Public Health, Environment and Surveying

The object of this article is to draw the attention of public health historians to the importance of plans produced by engineers for Victorian sewerage schemes. These plans assist in the understanding of the complex and rapidly changing technical aspects of the subject. The topographical information displayed is valuable in the analysis of the problems facing contemporaries. The article includes simple explanations of engineering and cartographic points, partly through the use of three extracts from the plan prepared by George Giles for the Lincoln proposals of 1849-50. Relevant work on the history of town plans by Harley and Oliver is referred to, including some details from the latter's annotated list of towns surveyed for sanitary purposes by the Ordnance Survey in the early 1850s.