And it was—but it was also the time of the Great Stink, a two-month stretch of 1858 in which London's primary water source, the River Thames, was so full of untreated sewage baking in the sun ...

Xand van Tulleken explores the onset of the Great Stink of 1858. In the process, he uncovers how poor sanitation led to cholera outbreaks, he considers Victorian knowledge of disease transmission ...

As a result of the Great Stink, the government invested in the construction of a new sewerage system for London. This was designed by Joseph Bazalgette. The new system was designed in 1858 and ...

turning ‘healthy rivers into disgusting drains’, and taking us back to the time of the ‘Great Stink’ in 1858 before we had treatment works, he said. Why do these plumbing misconnections ...

Dr Xand van Tulleken tells how an extraordinary heatwave struck London in the summer in 1858 and a terrible stench began to rise from the River Thames.