11. It was the press who came up with the name ‘The Great Stink’ – and they blamed the authorities for the state of the Thames
Shortly after the start of the heatwave, the London-based press started talking of ‘The Great Stink’. The widely-read City Press newspaper argued that the dirty state of the capital’s river could no longer be tolerated. One of its editors – clearly a subscriber to the miasma theory of how disease is spread – argued: “Gentility of speech is at an end—it stinks, and whoso once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it.” Similarly, the country’s most prestigious publication, the Times of London, called the Thames “a pestiferous and typhus breeding abomination”.
Notably, these influential newspapers started blaming the British government, openly calling on them to address this national shame. One of the most famous reports from the days of the Great Stink appeared in the Illustrated London News. Here, the reporter argued that the state of the river undermined Britain’s claims of greatness. He said: “We can colonize the remotest ends of the earth; we can conquer India; we can pay the interest of the most enormous debt ever contracted; we can spread our name, and our fame, and our fructifying wealth to every part of the world; but we cannot clean the River Thames.”