Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Bazalgette, Joseph William
BAZALGETTE, Sir Joseph William, C.B., son of the late Captain Joseph William Bazalgette, R.N., was born at Enfield, Middlesex, in 1819. At the age of eighteen he was articled as a pupil to Sir John MacNeil, C.E. In 1845 he was practising on his own account as an engineer in Great George-street, Westminster. In Nov. of the year in which the railway mania commenced he found himself at the head of a large staff of engineering assistants, designing and laying out schemes for railways, ship canals, and other engineering works in various parts of the United Kingdom, and preparing the surveys and plans for parliamentary deposit, which had to be accomplished by the last day of November. While his remarkable success was most encouraging, its effects soon began to tell upon his health, which completely gave way in 1847, when he was compelled to retire from business and go into the country, where a year of perfect rest restored him to health. In 1848 he accepted an appointment as assistant-engineer under the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. On the death of the chief engineer of the Commissioners in 1852, Mr. Bazalgette was selected from among thirty-six candidates to fill the vacant position, being first appointed under the title of General Surveyor of Works, and soon afterwards of Chief Engineer. His report on the failures of the new system of drainage in certain provincial towns led to the resignation of the Commissioners and the appointment of a new Commission by Lord Palmerston. Mr. Bazalgette was elected engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works on its establishment in 1856, and was instructed to devise a scheme for the drainage of London. Accordingly he prepared estimates and designs which were executed between 1858 and 1865. The main intercepting drainage of London is original in design, and it is also the most perfect, the most comprehensive, and at the same time the most difficult work of its class that has ever been executed. Though little thought of now, because it is unseen, it is the work for which its author's reputation as an engineer will ever stand highest in the opinion of professional engineers. Between 1863 and 1874 the Victoria, the Albert, and the Chelsea Embankments, were designed and executed by him, besides many other metropolitan improvements, such as new streets, subways, and artisans' dwellings. He has also designed and carried out the drainage of many other towns, and has devoted much attention to the question of the best means for the disposal and utilisation of sewage. He was created a Companion of the Bath in 1871 and knighted in 1874.