Abstract
This essay focuses on sewer gas, one of the most dreaded types of bad air in the Victorian city. The fear of sewer gas spiked dramatically in 1871 when the Prince of Wales was attacked by typhoid. The two-month saga of his illness, updated daily in the newspapers, become a detective story of sorts, as The Lancet undertook and published a sanitary audit of the Prince's residence to find the source of his infection. Soil pipes and sewers were all minutely inspected. Even the royal water closet was not spared.Following the Prince's recovery, sanitary reform became a national priority. Sectional drawings of homes showing sanitary fittings were used to teach people to detect sewer gas in their homes. But such sanitary sections were ultimately ambivalent. Even as they promoted good plumbing and sanitation, they testified to the dangers of connection; they foregrounded the risks of being hooked up through one's water closet or washbasin to centralised systems over which one had little control. They emphasise that the transition to modern infrastructural systems was a deeply divisive one that had far-reaching effects on the environment, social order and human subjectivity—effects that we are still grappling with today.
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