The Great Stink of 1858: Bazalgette's Sewers and a Wrong Theory

The Great Stink of 1858 drove Members of Parliament out of their own library. This is the story of how the wrong theory built the right sewer. From Faraday's white card on the Thames to Bazalgette's 1865 paper on London's sewers, Snow's water theory and Farr's report on the cholera of 1866: what the primary sources say, and where they stop. Shorter, from the same paper: "Bazalgette's Sewers: What His 1865 Paper Really Says", on this channel. More in the series Checked Against the Source. Correction, 8 Oct 2026: about 13 minutes in, the chart's bars labelled 1848-9 and 1853-4 show London's cholera deaths in the single years 1849 (14,137) and 1854 (10,738), as Creighton (1894) and Farr (1868) print them. The spoken figures for those two epidemics are the same single-year counts. Chapters 0:00 The legend and the summer of 1858 0:45 Faraday's white card, 1855 2:18 The 1865 paper and the foul river 5:29 How Bazalgette sized the sewers 7:53 From the 1854 plan to the 1858 Act 9:41 Chadwick's smell theory against Snow 12:35 Cholera returns, 1866: what Farr found 15:57 Credit, and the sewage left untreated 16:45 1866 to 1892, and the summary How this was made: researched from the sources below and directed by a human; narrated with an AI voice (Kokoro). The pictures are real prints, pages and photographs of the period; the plates and text cards are made by Fennel. No generated images. Pictures Plates and text cards: made by Fennel. Bazalgette, "On the Main Drainage of London", Proc. Institution of Civil Engineers vol. 24, 1865 · Internet Archive (Northeastern University Snell Library) · public domain Farr, Report on the Cholera Epidemic of 1866 in England, 1868 · Internet Archive (Royal College of Physicians, London) · public domain Snow, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, 1855 · Internet Archive (Wellcome Library) · public domain Bence Jones, The Life and Letters of Faraday, vol. 2, 1870 · Internet Archive (University of Toronto) · public domain Frederick James Smyth, London and the River Thames seen from the south, wood engraving, 1845 · Wellcome Library, London · CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · cropped Punch, 21 July 1855, Faraday giving his card to Father Thames · Wellcome Collection · CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) · cropped William Heath, Monster Soup, 1828 · public domain · Wellcome Collection Michael Faraday, portrait c.1830 · Smithsonian Institution Archives via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa...) · cropped Punch, 3 July 1858 (John Leech) and 10 July 1858 · public domain · Wikimedia Commons Lock & Whitfield, photograph of Joseph Bazalgette, 1864 to 1877 · public domain · Wikimedia Commons G. F. Cruchley, map of London, 1839 · public domain · Wikimedia Commons John Snow, portrait and map of the Broad Street outbreak · public domain · Wikimedia Commons Illustrated London News, 27 August 1859 and 15 April 1865 · public domain · Wikimedia Commons Fun, 18 August 1866 (George John Pinwell) · public domain · Wikimedia Commons William Farr, portrait c.1870 · public domain · Wikimedia Commons #GreatStink #Bazalgette #VictorianLondon