"dangerous," as we have ranged them in the previous table, making those
which from their aggregate number seemed to be the most hazardous trades,
appear the least so, and _vice versâ_. Thus lucifer-match makers have a
bad pre-eminence; indeed they are supposed to be subject to a
conflagration every third year; while the terrible victuallers,
carpenters, mercers, and bakers, at the top of the column, shrink to the
bottom of the list. These conclusions, nevertheless, are only an
approximation to the truth, since it is impossible to procure a correct
return of the houses occupied by different trades. Even if a certain class
of tenements is particularly liable to fire, it does not follow that it
will be held to be very hazardous to the insurers. Such considerations are
influenced by another question,--Are the contents of houses forming the
group, of that nature that, in cases of their taking fire, they are likely
to be totally destroyed, seriously, or only slightly damaged? For
instance, lodging-houses are very liable to fire; but they are very seldom
burnt down or much injured. Out of 81 that suffered in 1853, not one was
totally destroyed; only 4 were extensively affected; the very large
majority, 77, were slightly scathed from the burning of window and bed
curtains, &c. Among the trades which are too hazardous to be insured at
any price are--we quote from the tariff of the County
Fire-office--floor-cloth manufacturers, gunpowder dealers, hatters' "stock
in the stove," lampblack makers, lucifer-match makers, varnish makers, and
wadding manufacturers; whilst the following are considered highly
hazardous;--bone-crushers, coffee-roasters, composition-ornament makers,
curriers, dyers, feather-stovers, flambeau makers, heckling-houses, hemp
and flax dressers, ivory-black makers, japanners and japan makers,
laboratory-chemists, patent japan-leather manufacturers, lint-mills,
rough-fat melters, musical-instrument makers, oil and colour men, leather
dressers, oiled-silk and linen makers, oil of vitriol manufacturers, pitch
makers, rag dealers, resin dealers, saw-mills, seed crushers,
ship-buiscuit bakers, soap makers, spermaceti and wax refiners, sugar
refiners, tar dealers and boilers, thatched houses in towns, and
turpentine makers.
The great mass of these trades bear "hazardous" upon the very face of
them; but it is not equally apparent why that of a hatter should be so
very dangerous, and particular portions of his stock uninsurable. We are
given to understand that the stoves at which their manufacture is carried
on, and the shell-lac and willow, are the causes of this proneness to
conflagrations. The memorable fire at Fenning's Wharf, which burnt with a
fury to which that at the Royal Exchange and at the Houses of Parliament
was a mere bonfire, originated at a hatter's on London Bridge, from which
place it speedily spread to Alderman Humphery's warehouses in the rear,
leaped across Tooley Street--at this spot 60 feet wide--and thus invaded
the great river-side wharf. The two floating-engines belonging to the
brigade were brought into service on the occasion, and although they threw
between them fourteen hundred gallons of water a minute to the height of a
hundred feet, they had not the slightest effect upon the burning mass.
Nothing shows better the relative degrees of hazard than the different
rates charged for insurance. Thus an ordinary dwelling-house pays but
1_s._ 6_d._ per cent., while a sugar-refinery pays at least two, and
sometimes three guineas per cent., or from 30 to 40 times as much. The
same class of houses pay different rates according to their locality. The
residence which is charged 1_s._ 6_d._ in London, is, in St. John's,
Newfoundland--a town famous, or rather infamous, for fires--charged by our
English offices 1_l._ 11_s._ 6_d._ per cent. Probably the heaviest loss
the Phoenix Office ever sustained was by the fire of St. John's, in 1846.
It is a notable fact, that the city of London, which is perhaps the most
densely inhabited spot the world has ever seen, has long been exempt from
conflagrations involving a considerable number of houses. "The devouring
element," it is true, has made many meals from time to time of huge
warehouses and public buildings; but since the great fire of 1666 it has
ceased to gorge upon whole quarters of the town. We have never had, since
that memorable occasion, to record the destruction of a thousand houses at
a time, a matter of frequent occurrence in the United States and
Canada--indeed in all parts of Continental Europe. The fires which have
proved fatal to large plots of buildings in the metropolis have in every
instance taken place without the sound of Bow bells. A comparison between
the number of fires which occurred between the years 1838 and 1843, in
20,000 houses situate on either side of the Thames, shows at once the
superior safety of its northern bank, the annual average of fires on the
latter being only 20 against 36 on the southern side. For this exemption
we have to thank the great disaster, if we might so term what has turned
out a blessing. At one fell swoop it cleared the city, and swept away for
ever the dangerous congregation of wooden buildings and narrow streets
which were always affording material for the flame.
Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his "Handbook of London,"[43] gives the following
curious information respecting its supposed origin:--
"The fire of London, commonly called the Great Fire, commenced on the
east side of this lane (Pudding-lane) about one or two in the morning
of Sunday, September 2nd, 1666, in the house of Farryner, the king's
baker.
"It was the fashion of the true blue Protestants of the period to
attribute the fire to the Roman Catholics; and when, in 1681, Oates
and his plot strengthened this belief, the following inscription was
affixed on the front of this house (No. 25, I believe), erected on the
site of Farryner, the baker's:--
"'Here, by the permission of Heaven, hell broke loose upon this
Protestant city, from the malicious hearts of barbarous priests, by
the hand of their agent, Hubert, who confessed, and on the ruins of
this place declared the fact for which he was hanged, viz., that here
began that dreadful fire which is described on and perpetuated by the
neighbouring pillar, erected anno 1681, in the mayoralty of Sir Peter
Ward, knight.'
"This celebrated inscription, set up pursuant to an order of the Court
of Common Council, June 17th, 1681, was removed in the reign of James
II., replaced in the reign of William III., and finally taken down 'on
account of the stoppage of passengers to read it.' Entick, who makes
addition to Maitland in 1756, speaks of it 'as lately taken away.' The
house was 'rebuilt in a very handsome manner.'
"The inscribed stone is still preserved, it is said, in a cellar in
Pudding-lane. Hubert was a French papist, of six-and-twenty years of
age, the son of a watchmaker at Rouen, in Normandy. He was seized in
Essex, confessed he began the fire, and, persisting in his confession,
was hanged, upon no other evidence than his own. He stated in his
examination that he had been 'suborned in Paris to this action,' and
that three more 'combined to do the same thing. They asked him if he
knew the place where he first put fire. He answered he knew it very
well, and would show it to anybody.' He was then ordered to be
blindfolded, and carried to several places of the City, that he might
point out the house. They first led him to a place at some distance
from it, opened his eyes, and asked him if that was it; to which he
answered, 'No, it was nearer the Thames.' 'The house and all which
were near it,' says Clarendon, 'were so covered and buried in ruins,
that the owners themselves, without some infallible mark, could very
hardly have said where their own house had stood; but this man led
them directly to the place, described how it stood, the shape of the
little yard, the fashion of the doors and windows, and where he first
put the fire; and all this with such exactness, that they who had
dwelt long near it could not so perfectly have described all
particulars.' Tillotson told Burnet that Howell (the then Recorder of
London) accompanied Hubert on this occasion, 'was with him and had
much discourse with him, and that he concluded it was impossible it
could be a melancholy dream.' This, however, was not the opinion of
the judges who tried him. 'Neither the judges,' says Clarendon, 'nor
any present at the trial, did believe him guilty, but that he was a
poor distracted wretch, weary of his life, and chose to part with it
in this way.' We may attribute the fire with safety to another cause
than a Roman conspiracy. We are to remember that the flames originated
in the house of a baker; that the season had been unusually dry; that
the houses were of wood, overhanging the road-way (penthouses they
were called), so that the lane was even narrower than it is now, and
that a strong east wind was blowing at the time. It was thought very
little of at first. Pepys put out his head from his bedroom window in
Seething-lane, a few hours after it broke out, and returned to bed
again, as if it were nothing more than an ordinary fire, a common
occurrence, and likely to be soon subdued. The Lord Mayor (Sir Thomas
Bludworth) seems to have thought as little of it till it was too late.
