15. Charles Dickens and the scientists Michael Faraday were among the prominent Victorians who warned that the Thames was getting worse and worse
Some of the most prominent figures in Victorian-era London warned of the risks posed by the filthy Thames. Above all, the eminent scientist Michael Faraday was a vocal campaigner, calling on the government to clean up the dirty river. In one notable address to the Royal Institution, Faraday argued: “If there be sufficient authority to remove a putrescent pond from the neighborhood of a few simple dwellings, surely the river which flows for so many miles through London ought not to be allowed to become a fermenting sewer.”
But it wasn’t just scientists who commented on the state of the Thames. Famously, Charles Dickens noted in his bestselling book Little Dorrit (published between 1855 and 1857, right before the Great Stink) that the Thames was “a deadly sewer…in the place of a fine, fresh river.” What’s more, writing to a friend who lived outside of the capital, Dickens said: “I can certify that the offensive smells, even in that short whiff, have been of a most head-and-stomach-distending nature.” Similarly, the filthy, smelly river appeared almost as a central character in many of the most popular fictions of the time, including crime thrillers and gruesome murder mysteries.