The Thames in 1851 – an elongated cesspool!

As a thoroughfare, the Victorian Thames was much busier than the modern one. Engravings from the mid-century show the river so packed with steamers that it is remarkable that they did not collide more often.  Steamers were designated above or below bridge depending on whether they operated upstream or downstream of London Bridge. The above-bridge boats, all of them paddle steamers, belonged either to the Citizen Steamboat Co, the Iron Boat Co or the Westminster Steamboat Co. All the vessels belonging to the Iron Boat Co, on whose P[addle] S[teamer] Haberdasher Blackwood’s party travels, were named after City companies. (There were even a PS Fishmonger and a PS Spectacle Maker!) The fare from the Old Swan Pier at London Bridge to Lambeth or Vauxhall was a penny, a tariff which gave the boats their nickname of ‘penny steamers.’ Most below-bridge steamers, which operated as far afield as Gravesend and Ramsgate, belonged to the Diamond Funnel Company. I have not invented the semaphore communication system between the bridge and the engine room (see Chapter V); incredible as it may seem, that really was how the boats were directed. There was no bell or telegraph connecting the Master to the Engineer; instead a lad of thirteen or fourteen stood on the engine room hatch and translated the Skipper’s hand signals into shouted commands such as ‘Full ahead!’ or ‘Half astern!’

The Thames was not simply a thoroughfare; it was also an elongated cesspool. Although the ‘Great Stink’, which finally prompted the government to take action, did not occur until the summer of 1858, there had been plenty of lesser stinks before that, Parliament having enacted in the 1840s that all domestic cesspits should drain into the sewers and thus into the Thames. For many of the visitors who flocked to the Great Exhibition, the unexpected horrors of the river must have been as striking as the eagerly anticipated wonders of the Crystal Palace.