Article ID: CBB001421408

Sheffield's Great Flood of 1864: Engineering Failure and the Municipalisation of Water (2014)

unapi

Recent scholarly research at the intersection of the histories of technology and the built environment has revealed many tensions surrounding the design, building and management of major socio-technologies like urban waterworks. There remains much scope for research into the interdependence of socio-technological systems, engineering knowledge and the political and commercial agendas of municipal governments and private water suppliers respectively. In particular, the short- and long-term impact of reservoir disasters - examined in detail here through the case of Sheffield's 'great flood' of March 1864, in which over 250 people lost their lives - on the ownership and control of urban waterworks reveals many conflicts within the engineering profession, as well as the urban community itself, about the causes and consequences of socio-technological failure in the mid-nineteenth century. Using a rich variety of municipal, legal and commercial archival records, as well as contemporary newspapers, this article examines the competing interests involved in negotiating the long-term municipalisation of water supplies and concludes that greater attention should be paid to the influence of man-made disasters and engineering actors in this political game. KEYWORDS: Floods, socio-technology, water, engineering, municipalisation

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001421408/

Similar Citations

Article Galloway, James A.; (2013)
Coastal Flooding and Socioeconomic Change in Eastern England in the Later Middle Ages (/isis/citation/CBB001421392/)

Book Ted Steinberg; Cindy Ermus; (2018)
Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk, and Resilience (/isis/citation/CBB920508154/)

Book Rinne, Katherine Wentworth; (2010)
The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City (/isis/citation/CBB001250177/)

Article Bruun, Christer; (2012)
Stallianus, a Plumber from Pompeii (and Other Remarks on Pompeian Lead Pipes) (/isis/citation/CBB001320680/)

Book Abigail Agresta; Assistant Professor of History Abigail Agresta; (2022)
The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia (/isis/citation/CBB778426768/)

Book James P. Kraft; (2021)
Havoc and Reform: Workplace Disasters in Modern America (/isis/citation/CBB868261101/)

Chapter Mathias Deutsch; Karl-Heinz Pörtge; (2012)
Hochwasserereignisse und sie beeinflussende Faktoren – am Beispiel der Weser (/isis/citation/CBB524887379/)

Article Baecher, Gregory; Bensi, Michelle; Reilly, Allison; Phillips, Brian; Link, Lewis (Ed); Knight, Sandra; Galloway, Gerald D.; (Summer 2019)
Resiliently Engineered Flood and Hurricane Infrastructure: Principles to Guide the Next Generation of Engineers (/isis/citation/CBB715018066/)

Chapter Giorgio Dell'Oro; (2022)
Acque, inondazioni, disastri idrici: un dialogo aperto a varie discipline (/isis/citation/CBB221589477/)

Article Escobar, Maria Paula; Demeritt, David; (2014)
Flooding and the Framing of Risk in British Broadsheets, 1985--2010 (/isis/citation/CBB001420076/)

Book Norris Hundley, Jr.; Donald C. Jackson; (2015)
Heavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster (/isis/citation/CBB728247270/)

Article Sundberg, Adam; (2015)
Claiming the Past: History, Memory, and Innovation Following the Christmas Flood of 1717 (/isis/citation/CBB001422335/)

Chapter Janna Dieckmann; (2015)
The 1913 Flood in Ohio, USA (/isis/citation/CBB243970627/)

Authors & Contributors
Karl-Heinz Pörtge
Mathias Deutsch
Raviola, Blythe Alice
Wolfgang Schirmer
Phillips, Brian
Link, Lewis
Concepts
Floods
Disasters; catastrophes
Water supply
Environmental history
Flood control
Infrastructure
Time Periods
20th century
Renaissance
19th century
Early modern
21st century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Great Britain
New Bedford, Mass
Butte, Montana
Lombardy
California St. Francis Dam (Saint Francis Dam (Calif.)
Institutions
Anaconda Copper Mining Company
United Nations
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment