Sir Joseph William Bazalgette 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 sewer network for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning the cleansing of the River Thames.

Bazalgette was born on March 28th 1819 at Hill Lodge, Clay Hill, Enfield. He began his career working on railway projects, articled to noted engineer Sir John MacNeill and gaining sufficient experience (some in China) in land drainage and reclamation works for him to set up his own London consulting practice in 1842. In 1845, Bazalgette was deeply involved in the expansion of the railway network, working so hard that he suffered a nervous breakdown two years later.

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 (1848–49) killed 14,137 Londoners.

Bazalgette was appointed assistant surveyor to the Commission in 1849, taking over as Engineer in 1852. 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. 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. In 1858, the year of the Great Stink, Parliament passed an enabling act, in spite of the colossal expense of the project, and Bazalgette's proposals to revolutionise London's sewerage system began to be implemented. The expectation was that enclosed sewers would eliminate the stink ('miasma'), and that this would then reduce the incidence of cholera.

Bazalgette's solution was to construct a network of 82 miles of enclosed underground brick main sewers to intercept sewage outflows, and 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of street sewers, to intercept the raw sewage which up until then flowed freely through the streets and thoroughfares of London. The plan included major pumping stations at Deptford (1864) and at Crossness (1865) on the Erith marshes, both on the south side of the Thames, and at Abbey Mills (in the River Lea valley, 1868) and on the Chelsea Embankment (close to Grosvenor Bridge; 1875), north of the river. The outflows were diverted downstream where they were collected in two large sewage outfall systems on the north and south sides of the Thames called the Northern and Southern Outfall sewers. The sewage from the Northern Outfall sewer and that from the Southern Outfall were originally collected in balancing tanks in Beckton and Crossness respectively before being dumped, untreated, into the Thames at high tide.

The system was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales in 1865, although the whole project was not actually completed for another ten years.

The unintended consequence of the new sewer system was to eliminate cholera everywhere in the water system, whether or not it stank. The basic premise of this expensive project, that miasma spread cholera infection, was wrong. However, instead of causing the project to fail, the new sewers succeeded in virtually eliminating the disease by removing the contamination. Bazalgette's sewers also decreased the incidence of typhus and typhoid epidemics.

Bazalgette's work had a longer term impact in that he designed the diameter of the sewage pipes to be far in excess of what was needed at the time, stating, “…we're only going to do this once and there's always the unforeseen”. His foresight allowed for the unforeseen rapid increase in London’s populations and the sewers are still in use today,

Bazalgette died on March 15th 1891, and was buried in the nearby churchyard at St Mary's Church.

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The main tenant of Wycliffe’s beliefs however were that the Bible as the only sure guide to God’s truth. He believed that all Christians should look to God’s Word rather than the teachings of Popes and his clerics. The problem of course was that original texts of the Bible were written over many years in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and translated into Latin in the 300s by the Italian scholar and priest Jerome (c 345 – 420). This version became known as the Vulgate, Latin being the “vulgar” or “common tongue” and became the dominant translation used in the Catholic Church in the medieval period.

​By the 14th Century, parts of the Bible had been translated into early forms of English, but the complete Bible was only available in the Vulgate version. This meant that only the those who could understand Latin could read the Bible for themselves, leaving those who could not dependent on the educated clerics, such as Wycliffe, to read and explain God’s Word. With his belief in the authority of God’s Word, and that everybody should have direct access to it, Wycliffe went on to promote the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, Middle English. The result was the first complete version of the Bible in English. He started his work in August 1380 in his rooms at Oxford. By 1384 Wycliffe and his colleagues had translated the entire Bible. Many consider that Wycliffe himself translated the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), and possibly the whole of the New Testament, while his colleagues worked on the Old Testament. Updates were produced in the succeeding years by men such as Nicholas of Hereford in about 1390, and John Purvey (c 1353 – 1428) in 1388 and 1395.

On this day in 1556, former Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer was burnt at the stake for heresy. 

