The Aldgate Pump

 On the way home from War of the Worlds, we came across the Aldgate Pump at the end of Leadenhall Street:

I got terribly excited, because I mistook it for another famous pump.

This one had been in use as a water source since at least the time of King John, and was the source of what came to be known as the Aldgate Pump Epidemic - the water supply passed through several cemeteries in Victorian times, and picked up all manner of nasty things to poison the water.

I was mixing it up with the Broad Street pump in Soho, source of the cholera outbreak there in 1854, when local Doctor John Snow removed the pump handle to stop people from drinking the water and proved that cholera was spread through the water rather than by miasma, or bad air.

Next time I'm in Soho, I'll have to visit that pump.