Joseph Bazalgette

Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (28 March 1819 – 15 March 1891) was one of the great Victorian civil engineers. As the chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works, his major achievement was the creation of a sewer network for central London that helped relieve the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning the clean-up of the River Thames that had reached a nadir with "The Great Stink" of 1858.

Beginnings

He was born in Enfield, the son of a captain in the Royal Navy and grandson of a French immigrant, and began his career working on railway projects articled to noted engineer Sir John MacNeill and gaining sufficient experience (some in Northern Ireland) in land drainage and reclamation works for him to set up his own London consulting practice in 1842. By the time he married, in 1845, Bazalgette was deeply involved in the expansion of the railway network - working so hard that he suffered a nervous breakdown two years later.

Related Topics:
Enfield - Railway - John MacNeill - Northern Ireland - Reclamation - 1842 - 1845

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While he was recovering, London's shortlived Metropolitan Commission of Sewers ordered that all cesspits should be closed and that house drains should connect to sewers and empty into the Thames; a cholera epidemic (1848-49) then killed 14,137 Londoners.

Related Topics:
Metropolitan Commission of Sewers - Cesspit - Cholera

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Bazalgette was appointed assistant surveyor to the Commission in 1849, taking over as Engineer in 1852, after his predecessor died of "harassing fatigues and anxieties". Soon after, another cholera epidemic struck, in 1853, killing 10,738. Medical opinion at the time held that cholera was caused by foul air: a miasma. Dr John Snow had earlier advanced the explanation that we now know to be correct: cholera was spread by contaminated water, but his view was not generally accepted.

Related Topics:
1849 - 1852 - 1853 - Miasma - John Snow

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Championed by fellow engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Bazalgette was then appointed chief engineer of the Commission's successor, the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1856 (a post he retained until the MBW was abolished and replaced by the London County Council in 1889). In 1858, the year of the Great Stink, Parliament passed an enabling act, in spite of the colossal expense of the project, and Bazalgette's proposals to revolutionise London's sewerage system began to be implemented, with the expectation that enclosed sewers would eliminate the stink—the miasma— and thus reduce the incidence of cholera.

Related Topics:
Isambard Kingdom Brunel - Metropolitan Board of Works - 1856 - London County Council - 1889 - 1858 - Great Stink

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