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Architecture, ornament and excrement: the Crossness and Abbey Millspumping stationsPaul Dobraszczykaa Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, University of Reading, Reading, UK

To cite this Article Dobraszczyk, Paul(2007) 'Architecture, ornament and excrement: the Crossness and Abbey Millspumping stations', The Journal of Architecture, 12: 4, 353 365To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13602360701614631URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602360701614631

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Architecture, ornament andexcrement: the Crossness andAbbey Mills pumping stations

Paul Dobraszczyk Department of Typography and GraphicCommunication, University of Reading, Reading, UK

Introduction

In Ornament and Crime (1908), one of the most

powerful early manifestos of architectural modern-

ism, Adolf Loos directly equates ornament with all

manner of filth. With insistent repetition, his denun-

ciation of ornament is dramatised through its

equation with dirt, the negative meanings of the

term, in all its semantic contexts, being used to

force home his argument: ornament equals sickness,

disease, degeneracy, decay, waste, sterility and

ruin.1 Such images were to become common

tropes for future spokesmen of modernism. When

in 1928 Siegfried Giedion looked back at nine-

teenth-century historicised industrial buildings, he

condemned the contaminating air of their orna-

mentation, which he regarded as infecting them

with a decorative sludge.2 In this paper I will look

back to the nineteenth-century, at two buildings

that serve to contextualise very precisely the

relationship between historicised ornament and

dirt: Londons Crossness (Fig. 1; 186265) and

Abbey Mills (Fig. 2; 186568) pumping stations.3

Both performed important engineering functions

within Londons main drainage system the

worlds first city-wide sewerage network con-

structed in the 1860s and both were key symbolic

sites for public awareness of that system, and the

setting of public ceremonies to mark its com-

pletion.4 I explore how these buildings became a

focus for sustained reflection on the relationship

between architecture and dirt. In their design, the

architect put forward a redemptive vision of

excrement in the city, purified by technological

development and enshrined as a valuable resource

in itself; visitors saw wonder in their noble function

but also expressed disquiet at the monstrous quan-

tities of sewage concentrated in their subterranean

spaces. Within the focus of this paper, I will not

address the undeniable social, cultural and architec-

tural differences between London in the 1860s and

Loos and Giedion in Vienna and Germany half a

century later; rather, through these pertinent histori-

cal case-studies, I question the latters tendency to

universalise conceptions of dirt, arguing instead

that the experience of filth is one that is individual,

rooted in a specific time, place and in specific

spatial, material and architectural contexts.

Architecture and sewage

The Crossness and Abbey Mills pumping stations

the largest of the four connected with Londons

main drainage system were, and still are, vital

components of that system, largely built in the

1860s (Fig. 3) and masterminded by the engineer

Joseph Bazalgette (181991). Located at strategic

points within the new system of sewers that inter-

cepted Londons waste before it reached and pol-

luted the river Thames, these pumping stations

raised sewage from low-lying areas of London in

order that it would drain by gravitation into outfalls

located outside the city limits at Barking, on the

north side of the river, and Crossness, on the south.

Compared to the restrained classicism seen in the

smaller pumping stations at Deptford (185962)

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# 2007 The Journal of Architecture 13602365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360701614631

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and Pimlico (187074), the architectural extrava-

gance of Crossness and Abbey Mills is significant.

