""Lon­don's lit­tle lanes are charm­ing now," says Shee­han Quirke, the host of the video above, while stand­ing in one of them, "but 150 years ago in places like this, you'd have had whole fam­i­lies crammed into these tiny rooms with­out run­ning water. There would have been open cesspits spilling down the streets, and the stench of sewage boil­ing in the mid­day sun would have been unbear­able.""
"The stink­ing city, already the biggest in the world and grow­ing every day, "was­n't only hor­ri­ble to live in, but gen­uine­ly dan­ger­ous." Much of the tremen­dous amount of waste pro­duced by Lon­don­ers went straight into the Riv­er Thames, which even­tu­al­ly grew so foul that the engi­neer Joseph Bazal­gette took on the job of design­ing not just a sew­er sys­tem, but also an embank­ment to "replace what was essen­tial­ly a stink­ing swamp filled with rub­bish and human waste and eels.""
Victorian London grew into the world's largest city and suffered extreme overcrowding, inadequate housing, and lack of sanitation. Whole families lived in tiny rooms without running water while open cesspits spilled into streets, creating unbearable stench and dangerous conditions. Much waste flowed directly into the River Thames, which became foul. Engineer Joseph Bazalgette designed a comprehensive sewer system and an embankment to contain the pollution and replace a swamp filled with rubbish, human waste, and eels. The embankment completed in 1870 combined effective sanitation with decorative design, including elaborately decorated lamps and some early electric lighting that endure today.
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