The Architecture of Steam: Waterworks and the Victorian Sanitary Crisis by James Douet (review)

Reviewed by: The Architecture of Steam: Waterworks and the Victorian Sanitary Crisis by James Douet Tom Crook (bio) The Architecture of Steam: Waterworks and the Victorian Sanitary Crisis By James Douet. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press for Historic England, 2023. Pp. 176. James Douet's The Architecture of Steam is a richly illustrated and admiring account of the rise and demise of steam-powered waterworks over the course of the long nineteenth century. We remember them today principally for enabling the mass supply of clean drinking water and facilitating the introduction of waterborne sewage systems. Douet is right to celebrate their contribution to solving the Victorian sanitary crisis and [End Page 1310] overcoming the appalling epidemiological consequences of rampant urbanization and industrialization. The figures are striking. By the 1870s, Mancunians were consuming six times more water per day (some 33 gallons) than their forebears had in the 1840s. By the late 1860s, those who inhabited the wealthier parts of London were consuming about 39 gallons—which is roughly what we enjoy in the United Kingdom today (p. 87). A crucial part of this history, and the one that has attracted the most attention from historians, is the gradual assumption of municipal ownership. The great exception was London, where the water supply remained in the hands of private companies until 1903. Other towns and cities, by contrast, began taking charge from the 1830s, among them Manchester, Leeds, and Glasgow in the 1850s. The question of ownership is by no means peripheral to Douet's account, and he is keenly aware of the struggles endured by local authorities to take control. Legal and financial difficulties meant that it took Wolverhampton's council more than a decade to secure ownership of the Wolverhampton Water Company, established in 1845; the process began in 1855 and ended only in 1867 (pp. 41–43). Douet, however, is primarily interested in two other aspects of the waterworks, both of which are explored in tandem over eight chronologically arranged chapters. One of these is the architecture of waterworks and how they became not just the most emblematic buildings of a burgeoning water industry but important civic monuments. Public or private, they participated fully in the eclectic architectural historicism of the Victorian period (chs. 4 and 6, especially). Early works, such as the Grand Junction Company's complex at Kew Bridge, London (1838), embraced neoclassical designs. Later ones were housed in a variety of gothic exteriors, for example Nottingham's Bestwood works (1871) and Birmingham's Whiteacre complex (1872–84). All were imposing, proud buildings. As Douet notes, by the 1880s they had come to enjoy the same status as more conventional expressions of civic pride, such as public baths, libraries, schools, and hospitals (p. 97). The other aspect Douet explores is the technical intricacies of waterworks and how they combined a variety of engineering innovations. Chief among these was the incorporation of steam-powered pumping technologies first pioneered in collieries, starting with Newcomen's original invention in the eighteenth century. Douet dwells at length on the ways evolving steam technologies (e.g., the improved engine of Watt and, later, the Cornish engine) were combined with water abstraction, gravel filtering, and high-level storage to form the core elements of Victorian waterworks, highlighting the contribution of three engineers in particular: Thomas Wicksteed, James Simpson, and Thomas Hawksley (ch. 2). There were spillover gains, too; having enabled the mass production of waterborne sewage, steam-powered pumping helped with its disposal. The most visible features of Joseph Bazalgette's gargantuan main drainage scheme for London (largely completed during the 1860s) were four magnificent sewage pumping stations. Each raised the city's sewage [End Page 1311] sufficiently high so that it could once again secure the necessary gravitational traction to flow toward the two outfall works situated at Crossness and Barking (pp. 76–86). Neither of these aspects of the water industry has received sustained scrutiny, still less together within the confines of a single, compact volume such as Douet's. But readers will also welcome the periodic excursions it makes beyond Britain. The book is littered with fascinating detours to innovations and variations in cities such as Montreal, Paris, Hamburg, Chicago, and...

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