Crossness (Fig. 4) is a stylistically eclectic building,

combining Norman, mediaeval Italian and Flemish

motifs. Clearly designed to impress, the engine-

house included a cathedral-like main entrance, a

striking campanile-like chimney (see Fig. 1; now

demolished), and elaborate interior decorative iron-

work, the centrepiece of which is the central octag-

onal structure in a mixture of wrought and cast

iron (see Fig. 4; upper right-hand side). The design

features seen at Crossness are continued and devel-

oped at Abbey Mills. Here, the decorative octagon is

the buildings most striking architectural feature (see

Fig. 2; upper image) and the internal ironwork is both

more unified and more lavishly ornate than at Cross-

ness (see Fig. 2; lower image). The original twin ven-

tilation chimneys, richly ornamented and standing

212 feet high, gave this building a prominence that

has consistently attracted public attention; today it

still provides a focus for introducing the public to

Bazalgettes system.5

To mark the completion of both buildings and the

formal opening of the new sewers, the Illustrated

London News depicted Crossness in 1865 (see

Fig. 4) and Abbey Mills in 1868 (see Fig. 2) in the

form of wood-engraved views of the contrasting

exterior and interior spaces of both buildings.6 Like

other industrial building types in the Victorian

period railway stations, markets, factories and

warehouses pumping stations required large,

undivided interior spaces that were only achievable

through a structural use of iron, which was much

stronger in compression than any traditional build-

ing material; by contrast, because iron provided

the main internal structural support, the exterior of

these buildings allowed for a more conventional sty-

listic treatment in traditional building materials that

often gave no visual indication of the buildings func-

tion. In the case of Abbey Mills, this contrast is

emphasised by the composition of the engravings

354

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Paul Dobraszczyk

Figure 1. Anon.,

Engine-house,

Crossness: outfall of the

southern metropolitan

sewerage.: wood-

engraved print, Builder,

19th August, 1865,

p. 591 (authors

collection).

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Figure 2. Page layout,

Illustrated London

News, 15th August,

1868, p. 161 (authors

collection).

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in the Illustrated London News: one shows the flam-

boyant exterior (see Fig. 2; upper image), with its

polychromatic facades in a mediaeval Venetian

style, Mansard roof, striking central lantern, and

Moorish chimneys; the other the interior (see

Fig. 2; lower image) with its extraordinary decorative

ironwork and parts of the enormous steam engines

housed inside (seen in the left and right fore-

ground).7 As I have argued elsewhere, the design

of both Crossness and Abbey Mills was a result of

a partnership between Bazalgette the engineer

of the main drainage system as a whole and an

architect, Charles Henry Driver (18321900), their

input being focused on the functional and decora-

tive aspects respectively.8 However, despite the

apparent disjunction between the exterior and

interior of the buildings highlighted by the Illustrated

London News, both, in fact, demonstrate a con-

certed attempt, on the part of Driver, to achieve

an overarching synthesis of contrasting elements:

the historical and the modern, decoration and func-

tion; and outside and inside.

What is clear from Drivers architectural works as a

whole, his publications, and from his treatment of

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Figure 3. Main

drainage plan shewing

main, intercepting,

storm relief, and outfall

sewers, pumping

stations and outfall

works.; London County

Council, 1939:

reproduction from

original in Thames

Water Archive, London

with annotations by the

author indicating the

locations of the

pumping stations at 1

Deptford; 2 Crossness;

3 Abbey Mills; 4

Western (reproduced by

permission of Thames

Water plc.).

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Figure 4. Page layout,

Illustrated London

News, 15th April, 1865,

p. 341, frontispiece

(authors collection):

interior of Crossnesss

engine-house showing

the Prince of Wales

turning the engines on.

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the interior ironwork at Crossness and Abbey Mills

specifically, is that he viewed utility as a primary

problem in relation to architecture, and its decora-

tion as the solution.9 For Driver, and many others

in his field, utility possessed no meaning in itself:

that is, it lacked any aesthetic value required to

make it architectural.10 For Driver, a synthesis

by contrast or otherwise of utility and decoration

was an important part of his theoretical and

practical approach to architecture.11 In effect, at

Crossness and Abbey Mills, Driver creates a hybrid

style that synthesises a host of contrasting elements:

historical architectural forms (Italian, English,

French, Moorish) and his own (seen most clearly in

the forms that make up the exterior lantern); tra-

ditional building materials (York stone and Suffolk

brick) and new ones (wrought- and cast-iron). Para-

doxically, such hybridism also breaks down any sense

of a dichotomous relationship between decoration

and utility that was later so vehemently stressed by

Giedion. In particular, the elements of the interior

ironwork at Abbey Mills seen in the Illustrated

London News (see Fig. 2; lower image) the

columns, spandrels, brackets and railings

possess both a utilitarian and symbolic function;

form and function are fused together in a controlled,

if eccentric, form of synthesis. Indeed, for Driver,

such synthesis represented a self-consciously

modern treatment of iron, one that attempted to

naturalise its artificial basis, and to give aesthetic

meaning to utility.

Architecture and experience

One important feature of the depictions of Cross-

ness and Abbey Mills in the Illustrated London

News are the figures seen scattered throughout

the images: smartly-dressed male figures in the fore-

ground of the interior of Crossness (see Fig. 4),

diminutive working men outside Abbey Mills (see

Fig. 2; upper image, lower background) or an

equally inconspicuous woman perambulating its

interior spaces (see Fig. 2; lower image, lower-

centre background). In fact, all cross-sections of

society, including Royalty, archbishops and parlia-

mentarians, were present at the lavish opening cer-

emonies held in Crossness and Abbey Mills on 4th

April, 1865 and 31st July, 1868 respectively.12

These events were designed to highlight the import-

ance of subterranean technological development to

dignitaries, sponsors and the wider London popu-

lation who would eventually pay for the project.

