Note 7 — Chapter II · THEORIES OF MACCULLOCH.

It is right to observe that the unpleasant odour from the Thames, which during the month of June and part of July of the present year so disturbed the olfactory nerves of the Londoners, ceased at once so soon as the Bill for the purification of the Thames passed both Houses of Parliament. What connexion this had with the causes of the odour, and how these odours were so opportunely called forth and so quietly dismissed, I leave to be conjectured by the thoughtful of all classes. At this moment—August, 1858—during the most intense heat, the river is as sweet and fresh as a mountain stream, and has continued so ever since. Some are disposed to ascribe the cessation of the odours (for the stream is not in any way purified) to the throwing of quick-lime into the lower sections of the principal sewers; but if a remedy so simple as this was to be found in such a process, why was it not employed in June and July? It is only the unobserving who are surprised at such things, and who have not happened to observe what follows the spreading of an ancient cesspool over the fields by the road-side, or pouring its contents into a comparatively small river. The Thames is a comparatively small river, and the effects of pouring into it, at a convenient and suitable time (the dog-days, Parliament sitting, &c.), the contents of half-a-dozen cesspools of fifty years’ standing, undiluted and at once, would most assuredly give rise to results such as took place in London in June and July. The plot was a very nasty one—it might easily have been traced and the plotters detected: the sewer-makers, under the direction, no doubt, of the various boards, were very active in various quarters; and, not to mention other places, the main street of Hackney, for instance, for nearly a whole day, was by such means rendered quite unbearable.