  Among the more salient features of the metropolis which instantly strike the attention of the stranger are the stations of the Fire Brigade. Whenever he happens to pass them, he finds the sentinel on duty, he sees the “red artillery” of the force; and the polished axle, the gleaming branch, and the shining chain, testify to the beautiful condition of the instrument, ready for active service at a moment’s notice. Ensconced in the shadow of the station, the liveried watchmen look like hunters waiting for their prey—nor does the hunter move quicker to his quarry at the rustle of a leaf, than the Firemen dash for the first ruddy glow in the sky. No sooner comes the alarm, than one sees with a shudder the rush of one of these engines through the crowded streets, the tearing horses covered with foam, the heavy vehicle swerving from side to side, and the black helmeted attendants swaying to and fro. The wonder is that horses or men ever get safely to their destination: the wonder is still greater that no one is ridden over in their furious drive. Arrived at the place of action, the hunter’s spirit which animates the fireman, and makes him attack an element as determinedly as he would a wild beast, becomes evident to the spectator. The scene which a London fire presents can never be forgotten: the shouts of the crowd as it opens to let the engines dart through it, the foaming head of water springing out of the ground, and spreading over the road until it becomes a broad mirror reflecting the glowing blaze—the black, snake-like coils of the leather hose rising and falling like things of When we recollect that London presents an area of thirty-six square miles, covered with 21,600 square acres of bricks and mortar, and numbers more than 380,600 houses; that all the riches it contains are nightly threatened in every direction by an ever-present enemy; that the secret match, the spontaneous fire, and the hand of the drunkard, are busily at work; it is evident that nothing but a force the most disciplined, and implements the most effective, can be competent to cope with so sudden and persevering a foe. As late as twenty-two years ago there was no proper fire police to protect the metropolis against what is commonly About the year 1833 it became evident that much was lost, both to the public and to the insurance companies, by every engine acting on its own responsibility—a folly which is the cause of such jealousy among the firemen at Boston (United States), that rival engines have been known to stop on their way to a fire to exchange shots from revolvers. It was, therefore, determined to incorporate the divided force, and place it under the management of one superintendent, each office contributing towards its support, according to the amount of its business. All the old-established companies, with one exception,[41] shortly came into the arrangement, and Mr. Braidwood, the master of the fire-engines of Edinburgh, being invited to take the command, organized the now celebrated London Fire Brigade. At the present moment, then, the protection against fire in London consists, firstly, in the three hundred and odd parish-engines (two to each parish), which are paid for out of the rates. The majority of these are very inefficient, not having Thirdly, we have, in contrast to the immense rabble of Bumble engines and the Bashi-Bazouks of private establishments, the small complement of men and material of the fire brigade. It consists of twenty-seven large horse-engines, capable of throwing eighty-eight gallons a minute to the height of from fifty to seventy feet, and nine smaller ones drawn by hand. To work them there are twelve engineers, seven sub-engineers, thirty-two senior firemen, thirty-nine junior firemen, and fourteen drivers, or 104 men and 31 horses. In addition to these persons, who form the main establishment, and live at the different stations, there is an extra staff of four firemen, four drivers, and eight horses. The members of this supplementary In comparison with the great continental cities, such a force seems truly insignificant. Paris, which does not cover a fifth part of the ground of London, and is not much more than a third as populous, boasts 800 sapeurs-pompiers: we make up, however, for want of numbers by activity. Again, our look-out is admirable: the 6,000 police of the metropolis, patrolling every alley and lane throughout its length and breadth, watch for a fire as terriers watch at rat-holes, and every man is stimulated by the knowledge, that if he is the first to give notice of In most continental cities a watchman takes his stand during the night on the topmost point of some high building, and gives notice by either blowing a horn, firing a gun, or ringing a bell. In Germany the quarter is indicated by holding out towards it a flag by day, and a lantern at night. It immediately suggests itself that a sentinel placed in the upper gallery of St. Paul’s would have under his eye the whole metropolis, and could make known instantly, by means of an electric wire, the position of a fire, to the head-station at Watling Street, in the same manner as the Americans do in Boston. This plan is, however, open to the objection, that London is intersected by a sinuous river, which renders it difficult to tell on which bank the conflagration is raging. Nevertheless, we imagine that the northern part of the town could be advantageously superintended from such a height, whilst the southern half might rest under the surveillance of one of the tall shot-towers on that bank of the Thames. The bridges themselves have long been posts of observation, from which a large portion of the river-side property is watched. Not long ago there was a pieman on London Bridge, who eked out a precarious existence by keeping a good look-out up and down the stream. Watling Street was chosen as the head-quarters of the Fire Brigade for a double reason: it is very nearly the centre of the City, being close to the far-famed London Stone, and it is in the very midst of what may be termed, speaking igneously, the most dangerous part of the metropolis—the Manchester warehouses. As the Fire Brigade is only a portion of a vast commercial operation—Fire Insurance—its actions are regulated by strictly commercial considerations. Where the largest amount of insured property lies, there its chief force is planted. It will, it is true, go any reasonable distance to put out a fire; but of course it pays most attention to property which its proprietors have “Several lengths of scaling-ladder, each 6½ feet long, all of which may be readily connected, forming in a short space of time a ladder of any required length; a canvas sheet, with ten or twelve handles of rope round the edge of it for the purpose of a fire-escape; one 10-fathom and one 14-fathom piece of 2½-inch rope; six lengths of hose, each 40 feet long; two branch-pipes, one 2½ feet, and the other from 4 to 6 feet long, with one spare nose-pipe; two 6-feet lengths of suction-pipe, a flat rose, stand-cock, goose-neck, dam-board, boat-hook, saw, shovel, mattock, pole-axe, screw-wrench, crow-bar, portable cistern, two dog-tails, two balls of strips of sheepskin, two balls of small cord, instruments for opening the fire-plugs, and keys for turning the stop-cocks of the water-mains.” The weight of the whole, with the men, is not less than from 27 to 30 cwt., a load which in the excitement of the ride is carried by a couple of horses at the gallop. The hands to work the pumps are always forthcoming on the spot at any hour of the night, not alone for goodwill, as every man—and there have been as many as five hundred employed The fascination of fires even extends to the brute creation. Who has not heard of the dog “Chance,” who first formed his acquaintance with the Brigade by following a fireman from a conflagration in Shoreditch to the central station at Watling Street? Here, after he had been petted for some little time by the men, his master came for him, and took him home; but he escaped on the first opportunity, and returned to the station. After he had been carried back for the third time, his master—like a mother whose son will go to sea—allowed him to have his own way, and for years he invariably accompanied the engine, now upon the machine, now under the horses’ legs, and always, when going up-hill, running in advance, and announcing the welcome advent of the extinguisher by his bark. At the fire he used to amuse himself with pulling burning logs of wood out of the flames with his mouth. Although he had his legs broken half a dozen times, he remained faithful to his pursuit; till at last, having received a severer hurt than usual, he was being nursed by the fireman beside the hearth, when a “call” came, and at the well-known sound of the engine turning out, the poor brute made a last effort to climb upon it, and fell back dead in the attempt. He was stuffed and preserved at the station, and was doomed, even in death, to prove the fireman’s The most interesting and practical part of our subject is the inquiry into the various causes of fires. Mr. Braidwood comes here to our aid with his invaluable yearly reports—the only materials we have, in fact, on which fire insurance can be built up into a science, a feat which we have not accomplished to nearly the same extent as with life assurance, although the Hand-in-Hand office was founded so far back as 1696. Thus we have the experience of upwards of 150 years, if we could only get at it, to enable the actuary to ascertain the doctrine of chances in this momentous subject, which at present is little better than a speculation. An analysis of the reports, from the organization of the Fire Brigade in 1833 to the close of 1853, a period extending over 21 years, affords the following result: Abstract of List of Fires and Alarms for Twenty Years, ending 1853.
