fire, children playing with stoves, &c.) it is remarkable how uniformly
the same numbers occur under each head from year to year. General laws
obtain as much in small as in great events. We are informed by the Post
Office authorities that about eight persons daily drop their letters into
the post without directing them; we know that there is an unvarying
percentage of broken heads and limbs received into the hospitals; and here
we see that a regular number of houses take fire, year by year, from the
leaping out of a spark or the dropping of a smouldering pipe of tobacco.
It may indeed be a long time before another conflagration will arise from
"a monkey upsetting a clothes-horse," but we have no doubt such an
accident will recur in its appointed cycle.
Although gas figures so largely as a cause of fire, it does not appear
that its rapid introduction of late years into private houses has been
attended with danger. There is another kind of light, however, which the
insurance offices look upon with terror, especially those who make it
their business to insure farm property. The assistant-secretary of one of
the largest fire-offices, speaking broadly, informed us that the
introduction of the lucifer-match _caused them an annual loss of ten
thousand pounds_! In the foregoing list we see in how many ways they have
given rise to fires.
Lucifers going off probably from heat 80
Children playing with lucifers 45
Rat gnawing lucifers 1
Jackdaw playing with lucifers 1
----
127
One hundred and twenty-seven known fires thus arise from this single
cause; and no doubt many of the twenty-five fires ascribed to the agency
of cats and dogs were owing to their having thrown down boxes of matches
at night, which they frequently do, and which is almost certain to produce
combustion. The item "rat gnawing lucifer," reminds us to give a warning
against leaving about wax lucifers where there are either rats or mice,
for these vermin constantly run away with them to their holes behind the
inflammable canvas, and eat the wax until they reach the phosphorus, which
is ignited by the friction of their teeth. Many fires are believed to have
been produced by this singular circumstance. How much, again, must
lucifers have contributed to swell the large class of conflagrations whose
causes are unknown! Another cause of fire, which is of recent date, is the
use of naphtha in lamps,--a most ignitible fluid when mixed in certain
proportions with common air. "A delightful novel" figures as a proximate,
if not an immediate, cause of twenty-two fires. This might be expected;
but what can be the meaning of a fire caused by a high tide? When we asked
Mr. Braidwood the question, he answered, "Oh, we always look out for fires
when there is a high tide. They arise from the heating of lime upon the
addition of water." Thus rain, we see, has caused four conflagrations, and
simple over-heating forty-four. The lime does no harm so long as it is
merely in contact with wood; but if iron happens to be in juxtaposition
with the two, it speedily becomes red-hot, and barges on the river have
been sunk, by reason of their bolts and iron knees burning holes in their
bottoms. Of the singular entry, "rat gnawing a gaspipe," the firemen state
that it is common for rats to gnaw leaden service-pipes, for the purpose,
it is supposed, of getting at the water, and in this instance the grey
rodent laboured under a mistake, and let out the raw material of the
opposite element. Intoxication is a fruitful cause of fires, especially in
public-houses and inns.
It is commonly imagined that the introduction of hot water, hot air, and
steam-pipes, as a means of heating buildings, cuts off one avenue of
danger from fire. This is an error. Iron pipes, often heated up to 400°,
are placed in close contact with floors and skirting-boards, supported by
slight diagonal props of wood, which a much lower degree of heat will
suffice to ignite. The circular rim supporting a still at the
Apothecaries' Hall, which was used in the preparation of some medicament
that required a temperature of only 300°, was found, not long ago, to have
charred a circle, at least a quarter of an inch deep, in the wood beneath
it, in less than six months. Mr. Braidwood, in his evidence before a
Committee of the House of Lords, in 1846, stated that it was his belief
that by long exposure to heat, not much exceeding that of boiling water,
or 212°, timber is brought into such a condition that it will fire without
the application of a light. The time during which this process of
desiccation goes on, until it ends in spontaneous combustion, is, he
thinks, from eight to ten years; _so that a fire might be hatching in a
man's premises during the whole of his lease, without making any sign_!
