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 LIBRARY 
 
 ANNEX 
 
 2 
 
 . AGAINST FIRE - 
 
 JOSEPH BIRD 
 
Cornell University Library 
 TH 9146.B61 
 
 Protection against fire, and the best me 
 
 3 1924 022 801 413 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022801413 
 
PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE, 
 
 THE BEST MEANS OF PUTTING OUT 
 
 FIEES IN CITIES, TOWNS, AND 
 
 VILLAGES, 
 
 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR THE SECURITY 
 OP LIFE AND PROPERTY. 
 
 BT 
 
 JOSEPH BIRD. 
 
 An ounce of prevention is better tlian a pound of cure. 
 
 ^ '-/ 
 
 NEW YOEK: 
 PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 
 
 1873. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
 
 Joseph Bran, 
 in tlie Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, OAMBlbDQE : 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BT 
 
 H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ' PISE 
 
 FSBEONAI. 1 
 
 CHAPTEE n. 
 Of the Geeat Ihckease of Fiees 6 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 
 How TO PEESEETE LiFE FEOM DESTEUCTION ET FlEE . . 16 
 
 The Danger from Lamps. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 How TO PEOTECT OUE HOMES AKD WOEKSHOPS FEOM FlEE 22 
 
 A Dwelling-house saved from destruction. — Kerosene Eire 
 
 put out. 
 
 CHAPTEE T. 
 
 A New Fieb Peeventive System 33 
 
 The London Fire Brigade. — What to do in case of Fire. — 
 
 Boston Fire Department. — Mr. Damrell on Small Engines 
 
 and Extiaguishers. — Small Engines for Mansard Roofs. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OnE Dwelling-houses 75 
 
 Fire-proof Dwelling-houses. — A tetter from the Sculptor 
 Powers. — The Danger of Fire from Stoves. — Of Danger 
 from Furnaces. — Of Matches. — A Few Words to Ameri- 
 can Women. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 OoE Public Buildings ahd Waeehouses .... 96 
 Elevators. — Danger of Fire from Rubbish in Cellars. — 
 Smoking during Business Hours. — Store Fire Brigade. — 
 
iT CONTENTS. 
 
 Hotel Fire Brigade. —The Chictering Fire Brigade. —Of 
 Buildings which are in Great Danger of taking Fire. — 
 Mansard Eoofs. — Danger from Fires in Churches, Halls, 
 and Theatres. — Burning of the Eichmond Theatre. — 
 The Dreadful Catastrophe at Santiago, Chili. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Spohtaheotjs Igsition AM) Incesbiaet Fiees . . . 121 
 Day and Martin's. — Danger from Dried Wood. — Danger 
 from Vapor. — Spontaneous Combustion is at present 
 very little understood. — Oiled Bags, Cotton and Cotton 
 Waste, Hemp, etc. — New Causes of Spontaneous Igni- 
 tion. — Incendiary Fires. — Fraudulent Incendiarism. — 
 Pyromania. — Incendiarism for Deviltry. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Systems, Old ahd New 146 
 
 Fire Insurance. — The Albany Fire. — How may Great Con- 
 flagrations be extinguished. — Mistakes at Fires. — The 
 Fire-alarm Telegraph. — Warning Signals. — Steam Fire- 
 engines to throw Steam into Buildings. — Gunpowder to 
 avert Conflagrations. — History of Extinguishers. — New " 
 Fire Preventive Method. — Fire at the Temple House. — 
 Portable Apparatus. — Firemen always work nobly. — 
 The Newton Fire Department. — Education for Firemen. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 HiSTOEIC FlKES 207 
 
 The Great Fire of London. — Fires at Constantinople. — The 
 Chicago Fire. — The Boston Fire. — The Fire at Chicopee. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 Great Triumph of the Boston Fire Department. 
 
 262 
 
PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PEESOKAL. 
 
 Neae the close of a hot summer day, many- 
 years since, the people of Charlestown, Massachu- 
 setts, were startled by the cry of " fire." On a 
 small house near the bridge, there was a httle fire, 
 perhaps three feet in diameter. An earnest man 
 could have dashed it out in a minute or two, with 
 a pail of water. No one, however, made an at- 
 tempt to do what every one supposed would 
 be done in a few minutes by the firemen. The 
 fiiremen did not come as expected, and as there was 
 a high wind, the fire quadrupled its proportions 
 every minute, and soon the flames leaped upon 
 two large buildings, which before the first engine 
 got to work were aU on fire. The people now saw 
 their error, but it was too late. The engine was 
 powerless, and soon other great buildings were in 
 flames, and a conflagration was imminent. The 
 " little one had become a thousand," and although 
 a few minutes before it could have been smothered 
 X 
 
