1-150-195 - The Cartoon Collector/Heritage-Images

'How Dirty Old Father Thames was Whitewashed', 1858. A British workman in overalls and boots holds a large brush in one hand, and a handkerchief to his nose with the other. He has a bucket of lime at his feet which he is using to clean Father Thames who, with an old, weedy, kettle impaled on his staff, rests on an outlet pipe which gushes its untreated sewage into the river. This cartoon relates to Disraeli's Bill to purify the Thames, in which he proposed levying a tax of up to 3d in the pound for forty years to fund the renewal of the Capital's drainage system and to provide a sinking fund to cover the debts that would be incurred. Mr Punch, however, preferred a rather more blunt approach, suggesting that the Thames was so contaminated that any fund ought to be called 'a Stinking Fund'. From Punch, or the London Charivari, July 31, 1858.