I never thought about the mass appeal of a public drinking fountain. But I live in Berlin in the 21st century, and I don’t need to think about cholera and other diseases. But London was not like this in the 19th century. The life of the poorer classes was a nightmare back then. If you wanted to drink water, you couldn’t open the tap in your kitchen. Most people didn’t have access to water in their homes, so the alternative was to go to the Thames River and get some from there. But the Thames was so dirty that it wasn’t considered clean water anymore. The river was essentially an open sewer in the middle of London, filled with chemicals from the Industrial Revolution and feces from all the people living in the city. Everything was dumped in the river, without any treatment.

In 1854, London was hit with a cholera outburst that became known as The Broad Street Cholera Outbreak. After that, a movement started growing for regulations and public access to water. This led the British government to buy out all the private water companies that existed. The first public baths came to exist in Liverpool, and drinking fountains came along.