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B. H. Babbage

Benjamin Babbage
Benjamin Herschel Babbage 2.jpeg
Member of the South Australian Parliament
for Encounter Bay
In office
9 March 1857 – 17 December 1857
Serving with Arthur Lindsay
Preceded by New district
Succeeded by Henry Strangways
Personal details
Born 6 August 1815
London, United Kingdom
Died 22 October 1878(1878-10-22) (aged 63)

Benjamin Herschel Babbage (6 August 1815 – 22 October 1878) was an English engineer, scientist, explorer and politician, best known for his work in the colony of South Australia. He invariably signed his name "B. Herschel Babbage" and was frequently referred to as "Herschel Babbage".

Babbage was born in London, the eldest son of Charles Babbage, the renowned Cambridge mathematician who originated the concept of a programmable computer, and Georgina Whitmore. His uncle on his mother's side was William Wolryche-Whitmore, an MP in the House of Commons who lobbied for the formation of South Australia and introduced the South Australia Foundation Act into the British Parliament.

At the age of 18, Babbage became a pupil of the engineer and architect William Chadwell Mylne, with whom he worked on waterworks projects. In the 1840s, he also worked with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the son of his father's friend Marc Isambard Brunel, on railway planning and building in Italy and England.

Babbage married Laura Jones at Bristol on 10 September 1839. The couple had seven children.

In 1850, Babbage was invited by Patrick Brontë (clergyman and father of the Brontë sisters) to conduct an inspection in the West Yorkshire town of Haworth, partly brought about by Haworth's high rate of early mortality. Babbage was horrified by the unsanitary conditions in the town, and The Babbage Report to the General Board of Health into the town's water supply and lack of a sewerage system resulted in the board taking notice and working to improve the town's sanitation. He performed a similar inspection in the same year in the Herefordshire town of Bromyard, with similar findings. He said that he had "met with considerable opposition to the application of the Public Health Act to this town, from a large number of the inhabitants, upon the ground of the supposed expense of carrying out the sanitary reforms which I found to be so much needed." No action was taken by the town vestry for over twenty years.


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