IN MEDIÆVAL DAYS. AN EPOCH-MAKING FIRE.
"Prithee, good master, what's o' fire?"
"A baker's house they say, name of Farryner."
"Faith! it's in Pudding Lane, nigh Fish Street Hill," quoth another
spectator, coming up. "They say the oven was heated overmuch."
"It's an old house, and a poor one," said another speaker. "'Twill burn
like touchwood this dry weather."
"Aye, it have been dry this August, sure enow; and I reckon the rain
won't quench it to-night." And the speaker looked up to the starlit sky,
where never a cloud could be seen.
"Have they the squirts at work, good-man?"
"Aye, no doubt. 'Twill be quenched by morning, neighbour. Faith! 'tis
just an old worm-eaten house ablaze, and that's the tale of it."
But it was not "the tale of it." A strong east wind was blowing, and the
hungry flames spread quickly to neighbouring buildings. These houses
were old and partly decayed, and filled with combustible material, such
as oil, pitch, and hemp used in shipwright's work. In a comparatively
short time the ward of Billingsgate was all ablaze, and the fierce fire,
roaring along Thames Street, attacked St. Magnus Church at Bridgefoot.
Before the night was far spent, fire-bells were clashing loudly from the
steeples, alarming cries of "Fire! Fire!" resounded through the streets,
and numbers of people in the old narrow-laned city of London were
rushing half dressed from their beds.
It was the night of Saturday, September 2nd, 1666, a night ever
memorable in the history of London. About ten o'clock, any lingerers on
London Bridge--where houses were then built--might have seen a bright
flame shoot upward to the north. They probably conversed as we have
described, and retired to bed. But the fire spread from the baker's
shop, as we have seen, and the confusion and uproar of that terrible
night grew ever more apace.
Half-dazed persons crowded the streets, encumbered with household
goods, and the narrow thoroughfares soon became choked with the
struggling throng. But the flames seized upon the goods, and the
panic-stricken people fled for their lives before the fierce attack. The
lurid light fell on their white faces, and the terrible crackling and
roaring of the flames mingled with their shrieks and shouts as they
hurried along. Now the night would be obscured by dense clouds of thick
smoke, and anon the fire would flash forth again more luridly than ever.
To add to the alarm, the cry would ring through the streets, or would be
passed from mouth to mouth, that the pipes of the New River
Company--then recently laid--were found to be dry. With the suspicion of
Romanist plots prevailing, the scarcity of water and the origin of the
fire were put down to fanatical incendiaries; or, as an old writer
quaintly expressed it, "This doth smell of a popish design."
When the next morning dawned, the terrible conflagration, so far from
having been extinguished, was raging furiously; the little jets and
bucketsful of water, if any had been used, proved of no avail; and the
narrow streets became, as it were, great sheets of flame.
But was nothing done to extinguish the fire? What appliances would the
Londoners have had?
Here, perhaps, in the early hours of the conflagration, you might have
seen a group of three men at the corner of a street working a
hand-squirt. This instrument was of brass, and measured about 3 feet
long. Two men held it by a handle on each side; and when the nozzle had
been dipped into a bucket or a cistern near, and the water had flowed
in, they would raise the squirt, while the third man pushed up the
piston to discharge the water. The squirt might hold about four quarts
of water.
[Illustration: A CITY FIRE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.]
If one man worked the squirt, he would hold it up by the handles, and
push the end of the piston, which was generally guarded by a button,
against his chest. But, at the best, it is obvious that the hand-squirt
was a very inadequate contrivance.
Not far distant you might also have seen a similar squirt, mounted in a
wheeled reservoir or cistern, the pistons, perhaps, worked by levers;
and, possibly, in yet another street you might have noticed a pump of
some kind, also working in a cistern; while here and there you might
have come upon lines of persons passing buckets from hand to hand,
bringing water either from the wells in the city, or from the river, or
actually throwing water on the fire. Such were the appliances which we
gather were then used for extinguishing fires.
But such contrivances as were then in the neighbourhood of Fish Street
Hill appear to have been burnt before they could be used, and the people
seem to have been too paralyzed with terror to have attempted any
efforts.
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."
[Illustration: 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.
