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The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis

Stephen Halliday,

Adam Hart-Davis (Foreword by)

3.90 · Rating details · 146 ratings · 17 reviews

In the sweltering summer of 1858 the stink of sewage from the polluted Thames was so offensive that it drove Members of Parliament from the chamber of the House of Commons. Sewage generated by a population of over two million Londoners was pouring into the river and was being carried to and fro by the tides. The Times called the crisis "The Great Stink". Parliament had to ...more

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Paperback, 224 pages

Published February 1st 2001 by Sutton (first published July 1st 1999)

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· 146 ratings · 17 reviews

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Start your review of The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis

Jul 03, 2012 Caroline rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, miscellaneous, 4-star-reads

What a great pleasure it was to learn about my hero, Joseph Bazalgette, and his astonishing achievements. The book was well set out and easy to read. I particularly liked the boxes giving short biographies of the various people involved with Bazalgette’s projects. They imparted a real flavour of the movers and shakers who peopled his incredibly able world.

Here follows a synopsis to remind me of what I read (I don’t expect anyone else to read it!) I just don’t want to forget all the wonderful thi ...more

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May 28, 2019 Ben Moore rated it really liked it

Shelves: london-non-fiction, history

I was initially disappointed that this book actually spends very little time focusing on the ‘Great Stink’. Rather, the ‘Great Stink’ is a small piece of the overall story.

However, the story that is presented here is fascinating. I had never heard of Sir Joseph Bazalgette and now feel it’s an absolute crime that more people haven’t.

The construction of sewers could be an extremely dull topic but the author, Stephen Halliday, does an excellent job, for the most part, of bringing it to life. Occasi ...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Song Medina-Babijes rated it it was amazing

Halliday gives a clear historical account of what Thames looked like during the Victorian era--a river infested with waste and disease--and how one man changed it. The Thames river's transformation from one stinky river to one of the most admired rivers in Europe is something that the Philippines can replicate in its own water systems. Joseph Bazalgette, an engineer, put all the stops to clean Thames. His magnificent project is truly one for sustainability! ...more

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Jan 22, 2018 Ari rated it really liked it

Shelves: casual-nonfiction, technical-history, widener

This is an odd book, but a worthy one. As the title suggests, it's part history of London's 19th-century sewage system, and part biography of Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the sewage system. These two stories complement eachother, and the book felt loose but by no means padded. The book used to be a dissertation but is blessedly free of the usual defects of such. The author has many historical and biographical digressions, but minimal theoretical apparatus. The scholarly machinery of foot This is an odd book, but a worthy one. As the title suggests, it's part history of London's 19th-century sewage system, and part biography of Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the sewage system. These two stories complement eachother, and the book felt loose but by no means padded. The book used to be a dissertation but is blessedly free of the usual defects of such. The author has many historical and biographical digressions, but minimal theoretical apparatus. The scholarly machinery of footnotes and explicit roadmapping is present, but unobtrusive. This is a highly readable book for a nonspecialist.

I liked the book; it brought a number of things into focus and was an easy and pleasant read. The author is especially good when it comes to explaining the problem that Bazalgette solved. Before 1815, the Thames was a remarkably clean river. Dumping sewage to the river was illegal, and mostly impossible -- there were no sewers and everybody had a cesspit. In the second quarter of the century, however, things changed. The city kept growing. Laws were amended, allowing sewers into the river. The popularization of flush toilets increased the amount of waste being discharged. Presently, the Pool of London became a giant communal cesspit.

This got smelly. Parliament appointed a series of commissions and boards to consider and take action; maps were made, plans were solicited, but no significant construction was started. By the summer of 1858, conditions were apocalyptic and parliament was considering relocating away from London. This was the "great stink" of the title. The smell made a bigger impression at the time even than it would for us. In 1858, the prevailing theory was that bad air caused disease; the Parliament wasn't merely uncomfortable, they were afraid there would be mass death.

The parliament responded by creating the Metropolitan Board of Works -- a local government with enough power to solve the problem. The Board hired Bazalgette as chief engineer, and put him to work building a system of "intercepting" sewers -- so called because they ran parallel to the river, intercepting the existing sewer mains and diverting their flow far downriver.

The system was an immediate and near-complete success; in 1866, when there was a cholera epidemic, most of the city was served by the new sewers and those parts were largely spared. There were some problems with pollution near the egress, but these were mostly manageable.

A few other points of interest --

Bazalgette was a hard-working professional, and a pioneer in the use of modern concrete for the sewers -- and a pioneer in systematic quality-control testing for it, too.

People kept saying "sewage is valuable as manure, don't just flush it away." Cities kept offering it for sale, discovering no buyers and saying "no, it isn't." This same debate played out over and over for decades, with a rotating cast of characters.

Bazalgette, in addition to the sewers, also presided over the Thames embankments. These did in fact have sewer pipes in them, but also subways and other infrastructure -- they were a big dramatic and highly effective civil engineering project. ...more

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Sep 29, 2020 Kent rated it really liked it

A very interesting story of Victorian London plagued by recurring cholera epidemics and the engineering projects led by Sir Joseph Bazalgette that improved and saved the lives of countless Londoners.