Mr. Hosking, in his very useful and sensible little "Guide to the proper
Regulation of Buildings in Towns," quotes the following case, which
completely confirms Mr. Braidwood's opinion, and explodes the idea that
heat applied through the medium of pipes must be safe.
"Day and Martin's well-known blacking manufactory in High Holborn was
heated by means of hot water passing through iron tubes into the
various parts of the building. In December, 1848, the wooden casing
and other woodwork about the upright main pipes were found to be on
fire, and from no other cause that could be discovered than the
constant exposure for a long time of the wood to heat from the pipes.
In this case the pipes were not in contact with the wooden casing, but
they were stayed and kept upright by cross fillets of wood, which
touched them, and these it was which appeared to have taken fire. The
small circulating pipes which conveyed the hot water throughout the
several chambers were raised from the floor to about the extent of
their own diameter, and the floors showed no signs of fire where the
pipes were so removed; but in _every case_ where the prop or saddle
which held the pipe up from the floor had been displaced, and the pipe
had been allowed to sag and touch the floor, _the boards were
charred_. It was understood that the temperature of the water in the
pipes never much exceeded 300°. The practical teaching of this case
clearly is, that pipes should on no consideration be placed nearer to
wood than the distance of their own diameters. Wood dried in the
thorough manner we have mentioned is so liable to catch fire at the
momentary propinquity of flame, that practical men imagine there must
be an atmosphere of some kind surrounding it of a highly inflammable
nature. In cases of pine wood we could well understand such a theory,
as we know that a stick thrust into the fire will emit from its free
end a volatile spirit of turpentine, which lights like a jet of gas.
"Mercers' Hall, burnt in 1853, was the victim of its hot-water pipes,
which had not been in work more than four or five years. The vaulted
room in the British Museum, which contains some of the Nineveh
marbles, was fired--or rather the carpenters' work about--in a similar
manner; and if report tells the truth, the new Houses of Parliament
have been on fire several times already from a similar cause."
Under the heads "Incendiarism," "Doubtful," and "Unknown," are included
all the cases of wilful firing. The return, "Incendiarism," is never made
unless there has been a conviction, which rarely takes place, as the
offices are only anxious to protect themselves against fraud, and do not
like the trouble or bad odour of being prosecutors on public grounds. If
the evidence of wilful firing, however, is conclusive, the insured, when
he applies for his money, is significantly informed by the secretary that
unless he leaves the office, _he will hang him_. Though arson is no
longer punished by death, the hint is usually taken. Now and then, such
flagrant offenders are met with, that the office cannot avoid pursuing
them with the utmost rigour of the law. Such, in 1851, was the case of a
"respectable" solicitor, living in Lime-street, Watling-street, who had
insured his house and furniture for a sum much larger than they were
worth. The means he adopted for the commission of his crime without
discovery were apparently sure; but it was the very pains he took to
accomplish his end which led to his detection. He had specially made to
order a deep tray of iron, in the centre of which was placed a socket. The
tray he filled with naphtha, and in the socket he put a candle, the light
of which was shaded by a funnel. The candle was one of the kind which he
used for his gig-lamp,--for he kept a gig,--and was calculated to last a
stated time before it reached the naphtha. He furtively deposited the
whole machine in the cellar, within eight inches of the wooden floor, in a
place constructed to conceal it. The attorney went out, and on coming back
again found, as he expected, that his house was on fire. Unfortunately,
however, for him--if it is ever a misfortune to a scoundrel to be
detected,--it was put out at a very early stage, and the firemen, whilst
in the act of extinguishing it, discovered this infernal machine. The
order to make it was traced to the delinquent: a female servant, irritated
at the idea of his having left her in the house to be burnt to death, gave
evidence against him. He was tried and convicted, and is now expiating his
crime at Norfolk Island. Plans for rebuilding this villain's house, and
estimates of the expense, were found afterwards among his papers.
The class "doubtful" includes all those cases in which the offices have no
moral doubt that the fire has been wilful, but are not in possession of
legal evidence sufficient to substantiate a charge against the offender.
