John Phillips (surveyor)


John Phillips was a British engineer and surveyor in the first half of the 19th century. His work and reports led to the building of London's sewage system.

London in the 1840s

By the 1840s, London’s population numbered over two million, living in several hundred thousand households. An awareness of the need for sewerage reform and development led to the first comprehensive study of the metropolis for the purpose of planning sewerage improvements.
The conditions in London resembled those of most cities of two hundred years ago. By that time nearly every residence had a cesspool which collected and stored all house wastes beneath its first floor. With cesspools overflows, failure of proper drainage and the contamination of drinking water, epidemics and lingering illnesses became common. Fires and explosions due to methane build up in unventilated cesspools were just as frequent. Such conditions are vividly described in the following account from 1849, when workers entering to examine cesspools with oil lamps triggered sudden blasts:

John Phillips, surveyor of the Westminster Court of Sewers, report to Royal Commission 1847

In 1847, the first official report on sewerage and drainage by the engineer John Phillips, contained the following description, which portrayed a typical situation of the time:

Separation of effluent from storm waters

Combined- Versus Separate-Sewer Systems
Although sanitary wastes were a constant input to European sewer systems, designs did not anticipate this component until 1843 in Hamburg. The first types of wastewater legally allowed into the storm sewers were dishwater and other kitchen wastes. When the water closet came into general use in the mid-19th century, existing privy vaults and cesspools became overwhelmed. Eventually, this led to the permitted discharge of sanitary wastes into sewers previously restricted to surface runoff only, legally creating combined wastewater. The permitted discharge of sanitary wastes did not occur in London until 1847 or in Paris until 1880.
Phillips proposed the separate system of sewerage for London in 1849. But a few years later, Bazalgette’s combined system was selected. Although supporters for separate sewerage existed, early systems were mostly combined because: there was no European precedent for successful separate systems; there was a belief that combined systems were cheaper to build than a complete separate system; and engineers were not convinced that agricultural use of separate-sanitary wastewater was viable.