Imagine living in a city where there are no sewers, human waste is disposed of in the streets, in the basements of homes, or in buried cesspools near homes. Your drinking water is taken from wells and the River Thames. Cholera epidemics come and go without warning and almost everyone believes that c ...more

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Dec 19, 2017 Jj Li rated it liked it

Shelves: history, memoir, non-fiction

This isn't a topic most people think about, but Bazalgette really does deserve a place of honor amongst the greats of early-ish Science. This book has the potential to be a momentous modern epic, but the author's style is very scholarly and academic, a bit too dry to do the topic justice as a good human drama. As an informative text and compilation of resources and research, this is excellent, though. ...more

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Jul 28, 2019 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Sanitation History

A book which gives credit where credit is due to a Great Man and Engineer, Joseph Bazalgette! He was very modest, but his work was heroic legend! He made London safe to live and work in plus improving the streets, bridges, and parks. The City of London owes a great debt to Bazalgette. A great history read!

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Feb 26, 2018 Missclimpson rated it really liked it

I was surprised to find out that flush toilets were the cause of the problem. It makes sense when I think about it. Instead of carting off human waste to be used as fertilizer or whatever, as was the practice before flush toilets were invented, it was dumped into the rivers via “drains” of one type or another, leading to the great stink. An interesting read.

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Feb 14, 2021 Steve Gross rated it really liked it

A fantastically researched and produced book, with pictures and biographies. However, they seemed to have missed the lowest level - a basic map of the sewers, an explanation of what an embankment is and a map showing where they are, etc. Recommended only for professionals and London historians.

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Jan 04, 2017 Kriegslok rated it it was amazing

This is an excellent book. Books about growing food, cooking food, even eating food are proliferate. However, less interest is taken in what happens to your dinner after it has been masticated. This book takes it title from the failure of London's "great and good" to take any interest in what happened to the contents of their chamber pots once they had been sleuced into Thames tribuatories and how hot summers began to bring them nausea inducing reminders as a tidle wave of festering sludge slopp This is an excellent book. Books about growing food, cooking food, even eating food are proliferate. However, less interest is taken in what happens to your dinner after it has been masticated. This book takes it title from the failure of London's "great and good" to take any interest in what happened to the contents of their chamber pots once they had been sleuced into Thames tribuatories and how hot summers began to bring them nausea inducing reminders as a tidle wave of festering sludge slopped against the side of the Mother of Parliaments. It is presumably this reluctance to engage with human, and other, waste in polite society which has ensured that unlike many Victorian era engineers the name of Sir Joseph Bazalgette is relatively unknown. However, it was he who after the usual political footdragging, a reluctance to accept that the market wasn't going to sort it out (a lesson politicians seem eternally reluctant to learn) devised the magnificant London sewer system and its associated infrastructure. This is a story of extreme wealth in a sea of extreme poverty, of public health, of science and the struggle of those challenging recieved wisdom to be heard, of political foot dragging and of the development of innovative engineering techniques and the growth of bureaucracy capable of devising contracting systems and overseeing and quality controlling work (much of which is hidden below ground out of sight). Anyone who has been lucky enough to see behind the scenes and under the earth the tunnels, machinery and exquisite Victorian architecture of these places and their supporting infrastructure cannot fail but to be impressed. Without Bazalgettes strength and determination, and that of a few supporters who could think beyond penny pinching and to the greater good it is doubtful that such a system that has served London so well, and still does, would ever have been built on the scale it was. We also have Bazalgette to thank for the Thames embankments, many parks, streets and Thames bridges. Interestingly the London sewer was the proving ground for Portland cement and something of a project magic wand in handling the demands for effectiveness in wet conditions. This is an outstanding piece of research well illustrated with contemporary material. ...more

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Feb 12, 2017 Fabio Amador rated it it was amazing

El libro exalta la figura de Sir Joseph Bazalgette por su contribución al saneamiento de la ciudad de Londres en el siglo XIX mediante la planificación, diseño y construcción de un sistema de interceptores, además de otras obras de infraestructura que fueron construidas en esa época. Resulta también interesante la descripción de las controversias asociadas a la teoría miasmática de la enfermedad que era aceptada hasta ese momento. Como ingeniero resulta inevitable senstirse inspirado por este li ...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Denise rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, london, hard-copy-owned, history

I've always been fascinated by anything concerning the history of London, including the very workings of the infrastructure. I already knew Joseph Bazalgette's story and was amazed at the task he had before him. This book added to my knowledge by giving details such as what he was up against with local authorities and the typical "not in my backyard" camp. It may be too much information for some people's taste, but people who are fascinated by the things that most take for granted- this will giv ...more

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May 15, 2015 Mckinley rated it liked it

Shelves: history, non-fiction, health, city

Interesting; the photos and illustrations added greatly to my understanding and enjoyment.

For non-fiction books on this see: The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson; The Blue Death: The Intriguing Past and Present Danger of the Water You Drink; and by Robert D. Morris

For Fiction See: The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel
by Deborah Hopkinson ...more

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Jan 10, 2015 Arlene rated it liked it · review of another edition

The book was not as intriguing as the concept. I think perhaps this might be a book that needs to be read. I listened to it as an audio book and something was lost in the translation from page to ear.

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Sep 09, 2014 Andrew Lin rated it really liked it

Just finished reading this despite planning to do so for quite some time. A fascinating investigation of politics, engineering and history behind the infrastructure of a great city. Interesting to see that modern engineers still have to go through the same travails as our forebears.

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Mar 30, 2010 Converse rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history

Entertaining history of the building of the London sewers, Thames embankements, & numerous streets. Sewers built greatly reduced cholera epidemics, but not for the reasons contemporaries believed - they thought that the stink directly caused the disease.

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Mar 21, 2015 David rated it liked it

This must be the definitive book on England's greatest engineer. Packed with detail makes it hard going at times, but your persistence is amply rewarded. ...more

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