WEBVTT - The Great Stink: The Stench So Bad They Gave It A Name 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:07.240 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:11.320 there's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there, and today we 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:15.440 have guest producer Josh sitting in. Not me, another Josh, 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:19.280 Another Josh. Josh. Yeah, you know what his nickname is, uh, 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:25.080 little Josh, the great Stink. That is a terrible nickname, Chuck. 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:30.080 We're just kidding, of course. Sorry, Josh, I'm I'm sorry 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.080 for Chuck. Everyone knows I'm the great Stink. I don't 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:36.120 know about that either. I've never once smelled you in 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:40.280 the like more than decade that we've worked together. I've 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.800 never known you to smell fouley. Wow. Alright, that means 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:49.440 I'm doing my I'm keeping my distance. We've been close, buddy, 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:52.839 and you still don't stink. Certainly not a great stink. 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:55.360 But that's neither here nor there. We're not talking about 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:57.960 a great stink yet, are we. No. I don't even 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:00.840 know what you're talking about, right, Actually, you don't even 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:05.399 know what it is that you brought up. We we 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:09.520 are talking to start, Chuck about a little city called 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:15.640 London Town across the pond in Great Britain, the United Kingdom, England. 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:20.720 That whole area over there, and um, London's been around 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:23.000 a very long time. It's been around since at least 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.200 the Romans kind of came and set up shop. Right. Yeah, Oh, 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:28.000 by the way, since you brought that up. I hate 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:31.600 to get sidetracked already, but my good friend Rob from 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.440 college Rob Elsie, my roommate and one of the smartest 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.520 guys I know, texted me the other day and said, 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:41.440 by the way, Alexander the Great was neither Greek nor Roman. 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:44.760 He was Macedonian. I saw somebody else emailed that in 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:48.040 I was like, Greek still closer. Yeah, So anyway, shout 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:52.800 out to Rob. Way to go Rob, real time corrections. Yes, 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:55.160 that's the way to go, Rob. All right. So London 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:56.960 has been around for a couple of years, is what 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:00.160 you were saying it is, And it's kind of slowly 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:02.040 grew and more and more people were like, Hey, I 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:04.320 like the I like this town. There's a lot going 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:08.680 on here. The fish and chips are great. Um, eventually 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.680 it will produce uh, some pretty pretty neat people. I'm 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.480 gonna settle down here. I couldn't think of a single 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:20.240 London as an example, but you know, people, Mary Pop 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.440 is going to show up eventually, thanks Chuck so um, 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:27.400 people started settling and accumulating, and uh, it became like 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:32.160 a pretty substantial city by the like sixteen hundreds, right. 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:37.200 But then the nineteenth century came and all of a sudden, 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.320 this is at the peak of the British Empire. Uh, 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:45.760 the early nineteenth century came along and London just exploded 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:50.400 in in population, in industry, um, right before and then 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:54.520 during and then right after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Um, 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:58.120 London really uh just grew as a result of that, 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:00.640 and all of a sudden there was something like three 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:05.919 million people living in London by like the eighteen fifties, 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.240 which made it the most densely populated city on the 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:11.720 planet from what I understand, at least the it had 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:14.840 the largest population from what I understand. And you know 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.760 what that means, Yes, that means if there's how many 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:22.640 millions you said three million, three in eighteen fifty, that's 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:30.880 three million butt holes. Yep, human butt holes are not 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.280 just humans expelling things now, just three million humans. And 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:38.120 then you've got horse butt holes and all sorts of 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:41.240 other animal but holes, pig butt holes, and they're just 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:46.160 all they're all pooping all the time. Right, pooping. Every 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:47.760 once in a while they catch a food board all 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.560 this and they'd start throwing up to there is a 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:54.720 lot of tinkle coming out of other holes. Um, there's 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:58.080 a lot of excrement that was being generated in London 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:00.240 all of a sudden, and there had been for a 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:02.200 very long time, but all of a sudden it reached 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:06.800 