The presence of the press at these ceremonies rep-

resented an important interface between those

who conceived the project and those upon whom

it impacted, whether in social, economic or psycho-

logical terms.

The voluminous press accounts of these cer-

emonies gave expression to a range of responses

to the new main drainage system: rationalised

accounts of its technical details, drawn from

Bazalgettes own descriptions; paeans of wonder

at its unprecedented scale and noble function; and

disquiet at the monstrous quantities of sewage

now discharged into the Thames.13 One aspect

that many of these depictions stress is the relation-

ship between the architectural style of the buildings

and their function: that is, the pumping of sewage.

The ceremony at Crossness in 1865 in particular pro-

voked strong reaction from the press. If, according

to the Standard, an enchanters wand had

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touched the whole site at Crossness, the interior of

the engine-house (see Fig. 4) with its elaborate,

brightly-painted decorative ironwork and giant

steam engines was described as a perfect

shrine of machinery.14 According to the Daily

News, the beautiful octagon in the centre of the

engine-house resembled the interior of a Byzantine

church, with the shafts of the steam engines

acting as church galleries the pulpit being sup-

plied by the cylinder.15 Accounts of the Abbey

Mills engine-house lacked such direct religious

associations, but some of the articles did refer to

the tremendous engines,16 the wonderful machin-

ery,17 and a sense of deep wonder and admiration

at the sight of the lavish decorative ironwork.18 The

sense in which, according to the Daily Telegraph, the

factory becomes poetical and the furnace, fairy-

like strongly relates to the perceived reconciliation

of the artistic and the useful in these spaces; put

another way, the imbuing of the purely functional

with symbolism normally reserved for religious build-

ings made the prosaic seem magical.

Such responses can also be situated within long-

established notions of the sublime. First popularised

in the mid-eighteenth century by writers and theor-

ists such as Edmund Burke (172997), the sublime

was defined as a strong emotional response, made

up of a mixture of awe and terror, to vast or over-

whelming natural or man-made objects.19 In the

nineteenth century, industrial spectacles were

increasingly subject to sublime responses, whether

seen in J. M. W. Turners painting Rain, Steam and

Speed The Great Western Railway (1844) or in

responses to the Crystal Palace in 1851.20 The cer-

emonies at Crossness and Abbey Mills followed

the established precedent of public events designed

to highlight the sublimity of subterranean techno-

logical projects, examples of which include the

opening of the Thames Tunnel in 1827, a vast under-

ground water reservoir at Croydon in 1851, and the

Metropolitan Railway in 1863.21 As David Pike has

observed, the sense of the sublime in responses to

subterranean technology represented a dual rep-

resentation of the new underground during the

waning of the age of heroic engineering that

is, a mixture of a new idealised rational underground

and an established sublime mode.22 At Crossness

and Abbey Mills, the press responses celebrated

both rationalised technology and dream-like archi-

tectural ornamentation; both are assimilated as

sublime.

However, other responses suggest a more complex

interplay between the lavish architectural display and

the sewage concealed in enormous cast-iron pipes

beneath the sublime and wonderful machinery. As

part of the ceremony at Crossness, visitors were

invited to descend into the crypt-like space of part

of its vast subterranean sewage reservoir (Fig. 5).

Despite the temporary exclusion of the sewage and

the dazzling lighting, some visitors felt distinct

unease at the thought of being in such close proxi-

mity to what the writer for the Daily Telegraph

termed the filthiest mess in Europe ready to leap

out like a black panther after the guests had left.23

In the particular space of the subterranean reservoir,

where even if the sewage was not visible it was

however present in the imagination, monstrous

associations were expressed. Indeed, the very

magical quality of the architecture experienced in

both the interior of the pumping station and in the

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reservoir only served to heighten monstrous counter-

