Joseph William Bazalgette made probably the single biggest contribution to the health of Victorian Londoners. It is because of his work that the Thames is now the cleanest metropolitan river in the world. And it’s because of him that cholera, along with other diseases such as typhoid, are now part of British history.
What did Joseph Bazalgette do for London?
Joseph Bazalgette © As chief engineer to London's metropolitan board of works in the mid-19th century, Bazalgette had a significant impact both on London's appearance and, through his design of an efficient sewage system, on the health of its inhabitants.
What was the purpose of the Bazalgette system?
Bazalgette's plan was for an extensive underground system of sewers, joining up the patchwork of existing municipal drains. The new system would funnel the waste far downstream of the main city of London, eventually dumping it into the Thames Estuary at high tide.
Where is Bazalgette's memorialised?
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.
What is the name of the college named after Joseph Bazalgette?
Dulwich College has a scholarship in his name either for design and technology or for mathematics and science. ^ Halliday, Stephen (2013). The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis.
Why was Bazalgette significant?
Joseph Bazalgette (1819 - 1891) In 1842 he set up in private practice. In 1856, London's metropolitan board of works was established. The board was the first organisation to supervise public works in a unified way over the whole city, and it elected Joseph Bazalgette as its first, and only, chief engineer.
What is Bazalgette most remembered for?
Bazalgette is known today as the man who built the city's first modern interconnected sewer network that was to do more than any other public project to wipe out cholera in London and is still in use today. The memorial was unveiled in 1901, the last year of Victoria's reign and a decade after Bazalgette's death.
Who is Bazalgette and what did he do?
Joseph William Bazalgette was the Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and had been hired specifically to take charge of the new sewers. The cost would be enormous. Parliament initially offered £2.5 million, somewhere between £240 million and over a billion pounds in today's values.
Why was the London sewer system originally developed?
Tons of lime was spread on the Thames foreshore and near the mouths of sewers discharging into the river to try and dissolve the toxic effluent, with little effect. Parliament was forced to legislate to create a new unified sewage system for London. The Bill became law on 2 August 1858.
Who invented the first sewers?
Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamians introduced the world to clay sewer pipes around 4000 BCE, with the earliest examples found in the Temple of Bel at Nippur and at Eshnunna, utilised to remove wastewater from sites, and capture rainwater, in wells.
Who invented the London sewerage system?
Parliament gave £3 million to the Metropolitan Board of Works to sort out the problem. The task was taken on by chief engineer Joseph Bazalgette, who designed and constructed five major brick-lined sewers measuring 132 km (82 miles); three north of the river and two to the south.
Who is Joseph Bazalgette GCSE?
Joseph Bazalgette was a civil engineer in the 1800s. What was Bazalgette's contribution to public health? He was the chief designer and engineer on London's sewer system, ordered after the Great Stink.
How do you pronounce Bazalgette?
1:019:35Sir Joseph Bazalgette - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo you might get this name is actually from France. So Joseph Bazalgette family came over fromMoreSo you might get this name is actually from France. So Joseph Bazalgette family came over from France. And they were a family of tailored. And so Joseph Bazalgette grew up in London.
When was the first sewer system invented?
The Romans began building sewers in the sixth century BCE, with the giant Cloaca Maxima (meaning “Great Sewer”), a wonder of nearly eleven-foot-high stone vaults. But this underground cathedral wasn't meant to transport waste; rather, its function was to drain the marsh on which the city of Rome was built.
What did the Great Stink smell like?
This contamination could take the form of the odour of rotting corpses or sewage, but also rotting vegetation, or the exhaled breath of someone already diseased. Miasma was believed by most to be the vector of transmission of cholera, which was on the rise in 19th-century Europe.
Who Solved the Great Stink?
One of the most vocal and well-known supporters of Thames reform was an English chemist and physicist named Michael Faraday. He staunchly supported a complete reformation of the toxic river, so much so that after a boat ride along its surface, he composed and sent a letter to the editor of The Times newspaper.
How many died in the Great Stink?
6,536 people died in London, and an estimated 20,000 nationally, as a result of this outbreak. During the second major epidemic in 1848 the death toll in London more than doubled. The third outbreak in 1853–54 claimed 10,738 lives in the capital.
Where does the name Bazalgette come from?
Bazalgette is a surname, originating in the Cévennes region of Southern France. It is believed that there is a single Bazalgette family that comes from the hamlet of La Bazalgette, situated midway between Mende and Ispagnac in the Lozère département.
How do you pronounce bazalgette?
1:019:35Sir Joseph Bazalgette - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo you might get this name is actually from France. So Joseph Bazalgette family came over fromMoreSo you might get this name is actually from France. So Joseph Bazalgette family came over from France. And they were a family of tailored. And so Joseph Bazalgette grew up in London.
Who was Basil jet?
Basil Jet. A strange name. Like his near-contemporaries the Brunels, Bazalgette's family were immigrants from France in the late 18th Century. Isambard Brunel knew Joseph Bazalgette well and, in fact, strongly endorsed him for the post of Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1856.
Why is the bust of Bazalgette important?
Bazalgette’s modest bust on his embankment stands as a poignant memory of a man that saved London and allowed it to grow into the buzzing, successful, global powerhouse it is today .
What was Joseph Bazalgette's greatest achievement?
Joseph Bazalgette’s feat of engineering is a mostly forgotten facet of British history, yet not only did the design of his sewer system serve the population every day for over a century, but his efforts significantly improved public health.
How much did the Bazalgette project cost?
By the time the project entered its final stages in 1875, Bazalgette had spent over £6.5 million on the project, equivalent to a quarter of a billion pounds today.
Why was Bazalgette knighted?
