Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London

Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London explores not only the challenges faced by reformers as they strove to clean up an increasingly filthy city but the resistance to their efforts.
Beginning in the 1830s, reform-minded citizens, under the banner of sanitary
improvement, plunged into London’s dark and dirty spaces and returned with
the material they needed to promote public health legislation and magnificent
projects of sanitary engineering. Sanitary reform, however, was not always
met with unqualified enthusiasm. While some improvements, such as slum
clearances, the development of sewerage, and the embankment of the Thames,
may have made London a cleaner place to live, these projects also destroyed
and reshaped the built environment, and in doing so, altered the meanings and
experiences of the city.