Autograph letter signed by inventor Sir Goldsworthy Gurney about pollution 1836

Before the Great Stink of 1858: Steam Carriage inventor, Sir Goldsworthy Gurney on the pollution of the Thames.

GURNEY, Goldsworthy (1793–1875). Autograph letter to Benjamin Hawes MP on pollution and shoaling in the River Thames, 3 July 1835.

Autograph letter signed, 3 July 1835. Large single sheet folded, 225 x 185 mm, written over three pages, with an unidentified abbreviated location at head. Addressed “My dear Benjamin” to Benjamin Hawes MP (1797–1862). Several old folds, light toning and light mounting marks to the edge of the final blank side; overall very good.

An interesting letter from the inventor and engineer Sir Goldsworthy Gurney to Benjamin Hawes, MP for Lambeth, concerning the increasingly polluted state of the River Thames. Gurney highlights the increasing impurity of the water. He recalls evidence given some years earlier by the late Mr Rennie, who had estimated that solid matter carried into the Thames from the sewers of the metropolis amounted to no less than 500,000 Tons annually, an amount which Gurney considered more than sufficient to account for Shoals.

He argues that the City of London, as conservators of the river, ought to spend “a few thousand a year” on their removal and urges Hawes to seek the appointment of a Parliamentary committee to investigate the problem: “The watermen would applaud you.” Gurney then turns explicitly to industrial pollution, noting that the labour of the watermen had increased and that: “The Fishermen are ruined by the deterioration of the water from Gas works” before adding, apparently with some irony, “I dare say that Soap works do not contribute”.

Hawes was one of the MPs for Lambeth and was closely involved with metropolitan engineering questions, including the Thames Tunnel Company. The letter considerably predates the Great Stink of 1858, but addresses the same developing crisis of metropolitan sewage and the deteriorating condition of the Thames. Gurney would later become closely associated with questions of ventilation and sanitation, and was known by the date of this letter for his pioneering, albeit financially ruinous, steam carriages.