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down

So we're locked down self-isolating and yesterday heard the neighbour's children singing Ring-a-ring o' roses making us laugh out loud. According to one theory the nursery rhyme has its origins in the Great Plague which happened in England in 1665, but this is far from certain. Anyway, since its pandemics are somewhat topical and we have some time on our hands we thought we might as well knock out a quick blog about it.

It's unknown what the earliest version of the rhyme was or when it began, but it first appeared in print in 1881, while it is reported that a version was already being sung to the current tune in the 1790s. Many incarnations of the rhyme are accompanied by a game where a group of children form a ring, dance in a circle around a person, and stoop or curtsy with the final line. The slowest child to do so is faced with a penalty or becomes the "rosie" and takes their place in the center of the ring.

In 1898, A Dictionary of British Folklore contained the belief that the rhyme and game were of pagan origin. This theory states that it's in reference to Pagan myths and cites a passage in Jacob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie which states, "Gifted children of fortune have the power to laugh roses, as Freyja wept gold." It claimed the first instance to be indicative of pagan beings of light.

The plague theory, which associates the rhyme with the the Great Plague of 1665, or with earlier outbreaks of the Black Death going back to the 14th century, came to fore in the mid-twentieth century. According to the folklorists Peter and Iona Opie:

"The invariable sneezing and falling down in modern English versions have given would-be origin finders the opportunity to say that the rhyme dates back to the Great Plague. A rosy rash, they allege, was a symptom of the plague, and posies of herbs were carried as protection and to ward off the smell of the disease. Sneezing or coughing was a final fatal symptom, and "all fall down" was exactly what happened."

However, there are a number of good reasons why this theory lacks strength, notably that the theory did not appear until the mid-twentieth century, that the symptoms described do not fit especially well with the Great Plague and that European and 19th-century versions of the rhyme suggest that this "fall" was not a literal falling down, but a curtsy or other form of bending movement that was common in other dramatic singing games.

Nevertheless the interpretation has entered into popular culture and it gives us an excuse to shoehorn a topical blog into our schedule!

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John Snow was an English physician, who was a leader in the adoption of anesthesia and is considered one of the fathers of modern epidemiology. His success in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854 inspired fundamental changes in the city’s water and waste systems which led to similar changes in other cities, and a significant improvement in general public health around the world.

Snow was born on March 15th 1813 in York, England. From a young age, he demonstrated an aptitude for mathematics and in 1827, when he was 14, he obtained a medical apprenticeship with William Hardcastle in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He encountered a cholera epidemic for the first time in Killingworth, a coal-mining village, in 1832. Snow treated many victims of the disease and gained a lot of experience.

He was admitted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1838, graduated from the University of London in December 1844 and was admitted to the Royal College of Physicians in 1850. In 1850 he was also one of the founding members of the Epidemiological Society of London, formed in response to the cholera outbreak of 1849.

Snow was a skeptic of the then-dominant miasma theory that stated that diseases such as cholera were caused by pollution or a noxious form of "bad air". The germ theory of disease had not yet been developed, so Snow did not understand the mechanism by which the disease was transmitted. He first publicised his theory in an 1849 essay, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, followed by a more detailed treatise in 1855 incorporating the results of his investigation of the role of the water supply in the Soho epidemic of 1854.

By talking to local residents, he identified the source of the outbreak as the public water pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Although Snow's chemical and microscope examination of a water sample from the pump did not conclusively prove its danger, his studies of the pattern of the disease were convincing enough to persuade the local council to disable the well pump by removing its handle. This action has been commonly credited as ending the outbreak, but Snow observed that the epidemic may have already been in rapid decline.

Snow later used a dot map to illustrate the cluster of cholera cases around the pump. He also used statistics to illustrate the connection between the quality of the water source and cholera cases. He showed that the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company was taking water from sewage-polluted sections of the Thames and delivering the water to homes, leading to an increased incidence of cholera. Snow's study was a major event in the history of public health and geography. It is regarded as the founding event of the science of epidemiology.

