The Great Stink ........ when London was very smelly ...... on the wireless today

Now this is one I am going to listen to later this morning.

The silent highwayman, 1858

Of course all our cities, towns and villages were equally smelly.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the stench from the River Thames in the hot summer of 1858 and how it appalled and terrified Londoners living and working beside it, including those in the new Houses of Parliament which were still under construction. 

There had been an outbreak of cholera a few years before in which tens of thousands had died, and a popular theory held that foul smells were linked to diseases. 

The source of the problem was that London's sewage, once carted off to fertilise fields had recently, thanks to the modern flushing systems, started to flow into the river and, thanks to the ebb and flow of the tides, was staying there and warming in the summer sun. 

The engineer Joseph Bazalgette was given the task to build huge new sewers to intercept the waste, a vast network, so changing the look of London and helping ensure there were no further cholera outbreaks from contaminated water.

With Rosemary Ashton, Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London, Stephen Halliday, Author of ‘The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis’, and Paul Dobraszczyk, Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London"

Picture;The silent highwayman : Death rows on the Thames, claiming the lives of victims who have not paid to have the river cleaned up, during the Great Stink. July 10th, 1858, Cartoon from Punch Magazine, Volume 35 Page 137; 10 July 1858

*The Great Stink, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gjcm