The Great Stink (Don't Eat While Listening)

This week we're heading back to Victorian London, where the richest city on Earth was quietly drowning in its own waste.

As London's population exploded during the Industrial Revolution, millions of gallons of sewage, animal carcasses and factory waste poured straight into the River Thames. The result was The Great Stink of 1858 a summer so unbearably foul that Parliament was forced to flee its own chambers, and an engineering project was launched that would transform London forever.

We also look at the pioneering doctor who proved cholera wasn't spread by "bad air", the Irish labourers who built the hidden city beneath London, and the extraordinary sewer system that still serves the capital today.

Plus, we finish with the astonishing true story of a Japanese husband who paid rent on his wife's murder scene for 26 years in the hope that advances in DNA technology would finally identify her killer.

⚠️ Content warning: This episode contains extensive discussion of sewage, bodily waste, disease and decomposition.

🤢 Friendly advice: maybe don't eat while listening to this one.

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