Smelly Facts About London's The Great Stink of 1858
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Many think of the Victorian era as a time of tight-laced corsets and formal teas. 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 that the entire city took on an odious reek. The smell was so bad that it was blamed for illnesses among the upper class, reportedly caused citizens miles away to throw up whenever the wind changed, and eventually lead to the development of the London sewage system.
#thegreatstink #victorianera #weirdhistory
Coming next Sunday - TIMELINE 1980: ua-cam.com/video/5adOMpj9KEA/v-deo.html
Thanks for loving my comment! I love this channel so much! It makes history so much more interesting and funny ❤
u are obsessed with BO and stink
The worst smell I’ve ever encountered was when my friend’s winter coat got soaked in cat piss. Boyyy, we had so much fun holding back our vomit that day. It was the only coat he had for the frozen weather. We actually agreed on burning his coat when we got back to his house, but on our way back we got some powerful detergent.
He wasn’t impressed with his cat. I can assure you. LOL
I once met Donald Trump during a Lunch Meeting... There were lots of McDonald's bags and Diet Coke cans. Mind you that this was before he was President. Now when Trump passes gas, the Secret Service is responsible for clearing the room. I was very unfortunate, it was days before my appetite returned and still nothing tastes quite right.
Can you do a video about being a solder is the Byzantine empire around 900 a.d please. It is my favorite time and I cannot find anything about it.
Stories like these allow me to express how grateful I am to not have been born during those times.
Crazy to think we wouldn't know any difference though. 200 years people might be saying the same about today haha
I'm grateful that we can bath. I had no idea how privileged that is.
@@Oladavol we already do. New York is vile, I puked the first time I visited.
And nearly any Chinese city is worse then anything humanity has ever built.
I’m surprised there is no comment saying OmG I sEeE yOu EvErY wHerE
Yeah, I thank god to live in the 2020 and being put to jail if I go outside cause there's a deadly virus that is killing thousands of people and destroying our economy.
Fact that rome had a sewer system a thousand years before London crazy
civilizations do not follow our concept of time
So did India. What happened?
Mike Keller That should be the slogan for all the reasons London modernized quickly.
When Rome fell it set back the western world a 1000 years
Niso Stannard worse than Naples?
Can we all just take a moment to appreciate our sewer systems?
My civil engineer dad would be proud
yep
You guys are all so cute in your blissful ignorance. Our drinking water is not only filthy but toxic in ways that effect the body that humanity never could have imagined until the last couple generations
@@notthisguyagain2269 not on my island, our water is top notch
And also all the folks who keep it working. It may be a dirty and smelly job, but still one of the most important. If those sewers broke/leaked, clogged or what ever the fuck, we'd have some serious trouble.
This is why rebuilding our infrastructure is so critical.
Most infrastructures in the world are in bad shape but we're running out of money
@@VFatalis more printing 😂
@@reasonablerage4370 Hell no, that's exactly ignoring the infrastructure and the method to actually do good and put method.
I've never been able to smell a video but there is always a first for everything
@Evilpimp cruel
@Evilpimp The irony is I watched this video directly after showering but still a nice one
Cant believe how distant these things sound but they arent! I'm lucky to be born now for many aspects
This still happens in developing countries today, just because they don't have enough money to create proper sewage systems. We're lucky to be born in the locations we were born too
Imagine the things we do now that people in 100 years are gonna cringe at.
Yeah, it was quite shitty back then.
Yea no Lie. Ugh That made me sick I would not like by there
Maybe people in the past are luckier because the flooding that they experienced then is no more worse than the worsening floods that we will be experiencing now.
I actually do sewer and water construction
... the worst smell I’ve encountered was tearing out the old sanitary pipes in front of a very old hair salon... all the old hair and whatever else had produced THE worst smell...2nd is digging next to an d cemetery
I used to work at an Indian reservation that had over 100 fireworks stands all next to each other. Every one of them had there own portable toilet. During the hot Summer when they came to empty them once a week, the smell it created was pretty epic.
epic isn't the word I'd use
I'll bet they only sold snakes N sparklers?