like a critical mass. And up to this point London 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:12.480 um enjoyed what we're called Roman sewards, which are basically 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:16.159 just a ditch in the ground that were meant to 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.680 collect rainwater. Right, And if you had to poop or 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:22.479 p or um vomit or something like that, and you 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:26.960 were a human in your house, you probably had a cesspool, 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.000 which was basically a pit in the basement. Sometimes, if 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:33.160 you were fancy, you might have like a sister or 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:35.600 a canister or something like that, and you would go 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:38.839 pooper vomit or p into this hole. And then the 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:41.880 hope was that the whole was big enough and your 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.720 family was small enough in number that the pooper p 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.599 your vomit would would decay and get absorbed into the 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:54.560 surrounding ground faster than you could fill it up. That 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:57.960 was that was how they dealt with with um surface 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:00.839 water and sewage. Then you had a hole that you 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:04.520 pooped and puked and from impeded. And then you had 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:10.640 rain ditches conveying rainwater to the to the Thames is 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.160 where the rainwater was supposed to end up. But it 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.400 wasn't just rainwater was it that ended up in the Thames? No, 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.000 I mean these I mean I don't think we can 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:23.680 just breaze past these cesspools. They were purposely designed to 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:28.119 overflow into the streets. Eventually, yes, they figured out that, yeah, 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:30.679 we're getting to the point where we have enough people 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:35.360 that that ore are cesspools are not decaying fast enough 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.039 that they're starting to overflow. Yeah. And if you lived 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:41.240 if you were poor and lived on like the basement 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:45.440 or the ground floor of an apartment building or something, um, 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:49.880 you might very well see the stuff seeping into your household. Uh. 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:52.520 Sometimes if that's if like someone's gone or if it's 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:56.360 an empty building, that stuff would build up and methane 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:58.839 would become trapped in there and there would be literal 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:04.920 explosions for the trap methane of people's pooh poop explosion. Yeah, 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.680 it was really really bad. And then when you talk 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:10.920 about the Thames, river. The Thames is a tide way, 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.799 so that means that the tides affect the water flow 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:17.800 and so it's not like sewage. You know, they were 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:19.560 thought like, let's just send it out to the sea 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:23.160 and it's all good. But what it would would happen 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:25.960 is stuff would just kind of slash back and forth 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:29.760 because of the tides. And the end result was the 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:34.039 Thames River was and when I say disgusting, I mean 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:41.880 capital D disgusting, Yes, dangerously disgusting Capital D dangerously too. Yeah, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.400 so um, chuck, it was. I don't know how they 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.800 didn't realize that where London was on the Thames was 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:50.480 what's called the tide way, so it is affected by 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:52.920 the tide. And not only is it affected by the tide, 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:57.000 meaning when the tide rises, the um the estuary and 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:00.520 the sea basically comes up into London, but there's also 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.560 still water coming from the headwaters of the Thames. So 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.640 at high tide sometimes the Thames would overflow its banks 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:11.640 it would get so high. Right, So not only did 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:15.480 you have the Thames itself just basically turning into like 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:19.760 a washing machine on the agitation cycle, stewing and mixing 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:24.600 up garbage and remains because there are a lot of 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.960 dead human and animal bodies and it's much all yeah, 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.920 all that sewage, everything that people didn't want anymore, they 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:35.520 just put into the Thames. But unfortunately it wasn't carried 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:37.240 out to the seat. It was just kind of mixed together, 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:39.720 and it would be mixed together and kind of turned 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:43.840 into a solution that was suspended in the in the water, 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:46.960 and then eventually some of that would settle to the 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.280 to the bottom. But you have hundreds and hundreds of 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.400 years of waste just cycling right outside of London, and 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.320 like you said, eventually by the by the the nineteenth century, 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:02.240 apparently it really turned earned starting in about eighteen thirty. 