The Incredible Story of London Sewers

is the world not dark enough for you well good news it absolutely really is and if you'd like to know more about all the horrible things that humans have been doing to each other since time and memorial well please check out my new channel into the shadows from landmines to penal colonies to horrific diseases if it's well horrible we cover it check it out through the link in the description below or search for into the shadows i hope to see there and now today's video [Music] very few people have made such a life-enhancing advancement to the way of life as the mastermind of today's mega project his construction revolutionized sanitation and health for victorian londoners and over 150 years later is still saving lives every day against the relentless mass of waste that london produces in fact we could go as far as to say that this man saved more victorian lives than any other person of the time despite this joseph bazzlejet remains something of an unsung hero and should receive just as much if not more recognition as other great sanitary reformers of the 19th century most of his work lies directly beneath the feet of the everyday londoner and although rarely seen the sewer system is one of the most crucial parts of london's infrastructure the very reason the sewer system was built at that time was more of a political decision rather than a life-saving one and it was down to one major problem that affected everyone regardless of class or social status the smell if you lived or worked in the city of london at the time then it would have been inescapable and it was only when those in the highest of power became affected themselves that action was finally taken on how to solve the problem in order to understand the sheer magnitude of the task ahead we need to understand the state of london sanitation at the time and before that so let's get a little dirty with the fascinating if not rather disgusting life of the london sewers [Music] by the 1800s london had become the largest city in the world thanks mostly to the success of industrialization and the mass migration of people that now filled its streets of course with lots of people came lots of waste and with lots of waste came the problem of how to dispose of it the existing municipal drains were only built to cope with rain water and night soil collectors couldn't empty the two hundred thousand suspects quickly enough so over time london became caked in filth the cesspits themselves were expensive to empty and maintain so it's believed that they were designed to leak liquid either straight into the earth or as londoners were now discovering straight into these streets themselves if the cesspits weren't leaking then they were overflowing often draining straight into the city's water supply along with a whole host of other industrial and general waste the thames is of course a tidal river so instead of the waste heading out to sea it simply sloshed around with the tides and slowly polluted the water and air naturally diseases such as typhoid and dysentery began to sweep the capital and by 1831 london suffered its first outbreak of the deadly cholera where nearly 7 000 people would fall victim to the disease the outbreak was taken so seriously that the government opened an inquiry into the city sanitation and despite the calls for improvement the government always claimed they simply didn't have the money for a project of this magnitude however with almost two and a half million people now crammed into the city and a great deal of those living in squalor the problem of waste contaminating both the streets and the river thames continued until inevitably in 1848 a staggering 14 000 londoners were lost to yet another cholera outbreak 1848 also marked the same year that the united kingdom passed the public health act a legal landmark in which the government now took responsibility for public health and allowed local authorities to generate large amounts of money to improve sanitation conditions however as it often does red tape proved to stand in the way and very little was done by those local authorities and the public health act didn't even apply in london itself where the metropolitan commission of sewers created their own city sewers act they were presented with dozens of proposed plans on how to solve the crisis but none of them were authorized and the problem continued things only got worse after the abolishment of suspects and the introduction of flush toilets which channeled the flow of sewage directly into the thames and with a now unmanageable amount of waste the city fell to a third cholera epidemic in 1853 which claimed another 10 000 lives part of the problem was the victorian belief on how disease was spread the miasma theory in which diseases are spread through bad air had generally been accepted by most scientists at the time but there's always one and physician jon snow introduced the idea that the recent waves of diseases were spread through contaminated water he reasoned that cholera couldn't be spread by bad air as the initial symptoms related to the gastrointestinal tract when in fact if it was in the air then surely it would cause pulmonary symptoms his extensive research proved of course to be completely correct and yet it was widely rejected by the scientific community at the time sadly he passed away before his theories were proven true the very year that things came to a head in london and the city could take no more by 1858 the smell now emanating from the capital was overpowering a relentless heat wave that summer caused the thames to fall and the human and industrial waste that lined the banks of the river began to cook under the baking sun and the searing heat at first lawmakers of the land simply