2 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 ■with a blanket, or dashed out with a few pails 
 of water, it was now fighting a successful battle 
 with the Charlestown and Boston fire depart- 
 ments. On the wings of the wind, the fire flew 
 over the engines, and soon ten, twenty, and thirty 
 buildings were on fire, which was cutting its fiery 
 way through the town. A dreadful consterna- 
 tion seized upon the people whose homes were in 
 flames, and upon those whose property lay in the 
 direction the fire was flying with awful rapidity. 
 The roaring and crackling of the burning and fall- 
 ing buildings, the shrieks of the affrighted women 
 and children, the yells of the firemen, the cries of 
 the men, and the clang of the bells added to the 
 awful terror, while the water poured into the great 
 hotels and other buildings, only seemed to add to 
 the fury of the fixe. Forty, fifty, sixty, and at 
 last seventy buildings, and a great amount of other 
 valuable property were swept away, when by the 
 help of open spaces between the rows of wooden 
 buildings, aided by the great exertions of the fire- 
 men, the fire was subdued, but with a loss of more 
 than 1200,000. 
 
 Amid the confusion of such conflagrations, there 
 are often places which, while the firemen are at 
 work at more important points, must be neglected, 
 and yet where the right man in the right place 
 may save property from destruction. While I was 
 
PERSONAL. 3 
 
 looking about for a chance to help somebody, or 
 something, I saw quite a fire in the out shed of a 
 large three-story house. A good pump, a bucket, 
 a strong arm and a willing mind, made short work 
 of that incipient conflagration. My attention was 
 next directed to the front of the same house. Peo- 
 ple were removing the furniture from it as the 
 fire was burning a row of wooden houses separated 
 from it only by a narrow street or lane. It oc- 
 curred to me that the house might be saved, even 
 though the engines could not be spared from other 
 places. I soon told half a dozen men my plan, 
 and iu a few minutes there was a tub of water, 
 buckets and dippers, in every room, where the out- 
 .side was exposed to the oncoming fire, and a man 
 in each room to open a vrindow and dash out the 
 fire as it caught on the outside, while other men 
 supplied the tubs with the necessary water from 
 the pump. As I could stand fire like a salanian- 
 der, I volunteered to remain outside, and to point 
 to where the fire caught on the building, and to 
 see that the men were supplied with water. 
 
 Soon the fire became terrific, and there was 
 hardly a moment when some window was not 
 opened, and water thrown to dash out the flames. 
 Indeed there was one time when the whole front 
 of the house seemed covered with flames, while 
 from every window flew water from paib and dip- 
 
4 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 pers. The glass cracked into thousands of pieces, 
 looking like frost work, but the water from the 
 windows just at the right moment, kept the fiery 
 river at bay. The heat grew less intense, and at 
 last the " Brigade " came together to congratulate 
 themselyes upon their success. "We met in the 
 parlor, though not in dress suits, for a more wet 
 and tired party of young men it would have been 
 hard to find. My eyes soon gave me notice by 
 their stinging pain to go to the pump which had 
 served us so well, for a bath for them. The clear, 
 cool water, soon made the eyes all right, and I felt 
 like a new man. I was then again called to the 
 parlor to be introduced to the owner of the house. 
 He was one of those stately solid men of Boston, 
 and vicLuity, who, alas, have almost passed away. 
 Taking off his hat, he said, " I am told, young 
 man, that under Providence, you have been the 
 means of saving my house from this dreadful fire, 
 and I want to give you my heartfelt thanks for 
 your earnest and successful efforts in my behalf." 
 I think I blushed a httle. It was easy to do so 
 after fighting such a battle vdth fire. But I tried 
 to bear my honors meekly, told him of my 
 " Brigade " who had done such good services, 
 bowed myself out, and was soon on my way 
 home on foot to Watertown, as wet as a rat, as tired 
 as a whole pack of dogs, but as happy as a king. 
 
PERSONAL. 5 
 
 I never again met the owner, or any of my fire 
 friends wlio fouglit it out on that line that night, 
 but I am sure that I then and there learned a les- 
 son which has enabled me to be of some use in the 
 world by preyenting fires, and God willing I will 
 hope and strive to do more. From that time I 
 was convinced that it is the duty of every man or 
 woman, boy or girl, to attack and put out fires in- 
 stantly, when they are small and easily managed, 
 and that when there is a fire and the firemen are 
 not able to defend every exposed place, others 
 should, and often might with the same success 
 which attended our efforts at Charlestown. The 
 fire which T have attempted to describe occurred 
 August 25, 1835. 
 
 Siuce that time, now nearly forty years, I have, 
 with all possible diligence, carefuUy studied the 
 manner of and the means for extinguishing fires, 
 the careless and reckless manner of erecting build- 
 ings, and the danger to towns and cities from 
 spontaneous combustion, inflammable oils, etc. 
 
 The result of my observations will be found in 
 the following pages. 
 
CHAPTER n. 
 
 OF THE GEBAT DsTCEEASB OE FIEES. 
 
 The rapid increase in the number and magni- 
 tude of fires in the past few years, seems to many 
 people who have given but little attention to the 
 subject, to be a mystery. 
 