The item “totally destroyed” is mainly made up of houses and factories in which are stored very combustible materials, such as carpenters’ and cabinet-makers’ shops, oilmen’s warehouses, sawmills, &c., where the fire gains such a hold in a few minutes as to preclude the possibility of putting it out. The number is also swelled by houses which are situated many miles from the nearest station; for there are no stations in the outskirts of the town, and very few in the crowded suburbs. We have seen complaints of this want of help in thickly-populated localities; but the companies only plant an establishment where the insurances are sufficient to cover the expense, and people who do not contribute have no more right to expect private individuals to take care of their property than tradesmen in the Strand would have to expect the private watchman outside Messrs. Coutts’ bank to look after their shutters. Indeed, it seems to us that the Brigade act very liberally. The firemen It is a question whether government ought not to relieve the parish authorities from a duty which they cannot separately perform, and combine their engines into a metropolitan brigade; thus guarding the town from fire as they do from robbery by the police. If people will not protect themselves by insuring, the state should protect them, and make them pay for it. An excellent system prevails in most parts of Germany of levying a rate at the close of the year upon all the inhabitants, sufficient to cover the loss from fires during the past twelvemonth. As every householder has a pecuniary interest in the result, he keeps a bucket and belt, and sallies out to extinguish the conflagration in his neighbour’s premises. If the rate were adopted in London, and the present enormous duty on insurances reduced, the Mr. Samuel Brown, of the Institute of Actuaries, after analyzing the returns of Mr. Braidwood, as well as the reports in the Mechanics’ Magazine by Mr. Baddeley, who has devoted much attention to the subject, drew up some tables of the times of the year and hours of the day at which fires are most frequent. It would naturally be supposed that the winter would show a vast preponderance over the summer months; but the difference is not so great as might be expected. December and January are very prolific of fires, as in these months large public buildings are heated by flues, stoves, and boilers; but the other months share mishaps of the kind pretty equally, with the exception that the hot and dry periods of summer and autumn are marked by the most destructive class of conflagrations, owing to the greater inflammability of the materials, than in the damper portions of the year. This, from the desiccating nature of the climate, is especially the case in Canada and the United States, and, coupled with the extensive use of wood in building, has a large influence in many parts of the continent. The following list of all the great fires which have taken place for the last hundred years will bear out our statement:—
(Extracted from the Royal Insurance Company’s Almanack, 1854.) One reason, perhaps, why there is such a general average in the number of conflagrations throughout the year is, that the vast majority occur in factories and workshops where fire is used in summer as well as winter. This supposition appears at first sight to be contradicted by the fact that nearly as many fires occur on Sunday as on any other day of the week. But when it is remembered that in numerous establishments it is necessary to keep in the fires throughout that day, and as in the majority of cases a very inadequate watch is kept, it is at once apparent why there is no immunity from the scourge. Indeed, some of the most destructive fires have broken out on a Sunday night or on a Sunday morning; no doubt because a large body of fire had formed before it was detected. A certain number of accidents occur in summer in private houses from persons on hot nights opening the window behind the toilet-glass in their bedrooms, when the draught blows the blind against the candle. Swallows do not more certainly appear in June, than such mishaps are found reported at the sultry season. If we watch still more narrowly the habits of fires, we find that they are active or dormant according to the time of day. Thus, during a period of nine years, the per-centage regularly increased from 1·96 at 9 o’clock A.M., the hour at which all The origin of fires is now so narrowly inquired into by the officers of the Brigade, and by means of inquests, that we have been made acquainted with a vast number of curious causes which would never have been suspected. From an analysis of fires which have occurred since the establishment of the Brigade we have constructed the following tables:—
Among the more common causes of fire (such as gas, candle, curtains taking fire, children playing with stoves, &c.) it is remarkable how uniformly the same numbers occur under each head from year to year. General laws obtain as much in small as in great events. We are informed by the Post Office authorities that about eight persons daily drop their letters into the post without directing them; we know that there is an unvarying Although gas figures so largely as a cause of fire, it does not appear that its rapid introduction of late years into private houses has been attended with danger. There is another kind of light, however, which the insurance offices look upon with terror, especially those who make it their business to insure farm property. The assistant-secretary of one of the largest fire-offices, speaking broadly, informed us that the introduction of the lucifer-match caused them an annual loss of ten thousand pounds! In the foregoing list we see in how many ways they have given rise to fires.
