--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
|1833|1834|1835|1836|1837|1838|1839|1840|1841|1842|1843
--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
Slightly damaged | 292| 338| 315| 397| 357| 383| 402| 451| 438| 521| 489
Seriously damaged | 135| 116| 125| 134| 122| 152| 165| 204| 34| 224| 231
Totally destroyed | 31| 28| 31| 33| 22| 33| 17| 26| 24| 24| 29
Total No. of Fires | 458| 482| 471| 564| 501| 568| 584| 681| 696| 769| 749
False Alarms | 59| 63| 66| 66| 89| 80| 70| 84| 67| 61| 79
Alarms from | | | | | | | | | | |
Chimneys on Fire | 75| 106| 106| 126| 127| 107| 101| 98| 92| 82| 83
Total No. of Calls | 592| 651| 643| 756| 717| 755| 755| 863| 855| 912| 911
Insuran. on Building| | | | | | | | | | |
and Contents | .. | .. | .. | 169| 173| 161| 169| 237| 343| 321| 276
Insurances on | | | | | | | | | | |
Building only | .. | .. | .. | 73| 47| 59| 58| 92| 149| 116| 124
Insurances on | | | | | | | | | | |
Contents only | .. | .. | .. | 104| 76| 128| 115| 104| 52| 112| 107
Uninsured | .. | .. | .. | 218| 205| 220| 242| 248| 152| 220| 242
--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+------+-------
|1844|1845|1846|1847|1848|1849|Total.|Average
--------------------+----+----+----+----+----+----+------+-------
Slightly damaged | 502| 431| 576| 536| 509| 582| 6,574| 470
Seriously damaged | 237| 244| 238| 273| 269| 228| 2,955| 211
Totally destroyed | 23| 32| 20| 27| 27| 28| 365| 26
Total No. of Fires | 762| 707| 834| 836| 805| 838| 9,894| 770
False Alarms | 70| 81| 119| 88| 120| 76| 1,150| 82
Alarms from | | | | | | | |
Chimneys on Fire | 94| 87| 69| 66| 86| 89| 1,307| 94
Total No. of Calls | 926| 875|1022| 990|1011|1003|12,351| 882
Insuran. on Building| | | | | | | |
and Contents | 313| 313| 302| 263| 310| 368| 3,718| 266
Insurances on | | | | | | | |
Building only | 138| 107| 137| 125| 120| 163| 1,508| 108
Insurances on | | | | | | | |
Contents only | 94| 73| 125| 157| 134| 72| 1,453| 104
Uninsured | 217| 214| 270| 291| 241| 235| 3,215| 230
--------------------+----+----+----+-----+---+----+------+-------
Thus we perceive that, out of an average of 665 fires per annum, the
information being derived from 17 years’ experience, the following were
the number of fires produced by different causes:--
Average No. of Fires per Annum.
Candles, various accidents with 169
Flues, foul, defective, &c. 75
Unknown 63
Gas 46
Stoves over-heated 37
Linen, drying, airing, &c. 30
Accidents of various kinds, for the most part unavoidable 27
Fire heat, application of, to various hazardous manufacturing processes 26
Fire sparks 21
Shavings, loose, ignited 20
Carelessness, palpable instances of 18
Furnaces, kilns, &c., defective or over-heated 16
Children playing with fire or candles 14
Tobacco smoking 14
Spontaneous combustion 13
Wilful 12
Lucifer-matches 11
Ovens 7
Fires, kindled on hearths and other improper places 7
Suspicious 7
Lamps 5
Drunkenness 5
Lime, slaking of 4
Apparel, ignited on the person 4
Fireworks 4
Hot cinders put away 3
Incautious fumigation 3
Reading, working, or smoking in bed 1·33
Hearths defective 1·25
------
665
Here, then, we find that while the greatest proportion of fires are
caused by accidents with candles, about one-ninth of the fires above
mentioned arise from foul flues, or 75 out of 665, a circumstance which
teaches us the usefulness of the class of labourers of whom we have
been lately treating.