In most of these instances, however, the insured has _his reasons_ for
taking a much smaller sum than he originally demanded. Lastly, we have the
"unknown," to which 1,323 cases are put down, one of the largest numbers
in the entire list, though decreasing year by year. Even of these, a
certain percentage are supposed to be wilful. There is no denying that the
crime of arson owes its origin entirely to the introduction of fire
insurance; and there can be as little doubt that, of late years, it has
been very much increased by the pernicious competition for business among
the younger offices, which leads them to deal too leniently with their
customers; or, in other words, to pay the money, _and ask no questions_.
It is calculated that _one fire in seven which occur among the small class
of shopkeepers in London is an incendiary fire_. Mr. Braidwood, whose
experience is larger than that of any person, tells us that the greatest
ingenuity is sometimes exercised to deceive the officers of the insurance
company as to the value of the insured stock. In one instance, when the
Brigade had succeeded in extinguishing the fire, he discovered a string
stretched across one of the rooms in the basement of the house, on which
ringlets of shavings dipped in turpentine were tied at regular intervals.
On extending his investigations, he ascertained that a vast pile of what
he thought were pounds of moist sugar consisted of parcels of brown paper,
and that the loaves of white sugar were made of plaster of Paris. Ten to
one but the "artful dodge," which some scoundrel flatters himself is
peculiarly his own, has been put in practice by hundreds of others before
him. For this reason, fires that are wilful generally betray themselves to
the practised eye of the Brigade. When an event of the kind "is going to
happen" at home, a common circumstance is to find that the fond parent has
treated the whole of his family to the theatre.
There is another class of incendiary fires which arise from a species of
monomania in boys and girls. Not many years ago the men of the Brigade
were occupied for hours in putting out no less than half a dozen fires
which broke out one after another in a house in West Smithfield; and it
was at last discovered that they were occasioned by a youth who went about
with lucifers and slily ignited everything that would burn. He was caught
in the act of firing a curtain in the very room in which a fireman was
occupied in putting out a blaze. A still more extraordinary case took
place in the year 1848, at Torluck House, in the Isle of Mull. On Sunday,
the 11th of November, the curtains of a bed were ignited, as was supposed
by lightning; a window-blind followed; and immediately afterwards the
curtains of five rooms broke out one after another into a flame; even the
towels hanging up in the kitchen were burnt. The next day a bed took fire,
and it being thought advisable to carry the bed-linen into the coach-house
for safety, it caught fire three or four times during the process of
removal. In a few days the phenomenon was renewed. The furniture, books,
and everything else of an inflammable nature, were, with much labour,
taken from the mansion, and again some body-linen burst into a flame on
the way. Even after these precautions had been taken, and persons had been
set to watch in every part of the house, the mysterious fires continued to
haunt it until the 22nd of February, 1849. It was suspected from the first
that they were the act of an incendiary, and upon a rigid examination of
the household before the Fiscal-General and the Sheriff, the mischief was
traced to the daughter of the housekeeper, a young girl, who was on a
visit to her mother. She had effected her purpose, which was perfectly
motiveless, by concealing combustibles in different parts of the house.
The most ludicrous conflagration that perhaps ever occurred was that at
Mr. Phillips's workshops, when the whole of his stock of instruments for
extinguishing flame were at one fell swoop destroyed. "'Tis rare to see
the engineer hoist with his own petard," says the poet; and certainly it
was a most laughable _contre-temps_ to see the fire-engines arrive at the
manufactory just in time to witness the fire-annihilators annihilated by
the fire. A similar mishap occurred to these unfortunate implements at
Paris. In juxtaposition with this case, we are tempted to put another, in
which the attempt at extinction was followed by exactly the opposite
effects. A tradesman was about to light his gas, when, finding the cock
stiff, he took a candle to see what was the matter; whilst attempting to
turn it, the screw came out, and with it a jet of gas, which was instantly
fired by the candle. The blaze igniting the shop, a passer-by seized a
wooden pail and threw its contents upon the flames, which flared up
immediately with tenfold power. It is scarcely necessary to state that the
water was whisky, and that the country was Old Ireland.
