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A visit to Crossness in Erith to see Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s Engine House can be arranged with tea facilities |
What
does the word Empire mean to people? Perhaps a world map almost covered
in red, belonging to the motherland? To me, as far as London is concerned, it
means great achievements in railways, sanitation, fire-fighting, prison
improvements, Telegraphic communication and men and women of enormous courage,
who contributed to the “making” of a better Victorian London.
In
his book The Living Thames : the Restoration of a Great Tidal River, the
writer, John Doxet, said of Sir Joseph Bazalgette ‘he was a superb and far
sighted engineer, who probably did more good and saved more lives than any
single Victorian public official’. This is quite a statement, when we consider
that amongst contemporaries were Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry, yet his
contribution to London is still very much in use today.
He
devised a major system of intercepting sewers to rid London of its raw sewage.
At the time the people were drinking their own sewage, which flowed freely into
the river Thames, brought back by the tidal river and then pumped out for
drinking! It is no wonder there were numerous Cholera epidemics. Parliament only
took action in 1858 when they themselves were affected by the hot summer of that
year which became known as “The Great Stink” and Joseph Bazalgette was given the
enormous task of cleaning London of its sewage problem.
Sir Joseph Bazalgette also gave London beautiful bridges, avenues, gardens and riverside walks along London’s Embankments. The Victoria Embankment was the first street to have lighting in London.