Part 44
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.
We have said that London is growing upwards to the sky--no house in any valuable portion of the metropolis being now rebuilt without the addition of at least one story. Eighty and ninety feet is getting a common height for our great offices and warehouses, which is tantamount to saying that a certain portion of the metropolis, and that a constantly increasing one, is outgrowing the power of the Fire Brigade, as no engine built upon the present plan can throw water for many minutes to such an elevation. Mr. Braidwood foresees that he must call in the aid of the common drudge, steam. In America they have already introduced this new agent with some success, and in London we have proved its power in the floating engine. Steam fire-engines, it is evident, will soon be brought into use, unless we do away with the necessity for engines at all by fixing the hose directly on the mains, as is done at Hamburg. But to effect this it will be necessary to relay the whole metropolis with much larger pipes, to increase their number, and at the same time adopt the constant-service system. At present, even if we had the water always on, the mains are often so small as to preclude the use of more than two or three hose--for, if the collective diameters of the areas of the latter exceed that of the pipe which feeds them, the pressure will cease, and no water will be propelled to any height through the jet. It cannot be denied, however, that if the streets of London were all supplied with capacious mains, and the different companies plugged them profusely (a thing they are very chary of doing, for fear of their being injured by the wear and tear of the fire-engines), London would be rendered far more secure than it is at present, as scarcely any fire could withstand the full force of constant streams of thousands of gallons of water per minute. At present the greater portion of the water is wasted; at the destruction of the Houses of Parliament, a body of this element equal to an acre in area, and twelve feet deep, flowed from the mains, a tenth part of which could not have been used by the twenty-three jets that were playing simultaneously.
It will not here be out of place to say a few words upon the method of extinguishing flame by means of the gaseous mixture contained in Phillips's fire-annihilators. According to a writer in the "Household Words," the ordinary-sized annihilator is less than that of a small upright iron coalscuttle, and its weight not greater than can be easily carried by man or woman to any part of the house. It is charged with a compound of charcoal, nitre, and gypsum, moulded into the form of a large brick: the igniter is a glass tube inserted into the top of this brick: inclosing two phials--one filled with the mixture of chlorate of potassa and sugar, the other containing a few drops of sulphuric acid. A slight blow upon a knob drives down a pin which breaks the phials, and the different mixtures coming in contact ignite the mass, the gas arising from which, acting upon a water-chamber contained in the machine, produces a steam, and the whole escapes forth in a dense expanding cloud.
Mr. Phillips made some public experiments with his fire-annihilator three or four years ago, in which its power to put out the fiercest flame was fully proved. The timber framework of a three storied-house smeared with pitch and tar, upon being fired, was instantly extinguished: quantities of pitch, tar, and oil of turpentine, which only burn the stronger for the presence of water, were dealt with still more expeditiously. The valuable quality of rendering an atmosphere of dense smoke, in which no living thing could exist, perfectly respirable, was also shown in the most satisfactory manner. Since that time the machine has been brought into action at Leeds, where it put out a fire in an attic; and in a very serious conflagration, which took place in the spirit-room, and afterwards extended to the main hatchway of the mail steamer the _City of Manchester_, in the autumn of 1852, it was applied with the most perfect success. There can be no doubt that in all confined places the control of the annihilator over flame is omnipotent--acting much more speedily than water, and, unlike that element, doing no damage. When the flames are unconfined, the annihilator will prove of little use, because, the gaseous cloud that issues from it not being heavier than the air, it cannot be projected to any distance. As an auxiliary to the engine, it will be invaluable in many cases, as it will enable the fireman to go into places where at present he dares not enter, unless protected by the unwieldy smoke-jacket, the supply of air to which might at any time be cut off by rubbish falling upon the hose through which it is pumped to him by the engine.