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.560 They found records that as as late as eighteen hundred 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.280 people were still um catching and eating salmon out of 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.160 the Thames. By by eight well it was okay back then, 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:17.600 it was fine that by eighteen thirties something had changed 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:20.560 that that it had just again reached that critical mass 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:24.240 kind of like um, jeverson that South park where um 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:28.760 they go to the water park and like there there 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:31.920 there's like some scientists who realizes that the the p 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:34.800 to water ratio is about to hit a tipping point. 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:38.199 And once it tips past that point, everything's going to 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:41.640 turn into p um and it happens, and it's disgusting. 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:44.640 That's all kind of what happened to the eighteen thirties 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.160 to the Thames. It reached a critical point and tipped 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:52.120 into just like that dangerously disgusting vat of water that 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:56.920 was just hanging around in London at the time. Yeah. So, uh, 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.880 there's a very famous scientist named Michael Faraday who made 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:03.240 his name in UH in other realms of science, but 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.720 he actually worked for the Royal Institution UH in eighteen 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:11.960 fifty five when he basically started doing an investigation. He 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:15.560 went down to that river like got in it in 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:19.760 a boat, I would imagine, UH, and did various tests 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:21.840 and you know, recorded a bunch of stuff. And then 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:24.280 one of his tests was like he would drop white 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:28.520 paper in there and he said, after this paper gets 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.080 in like an inch below the surface, you can't even 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:35.720 see it, and like poop is basically like bubbling up 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.800 to the surface, Like you can see human excrement on 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:41.720 the surface down here. Yeah, like where where the time 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:44.840 the attempts is flowing past, like the structure of a 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.600 bridge that is jutting out of the water and it's 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:49.880 it's being cut up by that bridge. The flow is 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:54.040 it's roiling up this muck and disgusting stuff is just 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.320 roiling up in clouds. That he said, we're visible even 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:00.720 in this this opaque of a water. And he wrote 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.000 all this stuff up into an article letter I guess 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.840 that he sent to the Times newspaper, uh that he 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.960 called Observations on the Filth of the Thames. And this 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:13.800 was in eighteen fifty five, I think it was published. 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:17.520 And um, he basically says, if we just keep going 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.080 this way, we should not be surprised if um, something 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.000 really bad happens, like a hot spell comes along and 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:27.040 reminds us that we really missed a chance to do 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.120 something about this, and it's now too late. So that's 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:34.200 eighteen fifty five, and that's faaraday. At the same time, 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:37.240 there's another thing going on kind of off to the side, 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:41.920 where a um, a scientist named John Snow who actually 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:47.640 knew a lot. It turns out he um was that 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:51.320 was a Game of Thrones joke. Yeah, didn't somebody say, like, 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:56.240 you know nothing, John Snow? I think, but I think 0:10:56.280 --> 0:11:00.600 that might have been first season. But anyway, but did 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.559 make an impact. I think somebody said, you know nothing, 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:05.080 John Snow. I don't know. I just saw it on 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:12.640 Twitter years back, right they said red wedding. I don't know. 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:16.120 They just just say red wedding. That's it. Um. So, 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:17.959 this John Snow guy, I think he had an H 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:20.319 in his name, which was his parents put in to 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:24.040 differentiate him from the Game of Thrones cat is um. 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:28.800 He He was basically one of the world's first epidemiologists 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:31.920 and he's working feverishly at the time because there was 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:35.880 something called the Victorian plague, which is cholera, and cholera 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:40.320 was a water borne illness that you did not want. 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:45.560 You could literally vomit and poop yourself to death in 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.959 a matter of hours. You would lose so much um 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:54.120 how you would dehydrate that quickly. And so John Snow 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:57.480 was like, there's a caller outbreak, and I suspect it's 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:00.800 in the water. But he went against a grain at 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:05.720 the time because during the eighteen fifties, Chuck, everyone thought 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.920 that you caught diseases from the smell of things. It 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:14.360 was called the miasma theory. That's right. People thought that, 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.560 and they thought that possibly that's where even cholera was 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:21.360 coming from UH, and cholera was was nothing new. UH. 