The Pump of Death
The Pump of Death By the gentle author Watch these guys pump water. They seem unaware they are in the presence of the notorious “Pump of Death” In 1876, the water began to taste strange and was found to contain liquid human remains which had seeped into the underground stream from cemeteries. Several hundred people died in the resultant Aldgate Pump Epidemic as a result of drinking polluted water – though this was obviously a distant memory by the nineteen twenties when Whittard’s tea merchants used to “always get the kettles filled at the Aldgate Pump so that only the purest water was used for tea tasting.” Yet before it transferred to a supply from the New River Company of Islington, the spring water of the Aldgate Pump was appreciated by many for its abundant health-giving mineral salts, until – in an unexpectedly horrific development – it was discovered that the calcium in the water had leached from human bones. This bizarre phenomenon quickly entered popular lore, so that a bounci...