In Our Time: The Great Stink

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the stench from the River Thames in the summer of 1858 and how it appalled and terrified those 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. The source of the problem was that sewage, once carted off to fertilise fields had recently, thanks to the modern flushing systems, started to flow into the river. The engineer Joseph Bazalgette was given the task to build huge new sewers to intercept the waste