the causative agent of cholera. Another English doctor, William Budd, stated that the cause of the disease was a fungus-like living organism.

If we add to this the 400,000 tons of sewage water flowing into the Thames every day (150 million tons per year), the waste from the numerous factories located on its banks, and the vague ideas of Londoners of all walks of life about sanitation and hygiene, it becomes clear why the city is so often suffered from cholera epidemics.

Despite the evidence collected by John Snow and William Budd, the authorities continued to delay the construction of new sewers in London until the crisis of 1858. Architect Joseph Bazalgetti received the task from the government to develop the project and implement it in practice. Bazalgetti did an excellent job with it!

He erected five major interception systems, two in the south of the river and three in the north. Huge drainage works prevented the sewerage from entering the Thames, but diverted it to the east of the city, where at low tide the sewage flowed into the sea. The 82-mile-long tunnels had enormous capacity for that time and were built much deeper than the river bed.

During the construction of a new sewer in London, Joseph Bazalgetti used an innovative method of joining bricks for fortifications. coastline. Instead of ordinary lime mortar, which takes a long time to harden, he used Portland cement, which hardens even under water. Moreover, he ordered it to be mixed with gravel and coarse sand, essentially using concrete for mortar.

Construction of new sewers in London began in January 1859, andcompleted by 1870. The cost of the work was estimated at three million pounds, but the colossal costs were justified: the air in the English capital became much cleaner, cholera epidemics stopped, and the quality of the work of Victorian builders is such that the strength of the walls and pipes, despite the daily flow of toxic substances, are admired even today, 145 years later.

For centuries in the pre-industrial era, sewage in major cities Europe formed an important part of the agrocenosis - fertilizing the surrounding fields. In London, in the mid-19th century, a sewerage system 850 km long was first built, carrying sewage into the sea. Today, a power station runs on London excrement briquettes.

How London's sewer system, the greatest wonder of the world for its era, was built is described in Carolyn Steele's book, The Hungry City. How food determines our lives" (Strelka Press, 2014, pp. 333-340).

“By the early 19th century, London's population had quadrupled, and its horticultural farms, now extended as far as the River Lea, continued to regularly receive fertilizer through the Dung Wharf, the city's main waste collection point. Supply roughly matched demand (more population, more excrement, more fields to fertilize with it, more food for the townspeople) - until the water closet, invented by Joseph Bramah in 1778, came along. Having solved the problem at home with one press of the release lever, the water closet created a real nightmare on a city scale. The volume of wastewater has increased sharply. Old latrines overflowed, clogging and overflowing street drainage ditches intended only for rainwater. Excrement began to seep from underground drains between floorboards in low-lying homes.

Since the 1830s, cholera epidemics have raged in London one after another. In 1842, the socialist Edwin Chadick published An Inquiry into the Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, which painted a grim picture of life during the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. Chadwick concluded there: “ Various shapes epidemics, endemics and other diseases caused by unclean air, generated by the decomposition of animal and plant substances, dampness and dirt, as well as crowded housing, plague the population in every corner of the kingdom.”

In 1848, the government responded to the situation by creating a body called the Joint Sewerage Commission. Her first step, according to Chadwick's proposals, was the flushing of 369 underground drains in London. This operation, undertaken with the best intentions, turned out to be a disaster - its result was the discharge of centuries of accumulated sewage into the Thames. Many Londoners took their drinking water from the Thames, and the result was a new outbreak of cholera. Now this disease occurred every year, claiming up to 10 thousand lives.

London's "sewage crisis" has sparked debate across the Western world about urban waste. For example, the “father of mineral fertilizers,” the German Justus von Liebig, spoke about the extreme value of excrement - more precisely, about nutrients contained in them. “They need to be returned to the land, otherwise the outskirts of the cities will turn into a barren desert.” He even wrote a letter to British Prime Minister Robert Peel:

“The reason for soil depletion should be sought in the habits of city residents. Thus, water closets do not allow the collection and storage of liquid and solid feces. In Britain they do not return to the fields, but are carried away by rivers to the sea.”

