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 cost to each person would be hardly more pence than it is pounds at present to the provident few.
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 households might be considered to be about, to 3·34 at 1 P.M., 3·55 at 5 P.M., and 8·15 per cent. at 10 P.M., which is just the time at which a fire left to itself by the departure of the workmen would have had swing enough to become visible.
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:—
| Curtains | 2,511 | |
| Candle | 1,178 | |
| Flues | 1,555 | |
| Stoves | 494 | |
| Gas | 932 | |
| Light dropped down Area | 13 | |
| Lighted Tobacco falling down ditt | 7 | |
| Dust falling on horizontal Flue | 1 | |
| Doubtful | 76 | |
| Incendiarism | 89 | |
| Carelessness | 100 | |
| Intoxication | 80 | |
| Dog | 6 | |
| Cat | 19 | |
| Hunting Bugs | 15 | |
| Clothes-horse upset by Monkey | 1 | |
| Lucifers | 80 | |
| Children playing with ditto | 45 | |
| Rat gnawing ditto | 1 | |
| Jackdaw playing with ditto | 1 | |
| Rat gnawing Gaspipe | 1 | |
| Boys letting off Fireworks | 14 | |
| Fireworks going off | 63 | |
| Children playing with Fire | 45 | |
| Spark from ditto | 243 | |
| Spark from Railway | 4 | |
| Smoking Tobacco | 166 | |
| Smoking Ants | 1 | |
| Smoking in Bed | 2 | |
| Reading in ditto | 22 | |
| Sewing in ditto | 4 | |
| Sewing by Candle | 1 | |
| Lime overheating | 44 | |
| Waste ditto | 43 | |
| Cargo of Lime ditto | 2 | |
| Rain slacking ditto | 5 | |
| High Tide | 1 | |
| Explosion | 16 | |
| Spontaneous Combustion | 43 | |
| Heat from Sun | 8 | |
| Lightning | 8 | |
| Carboy of Acid bursting | 2 | |
| Drying Linen | 1 | |
| Shirts falling into Fire | 6 | |
| Lighting and Upsetting Naphtha Lamp | 58 | |
| Fire from Iron Kettle | 1 | |
| Sealing Letter | 1 | |
| Charcoal fire of a Suicide | 1 | |
| Insanity | 5 | |
| Bleaching Nuts | 7 | |
| Unknown | 1,323 |
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 percentage of broken heads and limbs received into the hospitals; and here we see that a regular number of houses take fire, year by year, from the leaping out of a spark or the dropping of a smouldering pipe of tobacco. It may indeed be a long time before another conflagration will arise from “a monkey upsetting a clothes-horse,” but we have no doubt such an accident will recur in its appointed cycle.
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.