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 catastrophe as happened at Drury Lane in 1844, when poor Clara Webster was so burnt before the eyes of the audience, that she died in a few days.
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.
The alarms from chimneys on fire have called the engines out no less than 1,982 times during the years the Brigade has been established, or on an average twice a week. Let us hope that, as we are setting about clearing the atmosphere by Act of Parliament, accidents of this kind will gradually cease. We may now watch with satisfaction many a tall shaft, as we steam down the river, that seems to stand idle in the air; the great rolling clouds of smoke that used to obscure the sky on the southern bank of the Thames are no longer seen, and the air is growing appreciably purer. It is evident that our manufacturers, where they have not become alive to the saving it would effect, have been coerced by the vigorous manner in which the Home Secretary has put the law in force against these black offenders; and we may hope that Dr. Arnott’s smoke-consuming grate, or some modification of it, will ere long find its way into every house to complete the work.
THE POLICE AND THE THIEVES.
Most men who have arrived at that age when the last one or two buttons of the waistcoat are allowed to be unloosened after dinner, can remember the time when the safety of life and property in the metropolis depended on the efforts of the parochial watchman, a species of animal after the model of the old hackney coachman, encumbered with the self same drab greatcoat, with countless capes, with the self same Belcher handkerchief, or comforter, speaking in the same husky voice, and just as sottish, stupid, and uncivil. At night—for it was not thought worth while to set a watch in the day-time—the authorities provided him with a watch-box in order that he might enjoy his snooze in comfort, and furnished him with a huge lantern in order that its rays might enable the thief to get out of his way in time. As if these aids to escape were not sufficient for the midnight marauder, the watchman was provided with a staff with which he thundered on the pavement as he walked, a noise which he alternated with crying the hour and the state of the weather in a loud singing voice, and which told of his whereabouts when he himself was far out of sight.
Up to the year 1828, and indeed for ten years later, in the city these men were the sole defence by night of the first metropolis in the world. The Charlies, as they were familiarly termed, had very little fight in them at any time; but it is well known that they “winked hard,” when required to do so by people who could afford to pay them for it. It is not astonishing that crimes under such a police flourished apace, or that robberies increased to an extent which alarmed all thoughtful people. Mr. Colquhoun, a magistrate, whose work on the police, written at the beginning of the century, gave the first ideas of the reforms which have been since adopted; estimates that the annual value of the property stolen at the time at which he wrote, was at least 1,500,000l.; and that the evil was gaining ground may be judged from the fact that the number of receivers of stolen goods had increased, between 1780 and 1800, from 300 to 3,000!
In addition to the nightly watch there was another class of persons who, if more active, were calculated in a still greater degree to defeat justice, but in a totally opposite direction: we allude to those men who made their bread out of the blood of the criminal population. The Government of the country was mainly to blame for the sins committed by these loathsome creatures. Since the time of Jonathan Wild thief-catchers had been stimulated to make criminals by what was termed Parliamentary rewards, or sums of forty pounds given by the Home Office to persons affording such information as would lead to the conviction of felons. The object of the officers was to secure blood-money, not to suppress crime; and it was their deliberate practice to allow robberies to proceed, which they might have prevented, in order to obtain the reward. To use their own language, they were accustomed “to let the matter ripen” until the fee was secure, and the work was cut out for the hangman. These men must not be confounded with the Bow Street runners, or detective police, some of whom were able and perhaps honest men; but they chiefly occupied themselves with thief-catching in private preserves, where the pay was ample, and contributed little if anything to the suppression of general crime.