Wait Indian, u mean indigeneous indians or ppl from the country of India
Reminds me of when I used to work at a refinery during the summer months. If the refinery didn’t smell bad enough, Wednesday morning’s would be when the portacans plant wide would be cleaned. The honey trucks would empty into a pit that was at a major intersection near the contractor gate. 🤢 For some reason they seemed to be at peak capacity for dumping as everyone was coming through the gates.
Okay, this is epic.
Can you imagine if weird history existed in 1858 and someone in London was just drinking some water then watched this
Ask Flint, Michigan
@@MarloSoBalJr or any heavy industrial city?..
*slice me off a glass of fresh(ish) water, if you'd be so kind*
@chico Beer was definitely safer to drink than the water.
More proof that the government only acts when a situation starts to affect them directly lol
Edit: Omg 2k likes thank you all for your understanding sense of humor!!! 🥰
Omg 3k! Nice! Thanks peeps that know a joke ❤❤
@Willem Chastity what even is the point of your comment
Well yeah, why would they act differently than civilians? You just described how everyone on Earth reacts. Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Victor Ponce probably a young 10 year old who doesn’t get enough attention at home, so they look for any type of interaction, but they lack a developed frontal lobe to communicate properly so they get angry instead of learning, so we parents have to teach them patience and knowledge, which they reject because they know everything 😉
True
@Willem Chastity ,idiot !
The worst smell I've ever encountered was when a patients ostemy bag was leaking all over our lobby at work. Probably what the river smelled like during the Great Stink tbh. ☠️
I empathize. One of my patients vomited faeces because of a bowel obstruction. The smell haunts me still
@@SuperDjdil wow, that's insane I didnt realise your body could even do that
@@SuperDjdil I just threw up in my mouth a little. 😨
@@SuperDjdil ....omg i was thinking of the patient..how utterly horrible it must be !
@shani perera Dear Jesus that is horrid
I love this channel. Your videos just happen to show up right when I am about to go to sleep, which I have no problem with. It's like listening to your grandma reading books for you again.
The worst smell I can remember was when I traveled to India. I was walking through the streets in New Delhi; that oppressive heat and humidity, with piles of garbage and raw sewage around us, was awful. It's the only time I have ever come close to throwing up because of a smell.
I love waking up to watching weird stinky stuff! Hahahaha.
Where are you from
Paul Cowlishaw Arizona, USA
russ g , means we’re weird I guess!
@@danielleonfirehernandez5150 cool cool
It's amazing we survived as a species. Imagine having to do the nasty with someone that hasn't bathed in forever. Just.. oh god
When I was married or the few relationships I have been in I insisted the person bathe before any intimacy.
I am from mountains in the northwest of the United States. I traveled the country only one time and I never took for granted our crystal clear rivers (and even some lakes). Some places the rivers look so disgusting that I couldn't imagine touching them let alone eating or drinking anything from them...
I grew up in Woodbury NJ. Around 1965 the Woodbury creek got pretty putrid for a while there. At one point a whole gang of fish all died, and piled up for us to see and smell. They must have taken care of it, because after that, it was never that bad again.
The sewers are still in use, but nowadays they have to send crews down occasionally to break up "fatbergs" which are congealed masses of trash and fats. Also, probably the worst thing I ever smelled was the trash compactor at this hotel I worked at. It sat outside and all the kitchen trash was thrown in there, it would bake in the sun and smell like deaths asshole. Not to mention the constant swarm of bees.
Worst smell I ever encountered was at A Fiesta supermarket I worked at. The moved the trash compactor and wanted me to clean under it. This compactor was the only compactor for the whole store and had tones of rotten meat, vegetable, milk and fruit juices sitting under it being baked by the Texas heat. Sure they’d empty it out twice a week but only clean under it once a year. I couldn’t for the life of me get near it without gagging.
