Y S Lee

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You are here: Home / Things I Write / Fatberg!

Fatberg!

August 14, 2013 By Ying 5 Comments

Hello, friends! Did you hear about the “fatberg”? It was a 15-ton conglomeration of solid fat found in a London sewer. (This NPR blog post has a photo. If you’re the queasy type, don’t click; just take my word for it.) This thing was 15 tons of congealed fat mixed with disposable wipes. Sewage workers spent 3 weeks hacking it into chunks which were then taken away in “heavy-duty lorries”. They said, “If we hadn’t discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston [in suburban London].” Workers are now busy repairing the damage done by the fatberg to the sewer.

You’ve probably noticed my fascination with sewers and the grotty details of urban life. And naturally, the first thing I thought when I heard this was, “Well. This would never have happened in Victorian London.” And it has nothing to do with population growth or advances in kitchen plumbing. Or the fact that baby wipes hadn’t yet been invented.

The first thing is that solid fat was an important resource in the nineteenth century. It was part of English cuisine (beef dripping or bacon fat spread on bread; lard in pastries; fats from all animals cooked into meals) and, if you were poor, an essential source of calories and nutrients. Fat also had commercial value: you could render it down and use it to make soap. If you had an excess of fat, you could sell it around the neighbourhood, or to the scrapman who came to your door. Indeed, fat was relatively expensive: there’s a traditional treat called lardycake, a sort of brioche made with lard and currants. It’s a festive food, associated with special occasions, and part of that is because of the extravagance of kneading sugar, dried fruit, and lard into a bread dough. But I digress. My point is that because of fat’s many uses and significant value, no one would deliberately pour it down the drain.

Even so, a small amount of fat must have found its way into the sewers (greasy dishwater, spills). We know this because in 1862, a journalist named John Hollingshead explored the sewers and and noticed “icicles” of fat clinging to the sewer roof. But remember! At this time, sewers drain straight back into the Thames. And this is where the mudlarks came in handy: poor Londoners, often children, who scavenged through rubbish on the riverbanks. They collected whatever refuse could possibly be recycled or re-used. Any clots of fat they spotted bobbing on the water would have been harvested and sold, too.

We had to wait until the early twenty-first century, and our prodigality with (and simultaneous terror of consuming) solid fats, and our domestic laziness in flushing everything down the toilet, before we could experience the Fatberg. Not really much of an advance, is it?

P. S. You probably don’t need to be told this now but please don’t pour cooking fat down the sink, especially the stuff from your festive turkey or your weekend bacon. Please don’t flush disposable wipes or maxi pads down the toilet. Don’t put hair in the toilet, either. All these things will only come back to get you in the monstrous form of the Fatberg.

P. P. S. Thanks to my friend Sean Burgess, who first alerted me to the Fatberg.

Filed Under: Things I Write Tagged With: fatberg, London, UK, victorian, Victoriana

Comments

  1. E.G.Randolph says

    August 15, 2013 at 11:11 am

    That is truly one of the most disgusting things I have ever read about.
    It must be a relief that there were no “Fatbergs” in Victorian London,
    or Mary and James may have run into a rather greasy spot of trouble in the last book.

  2. E.G.Randolph says

    August 15, 2013 at 11:13 am

    P.S. I wonder what the human interpretation (there always is one) of a “Fatberg” would be?
    Octavius Jones, perhaps? Or someone, as of yet, unknown and even more hideous?

  3. Ying says

    August 16, 2013 at 12:51 pm

    E.G.Randolph, I’m thrilled to have grossed you out in the service of history! And oh, I think you can get a lot more hideous than Octavius Jones…

  4. L says

    September 1, 2013 at 2:50 am

    I’d never make a decent Victorian – I’m far too disgusted by the idea of that much fat even possibly ending up in a sewer. Though hair, now, that is another problem – I try to comb out all loose strands pre-shampoo, but I’ve probably shed enough hair in the showers to make a decent-sized Hairberg. And sanitation workers must have stomachs (and noses) of steel, really.

  5. GEW says

    September 4, 2013 at 2:19 pm

    Has anyone written a “fatberg” commentary piece from this historical perspective? If not, you should! I love it (your commentary, not the fatberg).

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