Only 30% of people globally use flushing toilets connected to sewers. Two of every five people in the world – men, women and children - don’t have a safe, hygienic and private place to “go”. Today, another revolution is urgently needed. A huge public health revolution had begun, one that would eventually transform the lives of millions living in towns and cities in the industrialising world - and from which many valuable lessons can be drawn for the 21st century. Only seven years later, in 1865, the Prince of Wales, Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and 500 other distinguished guests dined on salmon at the Crossness pumping station, as the new sewers were inaugurated and the city’s excreta flowed beneath them. Sewers, one on either side of the river, were designed and built by Joseph Bazalgette, in a remarkably short time. The Stink powerfully concentrated MPs’ minds and they rushed through legislation to fund massive intercepting sewers to collect waste and deliver it further downriver. Disastrous cholera epidemics broke out every few years and it was believed such diseases were carried on the miasma, the smelly air, coming from the drains and river. The smell was so excruciating Parliament could barely sit, and sessions in the adjoining Courts of Law were frequently curtailed. Water closets had multiplied in London and huge amounts of human waste found their way into the river. Click here to enlarge imageĮxactly 150 years ago, an exceptionally hot summer reduced England’s river Thames to a scandalous condition known as the “Great Stink”. The simple VIP toilet, like this one in Zambia, provides an effective and affordable sanitation solution for some villagers. With the International Year of Sanitation just past, champions are needed for new ‘Great Stink’ to address the global sanitation crisis, says co–author of The Last Taboo.