One hundred and twenty-seven known fires thus arise from this single cause; and no doubt many of the twenty-five fires ascribed to the agency of cats and dogs were owing to their having thrown down boxes of matches at night, which they frequently do, and which is almost certain to produce combustion. The item “rat gnawing lucifer,” reminds us to give a warning against leaving about wax lucifers where there are either rats or mice, for these vermin constantly run away with them to their holes behind the inflammable canvas, and eat the wax until they reach the phosphorus, which is ignited by the friction of their teeth. Many fires are believed to have been produced by this singular circumstance. How much, again, must lucifers have contributed to swell the large class of conflagrations whose causes are unknown! Another cause of fire, which is of recent date, is the use of naphtha in lamps,—a most It is commonly imagined that the introduction of hot water, hot air, and steam-pipes, as a means of heating buildings, cuts off one avenue of danger from fire. This is an error. Iron pipes, often heated up to 400°, are placed in close contact with floors and skirting-boards, supported by slight diagonal props of wood, which a much lower degree of heat will suffice to ignite. The circular rim supporting a still at the Apothecaries’ Hall, which was used in the preparation of some medicament that required a temperature of only 300°, was found, not long ago, to have charred a circle, at least a quarter of an inch deep, in the wood beneath it, in less than six months. Mr. Braidwood, in his evidence before a Committee of the House of Lords, in 1846, stated that it was his belief that by long exposure to heat, not much exceeding that of boiling water, or 212°, timber is brought into such a condition that it will fire without the application of a light. The time during which this process of desiccation goes on, until it ends in spontaneous combustion, is, he thinks, from eight to ten years; so that a Mr. Hosking, in his very useful and sensible little “Guide to the proper Regulation of Buildings in Towns,” quotes the following case, which completely confirms Mr. Braidwood’s opinion, and explodes the idea that heat applied through the medium of pipes must be safe. “Day and Martin’s well-known blacking manufactory in High Holborn was heated by means of hot water passing through iron tubes into the various parts of the building. In December, 1848, the wooden casing and other woodwork about the upright main pipes were found to be on fire, and from no other cause that could be discovered than the constant exposure for a long time of the wood to heat from the pipes. In this case the pipes were not in contact with the wooden casing, but they were stayed and kept upright by cross fillets of wood, which touched them, and these it was which appeared to have taken fire. The small circulating pipes which conveyed the hot water throughout the several chambers were raised from the floor to about the extent of their own diameter, and the floors showed no signs of fire where the pipes were so removed; but in every case where the prop or saddle which held the pipe up from the floor had been displaced, and the pipe had been allowed to sag and touch the floor, the boards were charred. It was understood that the temperature of the water in the pipes never much exceeded 300°. The practical teaching of this case clearly is, that pipes should on no consideration be placed nearer to wood than the distance of their own diameters. Wood dried in the thorough manner we have mentioned is so liable to catch fire at the momentary propinquity of flame, that practical men imagine there must be an atmosphere of some kind surrounding it of a highly inflammable nature. In cases of pine wood we could well understand such a theory, as we know that a stick thrust into the fire will emit from its free end a volatile spirit of turpentine, which lights like a jet of gas. “Mercers’ Hall, burnt in 1853, was the victim of its hot-water pipes, which had not been in work more than four or five years. The vaulted room in the British Museum, which contains some of the Nineveh marbles, was fired—or rather the carpenters’ work about—in a similar manner; and if report tells the truth, the new Houses of Parliament have been on fire several times already from a similar cause.” Under the heads “Incendiarism,” “Doubtful,” and “Unknown,” are included all the cases of wilful firing. The return, “Incendiarism,” is never made unless there has been a conviction, which rarely takes place, as the offices are only anxious to protect themselves against fraud, and do not like the trouble or bad odour of being prosecutors on public grounds. If the evidence of wilful firing, however, is conclusive, the insured, when he applies for his money, is significantly informed by the secretary that unless he leaves the office, he will hang him. The class “doubtful” includes all those cases in which the offices have no moral doubt that the fire has been wilful, but are not in possession of legal evidence sufficient to substantiate a charge against the offender. In most of these instances, however, the insured has his reasons for taking a much smaller sum than he originally demanded. Lastly, we have the “unknown,” to which 1,323 cases are put down, one of the largest numbers in the entire list, though decreasing year by year. Even of There is another class of incendiary fires which arise from a species of monomania in boys and girls. Not many years ago the men of the Brigade were occupied for hours in putting out no less than half a dozen fires which broke out one after another in a house in West Smithfield; and it was at last discovered that they were occasioned by a youth who went about with lucifers and slily ignited everything that would burn. He was caught in the act of firing a curtain in the very room in which a fireman was occupied in putting out a blaze. A still more extraordinary case took place in the year 1848, at Torluck The most ludicrous conflagration that perhaps ever occurred was that at Mr. Phillips’s workshops, when the whole of his stock of instruments for extinguishing flame were at one fell swoop destroyed. “’Tis rare to see the engineer hoist with his own petard,” says the poet; and certainly it was a most laughable contre-temps to see the fire-engines arrive at the manufactory just in time to witness the fire-annihilators annihilated by the fire. A similar mishap occurred to these unfortunate implements at Paris. In juxtaposition with this case, we are tempted to put another, in which the attempt at extinction was followed by exactly the opposite effects. A tradesman was about to light his gas, when, finding the cock stiff, he took a candle to see what was the matter; whilst attempting to turn it, the screw came out, and with it a jet of gas, which was instantly fired by the candle. The blaze igniting the shop, a passer-by seized a wooden pail and threw its contents upon the Spontaneous combustion is at present very little understood, though chemists have of late turned their attention to the subject. It forms, however, no inconsiderable item in the list of causes of fires. There can be no question that many of those that occur at railway stations and buildings are due to the fermentation which arises among oiled rags. Over-heating of waste, which includes shoddy, sawdust, cotton, &c., is a fearful source of conflagrations. The cause of most fires which have arisen from spontaneous combustion is lost in the consequence. Cases now and then occur where the firemen have been able to detect it, as, for instance, at Hibernia Wharf in 1846, one of Alderman Humphery’s warehouses. It happened that a porter had swept the sawdust from the floor into a heap, upon which a broken flask of olive-oil that was placed above dripped its contents. To these elements of combustion the sun added its power, and sixteen hours afterwards the fire broke out. Happily, it was instantly extinguished; and the agents that produced it were caught, red-handed as it were, in the act. The chances