Joseph Bazalgette

Joseph Bazalgette, as Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, was directly or indirectly responsible for many improvements in London during the second half of the 19^th century, much of which continue in use today. These include the provision of many of the capital’s suburban public parks and major roads. Some of the worst of Victorian London’s slum tenement buildings were cleared. It is, however, the creation of London’s sewer system, and the embankment of the River Thames through Central London for which he is best known. It was the introduction of a modern sewage system that ended the recurring cholera epidemics, to which London had become prone in the 19^th century, during which tens of thousands died.

Bazalgette’s grandfather, Jean-Louis Bazalgette, had emigrated to Britain from France via America (as did the father of Joseph’s contemporary engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel), arriving in the 1770s. Jean-Louis prospered enough as a merchant and tailor in London that he became a substantial lender to the royal family, and acquired an estate in Surrey. One of his three children was Joseph William, father of the engineer. He joined the Royal Navy, and perhaps took part in the Battle of Trafalgar because he attended Nelson’s funeral.

Joseph was born at Enfield in March 1819. Young Bazalgette learned his expertise in land drainage and reclamation by being articled to the eminent Irish civil engineer John Benjamin MacNeill. At 19 years of age he became a graduate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Under MacNeill he worked in Ireland and laid out railway lines for the Railway Commissioners. He set himself up as a consulting engineer in 1842, aged 23, with an office in Great George Street in London, where other engineers were located. It was the time of railway mania, which provided Bazalgette with plenty of work. He was well-connected with the leading engineers of the time, including Robert Stephenson, Sir William Cubitt, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. By 1845 Bazalgette employed a large staff working on railways, canals and other schemes. The pressure of the work led to a breakdown in his health, however, and in 1847 he retired to the countryside for a year.

Following his break from work, Bazalgette returned to London, taking employment as an assistant surveyor to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. The commissioners had been arguing over different solutions for dealing with London’s sewage. In 1849 Frank Forster, a colleague of the railway engineer Robert Stephenson, was appointed as the Commission’s Chief Engineer and he instructed Bazalgette and Edward Cresy to evaluate over a hundred submissions. They found none of them to be satisfactory, so Forster took on the task himself. He came up with a plan to create intercepting sewers on each side of the Thames that would carry the waste eastwards where it could be discharged into the river beyond London. Having devised the general scheme, Forster died in 1852 and Bazalgette was appointed as his replacement.

The Sewers Commission realized they lacked the powers to carry out Forster’s scheme, so in 1856 the government replaced it with the Metropolitan Board of Works. Eight people applied for the position of Chief Engineer and Bazalgette was the successful candidate, supported by testimonials from his friends Brunel, Robert Stephenson and William Cubitt.

In the early months of 1856 Bazalgette submitted plans for drainage systems on the southern and northern side of the Thames. During the period between 1858 and 1875 eighty-two miles of new mains sewers were created, along with several major pumping stations, directly under Bazalgette’s control. Additionally, Bazalgette inspected and approved almost 1,220 miles of sewers created by local vestries around the London area.

The volume of work involved in creating the new sewer system put Bazalgette under a great deal of strain, often working into the early hours of the morning and then having to travel home to Morden. In 1869, with much of the work complete, he was authorized to take a three-month leave of absence from work to restore his health, although he returned after a month.

In the years after the sewer system came into operation there were increasing accusations that the problem of raw sewage in the Thames had merely been moved downstream. That was particularly so when over 700 people died as the Princess Alice pleasure steamship sank in the area of discharge. For many years Bazalgette defended his system. However, the population of London continued to increase, with Barking and Plumstead, where sewage flowed out into the river, becoming substantial suburbs. In 1887 the MBW began transporting pressed sludge from Barking and Crossness down to Canvey Island on specially constructed vessels, the first of which was named SS Bazalgette.

After the sewer system, Bazalgette also led other major works, including in the 1870s an unsuccessful submission for a design of a bridge over the Thames between St. Katharine’s, beside the Tower of London, and Bermondsey. There was often hostility between the MBW and the City of London, and the City Corporation objected to the need for another bridge. Instead, they went ahead with their own design at the same location, what was named Tower Bridge, which opened in 1894.

Against much hostility from local vestries and the City of London, the MBW created major new thoroughfares to reduce London’s chronic traffic congestion. Bazalgette was involved in the laying out of Northumberland Avenue between Trafalgar Square and the Thames, Queen Victoria Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road, Southwark Street, and Garrick Street.

During the 19^th century there were numerous areas of slum housing in London. The Artisans and Labourers’ Dwelling Improvement Act of 1875 made it a responsibility of the MBW to clear away slum dwellings, compensate property owners, and re-house tenants. The creation of the sewer system and the plans for major new roads provided an opportunity to demolish insalubrious tenement buildings. It was a time-consuming and laborious process, however, whereby a Medical Officer for Health had to declare a property unfit for habitation, the MBW then submitted an improvement plan to be agreed by the Home Secretary, and compensation negotiated with the property owner. Re-housing tenants was not easy, as nearby districts were already overcrowded. Nearly 40,000 people were re-housed in newly-built accommodation due to MBW schemes.

