Map: The Great Stink
'Sewer' is said to be old English for 'Seaward' - and, if so, therein lies the whole problem!
'Sewer' is also said to be from the old French 'Essouier' - 'to drain'.
'Sewage' is the problem. 'Sewerage' is the hardware intended to cope with it!
1357: King Edward III -
... dung and other filth that had a cumulated in divers(e) places upon the banks of the river ... and fumes and other abominable stenches arising therefrom ...
1361: Butchers were forbidden from throwing the entrails of slaughtered animals into the Thames -
'it caused sickness amongst those dwelling in the city'.
1535: Henry VIII made the casting of any refuse into the river an offence.
1632: John Taylor, the Water Poet -
Dead Hogges, Dogges, Cats and well flayed Carryon Horses
Their noysome Corpses soyled the Waters Courses;
Both Swines and Stable dunge, Beast-guts and Garbage,
Street-dust, with Gardners weeds and Rotten Herbage.
And from those Waters filthy putrifaction,
Our meat and drink were made, which bred infection.
1662: Enactment of Oath for Commissioners of Sewers, Grey's Inn -
Ye shall swear that you, to your cunning, wit and power, shall truly and indifferently execute
the authority given you by this COMMISSION OF SEWERS, without any favour, corruption, dread or malice
to be borne to any manner of person or persons.
And as the case shall require, ye shall consent and endeavour yourself for your part to the best
of your knowledge to the making of such wholesome, just, equal and indifferent laws or ordinances
as shall be made and devised by the most discreet and indifferent number of your fellows being
in commission with you for the due redress, reformation and amendment of all and every such things
as are contained and specified in said Commission.
The same laws and ordinances to your cunning wit and power, ye shall cause to be put to due execution
without favour, need, dread, or malice of affection as God so help you and all Saints.
1710: Jonathan Swift in The Tatler -
Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go:
Filth of all hues and colours seem to tell
What street they sail'd from, by their sight and smell ...
Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts and blood,
Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood.
Ironically it was actually the cleaning up of the city which caused the major problem for the river!
The city originally survived on cesspits.
Below a certain density of population this was a feasible, biological method
of sewage disposal - always assuming that the water supplies could be kept uncontaminated.
But the invention of the water closet and the increasing population brought this to an end.
Vast areas of London exceeded this critical density - so sewers were constructed to take sewage
into the river. This began to solve one problem and rapidly created another -
1855: Letter to The Times from Professor Faraday -
SIR,
I traversed this day by steam-boat the space between London and Hangerford Bridges
between half-past one and two o'clock; it was low water, and I think the tide must have been near the turn.
The appearance and the smell of the water forced themselves at once on my attention.
The whole of the river was an opaque pale brown fluid.
In order to test the degree of opacity,
I tore up some white cards into pieces, moistened them so as to make them sink easily below the surface,
and then dropped some of these pieces into the water at every pier the boat came to;
before they had sunk an inch below the surface they were indistinguishable,
though the sun shone brightly at the time; and when the pieces fell edgeways the lower part was
hidden from sight before the upper part was under water.
This happened at St. Paul's Wharf, Blackfriars Bridge, Temple Wharf, Southwark Bridge, and Hungerford;
and I have no doubt would have occurred further up and down the river.
Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface,
even in water of this kind.
The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water;
it was the same as that which now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets;
the whole river was for the time a real sewer.
Having just returned from out of the country air, I was, perhaps, more affected by it than others;
but I do not think I could have gone on to Lambeth or Chelsea,
and I was glad to enter the streets for an atmosphere which, except near the sink-holes,
I found much sweeter than that on the river.
I have thought it a duty to record these facts, that they may be brought to the attention of those
who exercise power or have responsibility in relation to the condition of our river;
there is nothing figurative in the words I have employed, or any approach to exaggeration;
they are the simple truth. If there be sufficient authority to remove a putrescent pond from
the neighbourhood of a few simple dwellings, surely the river which flows for so many miles through London
ought not to be allowed to become a fermenting sewer.
The condition in which I saw the Thames may perhaps be considered as exceptional,
but it ought to be an impossible state, instead of which I fear it is rapidly becoming the general condition.
