Five British scenes
A king in a castle, a smell at Westminster, a bridge that froze the Thames, a queen of two countries, a pump in Soho.
5 questions. Pick an answer to see the explanation. Share your result at the end.
True or false: Edward II of England was killed in 1327 by a red-hot poker.
False — almost certainly. The red-hot-poker story first appears in the Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, written around 1355, about thirty years after Edward's death at Berkeley Castle. Contemporary sources from 1327 say only that he died of natural causes; sources from the 1330s say he was suffocated. The poker detail was a later elaboration intended to fit a theological judgment about his sexuality. Modern historians regard it as invention.
In what year did the Great Stink of London finally force Parliament to act on the city's sewage problem?
The hot summer of 1858 raised the smell of untreated sewage in the Thames to the point at which Parliament — sitting directly above the river at Westminster — could not continue debate. The Metropolitan Board of Works was authorized to build Joseph Bazalgette's sewer system within eighteen days of the bill's introduction. 1832 is the first major cholera epidemic; 1845 the Public Health Act precursor; 1866 the last London cholera outbreak.
Why did the upper Thames stop freezing in London after 1832?
Old London Bridge's nineteen piers and surrounding starlings blocked approximately 80% of the Thames flow, slowing the upstream river so much that it froze in cold winters. When the bridge was demolished in 1831–1832 and the new Rennie bridge opened upstream, the obstruction was removed. The river has not frozen in London since.
By what nickname is Isabella of France, queen of Edward II of England, traditionally known?
Isabella's nickname *the She-Wolf of France* (la louve de France) became fixed in English historiography through Thomas Gray's 1757 poem *The Bard*. The name reflects the Plantagenet aftermath of her 1326 invasion of England, the deposition of her husband Edward II, and the three-year regency she ran with her lover Roger Mortimer until her teenage son Edward III overthrew them in 1330.
Where was the pump that John Snow asked to have shut down during the 1854 London cholera outbreak?
The Broad Street pump — now Broadwick Street in Soho — was the contaminated water source Snow identified by mapping cholera deaths in September 1854. The Board of Guardians of St James's parish removed the pump handle on 8 September. The outbreak had already largely run its course, but the action prevented a second wave. The well was contaminated by a leaking cesspool three metres away.