London sewer system

The network of sewers built and expanded in nineteenth-century London to carry human waste and stormwater away from the city.

Joseph Bazalgette: The British civil engineer who designed London’s major nineteenth-century intercepting sewer network. His design organized the network’s routes, gradients, and construction.
Great Stink: The severe summer 1858 stench from sewage-polluted water in the River Thames at London. The stench forced Parliament to act on London’s sewage problem.
London cholera outbreaks: Repeated nineteenth-century epidemics of cholera in London, spread chiefly through contaminated water. Reducing sewage contamination helped prevent the conditions that fueled these outbreaks.
Separate sewer system: A drainage design that carries stormwater and sanitary sewage in separate pipe networks. It contrasts with London’s extensive combined sewers, which carry both flows together.
Intercepting sewer: A sewer that captures flows from smaller drains and carries them toward a distant outlet. These large sewers intercepted urban waste before it reached central stretches of the Thames.
1858 Public Health Act: A British act that empowered the Metropolitan Board of Works to improve London’s drainage and sewerage. It supplied the legal authority and funding framework for the major works.
Thames Embankment: A series of Victorian embankments that narrowed and reshaped the Thames through central London. Its construction incorporated major sewer conduits beneath the riverfront.
Combined sewer overflow: A discharge of untreated wastewater from a combined sewer when flows exceed system capacity. Stormwater surges can force the London network to release diluted sewage into the Thames.
Combined sewer: A sewer that carries both sanitary sewage and stormwater in the same pipe. Much of Bazalgette’s network carried rainwater and sewage together.
Metropolitan Board of Works: The metropolitan authority that governed London’s public works from 1855 to 1889. It commissioned and managed the nineteenth-century sewer construction.

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