The objection is raised, however, that the streets of the City are already too crowded with pipes, while advantage of the pressure from the water-main is lost, and also the vacuum caused by the engine.
Noticing other improvements, we observe that the number of fire-alarm posts has also been greatly increased. The alarm consists of a red post in the street, with a glass face at the top front. The glass is readily broken, and the handle within it pulled, when a loud electric bell rings at the nearest fire-station. The Post-Office provides and maintains the fire-alarms; and Commander Wells, chief officer of the brigade, has devised a portable telephone, which can be plugged into a fire-alarm post, and a message sent by it from a fire to the station. Arrangements have been made with the Post-Office to supply the telephones and make the plug-holes. Over 2,380 fire-alarms were raised in 1897, of which 363 were maliciously-given false alarms. Practical jokes of this kind have been heavily punished, as they richly deserve.
Many false alarms are also given which cannot be regarded as malicious, but are genuine mistakes, such as of supposed chimney fires. Over 500 of these were recorded in one year. In 1898, the number of malicious false alarms was happily less—viz., 270; while the full record of false alarms reached 830.
The total number of fires in the metropolis in that year was 3,585—an average of nearly ten per day. This total gives an increase of 571 above the average; but only 205 out of the whole 3,585 were serious. There seems no doubt but that the public are learning to use the fire-alarms more readily and to give earlier intimation of fires. But, as the chief officer points out, while everybody knows the nearest letter-box, very few comparatively even now seem to know the nearest fire-alarm. Lamp-posts near the alarms are now painted red, and are fitted with a red pane of glass in order to attract attention; and we imagine the probability is that the alarms will be increasingly used at even the slightest appearance of fire.
Not only is each fire-station connected with a dozen or more fire-alarms in its neighbourhood, but it is also in electric communication with other fire-stations. There are 114 lines of telephone between the stations, and sixteen between brigade- and police-stations; while electric communication exists between stations and ninety-eight public or other buildings. In fact, the whole fire-brigade establishment is bound together by a web of electric wire, the centre being the headquarters at Southwark.
The remarkable organization of the brigade, famous for its leaders, famous for the bravery and skill of its men, and famous for the number and variety of its efficient appliances, has been a growth of comparatively few years. Starting in 1825 with the union of a few fire-office companies, it grew in seventy-three years to a remarkably strong and increasing force, with a multitude of hydrants, stations, horsed escapes, fire-alarms, and other appliances.
The development attained in these seventy-odd years, as compared with the hundreds of years before, is surely marvellous, though doubtless some seeds of the development—as in the introduction of the modern fire-engine—were sown before. But step by step it has proceeded, utilizing now the discoveries of science and now the work of the engineer, until it has reached its great position of usefulness and of high esteem.
It would be tedious to mark every detail of development. The work begun by his predecessors was carried still further by Captain Shaw, and under him the London Brigade became one of the most efficient in the world.