When I visited London as a child and they told my the Thames was toxic I was sad and didn’t understand how it could still be poisonous. Now that I’m older… I shudder since I’m pretty sure this is one of the worst biologically man made disasters (ie no oil spills or chemical disasters) in history.
🎵“I passed along the river Thames, it’s waters did they wreak..”🎶 A Knight’s Tale anyone?
Last year I hadn't heard from my grandparents for 2 months. We went on a trip to pick up a few hundred of pounds of fish. Turns out one fish was poisonous and had killed them that day. 2 months later i went to see what was up. Turns out they were both decaying im there 80 degree home with tons of fish they weren't able to put up. It was the worst smell ever. You could smell it at the begging of there driveway almost a mile away. Even police and clean up crew said those warm decaying bodies mixed with mushy fish were the worst thing they ever seen and had to smell. Never went there again, even at the funeral you could smell it through the closed casket. They told us that everything was so broken down they couldn't tell some human bones with the fishes. My family blame me since I tried moving the bodies because I was the last to see them and I didn't want to get blamed. All I did was pull off body parts and release fluids making it worse.
😢
the worst thing i’ve ever smelled are my school’s bathrooms. they literally never get cleaned. they probably do, but only around once every 2 months or so. every time i used it, it had the same smell it always had. wet shit.
I smelled this video coming from miles away 🤣
In Amsterdam the sewage waste from the expensive houses build next to the canals was pumped into them until the 1990's. I was always warned to stay away from the canals not to fall into it because of it, I found that weird but it was true. Now there is a sewage system, and the canals are clean now. The canals weren't as bad as the Thames but poop, and urine is enough to get into open water in a big city like Amsterdam.
The worst smells that I felt: when I worked at a funeral company. I was the computer guy, and I had to check a computer next to the mortician's lab, it was a normal day but suddenly, the most horrible stench came out of nowhere, it was the most putrid smell I ever experienced. The other one was when the wound from my appendicitis surgery got infected, the doctor drained the abscess, the smell was horrible and I was screaming in pain, for a 14 year old boy, that was a bad experience.
I've been watching y'alls content for some time now. Thank you for the videos ✌🏼
What a great and Wonderful CONCLUSION 😊
We still have the great stink in East London, its everywhere in Tower Hamlets. We all have to keep our windows shut during the summer at night, we do get some relief if it rains. We all have to breath in the smell of shite.
I’m so sorry 😢
The worst smell I've ever encountered was when I was found out the dishwasher at McDonald's when I used to work there has a debris catcher in the drain that needs to be emptied and none of the managers or crew knew about it until it eventually stopped draining
The grease traps in the grill area used to be dumped in a giant bucket out back nightly. One bucket hadn't been emptied when it should ans smelled awful
I would live on a handful of oats a day in the Outer Hebrides before I set foot in Victorian London...a literal Hell on Earth.
I love this story...keep up the good shows
South of our town there's a sewer lagoon and lemme tell ya, when the wind blows from that direction, you don't wanna be outside.
What a coincidence i am watching this while eating my breakfast.
I’m pretty sure we don’t still use the Victorian sewage system. I know that it is still there but we don’t use it anymore as it started to hold a lot of methane which ended up blowing up many peoples toilets. Now I’m pretty sure we use modern plumbing with pipes.
The worst smell I've ever encountered was a dead rat 🐀
It just smells like gas in my experience
Something about shit not getting taken care of until it affected rich people really kinda feels like it parallels ALL of history.
We all got taken to Erith Sewage Works when we started Nursing College. His efforts were the basis of public health within London.
It's the same old story. No one cared that the poor were getting sick and dying as long as the middle and upper classes were ok. It wasn't until those in power had to brave the stink that something was finally done about it. Things never change.
Queen Victoria couldn't take it for minutes the video said.
Only $300 million in today's currencies? Sounds like an absolute steal.
T33K3SS3LCH3N Sure based on today’s economy.
