Firemen and Their Exploits / With some account of the rise and development of fire-brigades, of various appliances for saving life at fires and extinguishing the flames.

by F. M. Holmes

Half-dazed persons crowded the streets, encumbered with household goods, and the narrow thoroughfares soon became choked with the struggling throng. But the flames seized upon the goods, and the panic-stricken people fled for their lives before the fierce attack. The lurid light fell on their white faces, and the terrible crackling and roaring of the flames mingled with their shrieks and shouts as they hurried along. Now the night would be obscured by dense clouds of thick smoke, and anon the fire would flash forth again more luridly than ever.

To add to the alarm, the cry would ring through the streets, or would be passed from mouth to mouth, that the pipes of the New River Company—then recently laid—were found to be dry. With the suspicion of Romanist plots prevailing, the scarcity of water and the origin of the fire were put down to fanatical incendiaries; or, as an old writer quaintly expressed it, "This doth smell of a popish design."

When the next morning dawned, the terrible conflagration, so far from having been extinguished, was raging furiously; the little jets and bucketsful of water, if any had been used, proved of no avail; and the narrow streets became, as it were, great sheets of flame.

But was nothing done to extinguish the fire? What appliances would the Londoners have had?

Here, perhaps, in the early hours of the conflagration, you might have seen a group of three men at the corner of a street working a hand-squirt. This instrument was of brass, and measured about 3 feet long. Two men held it by a handle on each side; and when the nozzle had been dipped into a bucket or a cistern near, and the water had flowed in, they would raise the squirt, while the third man pushed up the piston to discharge the water. The squirt might hold about four quarts of water.

A CITY FIRE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

If one man worked the squirt, he would hold it up by the handles, and push the end of the piston, which was generally guarded by a button, against his chest. But, at the best, it is obvious that the hand-squirt was a very inadequate contrivance.

Not far distant you might also have seen a similar squirt, mounted in a wheeled reservoir or cistern, the pistons, perhaps, worked by levers; and, possibly, in yet another street you might have noticed a pump of some kind, also working in a cistern; while here and there you might have come upon lines of persons passing buckets from hand to hand, bringing water either from the wells in the city, or from the river, or actually throwing water on the fire. Such were the appliances which we gather were then used for extinguishing fires.

But such contrivances as were then in the neighbourhood of Fish Street Hill appear to have been burnt before they could be used, and the people seem to have been too paralyzed with terror to have attempted any efforts.