If we neglect this subject, we cannot expect to do so with impunity; nor ought we to be surprised if,
ere many years are over, a hot season give us sad proof of the folly of our carelessness.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
M. FARADAY.
Royal Institution, July 7
Punch Cartoon on Professor Faraday's observations -
FARADAY GIVING HIS CARD TO FATHER THAMES
And we hope the Dirty Fellow will consult the learned Professor.
DIRTY FATHER THAMES:
Filthy river, filthy river,
Foul from London to the Nore,
What art thou but one vast gutter,
One tremendous common shore?
All beside thy sludgy waters,
All beside thy reeking ooze,
Christian folks inhale mephitis,
Which thy bubbly bosom brews.
All her foul abominations
Into thee the City throws;
These pollutions, ever churning,
To and fro thy current flows.
And from thee is brew'd our porter -
Thee, thou guilty, puddle, sink!
Thou, vile cesspool, art the liquour
Whence is made the beer we drink!
Thou, too, hast a Conservator,
He who fills the civic chair;
Well does he conserve thee, truly,
Does not, my good LORD MAYOR?
1855: Sir B Hall promised -
After five years the Thames is to receive no sewage.
Shirley Brooks (1816-1874) wrote a punning rhyme for Punch entitled 'Sink-we Scento' -
In shorter time, kind Sir, contrive
To purify our drink
For while your figure is a five,
Our river is a cinq.
French 'Cinq' = "five", punning on "sink" (sewer).
The question was raised as to where the new sewer outfalls should be.
A significant fact was soon discovered by experiment -
[There was] a tidal oscillation of floats placed in the stream at Barking Creek,
of about fourteen miles, increasing with the springs, decreasing with the neaps.
On an average during the passage from neap to spring tides,
suspended matter would be carried UPSTREAM at the rate of about one mile per day,
and during the passage from springs to neaps, it would be carried DOWNSTREAM at the rate
of about two miles per day.
In a complete lunation of fourteen days, suspended matter would pass about five miles
downstream.
The above quotation must still be more or less valid - and describes what happens today
when overloaded sewers discharge into the river! It goes down stream at about TEN MILES A MONTH!
In June 1858 the smell from the River Thames was so bad journalists described it as "the Great Stink".
Sheets soaked with chloride of lime were hung at the windows of the House of Commons to prevent MPs
getting cholera.
Benjamin Disraeli described the river as "a Stygian pool reeking with ineffable and unbearable horror".
Sittings were suspended and there was talk of moving the law courts to Oxford.
The Great Stink was preceded by serious cholera epidemics.
London saw 18,000 deaths in 1849 and a further 20,000 in 1854.
Water was drawn direct from the river for drinking - even though all fish had long since died.
Charles Kingsley -
Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow and dreaming pool;
Cool and clear, cool and clear,
By shining shingle and foamimg weir;
Under the crag where the ouzel sings,
And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings;
Undefiled, for the undefiled;
Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.
Dank and foul, dank and foul,
By the smoky town in its murky cowl;
Foul and dank, foul and dank,
By wharf and sewer and slimey bank;
Darker and darker the further I go,
Baser and baser the richer I grow,
Who dare sport with the sin-defiled?
Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child.
Construction of London's Victorian Sewers
Until the early 19th century, London's River Thames, contained relatively clean water.
Some 200 years before this, Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) realised that drainage and sewage disposal
would sooner or later prove a major problem in an expanding city.
He designed a relevant system; however, this was not constructed ...
In the early 19th century there was little or no consistency regarding sewage disposal in different
districts of the metropolis; cesspools were regarded as the proper receptacles for house drainage.
However, things were to change suddenly, and in the 1840s it became compulsory to drain houses into sewers
(all of which ultimately ran into the Thames); within six years, more than 30,000 cesspits were
systematically abolished, and "all house and street refuse was turned into the river".
This inevitably meant that Thames water (from which domestic water supplies were derived)
was heavily contaminated by sewage; popular newspapers and journals launched a campaign for cleansing
Thames water.
The Chief Municipal Engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works was at this time
Joseph William Bazalgette (1819-91)
Still in his 40s, he designed (in conjunction with Colonel William Haywood 1821-94)
and supervised, the building of an elaborate system for London's sewage disposal.