associations. In the subterranean reservoir, some

experienced a temporary conflation of the normally

polarised spatial categories of outside and inside,

invaded by an unseen danger and placed in the

very jaws of peril, in the gorge of the valley of the

shadow of death, separated only by bolted iron

gates from the pent up and bridled in sewage.24

Such a sense of monstrosity might, like the

sublime, equally be part of an old mode of represen-

tation of the underground that is, as an organic

space intimately, yet grossly, connected to the

body.25 The attraction of repulsion experienced so

strongly by this visitor was, like the sublime,

another common trope in descriptions of nineteenth

century industrial spectacles.26 Yet, this ambivalent

mode of experience did eventually give way to the

new rationalising discourse. Three years after the

ceremony at Crossness, at the similar event at

Abbey Mills, visitors also wondered at the lavish dec-

oration and vast machinery but in this case did not

refer to any monstrous associations. Indeed, even

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Figure 5. Page layout,

Illustrated London

News, 15th April, 1865,

p. 348 (authors

collection): interior of

Crossnesss

subterranean sewage

reservoir.

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when presented with the opportunity of inspecting

the sewage pumps below ground, most of the visi-

tors declined;27 even the Daily Telegraph, whose cor-

respondent had, three years earlier, been so rampant

in his imaginative prose, gave little attention to these

noisome chambers far below the buildings lavish

interior.28 The dramatic experience of architecture

and dirt at Crossness simultaneously rational,

sublime and monstrous was not re-enacted in

these spaces; instead, the majority of press accounts

focused their attention on the technical detail of the

building, often borrowing directly from Bazalgettes

own descriptive account of Abbey Mills that was dis-

tributed to the visitors at the ceremony.29 Providing

no wonder equivalent to Crossnesss subterranean

reservoir, Bazalgettes account instead directed visi-

tors thoughts solely to the new vision of sewers

that grounded them firmly within a rationalised con-

ception. Indeed, Bazalgette made no mention at all

of the lavish decoration provided by Driver, giving no

clues to the visitors of its symbolic content.

Ornament and excrement

Despite Bazalgettes rationalised account of Abbey

Mills and visitors lack of interest in its noisome

chambers, many still hoped for the realisation of

one particular organic connection with sewage:

that is, its possible recycling as an agricultural fertili-

ser. In both 1865 and 1868, anticipating the cer-

emonies at Crossness and Abbey Mills, Londons

leading newspapers the Times, Standard and

Daily News published articles explaining

Bazalgettes main drainage system to their readers,

contrasting it with the old sewers and cesspools it

superseded. All praised the effectiveness of the

new system in purifying the river Thames, transform-

ing it from effectively a giant sewer into the

pleasant and silver stream of a former age.30

However, in 1868, the local newspapers of Barking

the location where the entire sewage of north

London was discharged into the river not surpris-

ingly highlighted the fact that the main drainage

system had not fully purified the river; it had only

transferred a colossal nuisance further downstream

and thrust it under [the] noses of others. For

these unfortunate Barking residents, there was

only one proper function for the sewage, that is

to irrigate the land with it.31 Enthusiasm for

sewage utilisation was common in mid-Victorian

Britain and was consistently put forward as a sol-

ution to the problem of human waste disposal,

bringing together economics and natural theology

in a kind of cosmic circulatory ideal.32 However,

despite the presence of a 250-acre farm at Barking

that experimented in utilising a small part of

Londons sewage for the growing of grass, crops

and fruit, plans for doing the same for all of the

sewage came to nothing.33 Nevertheless, visitors

to Crossness and Abbey Mills still dreamed of its

eventual transformation into sweet milk and

butter, or wholesome bread or beef rather than its

wasteful flushing into the Thames.34

If Bazalgettes rationalised accounts of Crossness

and Abbey Mills give no explanation for these associ-

ations, it is not surprising if we, unlike Bazalgette,

place them in their architectural context. Both the

exteriors and interiors of the pumping stations

feature superabundant decoration provided

by Driver, with the conventionalised forms seen at

Crossness (see Fig. 4, upper right), developed,

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at Abbey Mills, into an all-compassing naturalistic

tour-de-force, comprising both horticultural

symbols of purity, such as the extravagant cast-iron

lilies in the interior (Fig. 6), and also agricultural

motifs, such as hops and berries seen in the exterior

frieze (Fig. 7). The presence of agricultural motifs in

particular suggests the possibility that here Driver

might be positing a more direct correlation

between sewage and natural abundance. As sup-

porting evidence, in a lecture given to the Society

of Mechanical and Civil Engineers in 1878, Driver

surprisingly calls into question the design of Bazal-

gettes main drainage system, which he viewed as

making impossible the recycling of the London

sewage as an agricultural fertiliser.35 The fact that

Driver continued to assert the recycling imperative

at this moment long after most had given up

hope of this ever being achieved for Londons

sewage suggests that for him this was a strongly

held view. Consequently, those visitors to Abbey

Mills who made connections between sewage and

natural abundance may have done so partly as a

result of the architects direct intentions. It might

even be suggested that Drivers decorative scheme

at Abbey Mills proposes not only a new style for

architecture, uniting the fragmentary disciplines of

engineering and art, but also a new way of living

for a new civilisation, based on the transformation

of man and his wastes.