UA-cam is recommending all the stuff I needed for history GCSE now that I’ve left school smh
Yep, would certainly have made for interesting history class
Yikes, the sole title of the video gave the terms "filthy" and "perfidia" a new dimension.
London residents dumped human excrement out side of their windows as well. According to historians the city streets had 9 feet of the pop and tunnels could be dug threw it
Your videos are very well down thank you 👍
The Great Stink sounds like a 1950s thriller
Or a really cool band name
My high school self would’ve been so bored, 30 year old me today- loving them. My how times have changed😂
It's kinda crazy that sewage infrastructure didn't catch up with advances in toilet technology.
Nobody thought about where the poop went after flushing.
Nightsoilmen cleared the cesspits (unbearable job, so a high wage was offered to do it). But they were getting too expensive because of the increasing population, so the cesspits were left unemptied and their contents piled up to bursting - and they did burst too.
I appreciate the present through the window of the past. We must never close this window, we must stare at what we see and say "never again"
Love your channel it's awesome
I'd like a video made about the History of Ice Houses, Ice boxes and early refrigeration. Some of the earliest refrigerators were dangerous.
Worst smell I ever encountered? I grew up downwind from the wastewater treatment plant, so in the summer it was basically like this.
I watched this on the toilet. An appropriate subject, in my humble opinion.
when I was a kid I was a Bush Gardens in Florida, we were by the elephants and a caretaker was clipping the giant animal's toes. He held one out to us and said smell it, we were dumb and did as we were told. It was the most rancid smell, I remember instantly gagging but since it was almost 24 yrs ago I can't recall the exact smell, I just remember thinking it smelled like all the worst things, like if hot garbage and spoiled milk had a baby, and that baby took a crap on a riverbank during low tide during spawning season.
“A pool reeking with ineffable and unbearable horror” -AKA middle school/jr high hallways.
*a delightedly effervescent extravaganza of intoxicating aromas to contend with on any 1858 Mid Summers morning*
I found this relatable because main river in my city is just like giant open sewer. Stinky and dirty. On the coast of the river are fucking restaurants where people are eating in that smell. So yeah I know how it is.
There's 2 chicken processing plants in chattanooga TN. In the summer heat, it makes all of downtown smell so bad you want to punch someone in the face.
watching this while drinking tap water that came from the Thames. gROSS.
I love you Guys I'm still laughing about your shark video "meat stick"
You can't tell me people drank that dookie water without thinking that MIGHT get them sick.
At least politicians have been consistent in not caring about people until it affected them personally.
After watching this, I took an extra shower and gave my 🚽 a little 🤗.
And I just gotta mention...
“Delicious raw sewage” 😂
“Thick, brown, and opaque” 😂
“CENTURIES of putrified garbage” 😂🤮(which I can’t even begin to imagine what that looks like 🤢)!!
Between this, piles of dead plague victims, and air pollution, seems like London is just a real smelly place throughout history.
Personally, the wordt smell I have ever experienced was at my job for the State Highway, 90 degree heat, a decomposing deer. I had to mow and clean trash around it and had to keep holding my breath. You could smell it a mile away.
It's a little known fact that the great stink was named after my girlfriend Tara.
The worst smell I’ve ever encountered was the paper mills in Canton, North Carolina.
1858: we have the great stink!
2020: we eat @$$ for fun.
1858: y doh?
It’s only when the VIP’s get influenced by tragedy when things happen without delay......
Can you guys do a video on Walter Bowman Russell?
5:42 “Ignoring the warnings of a panicked scientist seldom leads to anything good”
*cough *cough
The chinese government
Well the important thing is that humans learned not to dump pollution into our air and water supplies. Yep we fixed those problems forever.
Oh, man... Having had worked in healthcare, I know stink! But at least we could go home. This, I can't imagine😷😫 So horrible!
not too sure how i came across this video but i have never been so thankful to have been born during the 2000s
Worse thing I ever smelled was a knocked out Armored Car with the crew inside
It took Europe centuries to grasp cleanliness...