Snow was one of the first physicians to study and calculate dosages for the use of ether and chloroform as surgical anaesthetics, allowing patients to undergo surgical and obstetric procedures without the distress and pain they would otherwise experience. He designed the apparatus to safely administer ether to the patients and also designed a mask to administer chloroform. He even personally administered chloroform to Queen Victoria when she gave birth to the last two of her nine children, Leopold in 1853 and Beatrice in 1857.

In June 1858 Snow suffered a stroke while working in his London office. He never recovered, dying on June 16th. He was buried in Brompton Cemetery.

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Woop woop! We have our first save the date of 2020 for you! We will be at Edinbrick at the Potterrow Dome in Edinburgh on Saturday 16th May!

The event will run from 10.30am to 4pm and there are a limited number of Quiet Time spaces between 10 and 10.30am.

Entry is just £3 and under fives go free! A great deal all round!

Find out more and buy your tickets here:

www.ticketsource.co.uk/edinbrick

The event will raise money for the good folks at Fairybricks who donate LEGO to sick and disadvantaged children in hospital. We look forward to seeing you there!

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On this day in 1781, astronomer Sir William Herchel discovered Uranus. Of course Uranus had been observed before, indeed Hipparchos took great interest in Uranus way back in 128 BC. However, previous observers had assumed it was a star and it would not be until Herschel was able to take a really good look at it that Uranus was identified as what it truly is – a planet.

William Herschel was born November 15th 1738 in Hanover, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire. At the time the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover were united under King George II and the Herschel family were employed in the two nation's joint army. William and his brother Jakob joined as oboists in the regimental band of a Hanoverian Guards regiment and were deployed when the Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756. A year later France invaded Hannover and the brothers were present at the Battle of Hastenbeck where a British and German army was defeated. Soon after the brothers’ father sent them both to seek refuge in England. Although Jakob had received his dismissal from the Hanoverian Guards, Wilhelm was accused of desertion.
 
In England, William quickly learnt English and became an accomplished musician and composer, adding the violin, harpsichord and organ to his repertoire and composing a number of symphonies. He would eventually settle in Bath where his intellectual curiosity and interest in music eventually led him to astronomy. After reading Robert Smith's Harmonics, or the Philosophy of Musical Sounds (1749), he took up Smith's A Compleat System of Opticks (1738), which described techniques of telescope construction. He took lessons from a local mirror-builder and having obtained both tools and a level of expertise, started building his own reflecting telescopes. He relied on the assistance of other family members, particularly his sister Caroline and his brother Alexander, a skilled mechanical craftsperson.
 
He "began to look at the planets and the stars" in May 1773 and on  March 1st 1774 began an astronomical journal by noting his observations of Saturn's rings and the Great Orion Nebula (M42). By 1779, Herschel made the acquaintance of Sir William Watson, who invited him to join the Bath Philosophical Society. Herschel became an active member and through Watson would greatly enlarge his circle of contacts.
 
Herschel observed Uranus on March 13th 1781 from the garden of his house at 19 New King Street in Bath and initially reported it as a comet. This is how he presented his discovery to the Royal Society, though he also implicitly compared it to a planet.

Although Herschel continued to describe his new object as a comet, other astronomers had already begun to suspect otherwise. The object was soon universally accepted as a new planet and by 1783, Herschel too acknowledged this to Royal Society president Joseph Banks:

"By the observation of the most eminent Astronomers in Europe it appears that the new star, which I had the honour of pointing out to them in March 1781, is a Primary Planet of our Solar System."

In recognition of his achievement, King George III gave Herschel an annual stipend of £200 on condition that he move to Windsor so that the Royal Family could look through his telescopes (equivalent to £24,000 in 2019). As a bonus, George also pardoned him of his apparent desertion.
 
Despite only becoming a professional astronomer at the age of 43, Herschel made other valuable contributions to the field,  building increasingly powerful telescopes to make observations of nebulae and form theories on their formation and evolution. He made numerous other discoveries, including two moons of Saturn, Mimas and Enceladus; as well as two moons of Uranus, Titania and Oberon.
 
