Victorian water shortages
A London talking about water shortages, good husbandry of natural resources and the importance of recycling. It could be 2008, but instead it was the East End of 113 years ago. And things got so bad that at one point the water supply was cut off altogether.
London had only a generation before received a modern wonder of the world in Joseph Bazalgette’s marvellous sewerage system. The Great Stink of 1858, when an unusually hot summer caused the smell of raw sewage in the Thames to become unbearable, had brought matters to a head. Parliament had to be suspended and, for the first time, Government seriously examined alternatives to a London with filth and excrement flowing in the streets and being dumped straight into the river (a river from which drinking water was drawn). The continual outbreaks of cholera had made it all the more pressing.
Physician John Snow had accurately established that cholera was caused by dirty water, thanks to his observations around the Broad Street pump in Soho, just four years before. His findings were controversial though, with the majority believing that cholera was caused by the stench, or ‘miasma’ around sewage. It’s a similar misconception to malaria being caused by bad air (’mal aria’ from the Italian) rather than by mosquitoes.
When the sensitive noses of the MPs began to pick up the stink, something had to be done. And so Bazalgette’s grand plan of 83 miles of underground, brick lined main sewers and 1100 miles of street sewers was taken up. This, Bazalgette argued, would contain the miasma. The thinking, of course, was totally wrong, yet the system worked remarkably well - not only removing the sewage and its stink from the streets, but keeping it away from drinking water … and that was the crucial thing. Sewage treatment plants were then introduced, and the system serves us to this day.
But one of the reasons there was so much sewage and such a Great Stink was the sheer number of Londoners in a city that had recently doubled in size. Flushing toilets and indoor water supplies were on the increase and there simply wasn’t enough clean water to go round. And in contrast to Bazalgette’s superb brick tunnels, the water was delivered in fragile iron pipework that rusted, leaked and splintered during icy winters. London’s heavy rainfall made up for that until the 1890s, when a long drought saw supplies drying up.
The water was supplied by the East London Waterworks Company, which had been founded by Act of Parliament in 1806 to serve “all those portions of the Metropolis, and its suburbs, which lie to the east of the city, Shoreditch, the Kingsland Road, and Dalston; extending their mains even across the river Lea into Essex, as far as West Ham.” Water was drawn from the Lea, with a waterworks at Old Ford, and the company took over the Shadwell works, which had been built as far back at 1660, the Lea Bridge works (1760s) and a station at West Ham, dating from 1743.
But as fast as the company grew, they were defeated by population growth. Worse, that population was pouring its filth into the River Lea, reducing the supply of clean water. In 1841 the Company had supplied 39,000 homes. By 1903 the figure was 223,000. The firm moaned that “consumers took not the slightest interest in the careful use of water and made no provision against drought, frost, or the breaking of the mains”, People would leave taps running and deprive their neighbours. And during May 1995, East Enders found themselves strictly rationed - the taps being turned off during most of the day.
Once more, something had to be done, and now it was the effective nationalisation of the water supply, with the Metropolis Water Act 1902 amalgamating the eight private water companies as the Metropolitan Water Board. Fundamentally though, nothing had changed. London got better at finding water and flowing it to the capital, but much is still through porious and ancient pipes. Every day, in England and Wales, around 3.5bn litres of water is lost through leaks - more than 20 per cent of the total supply. London needs another Bazalgette, though it’s worth remembering that his grand plan, budgeted at £3m, came in at £20m, which would equate to around £1.5bn today. It’s a timely reminder, in the wake of the Olympics and Wembley overspends, that escalating costs are nothing new. London could be facing the biggest water bill of all time.