Africa and India are still learning how to keep themselves clean
Someday, cell phones will have smell to match the video one watches. I will skip this one.
It's used today and was designed for 2 million people , but London has 9 million people today.
I wish one day such actions will be taken by our Parliament and law makers...
3 Million is a bargain!
The over decades accumulated problem of sewage - solved.
Drinking water problem - solved.
Creating jobs on the way - done!
Let it work for a century - no problem!
a example for a good investment in infrastructure
Im trying to eat a mcdonalds while watching this!
Thanks 💓
Pls do a history video on hashinshin and top lane as a whole
Do you record your voice narrating these vids but then change the speed on it so your voice sounds different? Just curious.
I think it was 2016 when I went to San Francisco, it smelled like waste and sewage the whole week I was there. I was told there was a drought and sewage wasn't being moved very efficiently.
As a kid I thought Dicken's was exaggerating; as an adult I think he was sugarcoating.
He was definitely sugarcoating everything here-
Mmmm, don’t we all love some Great Stinks?
what did he sugarcoat?
Sugarcoating the shit.
Me too
you know when the romans moved into a new area the first piece of infrastructure they built was sewers and toilets, and this show why..
It does make me appreciate the intelligence of the ancient Romans
@@fallonfireblade4404 And Greeks
Et Tu Brute....another SHIT today!#### that was a pun
@@fallonfireblade4404 The heat was an extra incentive.
@@AverageAlien lol racist
“Delicious raw sewage” sir I’m gonna have to place you under arrest.
Poor choice of words.
Unsee juice
Wish I was Jared, 19
Why did he say that its making me hungry
😂
The man that created the sewer system, he would be so beyond proud that it's still used today, even hundreds of years later.
@Darkness Light They are updating most of it now so soon will be closing it alot of it as it still empties into the Thames if it overflows
The fact that it would be less than $1-billion today is also remarkable.
until a new problem arrives :D
He also pretty much the forerunner of all sewage systems in the world, contributing to the world’s hygiene.
A hundred? You know about Roman sewers right
Fun fact: When Bazalgette calculated how big the sewers needed to be, he went ahead and made them twice as big.
Safety factor of 2
I like his way of thinking. Better safe than sorry
Yes - and the network is still functional despite population growth, high rise buildings etc ...
The biggest problems being fatbergs and shaking loose of arch bricks due to juggernaut lorries driving above them ...
The extension "super sewers" add to Bazalgette's network, providing some safety catchment of excess volume overflow. They don't replace them ...
Hes a hero!
pun pun fun
So basically up until a century ago Londoners were living in their own filth
So much for high IQ
@@teflonkc713 what are you talking about?
Most of Europe did for centuries
Rudolph hess actually europeans were considered quite dirty by pretty much all indigenous groups they encountered. keep in mind, at the time europeans showered rarely
@@iiastridii Showers were made in the late 1700s.
Moral of the story: Most governments usually don't do a damn thing to fix the problem until it affects the upper classes or common people get angry enough to revolt (which affects the upper class). Also Engineers at that time already had a solution that had been ready for years and just waiting to be funded.
Completely agree💯💯
TheDarkever Moral not morale.
I wonder when will the common people of my country get angry enough to revolt... 😞
I wonder when the citizens in the US will get up and revolt. Probably never.
@@grimsonforce7504 The BLM thing is the start of that, as now it is no longer about race but a movement in response to the COPS' response to the first hints of protest, like "hey wait wtf, cops cant be the strongarm actors of the government, this is supposed to be a democracy not a dystopian oligarchy, and we fund their paychecks with our taxes so wtf"
"Yeah your river may have stank but we set ours on fire" - Cleveland
We sure did.
What?! How?
