| Lucifers going off probably from heat | 80 | |
| Children playing with lucifers | 45 | |
| Rat gnawing lucifers | 1 | |
| Jackdaw playing with lucifers | 1 | |
| 127 | ||
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 ignitible fluid when mixed in certain proportions with common air. “A delightful novel” figures as a proximate, if not an immediate, cause of twenty-two fires. This might be expected; but what can be the meaning of a fire caused by a high tide? When we asked Mr. Braidwood the question, he answered, “Oh, we always look out for fires when there is a high tide. They arise from the heating of lime upon the addition of water.” Thus rain, we see, has caused four conflagrations, and simple over-heating forty-four. The lime does no harm so long as it is merely in contact with wood; but if iron happens to be in juxtaposition with the two, it speedily becomes red-hot, and barges on the river have been sunk, by reason of their bolts and iron knees burning holes in their bottoms. Of the singular entry, “rat gnawing a gaspipe,” the firemen state that it is common for rats to gnaw leaden service-pipes, for the purpose, it is supposed, of getting at the water, and in this instance the grey rodent laboured under a mistake, and let out the raw material of the opposite element. Intoxication is a fruitful cause of fires, especially in public-houses and inns.
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 fire might be hatching in a man’s premises during the whole of his lease, without making any sign!
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. Though arson is no longer punished by death, the hint is usually taken. Now and then, such flagrant offenders are met with, that the office cannot avoid pursuing them with the utmost rigour of the law. Such, in 1851, was the case of a “respectable” solicitor, living in Lime-street, Watling-street, who had insured his house and furniture for a sum much larger than they were worth. The means he adopted for the commission of his crime without discovery were apparently sure; but it was the very pains he took to accomplish his end which led to his detection. He had specially made to order a deep tray of iron, in the centre of which was placed a socket. The tray he filled with naphtha, and in the socket he put a candle, the light of which was shaded by a funnel. The candle was one of the kind which he used for his gig-lamp,—for he kept a gig,—and was calculated to last a stated time before it reached the naphtha. He furtively deposited the whole machine in the cellar, within eight inches of the wooden floor, in a place constructed to conceal it. The attorney went out, and on coming back again found, as he expected, that his house was on fire. Unfortunately, however, for him—if it is ever a misfortune to a scoundrel to be detected,—it was put out at a very early stage, and the firemen, whilst in the act of extinguishing it, discovered this infernal machine. The order to make it was traced to the delinquent: a female servant, irritated at the idea of his having left her in the house to be burnt to death, gave evidence against him. He was tried and convicted, and is now expiating his crime at Norfolk Island. Plans for rebuilding this villain’s house, and estimates of the expense, were found afterwards among his papers.
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 these, a certain percentage are supposed to be wilful. There is no denying that the crime of arson owes its origin entirely to the introduction of fire insurance; and there can be as little doubt that, of late years, it has been very much increased by the pernicious competition for business among the younger offices, which leads them to deal too leniently with their customers; or, in other words, to pay the money, and ask no questions. It is calculated that one fire in seven which occur among the small class of shopkeepers in London is an incendiary fire. Mr. Braidwood, whose experience is larger than that of any person, tells us that the greatest ingenuity is sometimes exercised to deceive the officers of the insurance company as to the value of the insured stock. In one instance, when the Brigade had succeeded in extinguishing the fire, he discovered a string stretched across one of the rooms in the basement of the house, on which ringlets of shavings dipped in turpentine were tied at regular intervals. On extending his investigations, he ascertained that a vast pile of what he thought were pounds of moist sugar consisted of parcels of brown paper, and that the loaves of white sugar were made of plaster of Paris. Ten to one but the “artful dodge,” which some scoundrel flatters himself is peculiarly his own, has been put in practice by hundreds of others before him. For this reason, fires that are wilful generally betray themselves to the practised eye of the Brigade. When an event of the kind “is going to happen” at home, a common circumstance is to find that the fond parent has treated the whole of his family to the theatre.
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 House, in the Isle of Mull. On Sunday, the 11th of November, the curtains of a bed were ignited, as was supposed by lightning; a window-blind followed; and immediately afterwards the curtains of five rooms broke out one after another into a flame; even the towels hanging up in the kitchen were burnt. The next day a bed took fire, and it being thought advisable to carry the bed-linen into the coach-house for safety, it caught fire three or four times during the process of removal. In a few days the phenomenon was renewed. The furniture, books, and everything else of an inflammable nature, were, with much labour, taken from the mansion, and again some body-linen burst into a flame on the way. Even after these precautions had been taken, and persons had been set to watch in every part of the house, the mysterious fires continued to haunt it until the 22nd of February, 1849. It was suspected from the first that they were the act of an incendiary, and upon a rigid examination of the household before the Fiscal-General and the Sheriff, the mischief was traced to the daughter of the housekeeper, a young girl, who was on a visit to her mother. She had effected her purpose, which was perfectly motiveless, by concealing combustibles in different parts of the house.
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 flames, which flared up immediately with tenfold power. It is scarcely necessary to state that the water was whisky, and that the country was Old Ireland.