are that such a particular combination of circumstances might not occur again in a thousand years. The sawdust will not be swept again into such a position under the oil, or the bottle will not break over the sawdust, or the sun will not shine in on them to complete the fatal sum. It is an important fact, however, to know that oiled sawdust, warmed by the sun, will fire in sixteen hours, as it accounts for a number of conflagrations in saw-mills, which never could be traced to any probable cause. By means of direct experiment we are also learning something on the question of explosions. It used to be assumed that gunpowder was answerable for all such terrible effects in warehouses where no gas or steam was employed; and as policies are vitiated by the fact of its presence, unless declared, many squabbles have ensued between insurers and insured upon this head alone. At the late great fire at Gateshead, a report “Mr. Pattinson first caused a metal pot to be inserted in the ground until its top was level with the surface; and having put into it 9 lbs. of nitrate of soda and 6 lbs. of sulphur, he ignited the mass; and then, heating it to the highest possible degree of which it was susceptible, he poured into it about a quart of water. The effect was an immediate explosion (accompanied by a loud clap), which would have been exceedingly perilous to any person in its immediate vicinity. The experiment was next made under different conditions. The pot into which the sulphur and nitrate of soda were put was covered over the top with a large piece of thick metal of considerable weight; and above that again were placed several large pieces of clay and earth. It was deemed necessary to try this experiment in an open field, away from any dwelling-house, and which admitted of the spectators placing themselves at a safe distance from the spot. The materials were then ignited as before; and when in the incandescent state, water was poured upon the mass down a spout. The result was but a comparatively slight explosion, and which scarcely disturbed the iron and clods placed over the mouth of the vessel. Another experiment of the kind was made with the same result. At length, a trial having been made for the third time, but with this difference, that the vessel was covered over the top with another similar vessel, and that the water was poured upon the burning sulphur and nitrate of soda with greater rapidity than before, by slightly elevating the spout, the effect was to blow up the pot on the top into the air to a height of upwards of seventy feet, accompanied by a loud detonation. With this the coroner and jury became convinced that, whether or not the premises in Hillgate contained gunpowder, they contained elements as certainly explosive, and perhaps far more destructive.” We may here mention, as a curious result of the Gateshead fire, that several tons of lead, whilst flowing in a molten state, came in contact with a quantity of volatilized sulphur. Thus the lead became re-converted into lead-ore, or a sulphuret of lead, which, as it required to be re-smelted, was thereby The great fire, again, which occurred in Liverpool in October last, was occasioned by the explosion of spirits of turpentine, which blew out, one after another, seven of the walls of the vaults underneath the warehouse, and in some cases destroyed the vaulting itself, and exposed to the flames the stores of cotton above. Surely some law is called for to prevent the juxtaposition of such inflammable materials. The turpentine is said to have been fired by a workman who snuffed the candle with his fingers, and accidentally threw the snuff down the bunghole of one of the barrels of turpentine. The warehouses burnt were built upon Mr. Fairbairn’s new fireproof plan, which the Liverpool people introduced some years ago, at a great expense to the town. Water alone brought into sudden contact with red-hot iron is capable of giving rise to a gas of the most destructive nature—witness the extraordinary explosions that are continually taking place in steam-vessels, especially in America, which mostly arise from the lurching of the vessel when waiting for passengers, causing the water to withdraw from one side of the boiler, which rapidly becomes red hot. The next lurch in an opposite direction precipitates the water upon the highly-heated surface, and thus the explosive gas, in addition to the steam, is generated faster than the safety-valves can get rid of it. A very interesting inquiry, and one of vital importance to the actuaries of fire-insurance companies, is the relative liability to fire of different classes of occupations and residences. We already know accurately the number of fires which occur yearly in every trade and kind of occupation. What we do not know, and what we want to know, is the proportion the tenements in which such trades and occupations are carried on, bear to the total number of houses in the metropolis. The last census gives us no information of this kind, and we trust the omission will be supplied the next time it is taken. According to Mr. Braidwood’s returns, for the last twenty-one years, the number of fires in each trade, and in private houses, has been as follows:—
If we look at the mere number of fires, irrespective of the size of the industrial group upon which they committed their ravages, houses would appear to be hazardous according to the order in which we have placed them. Now, this is manifestly absurd, inasmuch as private houses stand at the head of the list, and it is well known that they are the safest from fire of all kinds of tenements. Mr. Brown, of the Society of Actuaries, who has taken the trouble to compare the number of fires in each industrial group, with the number of houses devoted to it, as far as he could find any data in the Post-office Directory, gives the following average annual percentage of conflagrations, calculated on a period of fifteen years:—
It will be seen that this estimate in a great measure inverts the order of “dangerous,” as we have ranged them in the previous table, making those which from their aggregate number The great mass of these trades bear “hazardous” upon the very face of them; but it is not equally apparent why that of Nothing shows better the relative degrees of hazard than the different rates charged for insurance. Thus an ordinary dwelling-house pays but 1s. 6d. per cent., while a sugar-refinery pays at least two, and sometimes three guineas per cent., or from 30 to 40 times as much. The same class of houses pay different rates according to their locality. The residence which is charged 1s. 6d. in London, is, in St. John’s, Newfoundland—a town famous, or rather infamous, for fires—charged by our English offices 1l. 11s. 6d. per cent. Probably the heaviest loss the Phoenix Office ever sustained was by the fire of St. John’s, in 1846. It is a notable fact, that the city of London, which is perhaps the most densely inhabited spot the world has ever seen, has long been exempt from conflagrations involving a considerable number of houses. “The devouring element,” it is true, has made many meals from time to time of huge warehouses and public buildings; but since the great fire of 1666 it has ceased to gorge upon whole quarters of the town. We have never had, since that memorable occasion, to record the destruction of a thousand houses at a time, a matter of frequent occurrence in the United States and Canada—indeed in all parts of Continental Europe. The fires which have proved fatal to large Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his “Handbook of London,”[43] gives the following curious information respecting its supposed origin:— “The fire of London, commonly called the Great Fire, commenced on the east side of this lane (Pudding-lane) about one or two in the morning of Sunday, September 2nd, 1666, in the house of Farryner, the king’s baker. “It was the fashion of the true blue Protestants of the period to attribute the fire to the Roman Catholics; and when, in 1681, Oates and his plot strengthened this belief, the following inscription was affixed on the front of this house (No. 25, I believe), erected on the site of Farryner, the baker’s:— “‘Here, by the permission of Heaven, hell broke loose upon this Protestant city, from the malicious hearts of barbarous priests, by the hand of their agent, Hubert, who confessed, and on the ruins of this place declared the fact for which he was hanged, viz., that here began that dreadful fire which is described on and perpetuated by the neighbouring pillar, erected anno 1681, in the mayoralty of Sir Peter Ward, knight.’ “This celebrated inscription, set up pursuant to an order of the Court of Common Council, June 17th, 1681, was removed in the reign of James II., replaced in the reign of William III., and finally taken down ‘on account of the stoppage of passengers to read it.’ Entick, who makes addition to Maitland in 1756, speaks of it ‘as lately taken away.’ The house was ‘rebuilt in a very handsome manner.’ “The inscribed stone is still preserved, it is said, in a cellar in Pudding-lane. Hubert was a French papist, of six-and-twenty years of age, the son of a watchmaker at Rouen, in Normandy. He was seized in Essex, confessed he began the fire, and, persisting in his confession, was hanged, upon no other evidence than his own. He stated in his examination that he had been ‘suborned in Paris to this action,’ and that three more ‘combined to In addition to these advantages we acquired another, that of PARTY-WALLS—a safeguard which has prevented fires from spreading in the City, when whole streets have been swept away in a few hours in other parts of the metropolis, and especially in what might be termed the water-side suburbs of London—Rotherhithe, Greenwich, and Gravesend. The Act by which party-walls were enforced came into operation immediately prior to the rebuilding of the town, and has been rendered more As the very heart of London is largely occupied with Manchester warehouses full of the most inflammable materials, the safety of the capital depends upon this restrictive law. The Manchester warehousemen, nevertheless, have managed to set that part of the Act at defiance. Let us take, as the latest and most flagrant example, Cook’s warehouses. This structure, which within these last two years has raised its enormous bulk in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and actually dwarfed the metropolitan cathedral by the propinquity of its monotonous mass, contains 1,100,000 cubic feet of space open from end to end, or nine hundred thousand feet more than it is entitled to possess. If we were to take twenty-five ordinary-sized dwelling-houses, and pull down their party-walls, we should have just the state of things which is here presented to us. But it will be asked, if it is against the law, why do not the proper officers interfere? Where are the City surveyors? The reason, good reader, is this: the Manchester warehousemen of late years have adopted a new reading of the law—a reading which we believe no judge would allow, but which the surveyors have not yet ventured to dispute. “We escape altogether,” say these gentlemen, “the provisions of the Building Act relative to warehouses, as, by reason of our breaking bulk, our places of business are not mere storehouses.” That this reading is a violation of the spirit of the statute there can be no doubt; that it is also a violation of its letter we also believe; if not, it is high time that the law be amended upon this point; for we affirm, on the very best authority, that London has never since the great fire been in such danger of an overwhelming conflagration as it is now by the presence and rapid spreading of these huge warehouses, filled with the elements of destruction, and placed side Let us suppose, for instance, that a fire had once established itself in Cook’s warehouses; to extinguish it would be out of the question. Fire-engines would be perfectly useless against a body of flame which would speedily become like a blast-furnace, and burn with a white heat. Who knows what would come after? Supposing the wind to be blowing from the south, we tremble for the cathedral. The huge dome is constructed entirely of oak, dried by the seasoning of 150 years, and the combustible framework is only lined on the exterior by sheet lead. It may be imagined that this would be protection enough against the enormous masses of burning cotton and linen cloth which would speedily be blown upon it; but Mr. Cottam not long since stated, at the Institution of Civil Engineers, that, “when the Princess’s Theatre was on fire, part of his premises also caught. On examination, he found that it arose from a piece of blazing wood being thrown over from the theatre, which, falling into the leaden gutter, had melted it, and the liquid metal passed through the ceiling on to a workman’s bench, where there was some oil, which it immediately set fire to.” The great dome would be in quite as much danger as Mr. Cottam’s workshop. Engines would be useless at such a height even as the stone gallery, the place where large bodies of burning material would most likely make a lodgment. Irreparable as would be the disaster with which we are threatened in this direction, one quite as great lies in another. Eastward of Cook’s warehouses, and in the neighbourhood of a vitriol or some other chemical manufactory, is situated Doctors’ Commons, the repository of the great mass of English wills. The roofs of this pile of buildings[44] are continuous; the buildings themselves are nearly as dry as the law itself. If one portion of the structure were to catch fire, nothing could save the whole from destruction. It may be urged that the block of buildings, which commands, like “A chapel in Liverpool-road Islington, 70 feet in length and 52 feet in breadth, took fire in the cellar, on the 2nd October, 1848, and was completely burned down. After the fire it was ascertained that, of thirteen cast-iron pillars used to support the galleries, only two remained perfect; the greater part of the others were broken into small pieces, the metal appearing to have lost all power of cohesion, and some parts were melted, But when we are considering the safety of Manchester warehouses, we are also considering the lives of the young men who are employed in them, and are in most cases located in the upper stories. In several of the wholesale warehouses in the City, as Mr. Braidwood informs us,— “The cast-iron pillars are much less in proportion to the weight to be carried than those referred to, and would be completely in the draught of a fire. If a fire should unfortunately take place under such circumstances, the loss of human life might be very great, as the chance of fifty, eighty, or one hundred people escaping, in the confusion of a sudden night alarm, by one or two ladders to the roof, could scarcely be calculated on, and the time such escape might necessarily occupy, independent of all chance of accidents, would be considerable.” The application of water would only aggravate the difficulty, for, if it touched the red-hot iron, in all probability it would cause it to fracture and render it useless as a support. It is well known that furnace-bars are very speedily destroyed by a leakage of the boiler, the effect of the steam on the under side of the bars being to curve and twist them. To insure a perfectly fire-proof building, we must resort to one of two courses—either we must divide large warehouses into compartments by solid brick divisions, and thus confine any fire that should happen to break out within manageable limits, just as we save an iron ship from foundering, on account of a circumscribed fracture, by having her built in compartments; or we must resort to the old Roman plan of building—that is, support the floors upon brick piers and groined arches well laid in cement, for mortar will pulverize under a great heat. The former plan has the great advantage that it insures the safety of the principal contents, as well as of the building itself. The new Record Office in Fetter Lane, is a perfect specimen of the kind, and is, perhaps, the only absolutely fire-proof structure