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In 1796 an architect by the name of Willey Reveley made four proposals to straighten the River Thames between Wapping and Woolwich Reach in east London, which were all rejected by Parliament. By eliminating one of the Thames's largest meanders, which bounds the Isle of Dogs in the west, south and east, this would have facilitated and simplified shipping up and down the Thames; and turn those obsolete river bends into giant wet docks for the ocean ships which were at that time clogging up the limited docking space.
As an added bonus, the river's straightened channel would improve the outflow of the heavily polluted waters of the Thames, which then still served as the receptacle of London's raw sewage - only after the Great Stink of 1858 would the government commission Joseph Bazalgette to build the sewerage system that is still largely in place today.