ignored it never agreeing on action or reform of the overhauling of infrastructure that was needed to fix the problem eventually and unsurprisingly those in power began to suffer the houses of parliament were coming unbearable with parts of the building uninhabitable and politicians having curtains soaked in chloride of lime in an attempt to keep the foul stench at bay parliament discussed uprooting the whole government outside of westminster despite the fact that they'd only recently purchased the plush new premises overlooking the thames pressure mounted further after a letter was published in the times by perhaps the world's most famous scientist of the time chemist and physician michael faraday of the royal institution who wrote about the state of the thames and the pollution that was now dominating its depths during a boat ride faraday threw pieces of white paper into the river only to watch in horror as they disappeared immediately under the surface proving how dark and dirty the water had become his letter caught the public's attention and the public turned to the government demanding a solution eventually between the outcry and the stench parliament could take no more and a bill was rushed through in a record-breaking 18 days and it provided the city with the finances to refurbish the river thames and build a brand new sewer system the great stink as it was to become known was a defining moment in the history of london despite various outbreaks of a whole host of deadly diseases tens of thousands of deaths frustrated calls for sanitation improvements and even evidence that contaminated water was responsible for cholera it was finally the smell that shamed the politicians into action and so in steps joseph basil jet who was specifically hired to take the reins of this undertaking the victorian engineer of french descent became a member of the institution of civil engineers in 1846 and by 1849 he was appointed to the metropolitan commission of sewers for london where he frustratingly failed to persuade the powers that be too back his various plans for an overhaul of the now terribly dated sanitation system eventually a much more powerful body was established and basil jet was promoted to chief engineer for the metropolitan board of works and was in this position when the great stink occurred only now he had more power to assert the changes that he had pushed for so many times baseljet reviewed over a hundred different proposals in order to come up with the ideal solution for a sewer system that could serve the whole capital his system would channel wastewater and sewage through his underground tunnel network into the main intercepting sewers he opted for egg-shaped tunnels which were narrower at the bottom this was not only to strengthen the tunnels but to keep the system flowing even at times of relatively low water thanks to basil jet's gradient of two feet per mile gravity sent the waste eastward and dumped it into the dams at a point where it would quickly be swept out to sea as opposed to back toward the city basil jets even designed the sewers to cope with the combined waste and rainwater his argument being that in order to build a separate rainwater system he would then need to dig up london all over again not surprisingly the combined sewer system was authorized and basil gents plans started to come together the project would create over a thousand miles of street drains and 82 miles of main sewers that would pump waste under londoner's feet into a series of main intercepting sewers with the help of four pumping stations these pumping stations were a testament to the architecture of the victorian age as grand as they were extravagant the stations have become renowned for their beauty with crossness in particular being described as a cathedral on the marsh not to its gothic splendor alongside this crosses also had the accolade of housing the largest steam engines in the world at the time baseljet would also build the victoria albert and chelsea embankments that not only would encase the new sewer pipes but also narrow the river and strengthen the overall flow which would help keep the thames considerably cleaner than it had been in years before baseljet chose to use the relatively new portland cement in order to hold together the 300 million plus bricks that would be used to make the new sewer system this choice was somewhat controversial at the time as paul and cement had to be mixed correctly for it to do its job to the fullest confident in his choices basil jet insisted that the portland cement was far superior to the previously used roman cement and would have more durability and strength when submerged by water the bricklaying was an integral part of the process and had to be done accurately it's believed that demand was so high for work as the bricklayer's wages increased by 20 making it a very profitable job during the years of construction the success of the project can be attributed to joseph bazeljet's obsessive work ethic overseeing every detail of work with impeccable attention and leaving nothing to chance his draconian quality control system was second to none inspecting every plan that was passed and visiting the various sites to check if the work was up to his required standard he built the sewers to withstand extreme weather events and created solutions for possible future problems that might arise by calculating the size of the sewers needed for anticipated flow rates at the time and doubling it creating a system capable of coping with the waste of around 4 million people the foresight behind this was simple the system will be built once and should be built to cope with the waste of a growing city the long and complex construction of basil jet sewer system ended up at the cost of