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

The suggestion was made to pull down houses, so as to create gaps over which the fire could not pass; and this suggestion no doubt indicates one of the methods of former days. But the method was not at first successful on this occasion.

Thus, Pepys, in his Diary, tells us, under date of the Sunday: "At last [I] met my Lord Mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent, with a handkercher about his neck. To the King's message [to pull down houses before the fire] he cried, like a fainting woman, 'Lord! what can I do? I am spent: people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.'" This is a graphic little picture of the bewilderment of the people; and Pepys goes on to say that, as he walked home, he saw "people all almost distracted, and no manner of means used to quench the fire."

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON (FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT).

In a similar manner, another famous eye-witness, John Evelyn, notes in his Diary that "some stout seamen proposed, early enough to have saved nearly the whole city," the destruction of houses to make a wide gap; "but this some tenacious and avaricious men, aldermen, etc., would not permit, because their houses must have been of the first."

The main idea, therefore, of extinguishing the fire seems to have lain in the pulling down of houses to produce a wide gap over which the fire could not pass. But at first the civic authorities shrank from such bold measures. On Sunday, then, the flames were rushing fiercely onward, the ancient city echoing to their roaring and to the cries and shrieks of the populace. The houses by London Bridge, in Thames Street, and the neighbourhood were but heaps of smouldering ruins. The homeless people sought refuge in the fields outside the city by Islington and Highgate, and the city train-bands were placed under arms to watch for incendiaries; while, as if the horror of the terrible fire was not enough, numbers of ruffians were found engaged in the dastardly work of plunder. The clanging of the fire-bells, the crackling of the huge fire, the cries and curses of the people, made such a frightful din as can scarce be imagined; while many churches, attended on the previous Sunday by quiet worshippers, were now blazing in the fire.

That night the scene was appalling, and yet magnificent. An immense sheet of fire rose to the sky, rendering the heavens for miles like a vast lurid dome. The conflagration flamed a whole mile in diameter, hundreds of buildings were burning, and the high wind bent the huge flames into a myriad curious shapes, and bore great flakes of fire on to the roofs of other houses, kindling fresh flames as they fell. For ten miles distant the country was illumined as at noonday, while the smoke rolled, it is said, for fifty miles.

Evelyn describes the scene in his Diary, under date September 3rd: "I had public prayers at home. The fire continuing, after dinner I took coach with my wife and son and went to the Bankside in Southwark, where we beheld the dismal spectacle, the whole city in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames Street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed: and so returned exceeding astonished what would become of the rest.

"The fire having continued all this night (if I may call that night which was light as day for ten miles round about, after a dreadful manner) when conspiring with a fierce eastern wind in a very dry season; I went on foot to the same place, and saw the whole south part of the city burning from Cheapside to the Thames and all along Cornhill.... Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save, as, on the other [side], the carts, etc., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle! such as haply the world had not seen the like since the foundation of it, nor be outdone till the universal conflagration of it! All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above ten thousand houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like a hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for near two miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds also of smoke were dismal, and reached, upon computation, near fifty-six miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom or the last day."

On Monday the Royal Exchange perished in the sea of flame. By evening Cheapside had fallen, and beside the water's edge it was blazing in Fleet Street; while it had also burned backward, even against the wind, along the eastern part of Thames Street, toward Tower Hill. The heat was so terrible that persons could not approach within a furlong, while the very pathways were glowing with fiery heat. Some persons chartered barges and boats, and, filling them with such property as they could save, sent them down the Thames. Others paid large sums for carts to convey property far beyond the city walls. A piteous exodus of sick and sound, aged and young, crawled or fled to the spacious fields beyond the gates. The ground was strewn with movables for miles, and tents were erected to shelter the burned-out multitude.