an enduring proof-of-concept.
1665 London
History has shown us that London is a city that “applies” its learnings from its disasters.
The Great Fire of London
In 1665, the Great Plague swept through London, killing about 200,000 people, almost one-quarter of London’s population.17 The people of London were to face another disaster a year later when a fire started on 2 September in the King’s bakery in Pudding Lane near London Bridge. It had been very hot that summer and there had been no rain for weeks. The wooden houses and buildings were tinder dry, so the fire spread rapidly across the city, its population powerless to stop it.18
As a result of the Great Fire, 80% of the city was destroyed: 13,200 houses, 87 churches, the Royal Exchange, Newgate Prison, and Bridewell Palace. It left 80,000 Londoners homeless, a fifth of the city’s population at the time and equivalent to almost two million people in today’s capital being made homeless.19
The Great Fire was not the first occurrence of disastrous fires to afflict London. St Paul’s Cathedral was first built in 605 and 70 years later was destroyed by a fire that swept through the city and once again in another fire in 1087. Alongside these disasters were two medieval fires that caused massive damage to London in 1135 and 1212, which resulted in the first Building Act of 1189 that legislated standards for building materials and footprints but clearly did not go far enough.
The Great Fire inspired a series of measures to prevent future fires. Each parish now had two fire “squirts” (an early attempt at the fire engine), which set the foundation for today’s fire brigade. The London Fire Prevention Regulations of 1668 also established a new water supply pipework and infrastructure, the origins are which are seen in modern fire hydrant systems.20 But it was the London Building Act of 1667 that takes its place as the single most influential piece of construction-related legislation in British history. It regulated storey-heights, banned timber facades in favour of brick and stone, and banned thatched roofs.21
Many of these structures are still enforced in building regulations today, with the roof of the new Globe Theatre being the first thatched roof permitted in London since the Great Fire. The real success of the 1667 Act, however, was that it was the first-time money was allocated by the state to employ surveyors to enforce building regulations.22 Thus, a profession that still exists today and our entire modern building control system was born.
It is also worth mentioning that the Great Fire helped bring about the end of the Great Plague by killing all the rats – another lesson London learned from disaster.
Cholera
In 1854, at the height of a new cholera epidemic in the Soho district around Broad Street, John Snow, a physician, plotted the course of the cholera outbreak on a map he drew himself and worked out from the map that all the victims had used the same Broad Street water pump. As an experiment, Snow removed the handle from the pump so no one else could drink from it and from then onwards no one else in the area became infected. Snow had stopped the spread by removing the source of the disease – the water pump. He discovered the connection between contaminated water and cholera.
Sewage
The discovery that cholera was a waterborne disease was pivotal in the city’s urban transformation. The Thames was little more than an open sewer system with zero wildlife and represented a public health hazard as much of the city’s waste ran freely through the streets and thoroughfares directly into the river. The city depended on a system of local waste disposal such as night-soil collectors to empty local cesspits and the city’s rivers, which also served as a source of drinking water and washing.23 The increasing use of the flush toilet made things worse as it allowed the wealthy to flush their excrement directly into the river. The summer of 1854 saw the “Great Stink” engulf London. The hot weather helped expose the pollution of the water of the Thames, and waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid swept through the population. The smell was so overpowering that The Times newspaper said that MPs had been “forced by sheer stench” to rush a bill through Parliament in just 18 days in the effort to provide money to construct a new sewer system for London.24
The engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, was commissioned to design a network of enclosed underground brick main sewers to intercept sewage outflows, and street sewers to intercept the raw sewage that ran freely along them. At a time when London’s population totalled 1 million people, Bazalgette made the ingenious decision to build it for 4 million people, “ensuring it will never need to be expanded”. The results were enormous, with the end of the cholera epidemic, improved public health, and innovative transformation of London’s sewer system.
With an ever-expanding population of 8 million, London still faces sewage issues to this day, with sewer overflow emissions happening about fifty times per year. This has resulted in a brand-new super-sewer, the Thames Tideway, being dug under London to intercept sewage that would otherwise pollute the river. Seven metres wide, it will run for 25 km, impressing Bazalgette I’m sure.
London is a lesson in reinvention. Its ability to enact new policy and reform to create a better place, learn from its disasters, and cater to its citizens’ most basic needs with progressive change is a challenge we are still facing today.
Modern London
The Great Smog of 1952 began with a simple veil of fog that was not unusual for grey, cool, misty London. Within a few hours, however, the fog began to turn a yellowish-brown colour as it mixed with the soot produced by London’s factories, chimneys, and diesel-fuelled cars and buses. This combination produced a poisonous smog the likes of which London had never seen before.
A high-pressure weather system had stalled over southern England and caused a temperature inversion that sent a layer of warm air high above the ground, trapping the poisonous cold air at ground level. It prevented London’s sulphurous coal smoke from rising and prevented the wind from dispersing the smog. It was a noxious, reeking, 48 km-wide air mass, which was so dense that Londoners were unable to see their feet as they walked.25
The Great Smog paralyzed London, with all traffic and public transport coming to a halt. Abandoned cars lined the streets, parents were advised to keep their children home from school, looting and burglaries increased, movie theatres closed, and a greasy grime covered all exposed surfaces.
The Great Smog lasted for five days and finally lifted when a wind from the west swept the toxic cloud away from London and out to the North Sea, but the damage was already done and the effects were lingering. Initial reports suggested that approximately 4,000 died prematurely in the aftermath of the smog, but many experts now argue that the Great Smog claimed between 8,000 and 12,000 lives.26 The elderly, young children, heavy smokers, and those with respiratory problems were particularly vulnerable.
Heavy fog was a common occurrence in London, and as a consequence there was no sense of urgency. The British government was slow to act, until the undertakers ran out of coffins and flower shops ran out of bouquets. Following a government investigation into the link between deaths and the Great Smog, parliament passed the Clean Air Act of 1956, which restricted the burning of coal in urban areas and implemented smoke-free zones.27
The transition from coal, as the city’s primary heating source, to oil, electricity, and gas took years, and there were other deadly fogs during this period. Slow action remains to be the greatest problem when it comes to cities enacting clear air quality protection