Three objects were kept in view:
(i) waste disposal
(ii) land drainage
(iii) introduction of a (safe) water supply system.
An important a priori consideration surrounded the fact that the Thames is tidal,
that is, if a dead horse was thrown into the river at Westminster or the city of London,
it would be taken a few miles down river only to return on the next (incoming) tide,
that is, it would not be transported to the estuary, and hence to the (open) North Sea.
In order to circumvent this, Bazalgette designed a system of sewers from which,
by means of four huge pumps, it was possible to discharge London's sewage into the Thames
at Barking Creek (northern) and Crossness (southern),
via outfall sewers (that is, well to the east of London, past the tidal segment of the Thames).
Recently there have been further concerns that raw sewage escapes into the river
at times when the sewers are overloaded with flood water. Whilst much remains to be done to
correct this it will obviously be expensive. Not least at risk from this are recreational water users.
2006: Sewage upstages river race -
More than a million tonnes of sewage flowed into the River Thames as thousands of people prepared
to take to the water for last Saturday's Great River Race.
On Thursday, September 14, 2006, sewage flowed into the Thames as heavy rain filled London's sewers.
The pollution, seen mainly in the Barnes area, caused a drop in the river's oxygen levels - threatening thousands of fish.
[ AND HUNDREDS OF OARS PERSONS! ]
2006: Thames Stategy East, Consultation, -
Part 3, p.26 -
The water quality of the Thames has improved over the years, initially due to the introduction
of the new combined sewerage system and more recently in the 1960s due to more advanced sewage
and industrial effluent treatment. This has resulted in an improvement in water quality and
consequent recovery of the ecosystem, including fish species.
The Thames now supports 121 species of fish [ and this presumably refers to below Teddington]
Because of the legacy of the Victorian combined sewerage system, pollution still enters the Thames
during periods of high water flows, and is ameliorated by the Thames Bubbler which oxygenates
the water at specific inflow points. Consequently ... much remains to be done to continue cleaning
up the river and its tributaries.
Part 3, 3.2, p.28 -
The Thames is a tidal river and the character of the river changes throughout the tidal cycle,
contrasting mostly at low tide when extensive mud flats are visible in some sections of the river
and its tributaries. The high sediment loading is maintained in suspension by the tidal action
and colours the water of the Thames giving rise to the belief that the Thames is not clean.
The Thames is in fact recognised as one of the cleanest metropolitan estuaries in the world.
2010:
Black & Veatch has been selected by Thames Water as principal contractor to upgrade and extend Mogden Sewage Treatment Works in West London. Construction will start in spring 2010 to significantly reduce the amount of storm sewage that overflows into the River Thames during heavy rainfall when the site becomes overloaded.
[ It is totally unacceptable that any untreated sewage should reach the river at any time.
"to significantly reduce the amount of storm sewage" is mealy mouthed -
either do it completely or find a better way!
The complete separation of rainwater and sewerage systems is essential.
It may be expensive - but there is ultimately no choice.
NB: the unexpressed argument which may be implied is that at times of high rainfall
the Thames flow would rapidly deal with the problem.
THIS IS NOT THE CASE! (it may sometimes be true - but high London rainfall may occur when the river flow
coming downstream is low) - and then the Victorian research quoted above would apply -
pollution moves downstream at about TEN MILES A MONTH!
