The Thames is inseparable from the city of London. Its origin is the town of Kemble and it passes through Oxford and London before reaching its mouth in the North Sea. The river was originally called Tamesis, a name which has both Roman and Celtic influences (Wikipedia). Without fail, because the River Thames has always played such an important role in the lives of Londoners, it has also been inevitably associated with the deaths of those same people. In Victorian London, the aroma of the Thames was impossible to avoid. Huge quantities of raw sewage were dumped into the river due to the growing popularity of flush toilets. Flush toilets, while improving the personal hygiene of residents of a typical London house, discharged sewage directly into the sewers beneath the streets of London (Wilkinson). This increased the pollution of drinking water until the contents of the river were so tainted that they were devoid of oxygen, plant life and animals. The river was said to smell like rotten eggs due to the production of hydrogen sulfide (Sinha-Jordan). In the summer of 1858, the Thame...