The medieval system operated largely unchanged until the 1850s and 1860s when London’s sewers were overhauled on a scale akin to that witnessed earlier in Rome.

Interestingly, two plans were put forward for London. The first was to channel the city’s effluent to a number of key points outside the city, where it might then be transported to the fields. However, critically, this plan was rejected in favour of a scheme that sought its immediate disposal into the Thames.

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At approximately the same time, the sewers of Paris were also disgorging large quantities of effluent into the Seine. This genuine waste of a useful resource was commented upon by Victor Hugo (1862: 54) in Les Misérables:

“All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, restored to the land instead of being cast into the waster, would suffice to nourish the world”

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