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:24.920 There was an epidemic in the eighteen thirties that killed 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.000 more than six thousand people. There was a second outbreak 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:30.520 kind of shortly before this in the late forties that 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:34.520 killed fourteen thousand, So that's twenty and then between fifty 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.720 three and fifty four another ten. So that's thirty thousand 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:44.440 Londoners UH killed by cholera. And there are miasthmus that think, yeah, 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:48.120 it's from it's from smelling this stuff in the air, right, 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.439 so people are trying to like treat the air. They 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:56.480 poured something called um calcium of chloride of lime, which 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:01.440 amounts to basically pool chlorine today into the Thames, like 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.280 a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of this stuff 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:06.560 to try to cover up the stench. That didn't work 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:09.160 and actually has made the Thames more toxic. But John 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:11.800 Snow is running around, He's like, no, no, there's there's 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:14.480 some other method of transmission. It has nothing to do 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.880 with the smell. Smells just a byproduct. And he actually 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:22.560 did a an an outbreak map of cholera and traced 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:26.719 it back to a particular well a public well that 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.800 had been dug unbeknownst to the well diggers, within about 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:35.040 um three or four feet of an abandoned cess pool 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.160 that had been built over and forgotten, and that the 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:44.679 cess pool that contained color laden fecal bacteria um into 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:49.400 the the the public well was making people sick, and 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.080 John Snow figured it out, and he's considered one of 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:56.360 the early earliest epidemiologists as a result. All right, let's 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:59.920 take a break and uh, I need to go wash 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.200 my hands, and then we'll come back and talk about 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:05.480 what happened in the summer of eighteen fifty eight right 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:32.320 after this. All right, so the times is in bad shape. 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.400 A few very smart people realize this. They're trying to 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:39.280 raise a little hay about it. Nothing much is happening. 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:44.160 People are getting cholera. Poor people are dying. But because 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:46.840 you know, I was about to say, because as Britain, 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:48.680 but a lot of countries back then may have handled 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:51.320 this the same way. Uh it really until it hit 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:54.280 kind of the the politicians and the rich and the 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.520 famous is when things really are going to change. And 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:01.120 in the summer of eighteen fifty eight, eat wave is 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:06.440 what really really changed things. Because the heat combined with 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:10.320 the the what was going on in that river really 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:14.680 made what was called the Great stinkh Capital g Capital 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.760 s in London. And it was happening all up and 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.960 down the Thims, but it was happening very close to where, 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:26.400 uh what was it Westminster where the politicians yeah, huddled 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.240 and uh and made their little rules and they couldn't 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:31.680 they basically couldn't go to work. They were like, you 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:35.120 know what, this is starting to affect our government. We're 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:40.160 using scented handkerchiefs. Uh, none of this is working. So 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.640 like we finally it took that to be able to 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.520 it be like in America, if you know, there was 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:49.600 something going on and no one reacted until like poop 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:53.239 was flowing up the steps of the White House basically right, basically, 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:55.840 and the the the irony of the whole thing is 0:15:55.880 --> 0:16:00.120 that had it not been for um, the persistence of 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:04.920 myasthma theory of disease, Parliament might have not actually ended 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.440 up acting because so you have to, you have to 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:10.640 put yourself in this. So this stink is so bad 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:15.360 that we're talking about it a hundred and fifty or 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:18.680 sixty years later, right, That's how bad it was it 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:25.560 was a legendarily bad offensive stench. And not only was 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:29.360 it a terrible, wretching smell of supposedly people miles away 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.240 would catch scent of it and throw up, like just 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:34.440 throw up where they were standing. It was that bad. 