Although it is foreign to our design to speak at length of agricultural fires, and incendiarism among farming stock, the subject is too important to be entirely omitted. One of the largest London insurance-offices, interested in farming stock, posts up bills about premises they have insured, which, after stating that no lucifers are to be used, or pipes are to be smoked, goes on to say, "_This farm is insured; the fire office will be the only sufferer in the event of a fire._" The inference is, that the labourer will feel more inclined to pay respect to the property of an insurance company than to that of the farmer. Yet it is far from being the case that the crime is always prompted by personal ill-will. One of the largest agricultural incendiaries upon record was a city weaver, who acted from a general spirit of discontent, without any hatred or knowledge of the owners. In other instances the sole motive is the "jollification" which generally follows a fire upon a farm: this fact came to light at a trial in Cambridge, eight or nine years since, when a man who was sentenced to death for setting fire to a homestead confessed to having caused twelve different fires, his only object being the desire to obtain the few shillings, and the refreshment of bread, cheese, and ale, which are given to labourers on these occasions. On the other hand, if the farmer determines to give no recompense, the hangers-on have been known to put their hands in their pockets and watch his property burn with the utmost indifference, if not with glee.
The cause of fire which the farmer has mainly to guard against may be at one seen by the following table, for which we are indebted to the manager of the County Fire Office:--
_Losses on Farming Stock between January the 1st and November the 30th, 1853._
+----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Number | | | |of Fires.| Cause. | Amount. | |---------|-----------------------------------------|------------| | | | £. s. d. | | 49 |Incendiary | 5214 6 11 | | 17 |Lightning | 181 5 10 | | 22 |Children and others playing with lucifers| 1211 18 10 | | 2 |Steam thrashing-machines | 430 0 0 | | 38 |General | 1781 19 9 | |---------| |------------| | 128 | | 8819 11 4 | +----------------------------------------------------------------+
These losses are upon a total insurance of eight millions. Incendiarism and children playing with lucifers are the two grand elements of destruction; and the former, we are given to understand, is below the general average. Kind treatment and better education are the only shields that can protect the farmer against incendiarism. The nuisance arising from children playing with lucifers may be abated by the absolute denial of matches to young boys about a farm, who, to cook their dinners, generally cause conflagrations near the ricks in the winter, and among the standing corn whilst "keeping birds" in the summer. The following excellent suggestions are by Mr. Beaumont, the secretary of the County Fire Office.
_Precautions to be taken against a Fire._
Forbid your men to use lucifer matches, smoke, or light pipes or cigars, destroy wasps' nests, or fire off guns, in or near the rickyard, or to throw hot cinders into or against any wooden out-building on the farm, on pain of instant dismissal.
Place your ricks in a single line, and as far distant from each other as you conveniently can.
Place hay-ricks and corn-stacks _alternately_; the hay-rick will check the progress of the fire.
Keep the rickyard, and especially the spaces between the stacks and ricks, clear of all loose straw; and in all respects in a neat and clean state. The loose straw is more frequently the means of firing than the stack itself.
Have a pond close to the rickyard, although there may be but a bad supply of water.
When a steam thrashing-machine is to be used, place it _on the lee side_ of the stack or barn, so that the wind may blow the sparks _away from_ the stacks. Let the engine be placed as far from the machine as the length of the strap will allow. Have the loose straw continually cleared away from the engine; see that two or three pails of water are constantly close to the ash-pan, and that the pan itself is kept constantly full of water.
_How to act when a Fire has broken out in a Rickyard._
Do not wait for the engines, nor for the assistance of the labourers from a distance. Depend entirely upon the immediate and energetic exertions of yourself and your own men.
Do not allow the rick or stack on fire to be disturbed--let it burn itself out--but let every exertion be made to press it compactly together, and, as far as is practicable, prevent any lighted particles flying about.
Get together all your blankets, carpets, sacks, rugs, and other similar articles, soak them thoroughly in water, and place them over and against the adjoining ricks and stacks, towards which the wind blows.
Having thus covered the sides of the ricks adjoining that on fire, devote all your attention to the latter. Press it together by every available means. If water is at hand, throw upon it as much as possible.
