Sir George Gilbert Scott, largely known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he started his career as a leading designer of workhouses. Over 800 buildings were designed or altered by him.
Sir Joseph William Bazalgette CB was a 19th-century English civil engineer. As chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works, his major achievement was the creation of a sewerage system for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city of cholera epidemics, while beginning to clean the River Thames. He was also the designer of Hammersmith Bridge.
The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the upper tier of local government of London's metropolis – it upgraded the infrastructure between 1855 and 1889. It also had a parks and open spaces committee which set aside and opened up several landmark parks. The metropolis, which the board served, included substantial parts of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent throughout the 33 years leading up to the advent of county councils. This urban zone lay around the medieval-sized City of London but plans to enact a similar body in 1837 failed. Parliament finally passed the Metropolis Management Act 1855 which dissolved a short-lived building office and a sewers commission and made the Board effective as of December that year. The board endured until it was succeeded by London County Council, as its directly elected, direct successor, in March 1889.
Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB was an English social reformer who is noted for his leadership in reforming the Poor Laws in England and instituting major reforms in urban sanitation and public health. A disciple of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, he was most active between 1832 and 1854; after that he held minor positions, and his views were largely ignored. Chadwick pioneered the use of scientific surveys to identify all phases of a complex social problem, and pioneered the use of systematic long-term inspection programmes to make sure the reforms operated as planned.
The London sewer system is part of the water infrastructure serving London, England. The modern system was developed during the late 19th century, and as London has grown the system has been expanded. It is currently owned and operated by Thames Water and serves almost all of Greater London.
Sir John Thwaites was a British politician who was the first Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works and therefore the first Leader of local government in London.
The Southern Outfall Sewer is a major sewer taking sewage from the southern area of central London to Crossness in south-east London. Flows from three interceptory sewers combine at a pumping station in Deptford and then run under Greenwich, Woolwich, Plumstead and across Erith marshes. The Outfall Sewer was designed by Joseph Bazalgette after an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and "The Big Stink" of 1858. Work started on the sewer in 1860 and it was finally opened on 4 April 1865 by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.
The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, and three outbreaks of cholera before the Great Stink were blamed on the ongoing problems with the river.
The Crossness Pumping Station is a former sewage pumping station designed by the Metropolitan Board of Works's chief engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette and architect Charles Henry Driver. It is located at Crossness Sewage Treatment Works, at the eastern end of the Southern Outfall Sewer and the Ridgeway path in the London Borough of Bexley. Constructed between 1859 and 1865 by William Webster, as part of Bazalgette's redevelopment of the London sewerage system, it features spectacular ornamental cast ironwork, that Nikolaus Pevsner described as "a masterpiece of engineering – a Victorian cathedral of ironwork".
Local boards or local boards of health were local authorities in urban areas of England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. They were formed in response to cholera epidemics and were given powers to control sewers, clean the streets, regulate environmental health risks including slaughterhouses and ensure the proper supply of water to their districts. Local boards were eventually merged with the corporations of municipal boroughs in 1873, or became urban districts in 1894.
The Metropolis Management Act 1855 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that created the Metropolitan Board of Works, a London-wide body to co-ordinate the construction of the city's infrastructure. The Act also created a second tier of local government consisting of parish vestries and district boards of works. The Metropolitan Board of Works was the forerunner of the London County Council.
Boards of improvement commissioners were ad hoc urban local government boards created during the 18th and 19th centuries in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its predecessors the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland. Around 300 boards were created, each by a private Act of Parliament, typically termed an Improvement Act. The powers of the boards varied according to the acts which created them. They often included street paving, cleansing, lighting, providing watchmen or dealing with various public nuisances. Those with restricted powers might be called lighting commissioners, paving commissioners, police commissioners, etc.
The Commissioners in Lunacy or Lunacy Commission were a public body established by the Lunacy Act 1845 to oversee asylums and the welfare of mentally ill people in England and Wales. It succeeded the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy.
During the 19th century, London grew enormously to become a global city of immense importance. It was the largest city in the world from about 1825, the world's largest port, and the heart of international finance and trade. Railways connecting London to the rest of Britain, as well as the London Underground, were built, as were roads, a modern sewer system and many famous sites.
James Newlands was a Scottish civil engineer who worked in Liverpool as the first Borough Engineer appointed in the United Kingdom, and is credited with designing and implementing the first integrated sewerage system in the world in 1848. His new sewerage system prevented raw sewage from contaminating drinking water thereby reducing the number of deaths caused by cholera and other water borne diseases.
United Kingdom environmental law concerns the protection of the environment in the United Kingdom. Environmental law is increasingly a European and an international issue, due to the cross border issues of air and water pollution, and man-made climate change.
Thomas Field Gibson FGS was a Unitarian silk manufacturer and philanthropist. He supported several novel initiatives to enhance British manufacturing quality and international trade while improving life for working people during the industrial revolution – particularly in Spitalfields where his business was centred. He also made important contributions to geology.
The Metropolitan Sewers Act 1851 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The act extended and amended the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers Act 1848 and the Metropolitan Sewers Act 1849, which would have otherwise expired at the end of that session of Parliament, until the end of the session of Parliament underway on 7 August 1852. The Act was superseded by the further Metropolitan Sewers Acts in 1852, 1853, 1854 and 1855.