Chadwick also agreed with Liebig's arguments. He himself became a devotee of the use of sewage after visiting Edinburgh and noting how fertile the area was irrigated by the waters of one of the main sewer canals called the “Smelly Brook”. And two English chemists Hoffman and Will calculated that the contents of the excrement of Londoners in a year is equal to the volume of all guano imported into Britain (guano is compacted bird droppings - BT). British high society began to lean towards leaving it as it was, as was customary in all European cities - collecting excrement and taking it to the fields.

However, the hot summer of 1858 made theoretical discussions about the benefits of sewage unacceptable. That year, the “Great Stench” rose from the poisonous waters of the Thames: the stench was so strong that the windows of the House of Commons had to be draped with cloth soaked in bleach. A cholera epidemic began again in the city.

Politicians, who have been talking about sewage for centuries, are finally convinced that something needs to be done. A new body was created to replace the Joint Sewerage Commission - the Metropolitan Administration public utilities– was tasked with solving the problem once and for all. An open competition was announced, to which 140 projects of varying degrees of fantasticness were submitted. One of them involved transporting London's sewage to the countryside via radial canals. According to another, the waste should be collected in floating tanks and then taken out to sea by tugboats.

In 1859, the Authority, having reviewed and rejected all 140 designs, settled on a plan developed by its own engineer, Joseph Bazalgette. The scheme was based on a proposal made 25 years ago by biblical artist John Martin. He was obsessed with apocalyptic visions, but in a rare moment of lucidity, in 1834, Martin published a pamphlet (with masterfully executed illustrations) in which he proposed to clean up the Thames by laying two intercepting sewers on both banks of the river, over which galleries could be built “to the working population could indulge in such a useful activity as walking.”

At Limehouse and Rotherhithe, the sewers would end in huge tanks where their contents would be turned into compost and sold to farmers "as they do in China". The idea was brilliant, but Martin didn't have the engineering knowledge to work out its practical application. But engineer Bazalgette got down to business. He proposed building five interception collectors, laying them with a slight slope in order to use natural drainage system Thames basin. They had to intersect with existing sewer channels and river tributaries. The end points of the system would be two huge reservoirs, at Beckton in the north and at Crossner in the south, where wastewater would accumulate in anticipation of the high tide, which would carry it straight out to sea.

Bazalgette's project finally buried plans for excrement recycling. After the “Great Stench,” the government wanted only one thing - to get rid of them, and as quickly and efficiently as possible. Bazalgette coped with this task brilliantly.

Construction new system London's sewer system was completed in the shortest possible time for those times - in six years. A total of 2.7 million cubic meters of soil were excavated, and 318 million bricks were required for cladding (their price in England increased 1.5 times during this period). The total length of the intercepting collectors was 137 km, and each of them was an inclined channel of an oval cross-section, which was supposed to maximize flow speed. The system, which connected 720 km of main sewer drains (making the total length of this system exceeded 850 km), was capable of moving more than 2 million cubic meters of wastewater per day, almost exclusively due to its own weight.

This “almost” was the reason for the construction of the pumping station in Krossner. Although Bazalgette used every possible trick to harness gravity, he still needed four pumping stations(one on the northern and three on the southern, low-lying bank of the Thames) for pumping sewage. Crossness station, located at the lowest point of the system, received largest volume work: lift half of London's sewage up to 12 meters into a giant underground reservoir.

The system built by Bazalgette still operates in London today. The Krossnes station is still operating, pumping 700 thousand cubic meters of sewage per day. Solid waste from the 1860s until the 1990s they were loaded onto barges and then dumped into the North Sea. Such an operation for a long time was even considered beneficial for the marine ecosystem, because the excrement contributed to the explosive growth of protozoa and plankton, the beginning of a food chain at the top of which were herring, cod or haddock.

However, starting in 1998, the Crossness plant began pressing and drying the solid sludge. It turned out that this is an excellent fuel (like dung, used since ancient times by the steppe people). These briquettes are used as fuel for its own power plant, and provide the sewerage complex with about 70% of the energy it consumes.

Also in the Interpreter's Blog about sewers.