Liverpool had the world's first integrated sewerage system.
In the first half of the 19th century, as the city expanded rapidly to accommodate a huge population explosion, Liverpool was considered one of the most unsanitary and deadly places to live on the planet and by 1848 the average life expectancy was just 19 years, with an infant mortality rate of 1 in 4. Cholera was a constant threat, with outbreaks killing hundreds, sometimes thousands, at a time. Human waste was deposited into cess pits, which were generally poorly constructed and leaked filthy effluent into groundwater supplies.
The council - comprised of titled landowners, wealthy businessmen and merchants - did little to relieve the problem. It was only when the shipping magnates began pressuring the council that action was taken. And the shipping companies weren't being benevolent; the reputation of disease-riddled Liverpool saw ships arriving from here quarantined for 40 days by American ports if there was a hint of illness on board. Only when the wealthy city grandees began to lose money from inactive, quarantined ships did they act.
Most of the renowned engineers of the age had been snapped up by the burgeoning rail companies, so Liverpool turned to Scottish engineer and architect James Newlands. 3 separate Acts of Parliament were passed to allow the city to 1) construct a sewerage system; 2) purchase of all the private water supply companies that had appeared (and were badly overcharging); and 3) buy up an existing reservoir at Rivington, construct two more reservoirs, and pipe the water to Liverpool (this was augmented by the Vyrnwy project).
He started in 1848 by having the most detailed map of the city drawn, detailing every contour with 3,000 geodetical observations. In the following 11 years, he built 86 miles of sewer; by 1869, there were over 300 miles of sewage system in the city. Construction on the famed London sewage & water system only began in 1859.
He designed the sewage 'pipes' (they were made of brick) to be shaped like an inverted egg (narrow part at the bottom) to keep water flow higher, in order to better flush through the effluent.
By the time Newlands retired as Borough Engineer in 1871, life expectancy in Liverpool had more than doubled to 38.
During his time in Liverpool, he also proposed a ring road (eventually, his successor built Queens Drive - the country's first purpose-built ring-road), and he also took time out to answer a request from the Government to become 'Sanitary Commissioner' to the British forces in Crimea suffering from 'pestilence' during the Siege of Sevastopol (Florence Nightingale wrote a letter of thanks afterwards)