@@AmyAndThePup pollution
Imagine your river being so polluted that it caught on fire.
oh my fucking god i looked in the comments section jokingly wondering if anyone was going to mention the cuyahoga and LO AND BEHOLD, I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED
Another reason Bazalgette's sewer system is still in use today is because when designing it, he calculated what size it would have to be to service the current population of London, and then doubled it.
amazing
Bazalgette was a genius.
I read that he made it 10 x the size required at the time as he predicted a huge increase in the population over the years.The authorities resisted but he won the argument.
@@joliax1646 agree
@@MarkBrennan thank goodness for those forward thinking people of the past.
Politicians often impede necessary progress unnecessarily.
The nastiest odor I've ever endured was from the air in industrial northern New Jersey in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There were, among other things, chemical factories belching pollution into the air constantly. If this stench had a color it would be a bruised grayish-purple surrounded by alternating bands of neon bilious green and diarrhea brown. Whatever was floating in that air caused my nose to swell shut so I couldn't breathe through it. Mouth breathing means that you don't filter out what you draw into your lungs. It also means that you don't smell the odor, you taste it. They're right when they say that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger if I'm still around to complain about it.
😊❤
well, at that time you probably smelled nazi camps.
@@niranjandesai6766 nah
That sounds awful.. I'm really sorry
I've heard New Jersey is nicknamed the cancer belt.
I am absolutely stunned that this went on so long. I cannot even fathom living around this and drinking water. Reminds me of the Ganges.
The Ganges is..there are no words to describe it tbh.
The stupidity continues even today. How much rioting in the streets does it take to enact change at government level still!
@@sergeant5848 rioting is the stupidest shit ever being honest
AyyanOriginal How so? It accomplishes a lot and grabs the attention of officials. It gets the job done instead of acting like there isn’t an issue until there comes to be a point where people are demanding things that should have been enacted a long time ago. So many of your very rights were gotten through riots and protests.
Yes, Ganges is in a very sorry state. But the government is trying it's best to clean up the mess which was the result of the exploitation done by the British as they had left millions of Indians in poverty few decades ago. 😊
I wish schools would teach us these things to make history subjects less boring. (at least for me)
@Ma Kyel
it depends on your teacher, really. Highschool history sucked for me. But i had a minor subject of history in college wherein the professor sticks to the curriculum but would always try to nake it interesting by adding facts like these sometimes or he’d search some movies regarding what we’re about to discuss.
they need to follow a curriculum/certain topic outline, so i guess least they can do is to present it in such a way that it’s interesting and not just merely reciting the contents of a history book
Ma Kyel My history teacher makes us watch movies or videos and sometimes talk about stories my classmates think it’s boring but I like History is my best subject
Come on now.....our educational system would never take the risk of teaching something interesting or helpful in life
True stories about lesser known incidents and everyday life and habits are interesting.
Are there teachers that show channels like this in class? Get kids to watch something besides the smelly shit on trending.
it's embarrassing. The Romans had to topped off centuries earlier.
Christianity had slowed down human development by 2000 years. We could be walking on the Moon by now.
@@romanromanov6397 not really. A lot of scientist were Christians. Most of what slowed down Western European knowledge was the downfall of the Roman empire and how everyone would you know destroy everything during wars. Look at the Mongols and Afghanistan for example. The destruction of the Islamic city set us back thousands of years. And brought a end to the Islamic Golden age
@@thatsnodildo1974 Rome was destined to fall. Even if Christianity didn't become the dominant religion in the western world, the system of Roman economy is like a ticking time bomb. Plus a lot of variables like the Huns, Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, that is slowly collapsing the empire. The Roman empire has become too overstretched, and became too difficult to manage. The great thing Christianity did is preserving the knowledge, records and history of the Roman Empire throughout the Middle Ages, that helped restart the Renaissance.
@Find this video on youtube no their not.
humans lost 6 thousand+ years of history, technology & advancements due to the " Roman NWO" ! which started when they stopped the
clock at 00AD , burnt down libraries, poisoned waters & called all other life "pagan" !
.. introducing the philosophy of baby talk & terror .. to present day!