Spontaneous combustion is at present very little understood, though
chemists have of late turned their attention to the subject. It forms,
however, no inconsiderable item in the list of causes of fires. There can
be no question that many of those that occur at railway stations and
buildings are due to the fermentation which arises among oiled rags.
Over-heating of waste, which includes shoddy, sawdust, cotton, &c., is a
fearful source of conflagrations. The cause of most fires which have
arisen from spontaneous combustion is lost in the consequence. Cases now
and then occur where the firemen have been able to detect it, as, for
instance, at Hibernia Wharf in 1846, one of Alderman Humphery's
warehouses. It happened that a porter had swept the sawdust from the floor
into a heap, upon which a broken flask of olive-oil that was placed above
dripped its contents. To these elements of combustion the sun added its
power, and sixteen hours afterwards the fire broke out. Happily, it was
instantly extinguished; and the agents that produced it were caught,
red-handed as it were, in the act. The chances are that such a particular
combination of circumstances might not occur again in a thousand years.
The sawdust will not be swept again into such a position under the oil, or
the bottle will not break over the sawdust, or the sun will not shine in
on them to complete the fatal sum. It is an important fact, however, to
know that oiled sawdust, warmed by the sun, will fire in sixteen hours, as
it accounts for a number of conflagrations in saw-mills, which never could
be traced to any probable cause.
By means of direct experiment we are also learning something on the
question of explosions. It used to be assumed that gunpowder was
answerable for all such terrible effects in warehouses where no gas or
steam was employed; and as policies are vitiated by the fact of its
presence, unless declared, many squabbles have ensued between insurers and
insured upon this head alone. At the late great fire at Gateshead, a
report having spread that the awful explosion which did so much damage
arose from the illicit stowage of seven tons of gunpowder in the Messrs.
Sisson's warehouse, the interested insurance companies offered a reward of
100_l._ to elicit information. The experiments instituted, however, by Mr.
Pattinson, in the presence of Captain Du Cane, of the Royal Engineers, and
the coroner's jury impanelled to inquire into the matter, showed that the
water from the fire-engine falling upon the mineral and chemical
substances in store, was sufficient to account for the result. The
following were the experiments tried at Mr. Pattinson's works at Felling,
about three miles from Gateshead:--
"Mr. Pattinson first caused a metal pot to be inserted in the ground
until its top was level with the surface; and having put into it 9
lbs. of nitrate of soda and 6 lbs. of sulphur, he ignited the mass;
and then, heating it to the highest possible degree of which it was
susceptible, he poured into it about a quart of water. The effect was
an immediate explosion (accompanied by a loud clap), which would have
been exceedingly perilous to any person in its immediate vicinity. The
experiment was next made under different conditions. The pot into
which the sulphur and nitrate of soda were put was covered over the
top with a large piece of thick metal of considerable weight; and
above that again were placed several large pieces of clay and earth.
It was deemed necessary to try this experiment in an open field, away
from any dwelling-house, and which admitted of the spectators placing
themselves at a safe distance from the spot. The materials were then
ignited as before; and when in the incandescent state, water was
poured upon the mass down a spout. The result was but a comparatively
slight explosion, and which scarcely disturbed the iron and clods
placed over the mouth of the vessel. Another experiment of the kind
was made with the same result. At length, a trial having been made for
the third time, but with this difference, that the vessel was covered
over the top with another similar vessel, and that the water was
poured upon the burning sulphur and nitrate of soda with greater
rapidity than before, by slightly elevating the spout, the effect was
to blow up the pot on the top into the air to a height of upwards of
seventy feet, accompanied by a loud detonation. With this the coroner
and jury became convinced that, whether or not the premises in
Hillgate contained gunpowder, they contained elements as certainly
explosive, and perhaps far more destructive."
We may here mention, as a curious result of the Gateshead fire, that
several tons of lead, whilst flowing in a molten state, came in contact
with a quantity of volatilized sulphur. Thus the lead became re-converted
into lead-ore, or a sulphuret of lead, which, as it required to be
re-smelted, was thereby debased in value from some twenty-two to fifteen
shillings a ton.
