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Last
Updated
07 Jun 2004
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 The
Thames river was viewed with great concern by many during the mid-nineteenth
century. Shown here is a cartoon from 1850 that appeared in Punch,
commenting about the quality of the London water. In 1855, the distinguished scientist, Michael
Faraday, wrote to the editor of the The Times: "Sir, I traverse
this day, by steam boat, the space between London and Hungerford Bridges,
between half past one and two o'clock; it was low water and I think the tide
must have been near the turn. The appearance and the smell of the water
forced themselves at once upon my attention. The whole of the river was an
opaque, pale brown fluid." He concluded, ..."the... river was
for the time a real sewer." This same river a few years earlier had supplied drinking
water to the Lambeth Waterworks Company.
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John
Snow wrote that the intake for the Lambeth company is on the River Thames,
opposite the Hungerford Market and near where Faraday had made his scathing
observations. The exact location, however, was not
marked in map 2 from 1854 (see right). At that time, the
Hungerford Bridge was a suspension bridge, mainly for foot traffic serving the
Hungerford Market |
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In the Reynolds' map of
1859 (see below), there is also no specific markings of where the intake pipe
for the Lambeth company might have been. The word "road" at the bottom right
refers to Belvedere Road.
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During 1845-64, the Hungerford Bridge was being replaced
with a wider railroad bridge, which also incorporated a footbridge. At the
time, the railroad company justified the demolition of the Hungerford suspension
bridge by arguing that the smell of the river was so bad, especially in the
summer, that no one used the bridge. |
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Perhaps building the railroad bridge put further pressure on the Lambeth Waterworks Company to relocate its water intake,
as was done
during 1847-52.
Additional
details of the area were provided in the first Old Ordnance Survey, published in
1872. Included in the figure at right is a diagram of where the pipeline
had probably been location years earlier. The Lion Brewery was a storehouse for the beer
company built in 1836. The Lion Brewery itself was on Broad Street, and was
mentioned by John Snow in his investigation of the Broad Street pump outbreak as
a place were there was no cholera. |
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Lambeth
Intake Prior to 1852 (continued)
Click here to see more on the
location of the pre-1852 intake of the Lambeth Waterworks Company.
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Sources:
Halliday S. The Great Stink of London, 1999.
Reynolds J. Map of Modern London, 1859.
Snow J. On the
Communication of Cholera, 1855.
Weinreb B, Hibbert C. The London Encyclopaedia, 1993.
Return to John Snow site
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