The story is that there was a public pump in London which, since antiquity, provided famously delicious water. After a big cholera outbreak it was determined that the great taste, and the cholera, was due to the rainwater filtering through cemeteries. The pump most associated with the story still stands, and it marks the border of East London. Apparently a different public pump was the big death dealer.
Anyway, that sounds like the kind of weird story I should have been at least vaguely aware of.
The cholera outbreak was near Broad Street in 1854. And I think the big deal was how a physician named John Snow was able to trace the source of the infections to that pump.
I’ve read a fair amount about the 1854 cholera outbreak and John Snow’s famous investigation, but I’ve never heard anything about water filtering through a cemetery. That doesn’t really make sense to me, because cholera is generally transmitted by fresh human feces, not by dead decaying flesh.
Yeah it’s a super famous case, that was critical in the acceptance of the germ theory of disease (one of the most important scientific theories in human history)
IIRC correctly it was putrid water from a nearby pool of water that was leaking into the pipe underground. The actual cholera outbreak was traced to an infant who died of cholera, their parents threw their dirty diapers into a pool of fetid water next to the building (cos living in a 19th century city suuuucked).
We planned to visit the infamous pump on our trip last year to London, but it was too much of a schlep that day and we were tired. But we researched it and were pretty psyched to see it.
Hence the importance of sanitary sewers to collect and remove sewage so that it can be properly treated and not contaminate wells. This is what I work on every day: the engineering involved in rehabilitating and replacing sewers that are typically more than 100 years old. My utility also maintains the drinking water system so that people aren’t dependent on local wells in the first place. It’s a two-pronged approach that has been put in place in most cities now since the late 1800s or early 1900s, which is why you rarely hear about cholera outbreaks these days.
The water mains and sewer mains that were installed back then were designed to last around 100 years, which is why pretty much all of them need to be replaced now. I will never be out of work—and neither will my son, who is also a civil engineer in the water and wastewater field.
After the cholera epidemic had subsided, government officials replaced the Broad Street pump handle. They had responded only to the urgent threat posed to the population, and afterwards they rejected Snow’s theory. To accept his proposal would have meant indirectly accepting the oral-faecal method of transmission of disease, which was too unpleasant for most of the public to contemplate.[22]
Its pretty much mandatory that any presentation that touches on the history of data visualisation includes that map and Minard’s visualisation of Napoleon’s troops numbers during the invasion of Russia:
As I recall, it had to do with an underground “catch basin” - an aspect of architecture/construction associated with housing in that period. Rather than a nearby pool of water. But my memory may be mistaken.
And, if you enjoy that, you should read up on the history of urban sewers. Such as (IIRC) London placing their discharges into the Thames such that when the tide came in, the sewage washed back upstream…
That was indeed an excellent book, and you correctly remember that it was a cesspool that had been ‘lost’ after street revisions that was located too closely (and leaking into) a new well.
Researchers later discovered that this public well had been dug only 3 feet (0.9 m) from an old cesspit, which had begun to leak faecal bacteria. The cloth nappy of a baby, who had contracted cholera from another source, had been washed into this cesspit. Its opening was originally under a nearby house, which had been rebuilt farther away after a fire. The city had widened the street and the cesspit was lost. It was common at the time to have a cesspit under most homes. Most families tried to have their raw sewage collected and dumped in the Thames to prevent their cesspit from filling faster than the sewage could decompose into the soil.
It was a cesspit that was only three feet from the well in question. “Catch basins” are associated with stormwater systems and are somewhat different.
A cesspit is a precursor to a more modern septic tank, basically consisting of a cylindrical brick structure with gaps in the bricks to allow effluent to seep into the groundwater. It does little to lessen the impact of the waste on the surrounding environment.
A modern septic system, on the other hand, consists of a tank that retains the solids (which are subsequently broken down by biological action and which have to be pumped out periodically), and the liquids overflow into a large leach field consisting of several 75-100 long perforated pipes in trenches. This necessarily takes up a lot of area, so they are not at all suitable for urban environments (but are still commonly and safely used in low density rural areas). And modern septic systems still need to be some distance away from any wells (typically >100 feet).
Cesspits are no longer legal in any jurisdiction that I’m aware of, even rural ones. Having one in an urban area right next to a drinking water well is mind-boggling to me.
High-density urban areas don’t have the room for septic systems, so sanitary sewers are utilized instead to collect and transport the wastewater to a centralized wastewater treatment plant.
ETA: I had drafted this an hour or so ago, but got interrupted by actual work before I could post it. And I now see that @Pork_Rind already referenced a couple of points I made.
Sometimes the soil is too thin for a conventual septic system (My brother was so happy when his new lot passed the perk test so he could have one). I think you either need a mound system or a holding tank, which you guessed it just holds waste until being pumped out. I know of one park that has a system that uses wood chips (you are supposed to add a shovel full after every use) – not sure how may people/day it is designed for I’m not sure wilderness latrines count on low usage or are periodically moved.(on Whitney trail, you have to pack your waste out, as there is too much use/too dry for the bio to degrade)
And I now see that