It would seem that a much larger proportion of the fires are wilfully
produced than appear in the above table.
The Board of Health, in speaking of incendiarism in connection with
insurance, report:--
“Inquiries connected with measures for the improvement of the
population have developed the operation of insurances, in
engendering crimes and calamities; negatively, by weakening natural
responsibilities and motives to care and forethought; positively, by
temptations held out to the commission of crime in the facility with
which insurance money is usually obtainable.
“The _steady increase_ in the number of fires in the metropolis, whilst
our advance in the arts gives means for their diminution, is ascribable
mainly to the operation of these two causes, and to the division and
weakening of administrative authority. From information on which we
can rely, we feel assured that the crime of incendiarism for the sake
of insurance money exists to a far greater extent than the public are
aware of.”
Mr. Braidwood has expressed his opinion that only one-half of the
property in the metropolis is insured, not as to numbers of property,
but as to value; but the proportion of insured and uninsured houses
could not be ascertained.
Mr. Baddeley, the inspector to the Society for the Protection of Life
from Fire, who had given attention to the subject for the last 30
years, gave the Board the following account of the increase of fires:--
------------------+-----------+----------+----------
| | |Proportion
| Fires per | Of which | per Cent.
| Annum of | were |of Insured
|Houses and | Totally |Houses and
|Properties.|Uninsured.|Properties
| | | Burnt.
------------------+-----------+----------+----------
In the first seven| | |
years there were | | |
on an average | 623 | 215 | 65·15
| | |
In the second | | |
seven years | 790 | 244 | 69·3
------------------+-----------+----------+----------
During this period there has been a great increase in the number of
dwellings, but this has been chiefly in suburban places, where fires
rarely occur.
“The frequency of fires,” it is further stated, “led Mr. Payne, the
coroner of the City of London, to revive the exercise of the coroner’s
function of inquiring into the causes of fires; most usefully. Out
of 58 inquests held by him (in the City of London and the borough of
Southwark, which comprise only one-eighteenth of the houses of the
metropolis) since 1845, it appears that, 8 were proved to be wilful; 27
apparently accidental; and 23 from causes unknown, including suspicious
causes. The proportion of ascertained wilful fires was, therefore, 23
per cent.; which gives strong confirmation to the indications presented
by the statistical returns as to the excess of insured property burnt
above uninsured.”
The at once mean and reckless criminality of arson, by which a man
exposes his neighbours to the risk of a dreadful death, which he
himself takes measures to avoid, has long, and on many occasions, gone
unpunished in London. The insurance companies, when a demand is made
upon them for a loss through fire, institute an inquiry, carried on
quietly by their own people. The claimant is informed, if sufficient
reasons for such a step appear, that from suspicious circumstances,
which had come to the knowledge of the company, the demand would not
be complied with, and that the company would resist any action for
the recovery of the money. The criminal becomes alarmed, he is afraid
of committing himself, and so the matter drops, and the insurance
companies, not being required to pay the indemnification, are satisfied
to save their money, and let the incendiarism remain unnoticed or
unpunished. Mr. Payne, the coroner, has on some occasions strongly
commented on this practice as one which showed the want of a public
prosecutor.
* * * * *
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.”
When the city of Hamburgh was rebuilt two or three years back, after
its destruction by fire, it was rebuilt chiefly under the direction
of Mr. W. Lindley, the engineer, and, as far as Mr. Lindley could
accomplish, on sanitary principles, such as the abolition of cesspools.
The arrangements for the surface cleansing of the streets by means
of the hose and jet and the water-plugs, are made available for the
extinction of fires, and with the following results, as communicated by
Mr. Lindley:--
“Have there been fires in buildings in Hamburgh in the portion of the
town rebuilt?--Yes, repeatedly. They have all, however, been put out
at once. If they had had to wait the usual time for engines and water,
say 20 minutes or half an hour, these might all have led to extensive
conflagrations.
