Many of us may be interested in the opportunity to spend a day in Victorian London. But few of us who have read Charles Dickens’ novels, for example, would actually choose to live there. “London’s little alleys are now glamorous,” says host Sheehan Quirke. video above“But 150 years ago, in a place like this, an entire family would have been crammed into this tiny room with no running water. The streets would have been filled with cesspits, and the stench of sewage boiling in the midday sun would have been unbearable.” This fetid city, already the world’s largest and growing every day, “was not just frightening to live in, it was downright dangerous.”
Much of the enormous amount of waste produced by Londoners flowed directly into the Thames, eventually resulting in such sewage that engineer Joseph Bazalgette was tasked with designing not only a sewage system but also an embankment “to replace what was essentially a fetid swamp filled with garbage, human waste and eels”. Bazalgette’s design was outstanding, even miraculously functional, but it was impractical.
After its completion in 1870, the embankment was lined with elaborately decorated lamps (some of the world’s first electric lighting) that still attract the attention of passersby into the 21st century. “We don’t associate decoration with cutting-edge technology. That’s the big difference between us and the Victorians. The Victorians saw no contradiction between striking modernity and time-honored tradition.”
Quirke became famous as culture teacher A few years ago, the social media platform was then called Twitter. His threads have fostered the understanding of countless readers on many subjects related to history, art, architecture, music, and design, looking at ways past civilizations may have been better than ours. For example, the Victorians may have lacked modern amenities that none of us could live without, but they designed even their sewage pumping stations “with the same decorative vigor as any church or palace.” Perhaps they believed that sanitation workers deserved beautiful surroundings. They certainly had “pride and belief that what they did here was valuable and meant something.” Current infrastructure, both large and small, is technically impressive, but to say the least, it hardly merits recognition. Whether our civilization can regain its beauty is a question at the heart of Quirke’s enterprise. And one of his growing groups of supporters is starting to ask themselves every time they step out.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
