Sir Joseph William Bazalgette CB (; 28 March 181915 March 1891) was a 19th-century English civil engineer. As chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works, his major achievement was the creation (in response to the Great Stink of 1858) of a sewerage system for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning to clean the River Thames. He was also the designer of Hammersmith Bridge. Early life Bazalgette was born in Hill Lodge, Clay Hill, Enfield, London, the son of Joseph William Bazalgette (1783–1849), a retired Royal Navy captain, and Theresa Philo, born Pilton (1796–1850), and was the grandson of a French Protestant immigrant who had become wealthy. In 1827, when Joseph was eight years old, the family moved into a newly built house in Hamilton Terrace, St. John's Wood, London. He spent his early career articled to the noted engineer Sir John Macneill, working on railway projects and amassed sufficient experience (partly in China and Ireland) in land drainage and reclamation to enable him to set up his own London consulting practice in 1842. In 1845, the house in Hamilton Terrace was sold and Joseph married Maria Kough, from County Kilkenny, in Ireland. At the time he was working so hard on the expansion of the railway network that two years later, in 1847, he suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1847, while he was recovering, London's Metropolitan Commission of Sewers ordered that all cesspits should be closed and that house drains should connect to sewers and empty into the Thames. As a result, a cholera epidemic ensued, killing 14,137 Londoners in 1849. Bazalgette was appointed assistant surveyor to the Commission in 1849, taking over as Engineer in 1852, after his predecessor died of "harassing fatigues and anxieties." Soon after, another cholera epidemic struck, in 1853, killing 10,738. Medical opinion at the time held that cholera was caused by foul air: a so-called miasma. Physician Dr John Snow had earlier advanced a different explanation, which is now known to be correct: cholera was spread by contaminated water, but his view was not then generally accepted. Championed by fellow engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Bazalgette was appointed chief engineer of the commission's successor, the Metropolitan Board of Works, in 1856 (a post which he retained until the MBW was abolished and replaced by the London County Council in 1889). In 1858, the year of the