It was a desolate area originally, recalled a local historian, so chemical manufacturers went there for the opportunity to pollute. Hence the stench and the name. A subsidiary cause was filth from the notorious Black Ditch—a medieval sewer, originating in Spitalfields and discharging its waste in Limekiln Dock. At this place an open ditch, it had been fed under the Cut by a syphon, but it overflowed in stormy weather. More than once Stinkhouse Bridge required the attention of Joseph Bazalgette himself. "The smell is so bad that sometimes we cannot sleep in our beds", complained an 1856 petition. The main cause of the stink, thought Bazalgette, was factories discharging effluent into the Cut. As time went by Stinkhouse Bridge became the nucleus of "the largest chemical and inflammable factories in London": the district was a fire risk. In 1866 it caught fire at last. So tremendous was the blaze that, reportedly, every unit in the London Fire Brigade knew to turn out—and where to go—just by "the great light in the sky". Many people jumped into the Cut to avoid being burned to death. About 200 yards up the Cut was the RNLI's storeyard. Lifeboats were kept there prior to release to service. Before that, they were sunk in the waters of the Cut to test their self-righting powers, as shown. The tests also required men to stand on a gunwale until it was submerged. Across the Cut began the notorious Fenian Barracks slum area, see below. There are many reports of individuals trying to end their lives by jumping off Stinkhouse Bridge. In 1909 Coroner Wynne Baxter remarked that he had held inquests on over 50 suicides there. In a derisory attempt to enhance its image it was renamed Lavender Bridge. So dirty was the water that when a local labourer dived in to save a woman trying to drown herself, the magistrate awarded him special compensation from the poor box. The bridge was rebuilt in 1929. It continued to be a well known East End placename even after the stink had gone. In "Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s" the runaway Irish girl Mary lingers at Stinkhouse Bridge. "It was pleasant standing by the bridge, looking down at the moving water." In 1833 the Limehouse Cut was the place most frequented for bathing, an East London magistrate told Parliament.