Conclusion

Alongside the cases of Abbey Mills and Crossness

pumping stations, Looss and Giedions equating of

ornament with excrement, outlined in the Introduc-

tion, seems crudely reductive. Both employ negative

associations of dirt to exclude whatever they regard

as antithetical to a new and clean vision of architec-

ture, stripped of historical associations and universal

in its form and meaning. This highlights not only that

architecture and dirt can be configured in a positive

relationship, but also the essential fiction of univer-

salising meanings of dirt. As the responses of those

who visited Crossness and Abbey Mills demonstrate,

the experience of filth is one that is individual:

rooted in a specific time, place and in specific

362

Architecture, ornament

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Paul Dobraszczyk

Figure 6. Abbey Mills

pumping station,

186568, engine-

house, interior, railings

in first-floor gallery

(authors photograph).

Figure 7. Abbey Mills

pumping station,

186568, engine-

house, exterior, part of

carved frieze in east

porch (photograph

reproduced by

permission of Quintin

Lake).

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spatial, material and architectural contexts. If one

consequence of this understanding is to prevent

any systematisation of the meanings of dirt, then

another is to open up of the multiplicity of personal

encounters with it in time and space. The Crossness

and Abbey Mills pumping stations are buildings

where the relationship between architecture and

filth is explicitly articulated: whether from the engin-

eers, architects or visitors perspectives.

Notes and references1. A. Loos, Ornament and Crime, in, A. Opel, ed., Adolf

Loos, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (Riverside,

California, Ariadne Press, 1998), pp. 16776.

2. S. Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Build-

ing in Ferro-Concrete (Santa Monica, Getty Center

for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1928),

pp. 99, 132.

3. I have analysed the architectural significance of

Abbey Mills in extensive detail in Historicizing iron:

Charles Driver and the Abbey Mills pumping station

(186568), Architectural History, 49 (2006), pp.

22356.

4. On the engineering function of the pumping stations,

see J. Bazalgette, On the main drainage of London:

and the interception of the sewage from the River

Thames, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of

Civil Engineers, 24 (1865), pp. 280314. I examine

press responses to the pumping stations in my forth-

coming chapter, Monster sewers: experiencing

Londons main drainage system, in, N. Scott, ed., At

the Interface/Probing the Boundaries (Amsterdam

and New York, Rodopi, 2007).

5. The chimneys were removed in 1940, reputedly to

prevent their use as navigation aids by German

bombers, but more likely for the safety of the

pumping station in the event of an air attack.

Thames Water plcs annual Open Sewers Week uses

Abbey Mills as a focal point for both a sewer visit

and a lecture on the history (and future) of Londons

sanitary development.

6. Illustrated London News, 15th April, 1865, p. 341 and

15th August, 1868, p. 161.

7. The Builder also depicted the exterior of Crossness on

19th August, 1865, p. 591.

8. P. A. Dobraszczyk, Historicizing iron, op. cit.,

pp. 23436.

9. For a comprehensive listing of Drivers architectural

projects see Obituary: Mr. C. H. Driver, Journal of

the Royal Institute of British Architects, 7 (1900),

p. 22; Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of

Civil Engineers, 143 (1900), pp. 42324; and Builder,

10th November, 1900, pp. 42324.

10. K. Carls and J. Schmeichen, The British Market Hall: a

Social and Architectural History (London and New

Haven, Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 5153.

11. Important examples of Drivers theoretical approach

can be found in C. Driver, Engineering, its effects

upon Art, Transactions of the Civil and Mechanical

Engineers Society (1874), pp. 312; and C. Driver,

On iron as a constructive material, RIBA Transactions

First Series, 25 (1875), pp. 16583.

12. The Prince of Wales attended the ceremony at Cross-

ness and the Duke of Edinburgh was invited to

Abbey Mills, as well as many Members of Parliament

and other important dignitaries. In the event, Cross-

ness was the higher-profile event, due to the Parlia-

mentary recess and the unavailability of the Duke of

Edinburgh in 1868. Six hundred guests attended the

ceremony at Crossness; that at Abbey Mills took

place on the same day as the opening of the Victoria

Embankment, a project concurrent with and con-

nected to the main drainage system. Visits to Abbey

Mills also continued after the main ceremony: during

the following fortnight, representatives from

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Londons vestries visited the pumping station in a suc-

cession of organised tours.

