Joseph Bazalgette

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Joseph Bazalgette in 1865

Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (born March 28, 1819 in Enfield , † March 15, 1891 in Wimbledon ) was one of the great civil engineers of the Victorian era .

As chief engineer of the London Metropolitan Board of Works , his most important work was the building of the sewerage network for central London , which saved the city from the cholera epidemics through the great cleanup of the Thames , which had turned into a sewer during the Great Stench of 1858 .

Career

Born in Enfield to a captain in the Royal Navy and the grandson of a French immigrant, he began his career at the age of seventeen, apprenticed in railway projects by engineer Sir John MacNeill , and gained extensive experience (some in Northern Ireland) in drainage and reclamation projects before setting up his own engineering firm in London in 1842. In 1849 he joined the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers .

With the help of his colleague Isambard Kingdom Brunel , he was then appointed chief engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) in 1856, a position he held until the MBW was abolished in 1889. His appeal came after three cholera epidemics killed 30,000 people in central London, the last of which was over 10,000 in 1853/54 alone. At that time, London was the largest city in the world and kept experiencing new epidemics of cholera, typhus and dysentery . Nobody knew the exact connection between drinking water , hygiene and epidemics . During the "Big Stench" in the summer of 1858, when all residents including the members of parliament fled from the vicinity of the river, the parliament - which Bazalgette's concept had previously rejected for revision five times - decided on a repair plan and finally set Bazalgette's concept with the approval of 3 Million pounds in force.

Bazalgettes concept

At the time, the Thames was little more than an open sewer , devoid of fish or other living things, and an apparent threat to London's public health. It was generally believed at the time that bad smells ( miasms ) caused diseases such as cholera. Not least because of this, Bazalgette banned the wastewater underground. He initiated the construction of 135 km of brick- built underground sewage collectors to divert 140 billion liters of sewage annually from drains and 1,750 km of sewers in the streets and to prevent this sewage from entering the river in an uncontrolled manner. In a series of experiments he had developed the egg shape, which is still valid today, as being particularly advantageous for the cross-sectional profile ( egg profile ) of the up to three meter high sewers. Assuming a suitable gradient, the waste water is passed on regardless of the amount of liquid transported and the amount of solids that settle is low if the gradient of 40 centimeters per kilometer of waste water pipe is maintained. In further tests on the Thames, he had determined the point outside of the urban area at which a discharge was not dammed back by the tides . The sewage was diverted into three large sewers to east London, where it was discharged into the river. Today there are extensive sewage treatment plants on both banks .

Construction phase

One problem was the selection of a suitable material: In order to withstand the high pressures and continuous contact with corrosive wastewater, Bazalgette decided on the particularly high-quality and expensive Portland cement . Both the bricks and the mortar with which they were walled up were meticulously checked by Bazalgette to ensure that they were of the required quality.

The concept included main pumping stations at Deptford (1864) and at Crossness (1865) in the Erith Marshes, both on the south bank of the Thames and at Abbey Mills in the Lea Valley (1868) and on the Thames waterfront (1875) on the north side of the river. The building at Abbey Mills still stands today, but pumps and motors were dismantled in the early 20th century. In Crossness, shut down in 1913, the machines were preserved; just like the building, thanks to its elaborate, iron Victorian ornamentation as a monument.

In eight years, six collecting canals with a total length of 160 kilometers were created, which are filled by 720 main canals and almost 21,000 kilometers of smaller sewers. The collecting canals run parallel to the Thames and carry sewage and rainwater with them. At that time, a total of 318 million bricks and 670,000 cubic meters of waterproof Portland cement were used.

The construction brought Bazalgette to the limit of its endurance, not least because its concept of underground sewers conflicted with the simultaneous expansion of the London Underground .

During the construction phase, the construction site was temporarily shut down for a year because of a strike in which the bricklayers, then selected specialists, wanted to increase their wages from five to six shillings a day. A gas explosion claimed one person. Six workers were temporarily buried, three of whom were recovered alive and two dead. One was missing. Less than ten accidents occurred during the entire construction period, which was low for this era.

One of the key elements of the system was in the tunnel of Woolwich , which transported the waste water to a pump station. There was the largest pump ever built. Four steam engines were installed. They allowed the sewage to be pumped from a depth of seven meters.

The drinking water supplier vowed to bring only clean water to London. However, when a dead eel came to light after a malfunction in a valve , it was proven that waste water components must have got into the drinking water. Therefore Bazalgette proposed the filtration prior to the drinking water. Three months after its inception, cholera disappeared from London and never returned.

London's sewage system quickly became the model for other metropolises, who applied Bazalgette's concept to their circumstances.

Honors

The system was inaugurated by the Prince of Wales in 1865, although the entire project wasn't fully completed until ten years later.

Bazalgette was beaten Knight Bachelor in 1874 and elected President of the Civil Engineering Institution in 1888.

For several years Bazalgette lived in North London in St. John's Wood at 17 Hamilton Terrace, where a blue plaque commemorates him today. His grave is at Wimbledon, where he died. A monument on the river side of the Victoria Embankment in central London commemorates Bazalgette's genius.

More work

literature

  • Stephen Halliday: The Great Stink of London. Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis. Sutton Publishing, Stroud 2001, ISBN 0-7509-2580-9 .

Web links

Commons : Joseph Bazalgette  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Historical town planning: The year of the "Great Stink". Retrieved May 8, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
personal data
SURNAME Bazalgette, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bazalgette, Sir Joseph William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English civil engineer of the Victorian era
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Enfield
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 1891
Place of death Wimbledon