Sir Joseph William Bazalgette

Victorian Engineer Famous for Designing Sewers and Embankments

Jul 20, 2009

Bazalgette was the brilliant civil engineer whose work included a new drainage system to cure "The Great Stink" caused by the polluted river Thames in Victorian London

Born in Enfield, Middlesex in 1819, Joseph William was the son of a Royal Navy Captain, Louis Bazalgette. In 1837, he became an articled pupil to the railway engineer Sir John MacNeil. Under his tutelage, Bazalgette went to Ireland and helped with the construction of sea embankments there. He also visited Holland and learnt much about the reclamation of land and building sea defences.

After his return from Holland, he worked on the dockyards at Portsmouth and helped build the Tame Valley Canal near Birmingham. In his mid twenties, he set up as a freelance engineer in Westminster, London. This was the time of “railway mania” and civil engineers were in constant demand as more and more railway companies were set up, requiring more and more plans to be drawn up.

Bazalgette’s business grew so rapidly that, in 1848, after several months of overwork and little sleep his health finally broke down and he had to retire to the country to recuperate. A year later, health restored, he was appointed as Assistant Engineer of the newly formed Metropolitan Commission of Sewers of London.

Bazalgette Appointed Chief Engineer of Sewerage Commission

The Commission of Sewers was established by an Act of Parliament in 1848 to control the London drainage system which had, until then, been managed by eight different organisations. At that time, the river Thames was London’s main source of drinking water and had become severely polluted because many Londoners had illegally connected their cesspits to ordinary drains which then emptied into the river. This caused several outbreaks of cholera.

The Commission ordered a survey of all of London’s sewers and it quickly transpired that they were not up to the job and needed repair. In 1852, after the death of the Chief Engineer of the Commission, Bazalgette was selected from thirty six candidates to fill the post. In 1855, having run out of money, the Commission was replace by the Metropolitan Board of Works and Sir Joseph was once again selected as Chief Engineer.

Bazalgette’s plans for a new sewerage system for the whole of London consisted of eighty three miles of interlinked sewers capable of taking away the sewage from more than one hundred square miles of buildings and built to manage up to 420 million gallons of liquid waste a day. The Prince of Wales formally opened the new drainage system in 1865.

Sir Joseph Builds the Embankments on the Thames

At around the same time that the sewers came into operation, Sir Joseph was contracted to draw up plans for the embankment of the Thames in London. The stretch on the south bank between Vauxhall and Westminster was completed in 1869 and the Blackfriars to Westminster section opened in 1870. The Chelsea embankment came next and was finished in 1874. The Northumberland Avenue section was finally completed in 1876.

Bazalgette then worked on other projects such as the Putney and Battersea bridges and the Woolwich ferry. He was given his knighthood on 12th May 1874 at Windsor Castle by Queen Victoria in recognition of his works in the capital. He drew up plans for the Blackwall tunnel and another bridge near the Tower of London. But he never saw these two projects completed as he died on 15th March 1891 at Wimbledon.

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