In 1858, the Great Stink happened in London. Everywhere you went, it stank.
The pits were filling with human faeces and we couldn’t clear them fast enough.
For years, it smelled. When you were eating a croissant, visiting the doctors, sleeping in your room.
Not that you did, but if you ever tried sleeping inside a yet-to-clean festival toilet, you’d know how is.
It is not until Joseph Bazalgette, commissioned by the city, came to fix the problem.
He designed 1,600km of brick sewer pipes in large oval shapes. Using gravity and downward slopes to ensure sewage flowed in the right direction (pun intended). For places it couldn’t, steam-powered pumps lifted the pipes. Beautiful ornate house were built to blend them into the neighbourhood.
They had to dig up the road, build the sewer and rebuild the road without machinery or computer modelling, in one of the world’s busiest cities. The digging, carrying and bricklaying was all done by hand and horse for six years.
150 years later, most of the pipes are still in use today.
Today, we have added a few more steps. Separating rainwater from sewage, treating it, and turning it into fertilisers and energy.
The night soil man who collected our poo has moved on. We are not in constant fear of cockroaches and snakes when we are in the toilet. And we can, by and large, take a breath of air without choking.
Can you imagine that?