in England, being constructed of iron and stone, and having no room larger than 17 feet by 25, and 17 feet high, with a It must not be supposed that we disparage altogether the use of iron and stone in the erection of warehouses, even where they are built on the ordinary plan; for the outside structure they are invaluable, and render it safe from most extraneous danger. No better proof of this could be given than the experience of Liverpool, whose fires during the last half-century have been on the most gigantic scale. The larger bonded and other warehouses were generally built with continuous roofs, and with wooden doors and penthouses to the different stories, which always kindled when there was a fire on the opposite side of the narrow streets in which they were ordinarily placed. To such a lamentable extent had conflagrations increased about the year 1841, that the rate of insurance, which had been eight shillings per cent., ran up to thirty-six shillings. This was about the time of the Formby Street fire, when 379,000l. worth of property was destroyed, and the total losses from the beginning of the century had not been less than three millions and a quarter sterling. The magnitude of the evil called for a corresponding remedy. A Bill was obtained in 1843 for the amendment of the Building Act; party-walls were run up five feet high between each warehouse, doors and penthouses were constructed of iron, the cubical contents of the buildings themselves were limited, &c.; and the effect of these improvements was so to diminish the risk that insurances fell to their normal rate. It cannot be said, however, that Liverpool has yet purged herself of the calamity of fire. In ordinary dwellings and in public offices the use of iron and stone, again, cannot be too much commended: in such buildings the rooms are comparatively small, and their contents are not sufficiently inflammable either in quantity or quality to injure these materials. A marked diminution in the number of fires in the metropolis may be expected, from the almost Without going to the expense of stone and iron, we might, by taking a hint from the Parisians, make the rooms of our private houses fireproof, by abandoning the absurd custom of separating rooms by hollow wooden floors and hollow wooden partitions thinly coated with plaster—a method which has the effect of circulating the fire from the bottom to the top of the house in the quickest possible space of time. If a fire breaks out in a room, the ceiling will, it is true, stop the flames for a considerable time; but the hollow partitions full of air act as conductors, and the firemen have often found that the flames have spread from a lower to an upper apartment by this secret channel, without injuring the intermediate rooms, and without even its progress being suspected. As we understand that the Building Act is to be amended, we trust its emendators will extend the clause relating to party-walls to rooms as well as to houses. The expense need be but trifling, as will be seen by consulting the little work of Mr. Hosking, who was the first, we believe, to instruct the English public in the admirable methods of the Parisian builders. Instead of using flimsy laths for their partitions, they employ stout oaken pieces of wood, as thick as garden palings; these they nail firmly on We have said that London is growing upwards to the sky—no house in any valuable portion of the metropolis being now rebuilt without the addition of at least one story. Eighty and ninety feet is getting a common height for our great offices and warehouses, which is tantamount to saying that a certain portion of the metropolis, and that a constantly increasing one, is outgrowing the power of the Fire Brigade, as no engine built upon the present plan can throw water for many minutes to such an elevation. Mr. Braidwood foresees that he must call in the aid of the common drudge, steam. In America they have already introduced this new agent with some success, and in London we have proved its power in the floating engine. Steam fire-engines, it is evident, will soon be brought into use, unless we do away with the necessity for engines at all by fixing the hose directly on the mains, as is done at Hamburg. But to effect this it will be necessary to relay the whole metropolis with much larger pipes, to increase their number, and at the same time adopt the constant-service system. At present, even if we had the water always on, the mains are often so small as to preclude the use of more than two or three hose—for, if the collective diameters of the areas of the latter exceed that of the pipe which feeds them, the pressure will cease, and no water will be propelled to any height through the jet. It cannot be denied, however, that if the streets of London were all supplied with capacious mains, and the different companies plugged them It will not here be out of place to say a few words upon the method of extinguishing flame by means of the gaseous mixture contained in Phillips’s fire-annihilators. According to a writer in the “Household Words,” the ordinary-sized annihilator is less than that of a small upright iron coalscuttle, and its weight not greater than can be easily carried by man or woman to any part of the house. It is charged with a compound of charcoal, nitre, and gypsum, moulded into the form of a large brick: the igniter is a glass tube inserted into the top of this brick: inclosing two phials—one filled with the mixture of chlorate of potassa and sugar, the other containing a few drops of sulphuric acid. A slight blow upon a knob drives down a pin which breaks the phials, and the different mixtures coming in contact ignite the mass, the gas arising from which, acting upon a water-chamber contained in the machine, produces a steam, and the whole escapes forth in a dense expanding cloud. Mr. Phillips made some public experiments with his fire-annihilator three or four years ago, in which its power to put out the fiercest flame was fully proved. The timber framework of a three storied-house smeared with pitch and tar, upon being fired, was instantly extinguished: quantities of pitch, tar, and oil of turpentine, which only burn the stronger for the presence of water, were dealt with still more expeditiously. The valuable quality of rendering an atmosphere of dense smoke, in which no living thing could exist, perfectly respirable, was also shown in the most satisfactory manner. Since that time the machine has been brought into action at Leeds, where it put out a fire Although it is foreign to our design to speak at length of agricultural fires, and incendiarism among farming stock, the subject is too important to be entirely omitted. One of the largest London insurance-offices, interested in farming stock, posts up bills about premises they have insured, which, after stating that no lucifers are to be used, or pipes are to be smoked, goes on to say, “This farm is insured; the fire office will be the only sufferer in the event of a fire.” The inference is, that the labourer will feel more inclined to pay respect to the property of an insurance company than to that of the farmer. Yet it is far from being the case that the crime is always prompted by personal ill-will. One of the largest agricultural incendiaries upon record was a city weaver, who acted from a general spirit of discontent, without any hatred or knowledge of the owners. In other instances the sole motive is the “jollification” which generally follows a fire upon a farm: this fact came to light at a trial in Cambridge, eight or nine years since, when a man who was sentenced to death for setting fire to a homestead confessed to having caused twelve different fires, his only object being the desire to obtain the few shillings, and the refreshment of bread, cheese, and ale, which are given to The cause of fire which the farmer has mainly to guard against may be at one seen by the following table, for which we are indebted to the manager of the County Fire Office:— Losses on Farming Stock between January the 1st and November the 30th, 1853.
