We often imagine Victorian London as the height of class
and the pinnacle of polite society.
But the truth is, there was something undeniable wafting
through even the fanciest neighborhoods
in the summer of 1858.
The city stank.
For decades, a steady stream of raw sewage
seeped from the old sewers directly
into the River Thames, which runs right
through the city of London.
As you might imagine, this was not good.
It basically turned the river into
a massive noxious open sewer with pale brown water
and all sorts of unspeakable things floating in it,
including lots and lots of human poop.
New-fangled flushable toilets made the problem even worse.
Combine that with a colossal increase in the city's
population and suddenly, London's icky issue
was becoming too much to bear.
That's when the summer of 1858 hit and the putrid problem
reached a tipping point.
That summer, a huge heat wave descended on the city,
scorching it relentlessly for two full months.
The sweltering heat caused all the waste in the river
to ferment, which made all that sludge, sewage,
and other sickening stuff smell even worse.
London press called it the Great Stink
and wrote article after article, describing
in disgusting detail, just how smelly the situation was.
And it wasn't just the odor that had people in a tizzy.
Most of them firmly believed the smelly air was deadly.
You see in those days, most people
still believed that all diseases were spread from person
to person by bad air.
Today, we know they spread through germs,
can be passed by touch, through the air, or in water or food
depending on the disease.
London had already dealt with a series of cholera outbreaks
in recent years.
So all that rotten air had Londoners scared stiff
that the Great Stink meant a great plague was looming.
But one doctor wasn't so convinced.
His name was John Snow, and he managed
to prove that cholera was passed from person to person
through the contaminated water supply rather than the air.
Apparently, he knew something.
Sadly, no one really listened to him.
And almost everyone continued to fear
they would catch cholera from the bad air
wafting off the river.
Eventually, the smell got so bad and the people of London
were in such a frenzy, that parliament simply
had to step in and, well, do their job.
They decided to build a new and improved state of the art sewer
system stat.
The new system was 82 miles long and moved waste farther
East, away from the river and into the ocean, which
apparently is somehow better?
Ugh.
Either way, the brand new system caused the Great Stink
of London to go away for good.
And the river finally became safe enough to drink again.
So in the end, London's terrible, horrible, super
stinky, very hot summer might have
been dreadful for everyone who smelled the Great Stink.
But it led to a healthier city, half decent drinking water,
and most importantly, a river that wasn't full of poop.
Today, all those efforts to sanitize the River Thames
have worked wonders.
The river that used to be an open sewer
is now considered one of the cleanest rivers in the world.
Talk about a glow-up.