The great fire, again, which occurred in Liverpool in October last, was
occasioned by the explosion of spirits of turpentine, which blew out, one
after another, seven of the walls of the vaults underneath the warehouse,
and in some cases destroyed the vaulting itself, and exposed to the flames
the stores of cotton above. Surely some law is called for to prevent the
juxtaposition of such inflammable materials. The turpentine is said to
have been fired by a workman who snuffed the candle with his fingers, and
accidentally threw the snuff down the bunghole of one of the barrels of
turpentine. The warehouses burnt were built upon Mr. Fairbairn's new
fireproof plan, which the Liverpool people introduced some years ago, at a
great expense to the town.
Water alone brought into sudden contact with red-hot iron is capable of
giving rise to a gas of the most destructive nature--witness the
extraordinary explosions that are continually taking place in
steam-vessels, especially in America, which mostly arise from the lurching
of the vessel when waiting for passengers, causing the water to withdraw
from one side of the boiler, which rapidly becomes red hot. The next lurch
in an opposite direction precipitates the water upon the highly-heated
surface, and thus the explosive gas, in addition to the steam, is
generated faster than the safety-valves can get rid of it.
A very interesting inquiry, and one of vital importance to the actuaries
of fire-insurance companies, is the relative liability to fire of
different classes of occupations and residences. We already know
accurately the number of fires which occur yearly in every trade and kind
of occupation. What we do not know, and what we want to know, is the
proportion the tenements in which such trades and occupations are carried
on, bear to the total number of houses in the metropolis. The last census
gives us no information of this kind, and we trust the omission will be
supplied the next time it is taken. According to Mr. Braidwood's returns,
for the last twenty-one years, the number of fires in each trade, and in
private houses, has been as follows:--
Private Houses 4,638
Lodgings 1,304
Victuallers 715
Sale-shops and Offices 701
Carpenters and Workers in Wood 621
Drapers, of Woollen and Linen 372
Bakers 311
Stables 277
Cabinet-makers 233
Oil and Colour-men 230
Chandlers 178
Grocers 162
Tinmen, Braziers, and Smiths 158
Houses under Repair and Building 150
Beershops 142
Coffee-shops and Chophouses 139
Brokers and Dealers in Old Clothes 134
Hatmakers 127
Lucifer-match makers 120
Wine and Spirit Merchants 118
Tailors 113
Hotels and Club-houses 107
Tobacconists 105
Eating-houses 104
Booksellers and Binders 103
Ships 102
Printers and Engravers 102
Builders 91
Houses unoccupied 89
Tallow-chandlers 87
Marine Store Dealers 75
Saw-mills 67
Firework-makers 66
Warehouses 63
Chemists 62
Coachmakers 50
Warehouses (Manchester) 49
Public Buildings 46
If we look at the mere number of fires, irrespective of the size of the
industrial group upon which they committed their ravages, houses would
appear to be hazardous according to the order in which we have placed
them. Now, this is manifestly absurd, inasmuch as private houses stand at
the head of the list, and it is well known that they are the safest from
fire of all kinds of tenements. Mr. Brown, of the Society of Actuaries,
who has taken the trouble to compare the number of fires in each
industrial group, with the number of houses devoted to it, as far as he
could find any data in the Post-office Directory, gives the following
average annual percentage of conflagrations, calculated on a period of
fifteen years:--
Lucifer-match makers 30·00
Lodging-houses 16·51
Hatmakers 7·74
Chandlers 3·88
Drapers 2·67
Tinmen, Braziers, and Smiths 2·42
Carpenters 2·27
Cabinet-makers 2·12
Oil and Colour-men 1·56
Beershops 1·31
Booksellers 1·18
Coffee-shops and Coffee-houses 1·2
Cabinet-makers 1·12
Licensed Victuallers ·86
Bakers ·75
Wine Merchants ·61
Grocers ·34