People appear to have been paralyzed, and no attempt of any
consequence was made to check its progress. For four successive days
it raged and gained ground, leaping after a prodigious manner from
house to house and street to street, at great distances from one
another. Houses were at length pulled down, and the flames, still
spreading westward, were at length stopped at the Temple Church in
Fleet-street, and Pie-Corner in Smithfield. In these four days 13,200
houses, 400 streets, and 89 churches, including the cathedral church
of St. Paul, were destroyed, and London lay literally in ruins. The
loss was so enormous, that we may be said still to suffer from its
effects. Yet the advantages were not few. London was freed from the
plague ever after; and we owe St. Paul's, St. Bride's, St. Stephen's
Walbrook, and all the architectural glories of Sir Christopher Wren,
to the desolation it occasioned."
In addition to these advantages we acquired another, that of
PARTY-WALLS--a safeguard which has prevented fires from spreading in the
City, when whole streets have been swept away in a few hours in other
parts of the metropolis, and especially in what might be termed the
water-side suburbs of London--Rotherhithe, Greenwich, and Gravesend. The
Act by which party-walls were enforced came into operation immediately
prior to the rebuilding of the town, and has been rendered more stringent
and effective from time to time by various amendments. The Building Act of
the 7th and 8th of Queen Victoria contains the important enactment, that
"no warehouse shall exceed 200,000 cubic feet in contents." Fire becomes
unmanageable when it has access to large stores of combustible matter;
under such conditions it acquires a "fortified position," and cannot, in
the vast majority of cases, be reduced unless by an early surprise.
As the very heart of London is largely occupied with Manchester warehouses
full of the most inflammable materials, the safety of the capital depends
upon this restrictive law. The Manchester warehousemen, nevertheless, have
managed to set that part of the Act at defiance. Let us take, as the
latest and most flagrant example, Cook's warehouses. This structure, which
within these last two years has raised its enormous bulk in St. Paul's
Churchyard, and actually dwarfed the metropolitan cathedral by the
propinquity of its monotonous mass, contains 1,100,000 cubic feet of space
open from end to end, or _nine hundred thousand feet more than it is
entitled to possess_. If we were to take twenty-five ordinary-sized
dwelling-houses, and pull down their party-walls, we should have just the
state of things which is here presented to us. But it will be asked, if it
is against the law, why do not the proper officers interfere? Where are
the City surveyors? The reason, good reader, is this: the Manchester
warehousemen of late years have adopted a new reading of the law--a
reading which we believe no judge would allow, but which the surveyors
have not yet ventured to dispute. "We escape altogether," say these
gentlemen, "the provisions of the Building Act relative to warehouses, as,
by reason of our breaking bulk, our places of business are not mere
storehouses." That this reading is a violation of the spirit of the
statute there can be no doubt; that it is also a violation of its letter
we also believe; if not, it is high time that the law be amended upon this
point; for we affirm, on the very best authority, that London has never
since the great fire been in such danger of an overwhelming conflagration
as it is now by the presence and rapid spreading of these huge warehouses,
filled with the elements of destruction, and placed side by side, as
though for the very purpose of producing the utmost mischief by contagion.
Let us suppose, for instance, that a fire had once established itself in
Cook's warehouses; to extinguish it would be out of the question.
Fire-engines would be perfectly useless against a body of flame which
would speedily become like a blast-furnace, and burn with a white heat.
Who knows what would come after? Supposing the wind to be blowing from the
south, we tremble for the cathedral. The huge dome is constructed entirely
of oak, dried by the seasoning of 150 years, and the combustible framework
is only lined on the exterior by sheet lead. It may be imagined that this
would be protection enough against the enormous masses of burning cotton
and linen cloth which would speedily be blown upon it; but Mr. Cottam not
long since stated, at the Institution of Civil Engineers, that, "when the
Princess's Theatre was on fire, part of his premises also caught. On
examination, he found that it arose from a piece of blazing wood being
thrown over from the theatre, which, falling into the leaden gutter, had
melted it, and the liquid metal passed through the ceiling on to a
workman's bench, where there was some oil, which it immediately set fire
to." The great dome would be in quite as much danger as Mr. Cottam's
workshop. Engines would be useless at such a height even as the stone
gallery, the place where large bodies of burning material would most
likely make a lodgment. Irreparable as would be the disaster with which we
are threatened in this direction, one quite as great lies in another.
