London's Lost "Stink Pipe" Tunnels | 16,000 Miles of Tunnel Explained
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ค. 2024
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Chapters:
00:00 - London’s Nasty History of Sewage Problems
02:03 - Why 19th Century wastewater was so dangerous
03:49 - When Dr. John Snow realized that germs were spread through the water
05:16 - The Great Stink of 1858
06:59 - How London built their waste drainage system
08:57 - London’s Pumping Stations - “Cathedrals of Sewage”
10:45 - London’s Stink Pipes
12:01 - How London’s Sewerage system saved the city
12:57 - Issues with the London Sewer systems downstream
14:16 - The abandonment of London’s historic pumping stations
15:22 - What remains of London’s Stink Pipes?
16:23 - Modern additions to London sewer tunnels
IT’S HISTORY - Weekly Tales of American Urban Decay as presented by your host Ryan Socash.
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» CREDIT
Scriptwriter - Dillan Aultimate
Editor - Karolina Szwata
Host - Ryan Socash
Music/Sound Design: Dave Daddario
» NOTICE
Some images may be used for illustrative purposes only - always reflecting the accurate time frame and content. Events of factual error / mispronounced word/spelling mistakes - retractions will be published in this section.
7:07. 2.5 million British pounds in 1858 is equal to about 380 million pounds in 2023
Edit: Great video regardless!
Yeah I heard that and was like "hold on, that doesn't make sense!"
U beat me £332,017,868.06
@@jamesfisher1808 A person of precision! 🤓 Excellent!👍😂
Came to say the same thing :P
Using the following formula:
Future Value=Present Value×(1+Annual Inflation Rate) ^Number of Years
Today's value would be about £130 million
One of Bazalgette's notable innovations that you didn't mention was his use of tunnels having egg-shaped (rather than circular) sections - this ensured there was a good flow-velocity even with little flow in the pipes, avoiding the solid stuff kept moving instead of dropping to the bottom of the tunnel.
Also Oval Pipes made it easier to walk through head at the top, sholders, then feet. What do you expect it's an american discussing an english subject.
@@bazra19 😄😆
Yes point taken!
Not to mention his strict quality control of the Portland cement he used.🤓
documentaries like this make me wonder what people 150 years from now are gonna question about our current methods of doing things.
I'm working on it
You don't need to wait for the future. The UK still has a lot of combined sewers, where you combine rainwater and sewage. It's a shit idea to put it mildly and really the reason why London had to spend £4.5 billion building that stupid tunnel. Sewage still regularly finds it's way into the sea in the UK. Mussels eating the sewage resulting in E. coli infections all over Europe just because the UK can't get it's shit together.
We'll be the first civilization to collapse because saving ourselves wasn't "cost-effective". They will certainly question our sanity.
History will not be kind to circumcision nor chemotherapy.
@@TwoTreesStudio The first is a crime against children; the second is the best we have right now.
How ironic that here today in June 2024 our rivers , waterways and sea are full of human effluent caused by all the UK privatised water companies. Unfortunately their sole aim is to ensure a healthy dividend got their shareholders with actually taking care for us and our environment as an afterthought
There are still thousands of post-Bazalgette stench-pipes. These were often installed at critical parts of a system to prevent air-locks, siphoning, and to prevent the build-up of gasses. nowadays all domestic sewers have a vent stack designed into them for the same purposes.
Modern plumbing has saved more lives than Modern medicine.
Plumbers protect the health of a nation.
Well, you might want to attribute that to the scientists and engineers that came up with research and the technology, rather than just the people who install and maintain bits of it. Not to mention the politicians who bring in the legislation to force those ideas. Nothing is done in total isolation from everything else.
@@another3997 what makes you assume I don't?
Plumber follow the laws that the government makes and inspectors inforce them.
I never sad it's the guy with the wrench.
Modern plumbing is a science all onto itself by definition.
Right now we Have people drinking polluted water worldwide!
Yes even in America.
Go plumbers ! Still today it's a difficult work. I can repair and replace cold or hot water lines in my house but I'm not brave enough to work on sewer pipes, always call a qualified plumber.
@@bkucinschi I did it for 30 years and have been an inspector for the last 20.
@@aaronkuntze7494: All my respect!
The Northern Outfall Sewer that runs from Victoria Park to Beckton is a good walk and passes many elaborate pumping stations. The path is directly above the sewer and takes you through a cross section of East London. It's something most tourists have no idea about...
We're also about to open an even larger one under the Thames. However, we've just had a significant e-coli issue from the water supply in Northampton.
The millions of pounds distributed to build the sewage system and its current comparison don't seem correct. 2.5 million pounds in the 1860s = 3.5 million pounds today! Nah.
