London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

A few words as regards the means of extinction and help at fires.

Upwards of two years ago the Commissioners of Police instructed their officers to note the time which elapsed between the earliest alarm of fire and the arrival of the first engine. Seventeen fires were noted, and the average duration of time before the fire-brigade or any parochial or local fire-engine, reached the spot, was 36 minutes. Two or three of these fires were in the suburbs; so that in this crowded city, so densely packed with houses and people, fifteen fires raged unchecked for more than half-an-hour.

There are in the metropolis, not including the more distant suburbs, 150 public fire stations, with engines provided under the management of the parochial authorities. The fire-brigade has but seventeen stations on land, and two on the river, which are, indeed, floating engines, one being usually moored near Southwark-bridge, the other having no stated place, being changed in its locality, as may be considered best. In the course of three years, the term of the official inquiry, the engines of the fire-brigade reached on the average the place where a fire was raging thirty-five times as the earliest means of assistance, when the parochial engines did the same only in the proportion of two to the thirty-five.

Mr. Braidwood, the director of the fire-brigade, stated, when questioned on the subject with a view to a report to be laid before Parliament, that “the average time of an engine turning out with horses was from three to seven minutes.” The engines are driven at the rate of ten miles an hour along the streets, which, in the old coaching days, was considered the “best royal mail pace.” Indeed, there have been frequent complaints of the rapidity with which the fire-engines are driven, and if the drivers were not skilful and alert, it would really amount to recklessness.

“Information of the breaking out of a fire,” it is stated in the report, “will be conveyed to the station of the brigade at the rate of about five miles an hour: thus in the case of the occurrence of a fire within a mile of the station, the intelligence may be conveyed to the station in about twelve minutes; the horses will be put to, and the engine got out into the street in about five minutes on the average; it traverses the mile in about six minutes; and the water has to be got into the engine, which will occupy about five minutes, making, under the most favourable circumstances for such a distance, 28 minutes, or for a half-mile distance, an average of not less than 20 minutes.”

The average distance of the occurring fires from a brigade station were, however, during a period of three years, terminating in 1850, upwards of a mile. One was five miles, several four miles, more were two miles, and a mile and a half, while the most destructive fires were at an average distance of a mile and three quarters. Thus it was impossible for a fire-brigade to give assistance as soon as assistance was needed, and, under other circumstances, might have been rendered. And all this damage may and does very often result from what seems so trifling a neglect as the non-sweeping of a chimney.

Mr. W. Baddeley, an engineer, and a high authority on this subject, has stated that he had attended fires for 30 years in London, and that, of 838 fires which took place in 1849, two-thirds might have been easily extinguished had there been an immediate application of water. In some places, he said, delay originated from the turn-cocks being at wide intervals, and some of the companies objecting to let any but their own servants have the command of the main-cocks.

The Board of Health have recommended the formation of a series of street-water plugs within short distances of each other, the water to be constantly on at high pressure night and day, and the whole to be under the charge of a trained body of men such as compose the present fire-brigade, provided at appointed stations with every necessary appliance in the way of hose, pipes, ladders, &c. “The hose should be within the reach,” it is urged in the report, “fixed, and applied on an average of not more than five minutes from the time of the alarm being given; that is to say, in less than one-fourth of the time within which fire-engines are brought to bear under existing arrangements, and with a still greater proportionate diminution of risks and serious accidents.”

Nor is this mode of extinguishing fires a mere experiment. It is successfully practised in some of the American cities, Philadelphia among the number, and in some of our own manufacturing towns. Mr. Emmott, the engineer and manager of the Oldham Water-works, has described the practice in that town on the occurrence of fires:—

“In five cases out of six, the hose is pushed into a water-plug, and the water thrown upon a building on fire, for the average pressure of water in this town is 146 feet; by this means our fires are generally extinguished even before the heavy engine arrives at the spot. The hose is much preferred to the engine, on account of the speed with which it is applied, and the readiness with which it is used, for one man can manage a hose, and throw as much water on the building on fire as an engine worked by many men. On this account we very rarely indeed use the engines, as they possess no advantage whatever over the hose.”