These losses are upon a total insurance of eight millions. Incendiarism and children playing with lucifers are the two grand elements of destruction; and the former, we are given to understand, is below the general average. Kind treatment and better education are the only shields that can protect the farmer against incendiarism. The nuisance arising from children playing with lucifers may be abated by the absolute denial of matches to young boys about a farm, who, to cook their dinners, generally cause conflagrations near the ricks in the winter, and among the standing corn whilst “keeping birds” in the summer. The following excellent suggestions are by Mr. Beaumont, the secretary of the County Fire Office. Precautions to be taken against a Fire. Forbid your men to use lucifer matches, smoke, or light pipes or cigars, destroy wasps’ nests, or fire off guns, in or near the rickyard, or to throw hot cinders into or against any wooden out-building on the farm, on pain of instant dismissal. Place your ricks in a single line, and as far distant from each other as you conveniently can. Place hay-ricks and corn-stacks alternately; the hay-rick will check the progress of the fire. Have a pond close to the rickyard, although there may be but a bad supply of water. When a steam thrashing-machine is to be used, place it on the lee side of the stack or barn, so that the wind may blow the sparks away from the stacks. Let the engine be placed as far from the machine as the length of the strap will allow. Have the loose straw continually cleared away from the engine; see that two or three pails of water are constantly close to the ash-pan, and that the pan itself is kept constantly full of water. How to act when a Fire has broken out in a Rickyard. Do not wait for the engines, nor for the assistance of the labourers from a distance. Depend entirely upon the immediate and energetic exertions of yourself and your own men. Do not allow the rick or stack on fire to be disturbed—let it burn itself out—but let every exertion be made to press it compactly together, and, as far as is practicable, prevent any lighted particles flying about. Get together all your blankets, carpets, sacks, rugs, and other similar articles, soak them thoroughly in water, and place them over and against the adjoining ricks and stacks, towards which the wind blows. Having thus covered the sides of the ricks adjoining that on fire, devote all your attention to the latter. Press it together by every available means. If water is at hand, throw upon it as much as possible. If engines arrive, let the water be thrown upon the blankets, &c., covering the adjoining stacks, and then upon the stack on fire. Among the numerous hands who flock to assist upon these occasions, many do mischief by their want of knowledge, and especially by opening the fired stack and scattering the embers. In order to obviate this evil, place your best man in command over the stack on fire, desire him to make it his sole duty to prevent it being disturbed, and to keep it pressed and watered. Place other men, in whose steadiness you have confidence, to watch the adjoining ricks, to keep the coverings over them, and to extinguish any embers flying from the stack on fire. In order to effect this, it is most desirable that there should be ladders at hand to enable one or two of the labourers to mount upon each stack. If the ricks are separated from each other, and there is no danger of the fire extending to a second, it is of course desirable to save as much of the one on fire as may be possible. That, however, is not unfrequently accomplished by keeping the rick compactly together rather than by opening it. Send for all the neighbours’ blankets and tarpaulins: these are invaluable, they are near at hand, and can be immediately applied. The companies are always very willing to pay for any damage done in attempting to save their property. The business of the Fire Brigade is to protect property and not life from fire, though the men of course use every exertion to save the inmates, and are always provided with a “jumping-sheet” In 1833 the Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire, which had been imperfectly organized a year or two before, was fully established, and has continued to increase the sphere of its influence year by year. The committee of management, appreciating the value of celerity in attending fires, have marked the metropolis out into fifty-five squares of half a mile each: in forty-two of these they have established a station,[46] in “The main ladder reaches from thirty to thirty-five feet, and can instantly be applied to most second-floor windows, by means of the carriage lever. The upper ladder folds over the main ladder, and is raised easily in the position represented, by a rope attached to its lever-irons on either side of the main ladder; or, as recently adopted in one or two of the escapes, by an arrangement of pulleys in lieu of the lever-irons. The short ladder, for first floors, fits in under the carriage, and is often of the greatest service. Under the whole length of the main ladder is a canvas trough or bagging, made of stout sailcloth, protected by an outer trough of copper-wire net, leaving sufficient room between for the yielding of the canvas in When we remember that the fire-escapes often have to be raised above windows from which the flames are pouring forth, it will be seen how valuable is this double protection against the destruction of the canvas. The necessity for it was shown at a fire in Crawford Street, Marylebone, where an explosion took place which fired the canvas and let the conductor fall through just as he was rescuing an inmate,—an accident by which he was dreadfully injured. When people look up at these fire-escapes, they generally shudder at the idea of having to enter the bag, suspended at a height of forty feet from the ground; but in the hour of danger the terrified inmates never exhibit the slightest reluctance. Once in, they slide down the bulging canvas in the gentlest manner, without any of the rapidity that would be imagined from the almost perpendicular position in which it hangs. The fire-escape which is stationed near the New Road is constructed so that it can be taken off its wheels, in order to allow it to enter the long gardens which here extend before so many of the houses. The height attainable by these escapes varies from 43½ feet to 45 feet. A supplemental short ladder is now carried by most of them, which can be quickly fitted on an emergency into the upper ladder, and increases the height to 50 feet. The intrepidity of the conductors of these machines is quite astonishing. Familiarity with danger begets a coolness which enables them to place themselves in positions which would prove destructive to unpractised persons. As in most cases they are the prominent actors in a drama witnessed by a whole street-full of excited spectators, they are perhaps tempted by the cheers to risk themselves in a manner they would little dream of doing under other circumstances. In addition to such a stimulus they are rewarded with a silver medal, and On another occasion this intrepid man having made an entrance into the second-floor window of a house in Tottenham-court Road, he was obliged to retreat twice, by reason of his lamp going out