At length St. Paul's succumbed. It had stood tall and strong in the
space of its churchyard, lifting its head loftily amid the billows of
flame; but at last the terrible fire, driven toward it by the east wind,
lapped the roof, and seized some scaffold-poles standing around. The
lead on the roof melted in the fierce heat, and ran down the walls in
streams; the stones split, and pieces flew off with reports like
cannon-shots; and beams fell crashing like thunder to the ground.
Evelyn notes, under date September 4th: "The burning still rages, and it
was now gotten as far as the Inner Temple; all Fleet Street, the Old
Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paul's Chain, Watling
Street now flaming, and most of it reduced to ashes; the stones of
Paul's flew like granados, the melting lead running down the streets in
a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no
horse nor man was able to tread on them, and the demolition had stopped
all the passages, so that no help could be applied. The eastern wind
still more impetuously driving the flames forward. Nothing but the
almighty power of God was able to stop them, for vain was the help of
man."
On the eastern side of St. Paul's, the old Guildhall fell to the fire.
On Tuesday night, it was, says a contemporary writer, the Rev. Thomas
Vincent, in a little volume published a year afterwards, "a fearfull
spectacle, which stood the whole body of it together in view, for
several hours together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I
suppose because the timber was such solid oake), in a bright shining
coale as if it had been a Pallace of gold, or a great building of
burnished brass."
The fire had now become several miles in circumference. It had reached
the Temple at the western end of Fleet Street by the river, and was
blazing up by Fetter Lane to Holborn; then backward, its course lay
along Snow Hill, Newgate Street--Newgate Prison being consumed--and so
past the Guildhall and Coleman Street, on to Bishopsgate Street and
Leadenhall Street. It seemed as though all London would be burnt, and
that it would spread westward even to Whitehall and Westminster Abbey.
But now the King (Charles II.) and his brother the Duke of York and
their courtiers were fully aroused; and it must have become clear to
even the meanest intelligence that houses must be blown down on an
extensive scale, in order to create large gaps over which the fire could
not pass. All through Tuesday night, therefore, the sound of explosions
mingled with the roaring of the fire.
By the assistance of soldiers, and by the influence of the royal
personages, buildings were blown up by gunpowder in the neighbourhood of
Temple Bar, which then, of course, spanned the western end of Fleet
Street; at Pye Corner near the entrance to Smithfield, and also at other
points of vantage. These bold means, together, no doubt, with the
falling of the wind, and also the presence of some strong brick
buildings, as by the Temple, checked and stopped the fire. Some began
now to bestir themselves, "who hitherto," remarks Evelyn, "had stood as
men intoxicated with their hands across." On the Wednesday, therefore,
the fire extended no farther west than the Temple, and no farther north
than Pye Corner near Smithfield; but within this area it still burned,
and the heat was still so great that no one would venture near it.
During the Wednesday, the King was most energetic. He journeyed round
the fire twice, and kept workers at their posts, and assisted in
providing food and shelter for the people. Orders were sent into the
country for provisions and tents, and also for boards wherewith to build
temporary dwellings. On Thursday the Great Fire was everywhere
extinguished; but on Friday the ruins were still smouldering and
smoking, and the ground so hot that a pedestrian could not stand still
for long on one spot. From St. Paul's Churchyard, where the ground rises
to about the greatest height in the old city, the eye would range over a
terrible picture of widespread destruction, from the Temple to the Tower
and from the Thames to Smithfield. Two hundred thousand homeless persons
were camping out, or lying beside such household goods as they had been
able to save, in the fields by Islington and Highgate. It has been
computed that no fewer than 13,200 houses, 89 churches, including St.
Paul's, 400 streets, and several public buildings, together with four
stone bridges and three of the city gates, etc., were destroyed, while
the fire swept over an area of 436 acres.
Now, in connection with this great calamity, we cannot find any
appliance at work corresponding to our modern fire-engine. The
inhabitants of London seem to have been almost, if not quite, as badly
provided against fire as Rome in the days of Nero.
In fact, the chief protection in early days in England seems to have
been a practice of the old proverb that prevention is better than cure,
care being exercised to regulate the fires used for domestic purposes:
we see an instance in the arrangement of the curfew-bell, or
_couvre-feu_, a bell to extinguish all fires at eight at night. Still,
when conflagrations did occur, we may suppose that buckets and
hand-squirts, as soon as mankind came to construct them, were the
appliances used.
