The big stink
The Great Stink ( English The Great Stink or The Big Stink ) was the name of the consequences of the unhindered discharge of sewage from the British capital London into the Thames in the summer of 1858 . The stench caused by the hot weather was found to be so unbearable by the townspeople that Parliament decided to build a comprehensive London sewer system .
causes
Part of the problem was the establishment of an increasing number of toilets with water flushing . Although these were a step forward compared to the chamber pots that were mainly used up to now , they also brought about an enormous increase in the amount of waste water that flowed into the existing septic tanks . These pits often overflowed and the sewage flowed into the sewer system, which was actually only intended for rainwater. The wastewater then entered the Thames unhindered. Not only did private households contribute to the sewage problem, but also factories, slaughterhouses and other commercial operations.
The Thames is one of the slowest flowing large rivers and, due to this fact, could not remove the newly created quantities of faeces quickly enough. In addition, the tidal range of the North Sea, about 50 km away, still affects the Thames in London so much that twice a day when the tide comes in, seawater is pushed into the river, which in fact has no flow speed for hours.
The “Metropolitan Commission of Sewers” had been founded as early as 1848 to measure the confusing sewer network and to clear the over 200,000 septic tanks. But the fragmentation of the agglomeration into many small communities meant that the work progressed very slowly.
Cholera epidemics had increased in the city since the 1840s . Back then it was still believed that cholera was an airborne miasm . In 1854, after an epidemic with over 10,000 deaths, doctor John Snow found out that the polluted water was the cause.
consequences
In 1858 the summer was unusually hot. The Thames and many of its tributaries in the metropolitan area were heavily polluted. The high temperatures encouraged bacteria to multiply and the resulting stench was so unbearable that even work in the House of Commons was affected. The curtains at the Palace of Westminster were soaked in chlorinated lime and MPs considered moving further upriver to Hampton Court Palace . The courts planned to move to Oxford and St Albans . Heavy rains ended the hot summer and washed away most of the dirt, which at least temporarily solved the problem.
A parliamentary commission was set up to investigate the consequences of the Great Stench and work out permanent solutions. Parliament asked the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) to plan and build an efficient sewer system. Joseph Bazalgette , chief engineer of the MBW, had already submitted plans before the Great Stench, but had been rejected by parliament five times. With the completion of the London sewer system , all Londoners had safe drinking water and the death rate dropped rapidly. Bazalgette's sewer system is still in operation today.
Henry Moule (1801–1880), English pastor of the Church of England , saw a connection between hygienic conditions and the spread of diseases. The outbreak of cholera in 1854 and The Great Stink gave him the impetus to experiment with composting toilets from 1859 . In 1860 he then applied for a patent for a dry earth closet .
literature
- Stephen Halliday: The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis , New edition, Sutton Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire 2001. ISBN 0-7509-2580-9 .
- Engelbert Schramm: In the name of the cycle. History of ideas of the models of the ecological cycle. In: Research texts of the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) . IKO, Frankfurt am Main 1997. ISBN 3-88939-255-5 (At the same time dissertation at the Technical University Darmstadt 1995).