
Joseph Bazalgette

Sir Joseph William Bazalgette, CB (; 28 March 181915 March 1891) was a 19th-century English civil engineer. As chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works his major achievement was the creation (in response to the Great Stink of 1858) of a sewer network for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning to clean the River Thames. He was also the designer of the Hammersmith Bridge.
Early life.
Bazalgette was born in Hill Lodge, Clay Hill, Enfield, London, the son of Joseph William Bazalgette (1783–1849), a retired Royal Navy captain, and Theresa Philo, born Pilton (1796–1850), and was the grandson of a French Protestant immigrant who had become wealthy.
In 1827 when Joseph was eight years old, the family moved into a newly-built house in Hamilton Terrace, St. John's Wood, London. He spent his early career articled to the noted engineer Sir John Macneill working on railway projects and amassed sufficient experience (partly in China and Ireland) in land drainage and reclamation to enable him to set up his own London consulting practice in 1842. In 1845 the house in Hamilton Terrace was sold and Joseph married Maria Kough, from County Kilkenny, in Ireland. At the time he was working so hard on the expansion of the railway network that two years later, in 1847, he suffered a nervous breakdown.
While he was recovering, London's Metropolitan Commission of Sewers ordered that all cesspits should be closed and that house drains should connect to sewers and empty into the Thames. As a result, a cholera epidemic (1848–49) killed 14,137 Londoners.
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 so-called "miasma". Physician Dr John Snow had earlier advanced a different explanation, which is now known to be correct: cholera was spread by contaminated water. His view was not then generally accepted.
Championed by fellow engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Bazalgette was appointed chief engineer of the Commission's successor, the Metropolitan Board of Works, in 1856 (a post which 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. The expectation was that enclosed sewers would eliminate the stink ('miasma'), and that this would then reduce the incidence of cholera.
Sewer works.
At that time, the River Thames was little more than an open sewer, empty of any fish or other wildlife, and an obvious health hazard to Londoners.
Bazalgette's solution (similar to a proposal made by painter John Martin 25 years earlier) was to construct a network of of enclosed underground brick main sewers to intercept sewage outflows, and of street sewers, to intercept the raw sewage which up until then flowed freely through the streets and thoroughfares of London.
The plan included major pumping stations at Deptford (1864) and at Crossness (1865) on the Erith marshes, both on the south side of the Thames, and at Abbey Mills (in the River Lea valley, 1868) and on the Chelsea Embankment (close to Grosvenor Bridge; 1875), north of the river. The outflows were diverted downstream where they were collected in two large sewage outfall systems on the north and south sides of the Thames called the Northern and Southern Outfall sewers. The sewage from the Northern Outfall sewer and that from the Southern Outfall were originally collected in balancing tanks in Beckton and Crossness, respectively, before being dumped, untreated, into the Thames at high tide.
The system was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales in 1865, although the whole project was not actually completed for another ten years.
Partly as a result of the Princess Alice disaster, extensive sewage treatment facilities were built to replace the balancing tanks in Beckton and Crossness in 1900.
The unintended consequence of the new sewer system was to eliminate cholera in areas connected thereto. Yet, the basic premise of this expensive project, that miasma spread cholera infection, was wrong. But instead of causing the project to fail, the new sewers succeeded in mostly eliminating the disease by removing the causal bacterium. Bazalgette's sewers also decreased the incidence of typhus and typhoid epidemics.
Bazalgette's capacity for hard work was remarkable; every connection to the sewerage system by the various Vestry Councils had to be checked and Bazalgette did this himself and the records contain thousands of linen plans with handwritten comments in Indian ink on them "Approved JWB", "I do not like 6" used here and 9" should be used. JWB", and so on. It is perhaps not surprising that his health suffered as a result. The records are held by Thames Water in large blue binders gold-blocked reading "Metropolitan Board of Works" and then dated, usually two per year.
Private life.
Bazalgette lived at 17 Hamilton Terrace, St John's Wood, north London, for some years. Before 1851, he moved to Morden, then in 1873 to Arthur Road, Wimbledon, where he died in 1891, and he was buried in the nearby churchyard at St Mary's Church.
In 1845 at Westminster, he married Maria Kough (1819–1902). Lady Bazalgette died at her residence in Wimbledon on 3 March 1902. They had children including:
Awards and memorials.
Bazalgette was knighted in 1875, and elected President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1883.
A Greater London Council blue plaque commemorates Bazalgette at 17 Hamilton Terrace in St John's Wood in North London, and he is also commemorated by a formal monument on the Victoria Embankment by the River Thames in central London. In July 2020, it was announced that a new public space west of Blackfriars Bridge, formed following construction of the Thames Tideway Scheme, would be named the Bazalgette Embankment.
Dulwich College has a scholarship in his name either for design and technology or for mathematics and science.
External links.
 
 
 