“GENTILITY of speech is at an end — it stinks, and whoso once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it.”

This is how the City Press described the smell emanating from the River Thames during the unusually hot summer of 1858.

With temperatures passing 40°C, the sun was gently cooking the gigantic stew of sewage, slaughterhouse waste and industrial run-off that flowed into the Thames from the struggling sewer system.

There had been complaints about the smell of the Thames for years before, but the “Great Stink” of 1858 prompted action immediately, in the form of pouring bleach into the river to ease the smell, as well as prompting the construction of over one thousand miles of sewers to cope with the expanding population of London.

Much of this sewer system remains in use today. In addition to the smell, the unsanitary conditions in Victorian London led to frequent cholera outbreaks.

It is hardly surprising that the horrible smell and presence of disease were linked in the minds of Londoners.

The leading theory of disease at the time was that breathing bad air released from decomposing matter caused illnesses such as cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis and malaria (the name of which derives from the Italian mala aria — meaning “bad air)”.