He died on August 25th 1822 with the epitaph:
 
    Coelorum perrupit claustra
    (He broke through the barriers of the heavens)
 
His house at 19 New King Street in Bath, Somerset, where he made many telescopes and first observed Uranus, is now home to the Herschel Museum of Astronomy.

This scene was created by Colin Parry as part of a series of models on British history. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see them first.

In the wake of the First World War a pandemic, which would become known as Spanish flu, spread throughout the world infecting around 500 million people. The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.

Despite its name it is not thought that the virus originated in Spain. To maintain morale, wartime censors minimised early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. However, papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII) and so these stories created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit, giving rise to the pandemic's nickname, "Spanish flu".
 
While its origin is not definitely known, a strong theory is that it had its centre at the major troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples in France. The overcrowded camp and hospital was an ideal site for the spreading of a respiratory virus. The hospital treated thousands of victims of chemical attacks, and other casualties of war, and 100,000 soldiers passed through the camp every day. It was also home to a piggery, and poultry was regularly brought in for food supplies from surrounding villages. It has therefore been postulated that a significant precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated and then migrated to pigs kept near the front.
 
Infectious diseases already limited life expectancy in the early 20th century, but Spanish flu had a huge impact, with life expectancy in the United States dropping by about 12 years in 1918, the first year of the pandemic. The infection was unusual as it resulted in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults rather than the very young, very old and very vulnerable.

Scientists offer several possible explanations for the high mortality rate of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Some analyses have shown the virus to be particularly deadly because it triggers a cytokine storm, which ravages the stronger immune system of young adults. In contrast, a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.

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Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist, and engineer who is most famous for inventing and patenting the first practical telephone.

Bell was born on March 3rd 1847 in Edinburgh. His father and grandfather were both authorities on elocution and at the age of 16 Bell himself began researching the mechanics of speech. 1870, Bell emigrated with his family to Canada, and the following year he moved to the United States to teach. There he pioneered a system called visible speech, developed by his father, to teach deaf-mute children. In 1872 Bell founded a school in Boston to train teachers of the deaf. The school subsequently became part of Boston University, where Bell was appointed professor of vocal physiology in 1873.

Bell had long been fascinated by the idea of transmitting speech, and by 1875 had come up with a simple receiver that could turn electricity into sound. Others were working along the same lines, including an Italian-American Antonio Meucci, and debate continues as to who should be credited with inventing the telephone. However, Bell was granted a patent for the telephone on March 7th 1876 and it developed quickly. Within a year the first telephone exchange was built in Connecticut and the Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, with Bell the owner of a third of the shares, quickly making him a wealthy man.

In 1880, Bell was awarded the French Volta Prize for his invention and with the money, founded the Volta Laboratory in Washington, where he continued experiments in communication, in medical research, and in techniques for teaching speech to the deaf, working with Helen Keller among others. A less celebrated aspect of Bell’s work was his advocacy of compulsory sterilisation in which he served as the chairman or president of several eugenics organizations.

He became a naturalised U.S. citizen in 1882 and in 1885 he established a summer home in Nova Scotia where he continued experiments, particularly in the field of aviation.

In 1888, Bell was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society, and served as its president from 1896 to 1904, also helping to establish its journal.
He died on August 2nd 1922 at his home in Nova Scotia.

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On this day in 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted providing the constitutional basis for the government of the ‘Principality of Wales’ following it’s annexation by England. The Statute introduced English common law to Wales but also permitted the continuance of Welsh legal practices within the country.
 
In 1267 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Gwynedd had been recognised by the English Crown as Prince of Wales, holding his lands with the king of England as his feudal overlord. However, following the death of Henry III in 1272, the relationship between England and Wales broke down as the new and ambitious King Edward I pressed his ambition to master of the whole island of Great Britain. By 1276 Llywelyn had been declared a rebel and diplomatic pressure was followed by a massive invasion force the following year. Edward forced Llywelyn into submission, confining him to lands above the Conwy.

