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Great thinkers

By Sue Mennell (May 2008 Issue)
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BACKGROUND: Joseph Bazalgette was born in Enfield, north London, and was the only son of a distinguished naval commander. He was privately educated and by the age of 19 was already studying to become a civil engineer. His early engineering career, working on the railways, gave him experience of land drainage and reclamation works and in 1842 he set up his own consulting practice. Bazalgette worked on railway expansion, but pressure of work during the period of ‘railway mania’, between 1847 and 1848, led to a nervous breakdown and he left London to recuperate.

He returned to find that, in his absence, the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers had ordered that all cesspits be closed and that house drains be connected to sewers which emptied into the Thames. The resulting cholera epidemic, between 1848 and 1849, killed 14,136 people. A further outbreak in 1853 killed 10,738. At the time, cholera was thought to be an airborne disease caused by ‘miasma’, and the foul air created by the outpouring of domestic and industrial effluent into the Thames was held to blame. The theory put forward by Dr John Snow, that cholera was spread by contaminated water, was not generally accepted at the time.

In 1849, Bazalgette was appointed assistant surveyor to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. Three years later he was appointed engineer and spent much of his time looking at how construction of the underground railway would affect sewerage plans. In 1854, with the support of fellow engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Bazalgette became chief engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which succeeded the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers.

INNOVATION: Bazalgette proposed a scheme of intercepting sewers which would take the flow from the existing sewers. However, instead of discharging sewage directly into the Thames, where it formed great stagnant pools when the water was low, the intercepting sewers would continue on to a point where it would be less harmful.

The scheme was, however, held up by innumerable bureaucratic delays.

Things finally moved on in 1858, the year of the Great Stink. That year was especially hot and the smell from the Thames, which was filled with human and animal excrement, animal corpses and outflow from various industries, was so bad that it drove MPs from the House of Commons. Prime minister Benjamin Disraeli instructed Bazalgette to deal with the stink before it became political, and a bill was passed that allowed work to begin immediately on his scheme of intercepting sewers.

The diameter of pipe required for Bazalgette’s sewers was based on twice the average daily amount of sewage per person, to allow for variations in flow, heavy rainfall and storms, and then doubled. At the time, Bazalgette said: “Well, we’re only going to do this once and there’s always the unforeseen.”

Had he used smaller pipes, the “unforeseen” flow from tower blocks built a century later would have caused them to overflow. Instead, they are still in use today.

In diverting sewage out to sea with his intercepting sewers, Bazalgette achieved his aim of removing the threat of cholera from London.

LEGACY: Bazalgette is perhaps best known for his work with the Metropolitan Board of Works on the Thames Embankment, which allowed some 52 acres of land along three-and-a-half miles of the river to be reclaimed.

Other works included building flood defences, the renovation of the Thames’ bridges, constructing the Blackwall Tunnel and the construction of a steam ferry for crossing the river.

Bazalgette undertook consultancy work for towns and cities at home and abroad and was responsible for the Maidstone Bridge, over the River Medway.

AWARDS: Bazalgette was knighted in 1875 and elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1883. A memorial to him is sited on the Victoria Embankment and a blue plaque marks the home where he lived for some years at 17 Hamilton Terrace, St John’s Wood.

In 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works was dissolved and Sir Joseph Bazalgette retired. He died in 1891.

Sue Mennell is editor of TJ Online. If you would like to nominate a ‘Great Thinker’, please send your nomination to her at sue@trainingjournal.com

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