Eastward of Cook's warehouses, and in the neighbourhood of a vitriol or
some other chemical manufactory, is situated Doctors' Commons, the
repository of the great mass of English wills. The roofs of this pile of
buildings[44] are continuous; the buildings themselves are nearly as dry
as the law itself. If one portion of the structure were to catch fire,
nothing could save the whole from destruction. It may be urged that the
block of buildings, which commands, like a battery, two such important
points in the metropolis, is, after all, fire-proof, and, as far as danger
from without is concerned, this is true enough; but as cotton bales are
not fire-proof, it is an impossibility to insure safety from within. Iron
columns in such instances melt before the white heat like sticks of
sealing-wax; stone flies into a thousand pieces with the celerity of a
Prince Rupert's drop; slate becomes transformed into a pumice light enough
to float upon water; the iron girders and beams, by reason of their
lateral expansion, thrust out the walls; and the very elements, which seem
calculated under ordinary circumstances to give an almost exhaustless
durability to the structure, produce its most rapid destruction. The great
fire at Messrs. Cubitt's so-called fire-proof works at Pimlico is one of
the latest proofs we have had of the entire fallacy of supposing stone and
iron can withstand the action of a large body of fierce flame. We saw the
other day portions of columns from this building fused as though they had
been composed of so much pewter. Again, when the Armoury of the Tower was
destroyed, the barrels of the muskets were found reduced to the most
fantastic shapes, and some of the largest pieces of ordnance were doubled
up. A stronger instance still was exhibited at Davis's wharf in 1837, when
a cast-iron pipe outside the building was melted like an icicle. But such
a fierce furnace is not at all necessary to destroy cast-iron supports, as
it appears from the experiments of Mr. Fairbairn, that, at a temperature
of 600° the cohesive power of the metal rapidly decreases with every
increment of heat. Mr. Braidwood, in his paper on fire-proof buildings,
read before the Institute of Civil Engineers on February 29th, 1849, was
the first, we believe, to draw attention to this serious defect in a
material used so extensively in modern buildings. Since that paper was
read, a case has come under his notice which clearly testifies to the
truth of his position:--
"A chapel in Liverpool-road Islington, 70 feet in length and 52 feet
in breadth, took fire in the cellar, on the 2nd October, 1848, and was
completely burned down. After the fire it was ascertained that, of
thirteen cast-iron pillars used to support the galleries, only two
remained perfect; the greater part of the others were broken into
small pieces, the metal appearing to have lost all power of cohesion,
and some parts were melted, of which specimens are now shown. It
should be observed that these pillars were of ample strength to
support the galleries when filled by the congregation, but when the
fire reached them, they crumbled under the weight of the timber only,
lightened as it must have been by the progress of the fire."
But when we are considering the safety of Manchester warehouses, we are
also considering the lives of the young men who are employed in them, and
are in most cases located in the upper stories. In several of the
wholesale warehouses in the City, as Mr. Braidwood informs us,--
"The cast-iron pillars are much less in proportion to the weight to be
carried than those referred to, and would be completely in the draught
of a fire. If a fire should unfortunately take place under such
circumstances, the loss of human life might be very great, as the
chance of fifty, eighty, or one hundred people escaping, in the
confusion of a sudden night alarm, by one or two ladders to the roof,
could scarcely be calculated on, and the time such escape might
necessarily occupy, independent of all chance of accidents, would be
considerable."
The application of water would only aggravate the difficulty, for, if it
touched the red-hot iron, in all probability it would cause it to fracture
and render it useless as a support. It is well known that furnace-bars are
very speedily destroyed by a leakage of the boiler, the effect of the
steam on the under side of the bars being to curve and twist them. To
insure a perfectly fire-proof building, we must resort to one of two
courses--either we must divide large warehouses into compartments by solid
brick divisions, and thus confine any fire that should happen to break out
within manageable limits, just as we save an iron ship from foundering, on
account of a circumscribed fracture, by having her built in compartments;
or we must resort to the old Roman plan of building--that is, support the
floors upon brick piers and groined arches well laid in cement, for mortar
will pulverize under a great heat. The former plan has the great advantage
that it insures the safety of the principal contents, as well as of the
building itself. The new Record Office in Fetter Lane, is a perfect
specimen of the kind, and is, perhaps, the only absolutely fire-proof
structure in England, being constructed of iron and stone, and having no
room larger than 17 feet by 25, and 17 feet high, with a cubical contents
of only 8,000 feet. None of the rooms open into each other, but into a
vaulted passage by means of iron doors; and if the documents were to take
fire in any one of them, they would burn out as innocuously to the rest of
the building as coals in a grate.
