What is Joseph Bazalgette?
[[File:Joseph Bazalgette by Lock & Whitfield.jpg|thumb|right|Joseph Bazalgette in the 1870s]] '''Sir Joseph William Bazalgette''', [[Order of the Bath|CB]] ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|æ|z|əl|dʒ|ɛ|t}}; 28 March 1819{{snd}}15 March 1891) was a 19th-century English [[civil engineering|civil engineer]]. He invented the system for cleaning [[drinking water]] so as to eliminate [[cholera]].<ref>Beare, Thomas Hudson 1901. Bazalgette, Joseph William . Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.</ref> As chief engineer of [[London]]'s [[Metropolitan Board of Works]] his work was in response to the [[Great Stink]] of 1858. He invented the system for cleaning [[sewage]] which is basically the same as used today. It stopped the city from having [[cholera]] epidemics, and also reduced [[typhus]] and [[typhoid]].<ref>https://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392332431/dirty-old-london-a-history-of-the-victorians-infamous-filth</ref> Until then, cholera had been [[endemic]] in all large cities throughout the world, beginning in [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] times. Bazalgette's plan was for new, closed sewers to pump the waste away from the city. Bazalgette took the polluted water though [[sewage treatment]] plants, after which the clean water was returned to the Thames.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis |first=Stephen|last= Halliday|publisher=The History Press|year=2013|isbn=978-0752493787}}</ref> Victorian London became one of the few large cities in the world to be free of epidemics carried by the water supply. The British later built the water and sewage systems in many other countries, especially those in, or connected with, the [[British Empire]] ([[Cairo]], [[Khartoum]], [[New Delhi]] and so on). The growth in population has made the water unsafe again in many places, but round about 1900 a clean water supply was available in many parts of the world. All this was a consequence of [[John Snow|Snow]]'s work, and Bazalgette's enginee