The man who staunched the Great Stink
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If ever the powers-that-be decide to put to democratic vote whose statue should stand on that plinth in Trafalgar Square, my tick would definitely go next to the name of Joseph Bazalgette. It's impossible to think of any civil engineer who's been responsible for saving so many lives. The Great Stink of London is a good factual account of the man and his many, many deeds - what relentless energy the Victorians had - but it's one fault is that it doesn't really come close to him. This was a chap who, while he was building London's sewerage system, clearing the West End of slums, building main thoroughfares and bridges etc etc, also found the time and the energy to father about 10 kids, sponsor the building of Wimbledon Public Library (not a great feat, you might think, except that public libraries were at the time viewed with a lot of suspicion by Tories, who feared reading would breed insurrection by the lower classes) and much else. And he sported what must be some of the finest whiskers of the Victorian age.
I recently wrote a Heritage piece for our local paper on Bazalgette, with information largely sussed from this book, and have been really surprised by the reponse. A great, great man, and if he doesn't get to stand on that Trafalgar Square plinth, this book will stand as a testament to what bloody-mindedness can achieve when set to good purpose.
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A Fair Contribution to Bazalgette's memory
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'The Great Stink' is a somewhat misleading title; this book is in fact about Sir Joseph Bazalgette's genius as the engineer who created much of the face and utility substructure of contemporary London. In that role, this book provides a foundation to further work on a man who, Mr Halliday rightly points out, has no obvious memorial or public recognition.
The book covers the early provisions for London's sanitation; the state of epidemiology in the nineteenth century; the impact of the WC and Cholera in the first half of the C19th; the belated and confused attempts at reform and improvement; Bazalgette's fights to preserve and implement his vision; the issue of what happened to London's sewage once it was clear of the capital; and Bazalgette's other engineering/urban improvements - new bridges, parks, streets etc.
However, it is this attempt at combining a biography of Bazalgette's professional life with a history of the development of London's sanitation which causes the book's main weakness. This writer was left wanting to know more about the details of London's sewer system, but also about Bazalgette the man.
One other weakness is the reliance on old prints and not contemporary photographs of London before and after the improvements. Some more detailed system maps would also have been welcome.
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Could do better
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It was the Great Stink of 1858, when the steamy summer weather brought home to Members of Parliament the consequences of the sewage of two million Londoners being pumped straight into the Thames. It fell to Joseph Bazalgette to come up with something to replace the old pipes and shift the s*** somewhere else. This he did so well that his system of sewers, pumping stations and treatment works still forms the basis of London's network. The book tells a good story somewhat repetitively, and could have done with some harsher editing. Bazalgette's importance to the layout and history of London is undeniable - the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments weren't built solely for traffic, there's plenty flowing underneath too. These embankments narrowed the Thames, and made some prime riverside properties, like Somerset House and the lovely lost Adelphi, into road-side properties. This book tells the story well enough, but leaves the way open for something better and terser. Â
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Superb account of a great reformer
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Halliday's book tells the story of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Chief Engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works (London's first metropolitan government) from 1856 to 1889. His greatest achievement was building for London a sanitation system of unprecedented scale and complexity. Throughout history, the main cause of death has been the contamination of drinking water by sewage. In particular, cholera spread when the faeces of sufferers contaminated drinking water: cholera epidemics in London killed 6,536 people in 1831-32, 14,137 in 1848-49, and 10,738 in 1853-54. In the long hot summer of 1858, the stench from rotting sewage in the Thames drove MPs from Westminster. The 'Great Stink' forced them, belatedly, to act. Bazalgette was charged with building a system to prevent sewage getting into Londoners' drinking water, which he did. The 1866 cholera epidemic killed 5,596 people in the East End, the sole part of London that had not yet been protected by Bazalgette's intercepting system. After the system was completed, cholera would never again kill Londoners. Bazalgette had turned the Thames from the filthiest to the cleanest metropolitan river in the world and added some twenty years to Londoners' lives. But this was not Bazalgette's only success. He constructed the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments, where he introduced the use of Portland cement. He laid out Shaftesbury Avenue, Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross Road, the Embankment Gardens, Battersea Park and Clapham Common. He built the bridges at Hammersmith, Putney and Battersea. He introduced the Woolwich Free Ferry and designed the Blackwall Tunnel. In 1889, the London County Council replaced the Board: Bazalgette's successes had proven the value of local government for great cities. Roy Porter wrote that Bazalgette stands with Wren and Nash 'as one of London's noblest builders'. John Doxat wrote, "this superb and farsighted engineer probably did more good, and saved more lives, than any single Victorian public official."
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A fascinating biogtraphy and essay on social history
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This is an odd subject for a book, tracing the history of Sir Joseph Bazalgette and his contribution to society by building Londons sewerage system. This isn't heavy-going reading, quite the contrary and I never thoought I'd ever get interested in a historical subject. The book contains a number of interesting side stories and I laughed out loud at learning of Richard the Raker, a man employed to rake out cesspits in the 1300's, who met an untimely end after falling into a cesspit and drowning in the contents. 10 out of 10 for an interesting book if not a particularly endearing subject. We've come a long way in 100 years!
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