10. Satirical cartoons were hugely popular in Victorian London, and the Great Stink gave cartoonists plenty of ammunition
The Great Stink coincided with a boom in illustrated newspapers and satirical publications in London and across the rest of Britain. In particular, publications such as the widely-read Illustrated London News and the much-loved Punch magazine featured cartoons both lamenting the state of the nation’s most famous river and lambasting the government for letting things get so bad. According to some historians, as politicians hated being mocked, such satire proved to be highly influential.
Many of the cartoons featured the figure of ‘Father Thames’, the personification of the famous river. He was shown to be in ill health, sometimes close to death. Moreover, he was often depicted as the victim of greedy or thoughtless people, above all politicians. While many cartoons may have made fun of the Great Stink, there was a serious tone to almost all of them; far from being a laughing matter, the state of the Thames was actually shown to be a matter of life or death for everyday Londoners.