Twelve toll bridges over the river were acquired by the MBW and freed from tolls, for which in 1877 Parliament passed the Metropolitan Toll Bridges Act. The first of these was Waterloo Bridge, where tolls ended in October 1878 to great enthusiasm by the public.  There was a grand ceremony in May 1879 when Lambeth, Chelsea, Battersea, Albert and Vauxhall bridges were made free on the same day. Guns were fired, Chelsea Pensioners paraded, boats were formed into a flotilla, and the Prince and Princess of Wales drove over each bridge in turn. A similar ceremony took place the following year when Wandsworth, Hammersmith and Fulham bridges were freely opened.

The increased traffic over Hammersmith Bridge following the abolition of tolls resulted in some disintegration to the structure. It was then substantially reconstructed and widened to Bazalgette’s design. Albert Bridge was repaired. The wooden Battersea Bridge was demolished and replaced with a design by Bazalgette, opening in 1890. Likewise, the ancient, wooden Fulham Bridge was replaced by Bazalgette’s Putney Bridge, opening in 1886.

Bazalgette also oversaw the acquisition of open space to become public parks. Battersea, Kennington, Victoria, Ravenscourt, Dulwich, Finsbury, and Clissold parks were thus created, as were Blackheath and Clapham Common. Each of these were surveyed by Bazalgette as part of their takeover and the MBW were involved in draining and landscaping as necessary. Over 2,600 acres of public parkland came to be managed by the Board. The MBW were in the process of acquiring Epping Forest, to the north of London, when they were outmaneuvered by their rival, the City of London Corporation, who instead purchased it.

The Port of London remained very busy with shipping as far upriver as London Bridge. It would have been impractical to build bridges downstream of Tower Bridge under which tall sailing ships could pass. Bazalgette therefore proposed road tunnels between Blackwall and Greenwich, and between Stepney and Rotherhithe, and two ferries at Woolwich and Greenwich. The Woolwich Ferry eventually began operating in 1889, after Bazalgette’s death, but he had previously designed its approach roads. The final act by Bazalgette in London, and by the MBW, was to award the contracts to construct the Blackwall Tunnel.

In March 1889 the Metropolitan Board of Works was replaced by the London County Council after some MBW officials were found to be involved in corruption. After 33 years as Chief Engineer Bazalgette, the MBW’s longest-serving member and its only Chief Engineer, retired. During his career he also designed or advised on sanitation systems for Cambridge and Norwich, as well as at Hampton Court Palace. He was frequently engaged, even after his retirement, as a consultant or an expert witness in legal disputes, or to give a second opinion on plans for drainage and railways designed by other engineers, including for St. Petersburg and Berlin. He produced reports on drainage for places as widespread as Budapest and Mauritius. His opinion was also sought by the London County Council during the planning of the Central in line.

Bazalgette died two years after the abolition of the MBW, at his home at Wimbledon, in March 1891, and his death was widely reported in the national press. He left an estate of considerable value.

The Victorians celebrated engineers, past and contemporary, and Bazalgette was certainly considered a major public figure during his lifetime. In 1871, while work on the sewer system was still in progress, he was made a Companion of the Bath. He was knighted in 1874 following the opening of the Chelsea Embankment, the third of the Thames embankments to be competed, and in 1884 he was elected as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers for the year 1883-84.

Bazalgette furthered advances in civil engineering by taking on pupils, producing papers on his work, and encouraging other engineers to do the same. During his time at the MBW he not only oversaw the Board’s own projects by also monitored the progress of private Bills passing through Parliament that would have an impact on London’s public amenities. These included railways, tramways, docks, water and energy supply. He produced detailed reports, and was an influential figure in the committee rooms of Parliament.

One notable achievement was the decision by Bazalgette and his assistant John Gant to rigorously test and use Portland cement in the construction of the sewer system. It was the first major project in which the material was applied. It was thereafter adopted (and remains) as the industry standard in place of bricks. Bazalgette and Gant’s testing methods introduced new quality control techniques into civil engineering.

Ten years after his death a memorial was erected to Bazalgette, situated close to the Charing Cross railway bridge, and opposite the junction of the Victoria Embankment and Northumberland Avenue. An inscription in Latin above a bust of Bazalgette refers to the embanking of the river. The Embankments were certainly the achievement for which he was most celebrated during his lifetime, although it was the sewer system that he found most challenging, and of which he himself was most proud.

However, Bazalgette and his legacy were largely forgotten until the latter part of the 20^th century. A new public space west of Blackfriars Bridge, created as part of the Thames Tideway, a major upgrade to Bazalgette’s sewer system, has been named the Bazalgette Embankment.