Joseph Bazalgette

• London's Local Government:

  London's local government was chaotic, with various different specialist authorities and commissions having to agree to provide services. This made any public health initiatives virtually impossible to implement. The Royal Commission on the City of London proposed dividing London into 7 boroughs, with each borough represented on a Metropolitan Board of Works. Although the idea of boroughs was discarded, the Metropolitan Board of Works was set up in 1855.
• The Metropolitan Board of Works took over the responsibilities of the Metropolitan Buildings Office and the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. It was not an elected body and instead consisted of 45 nominees from the principal local authorities in London. Joseph Bazalgette was made its chief engineer.
• When Bazalgette was appointed chief engineer in 1856, the River Thames was little more than an open sewer. The sewage contributed to the severity of the cholera epidemic.

  Bazalgette drew up a comprehensive plan where London's sewage was channelled through miles of street sewers into a series of larger incepting sewers. These large sewers would be pumped into the tidal part of the River Thames where it would be swept out to sea. The plans were good, but the board and its political boss became locked in arguments, mostly about money, until 1858.
• The Great Stink:

  The summer of 1858 was unusually hot, and due to the River Thames overflowing with raw sewage, the warm weather encouraged bacteria to thrive. The resulting smell was so powerful that business in the House of Commons was suspended. Nicknamed the 'Great Stink' by the press, it led to a large campaign for change, led by The Times newspaper. In July 1858, the Metropolis Local Management Amendment Act was passed, giving the Metropolitan Board of Works permission to improve the drainage of London.
• Sanitising London:

  Bazalgette's project was huge, involving over 2000km of interconnecting brick-lined sewers linked to 4 massive pumping stations, two at each side of the Thames. This also involved redesigning the Thames embankment. The pumping stations were to carry the untreated sewage to treatment plants. Bazalgette designed brick-lined egg-shaped sewer tunnels, which meant they rarely got blocked.
• Sanitising London:

  When planning the size of the sewers, Bazalgette started with the densest areas of population, calculated the the amount of sewage each person would generate, then doubled it. In building the sewers, 318 million bricks and 670000 cubic meters of concrete were used. The whole sewerage system was opened in 1865 by Edward, Prince of Wales.