“What Torrents of Filth Come from That Walbrook Sewer!!” This 1832 cartoon by satirist George Cruikshank shows the director of the Southwark Water Works, a main source of London’s drinking water, enthroned on an intake valve in the midst of a heavily polluted River Thames. Wearing a chamber pot for a hat and holding a trident with an impaled dog, cat, and rat, he raises a glass of foul liquid to cries of “Give Us Clean Water!” and “It Makes Me Sick!”
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