London's Victorian Sewage Stench: Why Not Even Queen Victoria Could Escape the Smell

Dumping waste into the Thames during a hot summer created such unbearable stench that it forced fundamental changes in London, and became one of the greatest engineering achievements of the Victorian era.

The River Thames has long been one of London's main arteries, used for transport and trade with ships constantly plying up and down, delivering people and goods. But at the same time that it helped build the British capital into a bustling metropolis and the center of a global empire, it also served as a dumping ground.

Whether it's chemicals from factories, animal parts from slaughterhouses, or domestic sewage, most of the city's wastewater ends up in the river. At the beginning of the 19th century, the condition of the Thames was dire. Furthermore, it was London's source of drinking water and allowed disease to wreak havoc. Between 1832 and 1854 there were three cholera epidemics.

To make matters worse, the population rapidly increased to over 2.5 million by 1850. And the introduction of even more sanitary water closets exacerbated the problem because flushing toilets meant more sewage flowing into the river. The old system of small sewers and cesspools had sunk.

Newspapers cried out for change, with tabloids such as Punch showing the river as an obnoxious old man named Father Thames. Scientists and engineers devised plans for how to deal with London's sewage problem, but nothing was done yet. A desperate Michael Faraday warned that just one "hot season" would give Londoners "a sad proof of the folly of our carelessness".

Faraday's warning came true in 1858. An increase in temperature of more than 30 degrees Celsius, we saw a decrease in the level of the river, which caused the dirt to cook under the sun. The smell became unbearable.

The London City Press read: "The delicacy of speech ends—it stinks, and he who smells the stench can never forget it, and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it."

Queen Victoria herself tried to take a boat down the river, hoping that the bouquet she was holding would be enough to mask the stench, but gave up after a few minutes and demanded that the boat be returned to shore.

It became almost impossible to be next to the Thames. At the time, diseases were believed to be spread through foul air, or miasma, so for Londoners to smell the Thames during a stench was not only very unpleasant, but life-threatening.

One group of people who were particularly affected were politicians, as the newly built Palace of Westminster, the seat of the British Parliament, was located on the banks of the river. They ordered tons of lime to be poured into the Thames and the curtains to be covered with chloride of lime to mask the smell, but to no avail. The committee rooms had to be vacated and there was serious talk of moving Parliament to another city, such as Oxford.

It turned out that political action could be swift when politicians themselves were in trouble. In just 18 days, MPs passed a bill authorizing £3m to go into what Chancellor of the Exchequer Benjamin Disraeli described as a "Stygian pool. Intolerable horrors".

The Metropolitan Board of Works was tasked with building a new sewer system for the city, led by engineer Joseph Bazalgette. He had tried for years to implement his plans to improve the health situation. Now, he was the mastermind behind an ambitious vision.

Bazalgette broke through London to create a network of interconnected sewers that led to the river, but joined main sewers parallel to it. Waste is directed to pumping stations – some such as Crossness and Abbey Mills, themselves architectural marvels – and downstream.

This project changed the appearance of the city, especially with the addition of embankments. These hid the sewers and narrowed the river, reducing the possibility of dirt accumulating in the water. Completed in 1875, more than 318 million bricks were used to realize Basalt's vision.

The smell improved, the water became clearer and the cases of disease decreased. There was another cholera epidemic, but only in a part of London not yet connected to the basalt network. Such was the success of the new sewage system that London still relies on it to this day.

Johnny Wilkes is a former writer for BBC History Revealed and continues to write for the magazine and HistoryExtra. He holds a BA in History from York University.