6. Huge sums of money were spent on dumping tons of chlorine into the river but this short-term fix was no match for the Great Stink
Even though Parliament didn’t immediately release funds to improve London’s sewerage system, the city authorities did spend a lot of money trying to make the Big Stink go away. From the beginning of June 1858 through to the end of July, around 200 to 25- tons of lime chloride was dumped into the Thames in an effort to mask the awful smell. Far from having the desired effect, however, the lime chloride reacted badly with the effluent in the river and ended up producing noxious gases. For all the money the London authorities threw at the problem, the Great Stink was just being made worse.
The only people who did benefit at this time were the huge numbers of unskilled day laborers who had moved to London over the course of the mid-19th century. Several thousand were employed on day contracts to dump lime chloride into the river at high tide. Then, when the water was at its lowest, these day laborers would go out onto the filthy banks of the Thames to pile lime onto the piles of human waste. The short-term fix was costing the London City Council around £1,500 a week – a huge amount in those days, and all for nothing.