His grandfather, Louis Bazalgette, a tailor and financier, was a Huguenot immigrant who developed ties to the future George IV and subsequently became wealthy.

He spent his early career articled to the noted engineer Sir John Macneill, working on railway projects, and amassed sufficient experience (partly in China and Ireland) in land drainage and reclamation to enable him to set up his own London consulting practice in 1842.

In 1858, the year of the Great Stink, Parliament passed an Enabling Act, despite the colossal expense of the project, and Bazalgette's proposals to revolutionise London's sewerage system began to be implemented.

Bazalgette's solution (similar to a proposal made by painter John Martin 25 years earlier) was to construct a network of 82 miles (132 km) of enclosed underground brick main sewers to intercept sewage outflows, and 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of street sewers, to divert the raw sewage which flowed freely through the streets and thoroughfares of London to the river.

Partly as a result of the Princess Alice disaster, extensive sewage treatment facilities were built to replace the balancing tanks in Beckton and Crossness in 1900.

Thames Water holds the records in large blue binders gold-blocked reading "Metropolitan Board of Works" and then dated, usually two per year.

[citation needed] Scion of a Huguenot family, Bazalgette was brought up at 17 Hamilton Terrace, St John's Wood in North West London.

In July 2020, the City of London Corporation announced that a new public space west of Blackfriars Bridge, formed following construction of the Thames Tideway Scheme, would be named the Bazalgette Embankment.