Rarely will you hear anyone bring up the Great Stink of 1858 by choice, but when elite schools are closing over sewage backfill in boarding horses and toilet waste is spilling into the Thames for days at a time, it is worth revisiting the two-month period that resulted in the sordid sewage system Londoners suffer with today.

During this ill-fated summer, heat, industrial waste and human excrement combined to produce an unyieldingly foul smell polluting the air city wide. Previously the rich had been able to ignore London’s antiquated waste system – reliant on the services of local night soil collectors who cleared pits of poo, of which there were 200,000 in a city of 3m. But this smell was bad enough to make anyone who wandered too close to the Thames to faint. Fornication, even, suffered. Cholera was rife, especially after an 1847 directive to throw all sewage into the Thames resulting in an epidemic that took 14,137 lives (ironic considering the current legal storm permits).

However, it was mainly the stink that caused parliament to finally pledge to solve the problem (just two years prior they had rejected proposals due to cost – as our private water firms would do 150........

© City A.M.