However I think it should also be pointed out that a great deal has already been achieved
(and so we are grateful to various people past and present for that) and that ALL RIVER USERS ARE
AMBASSADORS FOR THE RIVER. We do ourselves no favour by presenting the river as if it is still as it
was in the bad old days - it isn't - though until there is a total absence of sewage - it is still unacceptable ]
Upstream to Southwark Bridge
Estuary
PLA
QEII Br
Barrier
Tower Br
Custom Ho
London Br
; Frost Fairs
Cannon St Rb
The Great Stink
Southwark Br
Millenium Br
Blackfriars Rb
Blackfriars Br
Waterloo Br
Charing Cross Rb
Westminster Br
Lambeth Br
Vauxhall Br
Victoria Rb
Chelsea Br
Albert Br
Battersea Br
Battersea Rb
Wandsworth Br
Fulham Rb
Putney Br
Hammersmith Br
Barnes Rb
Chiswick Br
Kew Rb
Kew Br
RICHMOND
Twickenham Br
Richmond Rb
Richmond Br
TEDDINGTON
Kingston Rb
Kingston Br
Ditton Slip
Hampton Br
MOLESEY
SUNBURY
Walton Br
Desborough Cut
SHEPPERTON
Chertsey Br
CHERTSEY
M3 Br
Laleham Slip
PENTON HOOK
Staines Rb
Staines Br
Runnymede Br
BELL WEIR
Magna Carta Is
OLD WINDSOR
Albert Br
Datchet
Victoria Br
Black Potts Rb
ROMNEY
Eton
Windsor Br
Windsor Rb
Windsor Slip
Elizabeth Br
BOVENEY
Dorney Lake
York Cut
Summerleaze Fb
MonkeyIsland
New Thames Br
BRAY
Bray Slip
Maidenhead Rb
Maidenhead Br
Below Boulters
BOULTERS
Cliveden
Hedsor
COOKHAM
Cookham Slip
Cookham Br
BourneEnd RFb
Quarry Woods
A404 Br
MARLOW
Marlow Br
Bisham
TEMPLE
HURLEY
Medmenham
Culham Ct
Aston Slip
HAMBLEDEN
Temple Is
Fawley Ct
Remenham
Regatta
Phyllis Ct
Henley Slip
Leander
Red Lion
Henley Br
Angel on Br
Landing
Hobbs Boatyard
Hobbs Slipway
MARSH
Hennerton
Bolney
Wargrave
Shiplake Rb
R.Loddon
SHIPLAKE
Sonning Br
SONNING
Dreadnought
K&A Canal
CAVERSHAM
Reading Br
Caversham Br
Reading Slip
Purley
MAPLEDURHAM
Hardwick Ho
Whitchurch Br
WHITCHURCH
Hartswood Reach
Gatehampton Rb
Goring Gap
Goring Br
GORING
Swan
CLEEVE
Moulsford
Moulsford Rb
Papist Way Slip
Winterbrook Br
Wallingford Br
BENSON
Shillingford Br
R.Thame
DAYS
Burcot
Clifton Hampden
Clifton Church
Clifton H Br
Barley Mow
Long Wittenham
CLIFTON
Appleford Rb
Sutton Courtenay
Sutton Br
CULHAM
Culham Cut Fb
Abingdon Slip
Abingdon
Abingdon Br
ABINGDON
Nuneham Rb
Nuneham
Nuneham Park
Radley Boats
SANDFORD
Rose Island
Kennington Rb
Isis Br
Iffley Mill
IFFLEY
Oxford Rowing
Isis
Donnington Br
Riverside Slip
Boathouses
Punting
Lower Cherwell
Upper Cherwell
Islip
Head of River
Salters Steamers
Folly Br
Bacons Folly
Oxford Fb
Osney Fb
Weir stream
Osney Rb
Bullstake Stream
Osney Marina
OSNEY
Osney Br
Four Rivers
OLD RIVER
CANAL
Medley Weir Site
Medley Fb
Bossoms
Perch
Trout
GODSTOW
Godstow Nunnery
Godstow Br
Thames Br
KINGS
River Evenlode
EYNSHAM
Swinford Br
Oxford Cruisers
PINKHILL
Farmoor
Stanton Harcourt
Bablock Slip
Arks Weir Site
NORTHMOOR
Harts Fb
//Rose Revived
Newbridge
//Maybush
River Windrush
below Shifford
SHIFFORD
Shifford Fb
Tenfoot Fb
Trout Inn
Tadpole Br
RUSHEY
Old Mans Fb
RADCOT
Radcot Cradle Fb
Swan Inn
Radcot New Br
Radcot Old Br
GRAFTON
Eaton Hastings
Kelmscott
Eaton Fb
BUSCOT
Bloomers Hole Fb
Trout Inn
St Johns Br
ST JOHNS
Halfpenny Br
Marina Slip
LIMIT
Inglesham
Hannington Br
Kempsford
Castle Eaton Br
Marston Meysey
A419 Br
Cricklade
SOURCE?
THAMES HEAD
SEVEN SPRINGS