The Great Stink and London's Sewers

By the 1850s London's sewage flowed straight into the River Thames, which was also a source of drinking water. In the hot summer of 1858 the stench became so overwhelming that it was nicknamed the 'Great Stink', and Parliament, sitting beside the river, had curtains soaked in chemicals to mask the smell. Lawmakers quickly gave the Metropolitan Board of Works the power and money to act.

Its chief engineer, Joseph Bazalgette, designed a system of intercepting sewers that caught waste before it reached the central Thames and carried it east, downstream of the city. The project included about 82 miles of main sewers and over 1,000 miles of street sewers, and the Embankments built along the river. Completed largely by the mid-1870s, it helped end cholera in central London. Bazalgette built pipes larger than needed, anticipating growth, a decision later engineers praised.