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:39.680 Because again we're talking hundreds of years of human waste 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:43.720 and animal waste and um and decaying bodies and just 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:46.440 all sorts of nastiness and destines. Like you know what 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:48.120 they did with this, you know, when they were like 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:52.359 preparing animals for slaughter. It went to the same place exactly. 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:54.520 And again, this is hundreds of years of this stuff, 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:57.680 and the Thames has um slowed to a trickle because 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.320 it's a dry spell, and now because of this heat wave, 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.840 it's cooking. The Thames is cooking, all this nasty stuff 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:07.359 is cooking and the stench is coming off. So on 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:10.960 top of it being that bad of a smell, you 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:12.800 also have to put yourself in the position of the 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.359 people who are living at the time, who believed that 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:20.440 smells cause disease, that cholera and typhus and malaria are caused, 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:22.919 like if you smell it, you may have just caught it. 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:26.680 So they are terrified of this. But had john snow 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.639 had people listened to him and realized that no, you 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.280 get it from actually drinking the water, which is what 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.359 they're doing right. But Parliament may not have acted because 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:39.160 Parliament and some of the wealthier people in London they 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.320 got their water from like north of the city, um 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:46.040 piped in through aqueducts, so they had clean drinking water. 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:48.600 It was the lower classes that were drinking the water 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.440 drawn straight from the Thames, so they were drinking the 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:55.520 same water that they were throwing their waste into. Because 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:58.320 they didn't realize that there was such thing as um 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:03.840 the oral equal oral transmission of water borne illnesses. Everybody 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:07.760 thought it was just the stench. Yea. So parliaments uh 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.160 notoriously very slow to get anything done, like a lot 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:16.000 of governments. Uh. And then it took about, uh what 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.920 eighteen days, which was super fast. I think it was 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:22.120 a record. Yeah, I think so too. And they created 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.560 a bill past this bill and signed it into law 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.960 that basically said we need to basically re redo the 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:32.840 river here. I don't know what it's gonna take. Um. 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:34.320 I don't even think they knew how much it was 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:36.679 gonna cost at the time, but they knew that the 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:41.520 great stink had to stop right. So um. Again, this 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:44.160 was after it kind of like you said, the poop 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:48.880 just piled up at their doorstep, right. But they had fortunately, 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.359 just like a couple of years before, I think maybe 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:56.600 eighteen fifty five, they created a new department UM. Up 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:00.760 to this time, like the water works and the UM, 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.600 I think the sewage works were privately held. But Parliament 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:09.800 had just recently created a new department called the Metropolitan 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:14.399 Board of Works, and they had UM designated a chief 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:20.000 engineer by the name of Joseph H. Basil Get. Isn't 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:22.679 that how you would say it? Sure, we're going with 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:24.760 basil Get, then chuck if you're on board with that. 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:28.160 So Joseph basil Get would turn out to be one 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:32.960 of the most celebrated engineers in Western history. And he 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:35.640 just so happened to have kind of gotten on the 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:38.520 Michael Faraday trolley and been like, yes, we need to 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:42.399 do something about the Thames. And the solution is a sewer. 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:45.840 It's a modernized sewer. So he had spent years already 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:48.840 drawing up plans and trying to get them implemented to 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:51.960 no avail, and now all of a sudden, out of nowhere. 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:56.680 Within eighteen days of this, the great stink developing, the 0:19:56.760 --> 0:20:00.679 Parliament says, hey, Basil get go, get your plans. We're 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:03.560 gonna put him into uh. You go raise some money, 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.720 say about three million dollars, which is like I think 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.800 four d and thirty million dollars today three million pounds um, 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:13.800 and get to work as fast as you can. Yeah. 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:17.160 Before this, the UH, they didn't even have, like before 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:21.000 the Metropolitan Board of Works, they didn't even have a 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.240 a group that was even funded to tackle anything like this. 