[1][2] His new sewerage system prevented raw sewage from contaminating drinking water thereby reducing the number of deaths caused by cholera and other water-borne diseases.

He received additional training in chemistry, mathematics and mechanics, and wrote copiously for Encyclopaedia Britannica and other publications.

In his first year, he made a careful and exact survey of Liverpool and its surroundings, involving somewhere about 3,000 geodetical observations, and resulting in the construction of a contour map of the town and its environs, on a scale of one inch to 20 feet (6.1 m).

From this elaborate survey Newlands proceeded to lay down a comprehensive system of outlet and contributory sewers, and main and subsidiary drains, to an aggregate extent of nearly 300 miles (480 km).

The shape was crucial to ensuring water flowed freely and easily and enabled solid matters to be transported through the sewage system without blockages forming.

Newlands was an early proponent for a ring-road serving Liverpool (not realised for another 50 years, when Queens Drive was constructed by his successor as borough engineer, John Alexander Brodie).

After long bouts of ill-health, he died in Liverpool in 1871, aged 57, shortly after his retirement as borough engineer.