Maybe check that.
I think this might be an innocent slip of the tongue. £2,5mln in 1860 money might be about £3 *billion* in 2023 terms, so a fairly easy mistake to make. 😇
It’s more than that today, come on now…
@@TaylorDrummer
More bribes & kickbacks required in 2023.
Yes, 2.5 million £ in 1865 = 2.5 billion £ in 2023. With modern inflation rates(and cor ruption), it'll likely equal 2.5 quadrillion £ by 2033, and 2.5 quintillion £ by 2043. 😁
Seems like they don’t read the comments, pretty sad.
It wasn't until it started effecting politicians that anything got done.
Affecting, and yes. Thats why protesting in the street does not work, but diverting private jets might.
Thats one reason why the two tier communist system works so well!
It's hardly a good system, but it definitely ain't communist, thank you very much!
@@ianjames92 I read that as London's sewer system is better that communism.😂
If you think about it, the old miasma theory of disease is _almost_ right. When you contrast it with other explanations for disease, it becomes clear just how close it was. It also makes a TON of sense in a pragmatic way.
People often ridicule the miasma theory these days, but personally I find it rather interesting. Both the theory itself as well as its impact upon humanity as highlighted in this video.
As a Londoner I was taught they were called stench pipes , very good presentation
Wow, John Snow knew something after all.
Ah, I knew someone must have beaten me to it!
not just a great fast bowler
@gary Lol, or a Channel 4 presenter
I got to this comment about a min before the reveal. Your comment confused the heck outta me. Once the video go to it, I lol'd hard.
Yes - those politicians in London certainly produce a lot of content fit for those pipes.
It's refreshing to hear a report on this era to not end with the worst side of it but to also go on to detail the good and briliant people that solved it and moved the world forward.
After working as municipal sewer maintenance worker. The sewer is just as important as potable drinking water. People don’t think about what’s under their feet but just remember somebody maintains those pipes and pumping stations.
Yes a crap job and not one for me
Good video, Melbourne, Oz followed in a similar way as was known as Smellbourne for awhile, still sport some gorgeous Victorian stink pipes around inner city streets.
Have a look at the history of Cocoroc - a whole town built around Melbourne, Oz sewerage treatment farm; footy teams, 4 state schools, huge community that no longer exists.
Most of Oz still calls it Smellbourne.
But Werribee is huge and people moved there. And four schools meant one teacher per school for the population of 500 and 100 houses, it's not that big a shame.
The sewage treatment plant and community coexisted for a three quarters of century before higher security standards required the closure of the Cocoroc town.
The town of Clematis almost had a similar fate with the construction of the Cardinia Reservoir.
Those guys really knew their shit........
Engines were named for the queen and her husband and the future king and his wife. First pic is Victoria's daughter (Victoria, Princess Royal) and the third is Princess Alexandra, born 1936, not Alexandra of Denmark, wife of Albert Edward (later Edward VII).
I've been to Crossness, it's well worth a visit.
I was a bit mixed up aswellasalso. Princess Alexandra is still very much alive at time of writing. Princess Victoria, the Princess Royal married the then heir to the what was to become the united Germany's throne, the notorious Kaiser Wilhelm.
There’s also still hundreds of stink pipes in urban areas built up by the British in the 19th and early 20th centuries outside of Britain like in the inner city areas of Melbourne and Sydney in Australia for example! :)
I was born in the UK and have followed the evolution of London sewer system for many decades, I find this the most comprehensive documentary dealing with the issue that I've yet encountered, in addition, the soundtrack is exceptionally clear (which when you're 80 years of age matters a lot)... By beer, is meant "small beer", a mildly alcoholic drink known as 'small beer' was brewed and consumed for its hydrating and nutritional properties in households, workplaces and even schools across Britain. Typically brewed to around 2.8% ABV, small beer became a staple of British daily life and was even cited in Shakespeare's works. Breweries have known throughout history that beer is safer than water.
There is a BBC documentary called "Seven Wonders of the Industrial World" that has a whole episode dedicated to this topic. Mandatory viewing if you are interested in the topic.
Yes a fascinating fact
These are the real heroes of history.
at 15 :00 - Wow, I'd love to see that building. It's beautiful.
Learned something new about London. Very interesting video, thanks! On my visits I never noticed any of these stink pipes, but now I know.
I think it would be interesting if you guys covered the water towers of St. Louis Missouri and the water works tower/castles in the river. A lot where built to help get the city ready for the worlds fair
The only drawback to the current London sewer system is that it does not separate rain water from raw sewer and handles all of it at the same time. Hope they work this out in the future.
Chicago has this problem and it's cost billions to find the fix. Ryan has covered it in great detail.
Might be easier to apply the "sponge city" concept- use part of that water inside the city, create more absorbent spaces (like green roofs, urban gardens, ...), and dull flow spikes so the whole system can be built to a more affordable capacity.
You don't have to build pipes to remove what you use locally.
Of course, future maximum rainfall is an unknown amount, so floodwater relief is a critical consideration. I wonder wether the paved roads could be incorporated into such a system by design, to avoid them turning into de facto flood channels with extreme rain.
Should of course consider essential services, even if rush hour could be cancelled to accomodate extreme weather.
@@nos9784 London gets wet a lot.
The cost and difficulty level to achieve two entirely separate systems for every property in London would be nigh impossible. Then you have heavy rain to deal with. It may be possible in towns or smaller cities but the cost wouldn’t warrant it. The UK has some of the best water treatment and quality in the world which negates the need to separate it in the first place.
@@Anakinuk007 many cities (in germany, at least) strategically replace their sewers with split sewers whenever they do work anyway, where possible.
It is worth it, if you don't want your water treatment plants to overflow. If you don't want rivers of untreated sewage when heavy rains happen.
Overbuilding treatment enough is propably more expensive than choosing to do split systems where possible in the future.
To think at first glance of the title, I thought that this was about the BBC and or the parliament.
The UK does have a Conservative government after all... 😜🤣
Don't make the same mistake.. 🙃
@@BassandoForteLiberals in Canada have taken us into those tunnels with them over the last 10 years, thanks
Whilst I knew about Bazalgette’s Embankment sewer system, I was not aware of the ‘stink pipe history’, thank you for that.
very interesting, thank you!
John Snow’s investigation is also considered the beginnings/basis of Geographic Information Systems. The points he plotted on the map of infected households helped him pinpoint the contaminated pumps.
I’ve always found the sewer cathedrals amazing to see. So beautiful yet, I’m sure once very smelly.
@@asdf9890 the pump stations were amazingly clean. To prove this, the Prince of Wales was invited to a dinner party held in one.
There are many sewer vent pipes around London, less ornate of course. They are all quite a bit taller than the old concrete lamp posts, have an open-looking top, and never have any signs clamped to them.
Great video
4:20 Dr Snow's map of 1854 shows that there were some people travelling from quite a distance to get water from that well. Turns out, they prefered the taste to more local pumps! Lesson; always steer clear of the sweet tasting water.
Who could possibly think that drinking sewage water is unhealthy
14:50 wow, that was close, if it was listed prior to the works being conducted they would no doubt have been unviable & the building allowed to fall into disrepair.
I read that there were street lamps powered by sewer gasses.
Methane!
😅
One or more survive, functioning, in Sheffield. At least it did 3 years ago! They were called 'sewer gas destructors' if you want to search for them.
There are still a few remaining to this day, but I think they're fuelled by the natural gas mains we use to pipe the stuff into homes now.
There's one down the side of The Savoy on the Embankment and it is still fulfilling its duty by dint of flaming fart fumes, you might say.
Thanks, I've always wondered what these were.
I love how they actually had things called stink pipes 🤣
I think the more polite folk might use the term _„Gas pipes“_ 😇💨
Though more than 150 years after Basilgettes' system came online, British Brexit💩is still causing a *massive* stink in international politics... 😉
Chances are your house has a PVC stink pipe sticking out of the roof, venting your sewer line.
2.5 mil pounds is a lot more than 3 million pounds in todays money!!
Well done for this vid. From an American, it's one of the most accurate synopses I've seen on TH-cam.
It really isnt.
11:13 Did anyone else catch that Aston Martin in the driveway?? Super cool.
You can still find Stink Pipes in some small rural towns around the UK. They are not used anymore. Just industrial architecture.
Good job.
This has answered along unanswered question of mine. I always wondered if the sting pipes were still connected to the local system.
A very few are still in use (and there are many that were built well after the Victorian era), but the vast majority of them are no longer needed.
It's amazing how similar this tory is to something that happened in Chicago in the 1800s. . .
Brilliant 😊
Dr Snow was lucky Twitter wasn't around back then, he would've been cancelled.
facinating.......
100 miles of intercepting sewers and 1600 miles of street sewers do not equal 16000 miles!
How do you know?
I worked in a mine once. They bought our crew dinner for mining the 555th mile underground. Then somehow once the new manager came around it went up to 3,000 in about 4 weeks
The pipes are 3-dimensional so you have to multiply the 1600 by 3. Do this, of course, before adding the 100.