Entries for fire-extinguishing machines of some sort have been found in
the accounts of many German towns: for instance, in the building
accounts of Augsburg for 1518, "instruments of fire" or "water-syringes"
are mentioned.
Fires appear to have been very frequent in Germany in the latter part of
the fifteenth and in the sixteenth century. And though we do not know
much of the contrivances used in Europe in the Middle Ages, it is not
until 1657 that we have any reliable record of a machine at all
resembling Hero's siphon on the one hand, or the modern fire-engine on
the other.
This record is given by Caspar Schott, a Jesuit, and tells of an engine
constructed by Hautsch of Nuremberg, a city long famous for mechanical
contrivances. The machine was really a large water-cistern drawn on a
wheeled car, or sledge; and the secret of its propulsive power, Schott
supposes was a horizontal cylinder containing a piston and producing an
action like a pump. The cistern measured 8 feet long by 4 feet high, and
2 feet wide; its small width being probably designed for entering narrow
streets. It was operated by twenty-eight men, and it forced a stream of
water an inch thick to a height of about eighty feet. Hautsch desired to
keep the methods of its construction secret; but, apparently, it was not
furnished with the important air-chamber, and does not seem to have
differed very materially from Hero's siphon. Schott also says he had
seen one forty years before at Königshofen.
Notwithstanding, therefore, the danger of great conflagrations, mankind
does not seem to have made much progress in the construction of
fire-engines from the days of Ctesibius until the time of Charles II., a
period of about eighteen hundred years. On the other hand, we must
remember that syringes and water-buckets can be of very great service
when promptly and efficiently used. Even to-day London firemen find
similar appliances of great value for small conflagrations in rooms.
But we get a vivid little picture of the helplessness of even the
seventeenth-century public before a fire of any size, in a description
left by Wallington of a fire on Old London Bridge in 1633. Houses were
then built on the bridge, and Wallington says: "All the conduits near
were opened, and the pipes that carried the water through the streets
were cut open, and the water swept down with brooms with help enough;
but it was the will of God it should not prevail. For the three engines
which are such excellent things that nothing that ever was devised could
do so much good, yet none of them did prosper, for they were all broken,
and the tide was very low that they could get no water, and the pipes
that were cut yielded but littel. Some ladders were broke to the hurt of
many; for several had their legges broke, some their arms; and some
their ribes, and many lost their lives." More than fifty houses, we may
add, were destroyed by this fire.
Of what character were the engines to which he refers we cannot tell. We
do not know whether any engine like Hautsch's was established in London
at this time, or at the date of the Great Fire; but if so, it was not
apparently much in vogue. It must be remembered that the term "engine"
was applied indiscriminately to any sort of mechanical contrivance, and
even to a skilful plan or method (Shakespeare uses the word to designate
an instrument of torture); if, therefore, the word is used for a
fire-extinguishing appliance by any old writer, it does not follow that
the so-called engine would resemble Hautsch's machine or a modern
fire-engine.
[Illustration: FIRE-EXTINGUISHING APPLIANCES, SQUIRTS, BUCKETS, ETC.,
A.D. 1667.]
Judging from some Instructions of the Corporation after the fire,
hand-squirts and ladders and buckets were still chiefly relied upon in
1668. The Instructions are, moreover, interesting, as showing what
action the Corporation took after the Great Fire.
The city was divided into four districts, each of which was to be
furnished with eight hundred leathern buckets, fifty ladders varying in
sizes from 16 to 42 feet long, also "so many hand-squirts of brass as
will furnish two for every parish, four-and-twenty pickaxe-sledges, and
forty shod shovels." Further, each of the twelve companies was to
provide thirty buckets, one engine, six pickaxe-sledges, three ladders,
and two hand-squirts of brass. Again, "all the other inferior companies"
were to provide similar appliances; and aldermen were likewise to
provide buckets and hand-squirts of brass. The pickaxes and shovels were
for use in demolishing houses and walls if necessary, or dealing with
ruins; and though some kind of engine is mentioned, we know not whether
it was a hand-squirt mounted in a cistern, or some sort of portable
pump.
We may regard these regulations, however, as fixing for us the
hand-squirt and the bucket as the principal means of fire extinguishment
in Britain up to that date.
But now a great development was at hand, and a new chapter was to
commence in the story.