in the dense smoke. On the third trial it remained in, and enabled him to search the place. “I called out loud,” he says in his report, “and was answered by a kind of We shall content ourselves by quoting one more exploit from the Reports of the Society, the hero of which was Conductor Wood, who received a testimonial on vellum for the following service at a fire in Colchester-street, Whitechapel, on the 29th of April, 1854:— “On his arrival, the fire was raging throughout the back of the house, and smoke issuing from every window; upon entering the first-floor room, part of which was on fire, he discovered five persons almost insensible from the excessive heat: he immediately descended the ladder with a woman on his shoulders, and holding a child by its night-clothes in his mouth; again ascended, re-entered the room, and having enabled the father to escape, had scarcely descended, with a child under each arm, when the whole building became enveloped in flames, rendering it impossible to attempt a rescue of the remainder of the unfortunate inmates.” The rewards of the Society are not always won by their own men. William Trafford, police constable 344, for instance, had one of the Society’s medals presented to him, for “allowing two persons to drop upon him from the top windows of a house in College-street, Camden-town, and thereby enabling them to escape without material injury.” Nothing is said as to the damage done to poor Trafford by this act of self-devotion. The real working value of the fire-escapes may be judged from the fact that, during the twenty years they have been on duty, they have attended no less than 2,041 fires, and rescued 214 human beings from destruction. To make this excellent scheme complete, only thirteen stations have now to be The fire-escapes, in addition to their own particular duty, are also of the greatest service to the firemen of the Brigade, as, by the use of their ladders, they are enabled to ascend to any window of a house, and to direct the jet directly upon the burning mass, instead of throwing it wild,—a matter of the greatest importance in extinguishing a fire: for unless you play upon the burning material, and thus cut off the flame at its root, you only uselessly deluge the building with water, which is, we believe, in many cases quite as destructive to stock and furniture as the fire it is intended to extinguish.
Much may be done by the inmates to help themselves when a house is on fire, in case neither the engine nor the escape should arrive in time to assist them. Mr. Braidwood, in his little work on the method of proceeding at fires, advises his readers to rehearse to themselves his recommendations, otherwise when the danger comes, they are thrown, according to his experience, into “a state of temporary derangement, and seem to be The means to be adopted to prevent the flames spreading, resolve themselves into taking care not to open doors or windows, which create a draught. The same rule should be observed by those outside; no door or glass should be smashed in before the means are at hand to put out the fire. Directions for aiding persons to escape from premises on fire. 1. Be careful to acquaint yourself with the best means of exit from the house both at the top and bottom. 2. On the first alarm, reflect before you act. If in bed at the time, wrap yourself in a blanket, or bedside carpet; open no more doors or windows than are absolutely necessary, and shut every door after you. 3. There is always from eight to twelve inches of pure air close to the ground: if you cannot therefore walk upright through the smoke, drop on your hands and knees, and thus progress. A wetted silk handkerchief, a piece of flannel, or a worsted stocking drawn over the face, permits breathing, and, to a great extent, excludes the smoke. 4. If you can neither make your way upwards nor downwards, get into a front room: if there is a family, see that they are all collected here, and keep the door closed as much as possible, for remember that smoke always follows a draught, and fire always rushes after smoke. 5. On no account throw yourself, or allow others to throw themselves, from the window. If no assistance is at hand, and you are in extremity, tie the sheets together, and, having fastened one end to some heavy piece of furniture, let down the women and children one by one, by tying the end of the line of sheets round the waist and lowering them through the window that is over the door, rather than through one that is over the area. You can easily let yourself down when the helpless are saved. 6. If a woman’s clothes should catch fire, let her instantly roll herself over and over on the ground; if a man be present, let him throw her down and do the like, and then wrap her in a rug, coat, or the first woollen thing that is at hand. 7. Bystanders, the instant they see a fire, should run for the fire-escape, or to the police station if that is nearer, where a “jumping-sheet” is always to be found. Dancers, and those that are accustomed to wear light muslins and other inflammable articles of clothing, when they are likely to come in contact with the gas, would do well to remember, that by steeping them in a solution of alum they would not be liable to catch fire. If the rule were enforced at theatres, we might avoid any possible recurrence of such a During the twenty-one years that the Brigade has been in existence the firemen have been called out needlessly no less than 1,695 times, often indeed mischievously; for there are some idle people who think it amusing to send the men and engines miles away to imaginary fires. In most cases, however, these false alarms have originated in the over-anxiety of persons, who have hastened to the station for assistance, deceived by lights which they fancied to be of a suspicious character. Nature herself now and then gives a false alarm, and puts the Brigade to infinite trouble by her vagaries. Not only the men at one station, but nearly half of the entire force, were employed in November, 1835, from 11 P.M. to 6 A.M. on the succeeding morning, in running after the aurora borealis. Some of the dozen engines out on that occasion reached as far as Kilburn and Hampstead in search of those evanescent lights, which exactly simulated extensive fires. In the succeeding year the red rays of the rising sun took in some credulous members of the Brigade, and led them with their engines full swing along the Commercial and Mile-End Roads. Whilst on this false scent they came upon a real fire, which, although inferior to great Sol himself in grandeur, was far more remunerative, as the God of Morning knows nothing about rewards to first, second, and third engines. The most remarkable and universal false alarm caused by the play of the northern lights was in the autumn of this same year, when the whole north-eastern horizon seemed possessed by an angry conflagration, from which huge clouds of smoke appeared to roll away. On this occasion the public, as well as the firemen, were deceived: crowds poured forth from the West-end on foot and in carriages to see what they imagined to be a grand effect of the “devouring element;” and thirteen engines turned out with the full impression that a whole suburb of the metropolis was in flames. 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