If engines arrive, let the water be thrown upon the blankets, &c., covering the adjoining stacks, and then upon the stack on fire.
Among the numerous hands who flock to assist upon these occasions, many do mischief by their want of knowledge, and especially by opening the fired stack and scattering the embers. In order to obviate this evil, place your best man in command over the stack on fire, desire him to make it _his sole duty_ to prevent it being disturbed, and to keep it pressed and watered.
Place other men, in whose steadiness you have confidence, to watch the adjoining ricks, to keep the coverings over them, and to extinguish any embers flying from the stack on fire. In order to effect this, it is most desirable that there should be ladders at hand to enable one or two of the labourers to mount upon each stack.
If the ricks are separated from each other, and there is no danger of the fire extending to a second, it is of course desirable to save as much of the one on fire as may be possible. That, however, is not unfrequently accomplished by keeping the rick compactly together rather than by opening it.
Send for all the neighbours' blankets and tarpaulins: these are invaluable, they are near at hand, and can be immediately applied.
The companies are always very willing to pay for any damage done in attempting to save their property.
The business of the Fire Brigade is to protect property and not life from fire, though the men of course use every exertion to save the inmates, and are always provided with a "jumping-sheet" to catch those who precipitate themselves from the roofs and windows of houses. As the danger to life generally arises at a very early stage of a fire, when the freshly aroused inhabitants fly distracted into very dangerous places, and often destroy themselves by needless haste, it is highly necessary to have help at hand before the engines can possibly arrive. There are, it is true, ladders placed against all the parish churches, but they are always locked up, often rotten, and never in charge of trained individuals: accordingly, they may be classed for inefficiency with the parish engines. A proof of this was given at the calamitous fire which occurred in Dover Street, at Raggett's Hotel, on which occasion Mrs. Round and several other persons were lost through the conduct of the keeper of one of the fire-escapes of the parish of St. James being absent when called, and drunk when, upon his arrival, he attempted to put his machine in action: the keeper of a second escape belonging to this parish, and stationed in Golden Square, refused to go to a fire in Soho, which occurred in 1852, because it was out of his district: the consequence was, than seven persons threw themselves from the windows and were all more or less dangerously injured.
In 1833 the Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire, which had been imperfectly organized a year or two before, was fully established, and has continued to increase the sphere of its influence year by year. The committee of management, appreciating the value of celerity in attending fires, have marked the metropolis out into fifty-five squares of half a mile each: in forty-two of these they have established a station,[46] in its most central part, at which a fire-escape and trained conductor are to be found from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. from Lady-day to Michaelmas, and from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. from Michaelmas to Lady-day. When the remaining thirteen squares are furnished, there will be means of rescue from fire within a quarter of a mile of every house in London: thus the nightly watch for this purpose is better organized with respect to number of stations than even the fire brigade, and, like this force, it is under the general management of a single director. We are all familiar with the sight of these strange-looking machines as they come towering along in the dusk of the evening towards their appointed stations; but few perhaps have seen them in action or have examined the manner in which they are constructed. There are several methods of building them, but the one chiefly used is Wivell's, a very simple machine and speedily put in action, a description of which we take from the society's report:--
"The main ladder reaches from thirty to thirty-five feet, and can instantly be applied to most second-floor windows, by means of the carriage lever. The upper ladder folds over the main ladder, and is raised easily in the position represented, by a rope attached to its lever-irons on either side of the main ladder; or, as recently adopted in one or two of the escapes, by an arrangement of pulleys in lieu of the lever-irons. The short ladder, for first floors, fits in under the carriage, and is often of the greatest service. Under the whole length of the main ladder is a canvas trough or bagging, made of stout sailcloth, protected by an outer trough of copper-wire net, leaving sufficient room between for the yielding of the canvas in a person's descent. The addition of the copper-wire is a great improvement, as, although not affording an entire protection against the canvas burning, it in most cases avails, and prevents the possibility of any one falling through. The soaking of the canvas in alum and other solutions is attended to; but this, while preventing its flaming, cannot avoid the risk of accident from the fire charring the canvas."
