Down in the Bowels of London

One of my favourite readers, Minette of Scent Signals, sent me the following link which guides us down to the London...sewers! The Guardian video follows Rob Smith, head flusher at Thames Water, who explains how 'fat bergs' (amalgamations of illegally dumped cooking oil and wet wipes) are the culprits for frequent blockage and even flooding. But some more pleasant emanations are still possible, as he attests!

Not a pleasant subject on the whole you might say, even though those sewers have inspired writers Robotham, Gaiman and Updale (Lost, Neverwhere and Montmorency series respectively) as well as video games, with their dark and sinister atmosphere. But the interesting thing is that the London sewer system goes back to the Victorian Age. In the 1850s over 400000 tonnes of sewage were flushed into the River Thames each day, thus rendering the river biologically dead. The ...stinky culmination came in the summer of 1858, during which the smell of untreated human waste was extraordinarily potent in central London, forever giving the time frame the nickname "the Great Stink" and reinforcing the theory of "miasmatic air" as a cause for cholera to last well until at least the 1880s, when Koch re-discovered the bacterium responsible for the disease. (The predominance of the theory of the air carrying miasmata through odours is well documented in Alain Corbin's book The Fragrant and the Foul). Soon Joseph Bazalgette was commissioned chief engineer to oversee the construction of the new London sewage system in 1859.

The London sewers are stratographed in regions of class demarcations, nevertheless; certainly a distinction obvious in British society in general in the past, less so now, except for the respective...effluvium, so to speak. The fearless in the eye of dirt Rob Smith describes the emanations that bypass methane for a more pleasant odour as those coming from the "affluent effluent" ~the stuck remnants of perfumed body oils and bath washes which are used by the richer folks; certain areas smell of expensive oils that carry their aromatic heritage down the drain...
The London sewage system holds a special fascination apparently, a mix of the Gothic tradition with the metamodern V for Vendetta flair for underground scheming: With such names of "hot spots" as Devil's Gate, Itself, Labyrinth, and Rubix, is it any wonder perfume managed to sneak in there too?


Next post will be a review & lucky draw for a new niche perfume. Stay tuned!

sketch of Faraday and Father Thames via wikimedia commons