It must not be supposed that we disparage altogether the use of iron and
stone in the erection of warehouses, even where they are built on the
ordinary plan; for the outside structure they are invaluable, and render
it safe from most extraneous danger. No better proof of this could be
given than the experience of Liverpool, whose fires during the last
half-century have been on the most gigantic scale. The larger bonded and
other warehouses were generally built with continuous roofs, and with
wooden doors and penthouses to the different stories, which always kindled
when there was a fire on the opposite side of the narrow streets in which
they were ordinarily placed. To such a lamentable extent had
conflagrations increased about the year 1841, that the rate of insurance,
which had been eight shillings per cent., ran up to thirty-six shillings.
This was about the time of the Formby Street fire, when 379,000_l._ worth
of property was destroyed, and the total losses from the beginning of the
century had not been less than three millions and a quarter sterling. The
magnitude of the evil called for a corresponding remedy. A Bill was
obtained in 1843 for the amendment of the Building Act; party-walls were
run up five feet high between each warehouse, doors and penthouses were
constructed of iron, the cubical contents of the buildings themselves were
limited, &c.; and the effect of these improvements was so to diminish the
risk that insurances fell to their normal rate. It cannot be said,
however, that Liverpool has yet purged herself of the calamity of fire.
In ordinary dwellings and in public offices the use of iron and stone,
again, cannot be too much commended: in such buildings the rooms are
comparatively small, and their contents are not sufficiently inflammable
either in quantity or quality to injure these materials. A marked
diminution in the number of fires in the metropolis may be expected, from
the almost universal use of iron and stone in new structures of this
kind. The houses in Victoria Street, Westminster, built upon the "flat"
system, are, we should say, entirely fireproof, as the floors are either
vaulted or filled in with concrete, which will not allow the passage of
fire. Nearly all Paris is built in this manner, and hence its freedom from
large conflagrations.[45] Were it not for this, no city would be more
likely to suffer, as the houses are very high, and the supply of water
extremely bad. To Londoners it seems little better than a farce to watch
the _sapeurs-pompiers_ hurrying to a fire with an engine not much bigger
than a garden squirt, followed by a water-barrel--resources which are
found sufficient to cope with the enemy, confined as it is within such
narrow limits.
Without going to the expense of stone and iron, we might, by taking a hint
from the Parisians, make the rooms of our private houses fireproof, by
abandoning the absurd custom of separating rooms by hollow wooden floors
and hollow wooden partitions thinly coated with plaster--a method which
has the effect of circulating the fire from the bottom to the top of the
house in the quickest possible space of time. If a fire breaks out in a
room, the ceiling will, it is true, stop the flames for a considerable
time; but the hollow partitions full of air act as conductors, and the
firemen have often found that the flames have spread from a lower to an
upper apartment by this secret channel, without injuring the intermediate
rooms, and without even its progress being suspected. As we understand
that the Building Act is to be amended, we trust its emendators will
extend the clause relating to party-walls to _rooms_ as well as to houses.
The expense need be but trifling, as will be seen by consulting the little
work of Mr. Hosking, who was the first, we believe, to instruct the
English public in the admirable methods of the Parisian builders. Instead
of using flimsy laths for their partitions, they employ stout oaken pieces
of wood, as thick as garden palings; these they nail firmly on each side
of the framing of the partition, fill the space between with rubble and
plaster of Paris, and thickly coat the whole of the wall with the latter.
The floors are managed in the same manner, as well as the under side of
the stairs, which are thus rendered almost as fire-proof as a stone
flight. Very many lives would be saved in Great Britain if this simple
expedient were adopted by our builders, instead of making the stairs of
ill-fitted wood, full of air-crevices, and covering their under side with
a thin film of plaster; for fire always makes for the stairs, which form
the funnel of the house; and hence the necessity for rendering them as
secure as possible, in order to provide a line of retreat for the inmates.