When we remember that the fire-escapes often have to be raised above windows from which the flames are pouring forth, it will be seen how valuable is this double protection against the destruction of the canvas. The necessity for it was shown at a fire in Crawford Street, Marylebone, where an explosion took place which fired the canvas and let the conductor fall through just as he was rescuing an inmate,--an accident by which he was dreadfully injured. When people look up at these fire-escapes, they generally shudder at the idea of having to enter the bag, suspended at a height of forty feet from the ground; but in the hour of danger the terrified inmates never exhibit the slightest reluctance. Once in, they slide down the bulging canvas in the gentlest manner, without any of the rapidity that would be imagined from the almost perpendicular position in which it hangs.
The fire-escape which is stationed near the New Road is constructed so that it can be taken off its wheels, in order to allow it to enter the long gardens which here extend before so many of the houses. The height attainable by these escapes varies from 43-1/2 feet to 45 feet. A supplemental short ladder is now carried by most of them, which can be quickly fitted on an emergency into the upper ladder, and increases the height to 50 feet.
The intrepidity of the conductors of these machines is quite astonishing. Familiarity with danger begets a coolness which enables them to place themselves in positions which would prove destructive to unpractised persons. As in most cases they are the prominent actors in a drama witnessed by a whole street-full of excited spectators, they are perhaps tempted by the cheers to risk themselves in a manner they would little dream of doing under other circumstances. In addition to such a stimulus they are rewarded with a silver medal, and with sums of money, for any extraordinary act of gallantry. Every instance of a daring rescue is entered in the society's books, from which we have extracted a few examples, to show what enterprising fellows they are. At a fire which broke out in November, 1844, in a house in Hatton Garden, Conductor Sunshine on his arrival found the following state of things. On the second floor a man was sitting on the sill of one of the windows (there were four windows abreast), and on the third floor a man was hanging by his hands to the window-sill at the other extremity of the house-front. After having rescued the man on the second floor, he did not dare to raise his third-floor ladder, for fear of hitting the hanging man's hands, and causing him to fall; accordingly, he stood upon the top rung of the second-floor ladder, and by so doing could just touch with his upstrained arms the poor fellow's depending feet. In this position, having himself but a precarious hold of the window-frame beneath, his only footing being the topmost rung, he called to the man to drop when he told him, and discovered from his silence that he was deaf and dumb. Upon being tapped upon the foot, however, he let go, and the conductor managed, incredible as it may appear, to slip him down between himself and the wall on to the top of the ladder, and brought him safely to the ground. In the next case, Conductor Chapman was the hero of the scene, although the indomitable Sunshine was present. Having crossed the roofs of two adjoining out-buildings, Chapman managed to place his ladder against the second back floor of the house on fire. Having rescued a lady, he was obliged to retrace his steps over the roofs, as the fire was coming through the tiling. He could only cross by making a bridge of the short ladder; and scarcely had they cleared the premises when it fell in with a tremendous crash.
On another occasion this intrepid man having made an entrance into the second-floor window of a house in Tottenham-court Road, he was obliged to retreat twice, by reason of his lamp going out in the dense smoke. On the third trial it remained in, and enabled him to search the place. "I called out loud," he says in his report, "and was answered by a kind of stifled cry. I rushed across the landing to the back room, and encountered a man, who groaned out, "O save my wife!" I groped about, and laid hold of a female, who fell with me, clasping two children in her arms. I took them up, and brought them to the escape, guiding the man to follow me, and placed them all safely in the canvas, from whence they reached the ground without any injury; and, finally, I came down myself, quite exhausted." "We thought," said a bystander, "when he jumped into the second-floor window, that we should not see him again alive; and I cannot tell you how he was cheered when he appeared with the woman and her two children."