just over 4 million pounds which is equal to about 500 million pounds today the prince of wales officially launched the brand new system from the crossness pumping station on april 4th 1865 just seven years after the great stink [Music] the true value of basil jen's system was realized in 1866 when a new cholera outbreak swept the land london remained relatively unscathed with only those in the east end of the city falling victim to the fresh onslaught of the disease the reason behind this is simply down to the fact that the east end was not connected to basiljet's system leaving their water supply vulnerable to contamination and so as the years rolled by the new sewers performed exactly as basiljet had designed and provided a safer water supply improving the quality of life more than anyone else at the time we can only imagine the further outbreaks of diseases that could have continued to ravage london's population which was now growing at an incredible rate for his innovation in sanitation bazeljet was awarded the highest honor in the land a knighthood by the time of bazeljet's death in 1891 the population had doubled to around 5 million and yet his system still coped with the capacity of waste and water flowing through its tunnels the tunnels were in fact so well built that surveys a century later showed no need for repair as the construction was holding up rather nicely had basil jet not doubled the calculation of his tunnels then london's sewer system would have failed to cope somewhere around the 1960s causing serious overflowing and pollution to plague the city once again over time joseph basiljet has finally begun to receive the much needed credit that he deserves with a memorial dedicated to him at the victoria embankment and several written works exist on the man and the legacy that he left behind although his most famous work isn't on the map and most londoners will never see it with their own eyes you can see the mark of joseph basil jet all around the city he was instrumental not only in the sewer system but also in creating or re-planning major roads in london leading the design of the woolwich ferry which would provide a free service linking woolwich and north willitch building key bridges including putney hammersmith and battersea and was even the lead designer on the proposal of what would eventually become tower bridge basiljet's fingerprints are all over london his creations transforming the capital and remaining significant in the way that london works to this very day [Music] even the greatest of innovators must eventually fall behind the time somewhat and with a population heading toward 9 million baseljet system is in need of an upgrade as much as its legacy is a testament to both bazeljet and victorian ingenuity the proverbial cracks are beginning to show with the population beyond the original shelf life of the sewers the overflowing of waste into the thames is becoming more frequent and causing major pollution problems once again modern times bring modern problems so along with the usual array of waste we now have baby wipes sanitary products condoms and many more items that pose a constant threat to the now temperamental sewer system one unexpected blockage that though foresight could have seen is the fatberg these matters of grease oil and general disposables that don't actually dispose have become a real threat to the flow of the sewers a london bus-sized example was discovered in 2013 under kingston upon thames and a few years later a record-breaking fatburg was discovered in the infamous area of white chapel at 250 meters long it stretched further than tower bridge and weighed in at a colossal 130 tons almost 10 times the size of the kingston fatberg these are just some of the ways that waste has evolved since the time of basil jet and in order to combat these changes a modern solution is needed to keep the waste flowing a new super sewer is under construction that will take what basil jack created and bring it into the 21st century and beyond and just like basil jet the new system is set to last for at least a century providing londoners with safer cleaner water for generations to come the thames tideway will be a 16-mile new tunnel that will link acton in the west of the city to the bechton sewage treatment works in the east with the aim being to intercept store and transfer untreated sewage ensuring waste is channeled away from the thames river planning was approved in 2014 with work beginning in 2016 and much like their victorian counterparts the engineers of today are experiencing the challenges of building such an intricate construction in the middle of a major metropolitan area with completion finally expected around 2025. much like basil jet all those years ago the new building works also involve creating new areas of public land with seven new locations taking up three acres of london that will give the city even more access to the thames creating green spaces and social hotspots for londoners to enjoy while overlooking what should be the cleanest thames river in a very long time with around 94 of the sewage currently entering the thames on a yearly basis being intercepted by this new super sewer the company behind this massive task fittingly named basil jet tunnel limited have a lot to live up to they take their name from the very man that transformed the life of the city by providing safer water for all basal jet eradicated cholera amongst a whole range of other water-borne germs that could no longer thrive in the city's streets so although it's impossible to predict exactly how many lives he has saved over the years we cannot ignore his contributions to the health and the shape of london then and ever since [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 24 2022