Gentility of speech is at an end — it stinks, and whoso once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it.”
These were the words used by the City Press newspaper to describe the stench emanating from the River Thames at the peak of the summer of 1858. River Thames had been contaminated by industrial effluent and human waste and the smell emanating from it was so awful, that it was nicknamed the “Great Stink”.