In 1282 however, many of the lesser princes who had supported Edward against Llywelyn in 1277 had become disillusioned with the exactions of the English royal officers. On Palm Sunday that year, Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd ap Gruffydd attacked the English at Hawarden Castle and then laid siege to Rhuddlan. The revolt quickly spread to other parts of Wales, with Aberystwyth Castle captured and burnt and rebellion in Ystrad Tywi in south Wales, also inspired by Dafydd according to the annals, where Carreg Cennen castle was captured.
 
Though he claimed not to have been involved in the planning, Llywelyn felt obliged to join his brother’s ill prepared rebellion. The Archbishop of Canterbury tried mediating between Llywelyn and Edward, and Llywelyn was offered a large estate in England if he would surrender Wales to Edward, while Dafydd was to go on a crusade and not return without the king's permission. In an emotional reply, which has been compared to the Declaration of Arbroath, Llywelyn said he would not abandon the people whom his ancestors had protected since "the days of Kamber son of Brutus". The offer was refused.
 
Llywelyn now left Dafydd to lead the defense of Gwynedd and took a force south, trying to rally support in mid and south Wales and open up an important second front. However, on December 11th 1282, Llywelyn was killed in an ambush at Cilmeri. His leaderless army was routed shortly afterwards and English forces moved to occupy Powys and eastern Gwynedd.

Following these events Dafydd ap Gruffydd proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and attempted to continue the fight. However, the English encircled Snowdonia, systematically crushing any effective resistance, starving the local people and compelling Dafydd to move desperately from one fort to another. He was eventually forced to flee, living as a fugitive, sleeping outdoors and forced to keep moving from place to place to avoid capture. In May 1283 he is recorded leading raids from the mountains, but his forces were now in a state of disarray. On June 22nd, he was captured in the uplands above Abergwyngregyn, having apparently been betrayed, and it is said that he received serious injury while being taken. He was taken to Edward on the night of his capture, then moved under heavy guard by way of Chester to Shrewsbury where in October he was hanged, drawn and quartered. He holds the distinction of being the first person to be executed by the Crown for the crime of "treason." His children and legal successors were locked away and never released: his sons Llywelyn ap Dafydd and Owain ap Dafydd in Bristol Castle; his wife (another cousin of Edward, originally given in marriage to Dafydd when they were friends and allies), daughter and niece in separate convents for the rest of their lives.

It is by this means that Wales became "united and annexed" to the Crown of England as under the auspices of Llewelyn and Dafydd’s treason, Edward I was able to take possession of the lands and titles of the House of Aberffraw.
 
The Statute of Rhyddlan was issued from Rhuddlan Castle in North Wales, one of the "iron ring" of fortresses built by Edward I to control his newly conquered lands. It provided the constitutional basis for the government of what was called "The Land of Wales" or "the king's lands of Snowdon and his other lands in Wales", but subsequently called the "Principality of North Wales". The English Crown already had a means of governing South Wales.

The Statute introduced the English common law system to Wales, but the law administered was not precisely the same as in England. The criminal law was much the same, with felonies such as murder, larceny and robbery prosecuted before the justiciar, as in England. The English writs and forms of action, such as novel disseisin, debt and dower, operated, but with oversight from Caernarfon, rather than the distant Westminster. However, the Welsh practice of settling disputes by arbitration was retained. The procedure for debt was in advance of that in England, in that a default judgment could be obtained. In land law, the Welsh practice of partible inheritance continued, but in accordance with English practice:

• Daughters could inherit their father's lands if there was no son.
• Widows were entitled to dower in a third of their late husband's lands.
• Bastards were excluded from inheriting.

 
The Statute would be in force until the early 16th century when it was superseded by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542 when Henry VIII made Wales unequivocally part of the "realm of England".

These scenes were created by James Pegrum and  Dan Harris as part of a series of models on British history. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see them first.