Joseph Quick

Who was Joseph Quick?

Joseph Quick was an English civil engineer who was closely involved in improvements to water supply in the great industrial cities of the nineteenth century. Both his father and his son were also waterworks engineers by the name Joseph Quick.

On 28 March 1844, as engineer to the Southwark Waterworks, Quick was called to give evidence before the Health and Towns Commissioners of the British Parliament. Again after the 1848/49 outbreak of cholera in London, he was one of the advisors to the government to improve the London water supply infrastructure. One proposal was to have all intake of water from the Thames moved from the tidal Thames to up-river of Teddington Lock. The expert evidence heard by parliament led to the Metropolis Water Act, as a result of which Quick was entrusted with the building of the new Hampton Waterworks, which he designed in an Italianate style.

Even before work at Hampton was complete, contamination of the water supply of the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company, providing water to the borough of Southwark, Battersea, and other locations in the vicinity, led to the 1853 cholera outbreak. A further cholera outbreak in Soho in 1854 added to the urgency. Both outbreaks were famously studied by Dr John Snow. The company’s new facilities up-river at Hampton only came into operation in 1855.