13. I explore these responses in greater detail in my forth-

coming paper Monster sewers: experiencing

Londons main drainage system, op. cit.

14. Times, 5th April, 1865, p. 5: Opening of the main drai-

nage.

15. Daily News, 5th April, 1865, p. 5: Opening of the

metropolitan main drainage works by the Prince of

Wales.

16. Times, 31st July, 1868, p. 12: The Thames Embank-

ment.

17. Observer, 2nd August, 1868, p. 3: Thames Embank-

ment and Abbey Mills pumping station.

18. Standard, 31st July, 1868, p. 3: Opening of the

Thames Embankment footway.

19. Burkes influential essay, A Philosophical Enquiry into the

Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, first

published in 1757, set out in a series of categories the

characteristics of the sublime and what might induce

it. Subsequent literature on the sublime is enormous in

its scope: for introductions to the sublime and aesthetics

see W. J. Hipple, The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Pic-

turesque in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory

(Carbondale, Illinois, Southern Illinois University Press,

1957) and A. Ashfield and P. de Bolla, eds, The

Sublime: a Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aes-

thetic Theory (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,

1996). For a contemporary assessment of the sublime

see, for example, C. McMahon, Reframing the Theory

of the Sublime: Pillars and Modes (Lewiston, Edwin

Mellen, 2004).

20. On Turner and the sublime, see A. Wilton, Turner and

the Sublime (London, British Museum, 1980). For an

exemplary reading of the Crystal Palace as sublime,

see the Illustrated London News, 3rd May, 1851,

pp. 34344: The Great Exhibition and pp. 34849:

The opening of the Great Exhibition.

21. On the opening of the Thames Tunnel, see R. Trench

and E. Hillman, London under London: a Subterranean

Guide (London, John Murray, 1984), p. 111; on the

Croydon reservoir and the Metropolitan Railway, see

the Illustrated London News, 20th December, 1851,

pp. 72526: Opening of the Croydon water works

and 17th January, 1863, pp. 7374: Opening of the

Metropolitan Railway.

22. D. Pike, Subterranean Cities: the World Beneath

London and Paris, 18001945 (Ithaca and London,

Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 21920.

23. Daily Telegraph, 5th April, 1865, p. 2: Opening of the

main drainage by the Prince of Wales.

24. Ibid.

25. Pike, Subterranean Cities, op. cit., pp. 812.

26. A collection of accounts that exemplify the attraction

of repulsion can be found in R. Allen, The Moving

Pageant: A Literary Sourcebook on London Street-

Life, 17001914 (London and New York, Routledge,

1998), pp. 10563.

27. East London Observer, 8th August, 1868, p. 5: Visita-

tion of Abbey Mills pumping station.

28. Daily Telegraph, 31st July, 1868, p. 2: Opening of the

Thames Embankment footway.

29. J. Bazalgette, A Short Descriptive Account of the

Thames Embankment and of the Abbey Mills

Pumping Station (London, Metropolitan Board of

Works, 1868). Much of the long article published

in the Times after the ceremony on 31st July, 1868

(p. 12, The Thames Embankment) was directly

copied from Bazalgettes account; this article

formed the basis for most of the other press cover-

age of the event.

30. Standard, 4th April, 1865, p. 5: The southern outfall;

and 31st July, 1868, p. 3.

31. Essex Times and Romford Telegraph, 12th August,

1868, p. 4: leader; and Stratford Express, 1st August,

1868, p. 4: leader.

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32. C. Hamlin, Providence and Putrefaction: Victorian

Sanitarians and the Natural Theology of Health and

Disease, in, P. Brantlinger, ed., Energy & Entropy:

Science and Culture in Victorian Britain (Bloomington,

Indiana, Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 92123.

33. On the proposals for the utilisation of Londons

sewage, see S. Halliday, The Great Stink of London:

Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the

Victorian Metropolis (Stroud, Sutton, 1999),

pp. 10823.

34. Daily News, 4th April, 1865, p. 4: leader.

35. C. Driver, Presidential address, Minutes of Proceed-

ings of the Civil and Mechanical Engineers Society,

522 (1879), pp. 67.

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