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:27.680 And then once they even had the Metropolitan Board, it 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:30.040 wasn't really funded yet. So that's why they had to 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:32.800 go out and raise money. So the hiring of Basil 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:38.040 Gat was Basil Gat. Basil Gette is the Italian. No 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:41.800 I think his family originated in revolutionary France, so let's 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.159 say Basil get Yeah, so the hiring of him was 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:47.520 fortuitous because he knew what he was doing. Um, he 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:49.680 was definitely the guy to come in and take care 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:55.240 of this and his plan, like it was so revolutionary 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:57.800 that it's still in its simplicity though that it's still 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:00.520 sort of the basis for how things work aday all 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:02.920 these years later. Yeah, No, I mean, not only was 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:05.760 the revolutionary, was that well built as well, Like it's 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:09.919 it's the that sewer built in from like eighteen fifty 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.919 eight to I think the eighteen seventies forms the backbone 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.679 of London's metropolitan sewer system. Still to this day. It 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.000 was that well made. Oh yeah, So he's like, here's 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.320 what we'll do. He says, We're gonna catch this water, uh, 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:25.359 and the waste like you know, rain water and stuff, 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:29.119 surface water before it gets to the river. And everyone said, 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:33.000 good start, and he said, and then then we're gonna 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:36.199 just reroute it. Basically, we're gonna run it parallel to 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:41.440 the river and uh, combine these sewers together and divert 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:46.080 this stuff downstream. And again the plan those sadly is 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:48.879 still to divert it out to the sea, but just 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:52.360 not to the sea such that it would wash right 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:56.359 back in with the tides exactly. And and most importantly 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:59.640 where where it dumped out into the Thames was way 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:03.640 below the populated area, so it was out of sight, 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.359 out of mind, but it was still I mean, is 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:10.400 that that is definitely a mark against it, But with 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.440 considering what he had to work with, it was quite revolutionary. 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:17.399 The idea of catching all this stuff and moving it 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:20.840 away from the city to keep the Thames clean. Right, 0:22:21.240 --> 0:22:23.000 all right, So let's take another break and we'll come 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:27.200 back and talk more about basil Gets plan that actually 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:53.439 worked right after this. So Chuck Um, you said, like, 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:57.359 the main part of basil Gets plan was, um to 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:00.439 basically build a subtranean sewer that rampare a little to 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:06.200 the Thames. That was big. I saw somewhere else miles. 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:07.639 I don't know where they got that, but let's go 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:11.040 with eighty two miles because it sounds much much more realistic. 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:15.679 But um that that in parts were big enough to 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:18.960 build it to to run a train through. And in fact, 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.400 some of these underground sewer tunnels they're like, well, it's 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:25.959 also build the underground subway system at the same time. Um. 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.320 So it was a massive project. And those use gravity. 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:32.040 They had like a two ft drop per mile, which 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:34.720 is a pretty good drop, so they would conduct the 0:23:34.880 --> 0:23:39.080 sewage and rainwater down down towards the Thames, but not 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:41.800 at the times using gravity. And then smaller ones were 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:45.240 egg shaped so that they they were narrower at the bottom, 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:47.200 so that would kind of get the flow going even 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:52.120 faster too. So, um, that's like the main part, that's 0:23:52.160 --> 0:23:54.720 the bulk of of this project, but it's certainly not 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:58.640 the whole thing by a long shot, No, not at all. 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:02.320 So they uh realized that they were like, you know, 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:05.720 even if you build a house that runs on gravity, 0:24:05.840 --> 0:24:09.439 there might be low lying areas of your sewage pipe 0:24:09.680 --> 0:24:12.480 that eventually calls you problems. I've been through this myself. 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:14.879 It's no fun. No one wants to deal with poop, 0:24:15.119 --> 0:24:20.200 whether it's Victorian London or modern day Atlanta. And so 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:23.159 like today, you have to pump that stuff out. So 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:27.080 they built these giant pumping stations, a few different ones, 0:24:27.320 --> 0:24:32.000 um Crossness, Abbey Mills, Chelsea and Deptford. And they made 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:35.399 these things really nice looking, which was probably a pretty 0:24:35.440 --> 0:24:40.720 good move. Um, especially Abbey Mills and Crossness really really 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:44.240 lovely buildings. They kind of look like cathedrals, which is 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:49.320 ironic because they were pumping out poop the whole time. Uh. 0:24:49.400 --> 0:24:51.919