A River Runs Putrid: A Summer of Filth, 1858
The city of London breathed in the heat of summer, 1858. But it was not merely the sun that scorched the metropolis. An even more unpleasant force infested its very heart: the River Thames. Years of industrial effluents had transformed London's lifeblood into a stench. The stench was overwhelming, a miasma that clung to every cobblestone and satura