@@jakeharris9075 are you saying 2495 miles of mine tunnels where dug in 4 weeks??
Just look at the print
I lived in the suburbs of London where we had stink pipes in every street.
The B1M (another great YT channel) has a video on the tideway tunnel.
And we've come the full circle. Thatcher sold off most of the publicly owned utilities. In the past couple of years, once again, all over the country, sewage companies discharge raw sewage into streams, rivers and lakes because not treating it means more profits for shareholders. We left the EU so that a few wealthy people could make more money.
We left the EU because that's what the majority wanted. People were fed up of rules and regulations being forced upon us by people who had little interest in the UK, yet bound us tightly whether it was good for us or not. The laws on dumping sewage weren't relaxed, they've been strengthened, and companies are still heavily fined for breaches. Breaches which can ultimately lead to criminal convictions and prison terms. Water quality is monitored by various organisations. Utilities such as water, electricity and gas weren't doing particularly well under state ownership anyway. So your "theory" really doesn't hold up.
@@another3997 a recent scientific study showed that leave voters were poorly educated. Your comment shows this. You don't understand how the system worked, you didn't understand that every member state got to vote on anything proposed, you know, like.democracy!
As for the rest of your comment, well, either you are a right wing Tory, or you're real name is Froschmaul Farage, because you either believe the nonsense or you are lying in the hope that *I* might believe the nonsense.
If the utilities were all doing so badly, why were investors falling over themselves to buy shares in these 'failing' commodities?
@@another3997 lol hardcore brexiteer there, amazing that those still exist.. ofc phyllis is right, i am a german but it seems clear that your torie politicians are running down the country and public services so their rich friends can aquire everything even cheaper... but yes, glad that you got rid of your regulations and are now allowed to dispose your waste in your rivers again.. i bet no one minds the your water quality is the lowest in decades again.. good job
Thatcher the mill snatcher whose motto was ‘greed is good ‘
You know something John Snow!
Up until recent times the sewerage works at Westhall Road in mortlake separated the solids these then went for a time into filter beds .eventually this went away in tankers to market gardens it was an excellent growing material as tomato seeds don't get digested we used to get tomatoes as big as apples . These days all that just gets wasted. Just think all the by products opf sewerage gas etc. That is just being pumped in the sea and wasted.
I thought tomato’s tasted like crap!
It’s honestly surprising human lived as long as we did drinking our own poop water and all!
You might not believe it but there still exist today gas street lamps supplied by the methane gas from the sewers below.
The most "well" known is just down the side of the famous Savoy hotel.
best saturday night ive had in a long time....
The most polluted? Few people got out of the Seine, the Tiber or for that matter most of the rivers in Europe.
If anything it was Sir Joseph Basiljet that made modern London possible. I would love to see you do a video on him. Dr Snow was shown to be correct
Joseph Bazalgette
I'm always amused that it was a descendant of Bazalgette who devised the Big Brother show back in the 90s. As one comedian at the time observed, the early Bazalgette helped move crap out of our cities, the modern one was busy pumping crap into out homes through the telly!
Polite name is vent pipe as I was told in 1977 in a technical drawing class
I think we are going back to these times!
1860s: sewage in rivers
2020s: sewage in rivers
Stink Pipe would be a great name for a band.
excellent video, knew pretty much none of this beforehand. Only critique would be around 14:55 "grade 1 by historic england" ok but *what is grade 1* easy enough to google, but a quick extension of that sentence "grade 1 by historic england, designating it as the highest amount of historical or architectural significance."
yes a very minor thing again solved by a 10 second google search, but for nearly a 20 minute video an extra 10 seconds of context would be nice, same with 15:50 for everybody else who has no idea what the different grades mean in the UK
4:13 "No one took him seriously" - Or, to put it another way, they all said _"You know nothing, John Snow"_
13:30 does anyone know what is the song in the background?
The LEE Tunnel isn't temporary it connects to tideway at Abbey Mills and takes the sewage to be treated at Beckton.
2.5 million pounds is 1858 is not 3 million today, but actually 95.75 million pounds in today's money. The Victoria Embankment was not built to narrow the river, it was built to provide a barrier against flooding, which scientists of the time believed was coming, with what they believed was climate change, but turned out to be a weather cycle.
15:31 where is this place?
In a small almost insignificant way they are correct. Smells are from gasses and small particles in the air.
nice
Remember that London still dont have a funktional sewer system for the whole city - in 2023. When it rains, the sewage still runs directly into the Thames, very smelly...
The restored pumping stations looks like they could be the engine room of the yellow submarine
How did the sewage system fare during the Blitz? Was it targeted by the enemy? A city can be stricken in wartime by knocking out the sewage system.