Despite a few inevitable setbacks, the new system vastly improved the well-being of native Londoners and in 1875, Bazalgette was knighted for his services to engineering.
What were the flaws of the Bazalgette system?
A further flaw to the design was the decision not to treat raw sewage, merely pumping it into the Thames. Whilst Bazalgette’s system improved sanitation on land, the river was still filthy. In 1878, the Princess Alice pleasure boat sank, killing nearly 700 people, most of whom died of poisoning from the water.
Who was Joseph Bazalgette?
Joseph Bazalgette was given the position of chief engineer for the monumental scheme, which was the largest civil engineering task to have been undertaken in that period. His experience in drainage, land reclamation and railways would prove vital to the success of the project. Young Bazalgette’s engineering experience began when observing ...
How did Bazalgette make London the greenest city in the world?
In an effort to rid the city of miasma, Bazalgette incorporated parks into his plans, making London one of the greenest capitals in the world. It was not these verdant spaces however, but the sewage system that cleaned up the waterways, reducing the number of cholera pandemics and considerably improving the health of people living in London.
What impacts did Bazalgette’s system have?
London’s riverside landscape was transformed – and so was the health of its population. Cholera and typhoid outbreaks were effectively eradicated, and many thousands of lives saved over subsequent decades. Though the new sewer network greatly improved sanitation, the dangers of discharging untreated sewage into the Thames were exposed on 3 September 1878 when the crowded pleasure boat SS Princess Alice collided with a collier ship and sank downstream from the northern outfall. More than 600 passengers died; of the 130 survivors pulled from the Thames, at least 16 later perished, having ingested the foul water. As a result of the subsequent public inquiry into the incident, from 1888 solid waste was separated from the sewage, and transported downstream on ‘sludge’ boats to be dumped out at sea.
Why and how did Bazalgette act?
Concerns about London’s water supply and drainage grew during the first half of the 19th century, particularly following the arrival of cholera in 1831. That first outbreak killed 6,536 people in the capital; a second, in 1848–49, took the lives of more than 14,000 Londoners. At that time, before scientists established that such water-borne diseases were caused by bacteria, it was widely believed that cholera was a product of ‘miasma’ – bad air. And the air around the Thames had become very bad indeed.
Who was Joseph Bazalgette?
Born in Enfield in 1819, Joseph William Bazalgette was – like another acclaimed Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel – of French descent, his grandfather having arrived in England in the 1770s. By 1846, when he became a full member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Bazalgette had considerable experience of land reclamation and railway projects.
Where is the remains of Bazalgette?
Bazalgette was knighted in 1874, retired in 1889, and died just two years later; his remains lie in a magnificent mausoleum at St Mary’s Church, steps from his home in Wimbledon.
Where did Bazalgette live?
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).
Where was Joseph Bazalgette born?
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.
How many miles of sewers did Bazalgette build?
Bazalgette's solution (similar to a proposal made by painter John Martin 25 years earlier) was to construct a network of 82 miles (132 km) of enclosed underground brick main sewers to intercept sewage outflows, and 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of street sewers, to intercept the raw sewage which up until then flowed freely through the streets and thoroughfares of London.
How important was Bazalgette?
Signed by Joseph Bazalgette. Courtesy of the Port of London Authority.
What was the most important thing that Bazalgette insisted on?
Bazalgette insisted on the use of the the relatively new Portland cement, an extremely strong substance that is also water-resistant. This is one of the factors that has helped the Victorian sewer system survive to this day.
What did Bazalgette design?
He also found time to design a number of other major pieces of engineering, including Battersea Bridge, Albert Bridge, Putney Bridge, and early plans for the Blackwall Tunnel.
What was the plan of the Bazalgette?
Bazalgette's plan was for an extensive underground system of sewers, joining up the patchwork of existing municipal drains. The new system would funnel the waste far downstream of the main city of London, eventually dumping it into the Thames Estuary at high tide.
How many people lived in London when Bazalgette died?
By the time Bazalgette died in 1891, there were 5.5 million people living and defecating in inner London, over double the number when he first designed the sewers in the 1850s.
When did the Bazalgette breakthrough?
In 1852 the Bazalgette had a breakthrough when he was promoted to Engineer to the 4th Sewer’s Commission but still events moved at an ominously slow pace.
What did Joseph Bazalgette have to do to put his plans into action?
Bazalgette was to transform an ancient network of sewers into a modern system to serve a population of 2.5 million people and growing and he must do it with minimum of disruption and it had to be good enough to last at least a hundred years.
Why was Bazalgette knighted?
He was knighted in recognition of his great work and a memorial can be found to him on the Embankment. These changes were closely allied with the period building up to and during the Industrial Revolution and Bazalgette was one of a number of examples of brilliant British Engineers and inventors.
When did Bazalgette reapply to the sewers commission?
He showed great attention to detail and was persistent in his doggedness to get his ideas, if not accepted then at least considered by the Sewer’s Commission.Well aware of the urgency of the crisis and anxious that no more time be wasted, Bazalgette reapplied to the Sewers Commission in August 1849.
When did Bazalgette return to the country?
So in 1849 Bazalgette returned from the country, to find the city in the final throes of its second cholera epidemic. He had recently been recovering from a breakdown brought on by the intense pressure he put himself under in his work. He was a man driven by a high work ethic and an exacting attitude.
Where was Joseph Bazalgette born?
Joseph Bazalgette was born in Enfield North London in 1819.
Who was the most important product developed in the C19th century?
However, correctly mixed and it would prove to be one of the most important products developed in the C19th. Joseph Bazalgette with his usual brilliant ability to see possibilities stuck to his principles when he was criticized for his choice of materials.