“What has been the effect on insurance?--The effect of the rapid
extinction of fires has brought to light to the citizens of Hamburgh,
the fact that the greater proportion of their fires are the work of
incendiaries, for the sake of the insurance money. A person is absent;
smoke is seen to exude; the alarm of fire is given, and the door is
forced open, the jet applied, and the fire extinguished immediately.
Case after case has occurred, where, upon the fire being extinguished,
the arrangements for the spread of the fire are found and made
manifest. Several of this class of incendiaries for the insurance
money are now in prison. The saving of money alone, by the prevention
of fires, would be worth the whole expense of the like arrangement
in London, where it is well known that similar practices prevail
extensively.”
The following statement was given by Mr. Quick, an engineer, on this
subject:--
“After the destruction of the terminus of the South Western Railway by
fire, I recommended them to have a 9-inch main, with 3-inch outlets
leading to six stand-pipes, with joining screws for hose-pipes to
be attached, and that they should carry a 3-inch pipe of the same
description up into each floor, so that a hose might be attached in any
room where the fire commenced.
“In how many minutes may the hose be attached?--There is only the time
of attaching the hose, which need be nothing like a minute. I have
indeed recommended that a short length of hose with a short nozzle or
branch should be kept attached to the cock, so that the cock has only
to be turned, which is done in an instant.
“It appears that fire-engines require 26 men to work each engine of two
7 inch barrels, to produce a jet of about 50 feet high. The arrangement
carried out, at your recommendation, with six jets, is equivalent to
keeping six such engines, and the power of 156 men, in readiness to
act at all times, night and day, at about a minute’s notice, for the
extinction of fires?--It will give a power more than equal to that
number of men; for the jets given off from a 20-inch main will be much
more regular and powerful, and will deliver more water than could be
delivered by any engine. The jets at that place would be 70 feet high.”
The system of roof-cisterns, which was at one time popular as a means
of extinction, has been found, it appears, on account of their leakage
and diffusion of damp, to be but sorry contrivances, and have very
generally been discontinued. Mr. Holme, a builder in Liverpool, gives
the following, even under the circumstances, amusing account of a fire
where such a cistern was provided:--
“The owner of a cotton kiln, which had been repeatedly burnt, took it
into his head to erect a large tank in the roof. His idea was, that
when a fire occurred, they should have water at hand; and when the
fire ascended, it would burn the wooden tank, and the whole of the
contents being discharged on the fire like a cataract, it would at
once extinguish it. Well, the kiln again took fire; the smoke was so
suffocating, that nobody could get at the internal pipe, and the whole
building was again destroyed. But what became of the tank? It could not
burn, because it was filled with water; consequently, it boiled most
admirably. No hole was singed in its side or bottom; it looked very
picturesque, but it was utterly useless.”
The necessity of almost immediate help is shown in the following
statement by Mr. Braidwood, when consulted on the subject of
fire-escapes, which under the present system are not considered
sufficiently effective:--
“Taking London to be six miles long and three miles broad, to have
anything like an efficient system of fire-escapes, it would be
necessary to have one with a man to attend it within a quarter of a
mile of each house, as assistance, to be _of any use, must generally
be rendered within five minutes after the alarm is given_. To do this
the stations must be within a quarter of a mile of each other (as the
escapes must be taken round the angles of the streets): 253 stations
would thus be required and as many men.
“At present scaling ladders are kept at all the engine stations, and
canvas sheets also at some of them; several lives have been saved by
them; but the distance of the stations from each other renders them
applicable only in a limited number of instances.”
The engines of the fire-brigade throw up about 90 gallons a minute.
Their number is about 100. The cost of a fire-engine is from 60_l._ to
100_l._, and the hose, buckets, and general apparatus, cost nearly the
same amount.