In the hot summer of 1858 the Thames stank. Over the past forty years, London’s population had trebled and the capital’s infrastructure was creaking. Sewers had been run by local commissioners and there was little co-ordination between districts. Factories, slaughterhouses and breweries discharged their effluent into the Thames and its tributaries, but new-fangled flush toilets had also been installed in many of London’s smarter homes, and they were now emptying their waste into the capital’s 200,000 cesspits, causing them to overflow into the surface water drains that fed into the river. Day after day London’s temperature reached 90 degrees and no rain fell to flush away the mephitic effluent. Each day, 90 million gallons of sewage poured into the Thames. It was estimated that one fifth of the river’s volume was raw sewage. The smell was unspeakable. In the Houses of Parliament the blinds were coated with chlorine and zinc, and tons of lime were spread upon the Thames foreshore, but MPs and peers were forced to abandon their sessions.

The episode became known as The Great Stink. Continue reading →

The true scale of London’s housing crisis was revealed by last week’s “social cleansing” story. Inside Housing’s Jules Birch and Steve Hilditch’s Red Brick covered the topic admirably, and I don’t intend to rehearse the issues here, but it’s important to note that the story was not just about Newham. Most London boroughs are looking to export people from the capital because of the shortage of affordable homes and the expense or non-availabilty of private lettings. Continue reading →

The Corn Laws of 1815 aimed to protect the interests of large landowners by restricting the import of foreign grain. As a result, food prices increased significantly and ‘hard-working families’ found they had less surplus income to pay their rent or to buy clothes and other manufactured goods. For the poorest families, more than half of their income could be spent on bread alone. This created a ‘cost of living crisis’ that stifled economic growth and caused unemployment to rise. Thousands of people were forced to turn to to their local parish for support. This meant either ‘outdoor’ relief (i.e. benefits) paid to them in their own homes, or ‘indoor’ relief – the workhouse. Continue reading →

In October 2010, Inside Housing published an iconic front page – The End of Social Housing 1945 – 2010. It’s taken three and a half years but a group of housing people has finally responded to that message and decided that enough is enough. SHOUT – Social Housing Under Threat – aka The Campaign for Social Housing has now been formed. Continue reading →