TWO METHODS OF CARRYING—A WOMAN OR A MAN.
Sheer physical strength is a desideratum in all branches of public service, but especially so in the Fire Brigade, where lives and property almost always depend upon nerve and muscle. Accordingly the strength test is necessarily a heavy one. A fire escape is brought into the yard, and is rested lengthwise on the flagstones. To a ring-bolt in the stones a tackle is hooked, the other end being made fast to the foot of the escape. The candidate is then requested to haul the escape bodily from the ground into its normal vertical position. It is an immensely trying pull of 240 lbs. If the candidate manages it, he becomes a probationer at a salary of 24s. per week.
The Southwark instructors reckon that it takes three months' hard work and unceasing drill before a man is competent to leave the yard, even as a fireman of the fourth class. During this period he is not permitted to attend a fire in any capacity.
No other sort of drill equals in fascination that which the embryo M.F.B. man must go through. Unlike a soldier or sailor, he must undertake many of the actual dangers of warfare during ordinary drill on the parade-ground. The instruction, conducted by superintendents who have gone through the mill themselves and know every detail of the work, is divided into two parts—theoretical and practical.
The room in which most of the theory is taught is particularly interesting. It contains a half section of every apparatus or device used by or in connection with the brigade. There is a half section of the boiler of the familiar steamer, a half section of a street lamp, indicating the position of a hydrant, and half sections of hose, nozzles, fire-plugs, flanges, and all the complicated machinery forming parts of the various types of engines in use.
That very important part of instruction, the use of steam, is undertaken in the yard, so that practical demonstration with a steamer under way may accompany the lesson.
Hand in hand with theoretical instruction, a daily grounding goes on in what may be termed emergency drill. To the layman, this is perhaps the most interesting part of the work.
Everything must be rehearsed over and over again. Every movement, every action must be practised again and again till it becomes automatic, before a man can feel sure of doing the right thing at the right time under circumstances of difficulty and danger. Most of us have seen a fireman descend an escape, bearing on his back a human burden, possibly heavier than himself; we wonder how it is done, but it does not occur to us that this same evolution is practised every day at Southwark in all its separate movements.
Our illustrations of this drill show how a fireman is taught to lift and carry a human body. In the first picture, the men under instruction are at "Attention." The second shows the first movement, the body being lifted on to its knees. In the third it is raised to its feet. In the final evolution the prostrate figure is bodily lifted on to the rescuer's back. The whole operation scarcely occupies a moment of time. By this method, the strain of lifting is reduced to a minimum, and the position of the body across the shoulders leaves both hands free.