An unfortunate counterpart of the technical gains achieved in fire-fighting during the hand-pump period was the sharp increase in rivalry among different volunteer companies. In many cases this spirit of competition spilled over into acts of violence.
Not content to use fair means of reaching a fire first, some rival volunteer companies put obstructions in front of their competitors’ engines, chopped hose to ribbons and broke into fisticuffs at every opportunity; one famous battle in Manhattan lasted for several hours. Many companies found the sidewalks smoother than the streets; whenever possible they pulled their engines at full speed down the sidewalk, scattering hapless pedestrians aside like ten pin’s. The spirit of the day was “Go as you please” and “Hit a head wherever you see one.” If fists wouldn’t do the job, wrenches and axes were called upon. If they were insufficient, even firearms were sometimes employed.
Such behaviour was not confined only to the largest cities. Dayton historian Charlotte Reeve Conover reported that “Sometime during the fifties the [fire] companies changed in personnel. The solid citizens took to lying abed and letting the boys about town fight fires, with the result that demoralization set in which put an end to the volunteer system. It was competition which ruined them.”
She adds, “It will not be found surprising that in time there came to be something that Daytonians dreaded worse than a fire, and that was the Fire Department.”
The extent of the inter-company rivalry was dramatized by a memorable street battle which occurred in 1856 in Dayton. While fire was destroying a carpentry shop, the “Vigilance” and the “Deluge” fire companies began arguing over which should take the more advantageous position for battling the flames. Eventually the fire was forgotten as the volunteers engaged in a free-for-all. One fireman during the course of the fight was mortally injured when hit on the head with a brick. This incident was only one of several which led to the disbandment of Dayton’s volunteer fire companies in 1863 and the setting up of a regular paid fire department.
It was during the pre-Civil War period of strife, and only forty miles southwest of Dayton, that an unknown mechanical genius named Moses Latta was perfecting the steam fire engine. Although the Cincinnatian’s development would one day make the old hand pumpers as obsolete as the fire buckets which preceded them, it would still be some time yet before the full significance of his work was realized.
Intense rivalry among volunteer companies in the era of the hand pumpers frequently resulted in street fights. One battle began when two companies argued over use of a fire hydrant. The so-called hydrant later turned out to be only a half-buried cannon used as a hitching post.
“Uncle Joe Ross” Arrives
Moses Latta was not the first man to harness steam as a replacement for muscles in fire-fighting. The earliest steam fire engine had been fashioned in 1829 in London by George Braithwaite, a noted engineer. His assistant on the project was John Ericsson, who more than three decades later was to win recognition in this country as the designer of the ironclad “Monitor” of Civil War fame. Appropriately dubbed the “Novelty,” Braithwaite’s steam fire engine never captured the public’s fancy, although a few were sold on the Continent, one purchaser being the King of Prussia. In 1833 Braithwaite gave up his project.