Robert Rawlinson and the UK public health revolution

Robert Rawlinson was the acknowledged leader of the UK revolution in public health engineering, which transformed the lives, and particularly the life expectancy, of the people living in the towns and cities of England during the Victorian age. Having grown up in a poor Lancashire family, Rawlinson commenced work as a stonemason. The crucial change to professional work came at the age of 21 years when he obtained employment in the Liverpool dock engineer's office. In 1848, he became an engineering inspector for the newly formed General Board of Health. From that time most of Rawlinson's work was in government service: he was a member of the Crimean sanitary commission, the organiser of public works for relief employment during the Lancashire cotton famine and chairman of the first rivers pollution commission. For many years he was the chief engineering inspector to the Local Government Board. There was a close connection between his work and the activities of many of the influential people of his day including Lord Shaftesbury and Florence Nightingale.