Melbourne had a portable pump system which was never used.
During the blitz, pretty much everything became a target as it progressed, not helped by the fact that precision bombing was nigh on impossible. The blitz aimed to break the will of the nation as much as it aimed to destroy specific targets. Once they realised bombing airfields wasn't working, and the RAF were still a viable threat, they switched tactics and started bombing more general infrastructure. Destroying manufacturing capabilities was the general idea, but a huge, widely distributed sewage network wouldn't have been a viable target.
I have two sisters that live in London. My older sister and brother-in-law have lived in London for just over half their lives: 67 years old, and we are all from Chicago. And I have another younger sister that lives in Walden and she is a drug dealer Harrison she works for Johnson and Johnson pharmaceutical
The water that would come out of their sinks and pipes, even their showers, they called the water that came out “chowder”. Even dead fish would sometimes come through the pipes.
Not a lot has changed in London then.
1:10 - There actually were worst rivers, around the world, than the Thames (for pollution back then). In fact, they stil exist today (and are still quite polluted). But the people who live around them, after so many generations of people dying etc, have an immunity to the waste in the river. However, non-locals, find it harder to swim in that river without incident :) Part of the reason it (and others) are still polluted today? Like most of the world, no one talks about it. The Thames, was only addressed after talking about it :)
1:30 Fun fact about the flush toilet: it was originally invented in the 1500s by a British inventor. But because he was critical of the government, Queen Elizabeth I had his blueprints seized, had a single unit made just for her, and then kept the whole thing a secret until it was independently invented again 300 years later.
So if you ever need to explain to someone why the first amendment is important just tell them about the time that a politician deprived the world of flush toilets for 300 years because some guy hurt her feelings.
Not a politician. A Monarch.
@@ljt3084 the Prince of Pedantry, ladies and gentlemen. Watch the point sail right over his head, that's why he's got the title, yes sir-ee!
@@michealdrake3421 I think the distinction, while small, is relevant. Your comment also, reeks of unwashed pedantry. You see, it may not be 12 inches but it *smells* like a foot.
@@ljt3084 Back then the monarch was head of government.
Until 2008, Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada) was still pumping its raw sewage into Halifax Harbour. You didn't want to take a boat out on that, you certainly didn't want to swim in it. NOt only was it dangerous, but the "floaters" were unsightly. It strains credulity, but it's true. *_2008._*
Why can't we have beautiful looking utility buildings like the victorians 😩
Stink Pipes section starts at 10:45
Need a modern day Bazelgette
If this project had been contemplated in modern times the government would have fully supported it at the beginning but then constantly interfered, with the design and execution, cut back outlying sections and ended up with just something to remove the stench around Westminster not benefiting the outlying areas Much like a current railway project
How were the tunnels dug?
We’ve gone full circle now
That was a strange way of saying 'cartoonists' lol. It was like you were saying the two different words 'car-toonist'
I found a stink pump not far from where I currently live
Helloooooooo SF !
I remember holidaying on hireboats on the 'pristine' Norfolk Broads in the 1960s. All the boats then had sea-toilets which just flushed into the rivers. Also, working barges had them, or even more primitive 'bucket and chuck it' technologies. Yuk! I now live on a boat, cruising our river and canal system. We have proper waste tanks which are emptied at proper facilities. But, sewage is still going into most of our rivers because of lazy and money-grabbing management companies. Disgraceful!
"screens ornamented with figs because they have a laxative effect" - who knew the Victorians had such a scatological sense of humour?
I hear pages being turned.
🤔🕵️♂️: “ something suspicious about everyone getting sick in this nasty city… ( takes sip of tems water)( spits out poop particle) I mean, I have absolutely no idea what it could be but I swear it, I’m going to get to the bottom of the”
😂
16000 miles ?! thats nearly double all the roads in london.
"2,5 million pounds or 3 million pounds in today's money"
I believe you forgot more than 1 zero on that conversion!
At 10:16 "Prince Consort" is not a name, it's a title! How incompetent are you?
£256,673,292 in todays money
If you put a match to the top of the pipe, you'll get a flame......
I find it so weird that they were able to build insanely smart projects and beautiful buildings like that but nobody planned for any irrigation and they had weird beliefs about disease. Like wow the old world was something else. They used to poo on the floors in the parliament building along with their pets.
I wonder if you would start with Canadian history. There is lots of it !
Don't mixup stench pipes with Trolley bus power poles
Did the 'medical doctors' of that day also them them to 'follow the science'? that the smell was the issue.
Drowning in sewage, hell of a way to go.