Episode 7 of 10: Richard Barnett – Part 1.
For the next two weeks, the series will be devoted to London ’s diseases. Cambridge historian, Richard Barnett, takes a trip through the sewers to examine the devastating effects of cholera, and its revolutionary effects on cleanliness, while pausing every so often to negotiate a rapid, drag a wellie out of a pile of rotting mud or, in part 2, analyse a fragment of pottery found in the silt.
This week, Richard takes us from the swamp land on which London was built, to the first cases of cholera, a disease which, in Richard’s words, saw its victims fitting themselves to death in their own excrement.
Tunnel Vision is a ten part series which sees Bruno Rinvolucri dupe a collection of writers, musicians, activists and academics into wading knee deep through the swollen rivers of sewage and miles of forgotten sewers that stretch beneath London’s surface. Safely esconced in the London’s effluvia, Tunnel Vision’s troglodytes explore this hidden and somewhat mysterious subterranenan environment sonically and historically. Leading us on a narrative of fact, fiction, anthropology, architecture, activism, music and sound.
This episode was originally broadcast on Tuesday 29th September 2009.
Email: brinvolucri@yahoo.co.uk