 There is something uncanny about it. A gentle- 
 man in Chicago, who was at the dreadful fire in 
 that city, told me he had no doubt that its awful 
 magnitude was entirely owing to the electricity 
 with which the air was charged at that time. If 
 well-informed people entertain- such ideas, what 
 may not less intelligent minds be led to conceive ? 
 
 This subtle element, so useful to mankind when 
 confined within the limits of safety, now so often 
 bursts those bounds, that we may reasonably sup- 
 pose there is never a moment that there is not 
 somewhere in the United States a fire, more or 
 less destructive in its ravages. 
 
 Now, in the city, town, viUage, hamlet, or on 
 the isolated farm ; on the prairie, in the forest, or 
 at the hut of the lonely settler, ever somewhere 
 may be seen the cloud of smoke by day, or the 
 
OF THE GREAT INCREASE OF FIRES. 7 
 
 crimsoning sky by night, telKng of distress and 
 disaster from this prolific source of evil. 
 
 A city has in one of its buildings a tiny fire, 
 ■which could be hid under a bushel. Neglected, 
 it has burned its way out to the raging gale. 
 Now it rushes on its fiery pathway, through miles 
 of streets, the homes of thousands, to the water's 
 edge, or out to the open country. For weeks we 
 read of the dreadful loss ; of the dead, of the sick 
 and wounded, the sufferings of the poor, houseless, 
 and almost starving people; of the startling inci- 
 dents, the loss of Hfe, the fortimate escapes from 
 fearful peril, the ruin of thousands who, before the 
 fire, were surrounded with comforts ; of the calls 
 for. aid, the thanks for help received. At length 
 the tale is changed, and we learn of the uprising 
 of new buildings, reared in midwinter, or in a few 
 weeks or days, perhaps more carelessly erected 
 than those so lately destroyed. 
 
 A town has been swept out of existence by a 
 little spark lighting upon a roof, out of the reach 
 of those who saw it, and which, fanned by the 
 wind, ran like wild-fire over the dried shingles, 
 which were taken upon a dozen other buildings 
 before the department could be got to work. An- 
 other cry for help ; another sad account of distress 
 and destitution. Another blessed shower of relief ; 
 another outpouring of heartfelt thanksgiving. 
 
8 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 The spaces of time between such dreadful dis- 
 asters are only too well filled up with accounts of 
 the destruction of villages, homesteads, and work- 
 shops in every section of the country. Almost all 
 such fires are seen when so small that, with the 
 same coolness and presence of mind with which 
 we attend to other affairs, and with proper imple- 
 ments for extinguishing them, such as we provide 
 for our other work, would be put out in a few min- 
 utes, and with so little loss as to hardly be worth 
 telhng of to the neighbors. 
 
 Thus ever war, and almost every battle is a de- 
 feat. A hundred fires of buildings destroyed to 
 one instantly attacked and saved. 
 
 Ever reading of disaster, loss of property, often' 
 of hfe, when one occurs we become panic-stricken 
 when we should be more than ever self-possessed. 
 
 It should be the duty of some person in every 
 town to give the cause of fires, why they were not 
 at once put out, how large or small they -were 
 when first seen, how much they, had increased 
 when water was thrown upon them, and if extin- 
 guished at once and without loss, the manner and 
 means made known, that other property might be 
 saved in Hke manner. If such a record was pub- 
 hshed, we should learn that one cause of fires was 
 the crowding together of wooden buildings, as at 
 Portland and at Chicago, from which sparks flying 
 
A BOY PUTS OUT A FIRE. 9 
 
 from the first building on fire, would set many 
 others on fire before the first engine could be got to 
 work, or even perhaps before the telegraph told 
 the firemen there was a fire. And if it should be 
 proved that for these little fires the small hand- 
 engiaes were more efficient than great steam fire- 
 engines, and that such fires, by their use, could 
 have been put out with a loss of a few dollars in- 
 stead of many millions, they would soon be adopted. 
 Then by the combiaed force of the steamers and 
 the small engines, conflagrations would become 
 almost obsolete. Many an awful fire, the news of 
 which has been sent over the land, would have 
 been dashed out without loss by some man or 
 woman, boy or girl, if proper and efficient means 
 for doing it were at hand, and it was the custom 
 to pubhsh such instances of self-possession at fires, 
 as it was of the heroic deeds of the soldiers in our 
 late war. 
 
 Take, for instance, the following example : A 
 boy, employed in a store near the Old South 
 Church, discovered a fire in the basement of the 
 store, in a very dangerous place, which in a few 
 minutes would have driven the inmates from the 
 store, and resulted m the loss of thousands of 
 doUars worth of property. Spriagiug to the wash- 
 bowl, the only implement at hand, he fflled it with 
 water and throwing it upon the flames, he was in a 
 
10 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 moment back with another, and others followed, 
 and so he dashed it out almost before the other in- 
 mates knew there was a fire on the J)remises. As 
 one of the salesmen went to find the cause of the 
 smoke and disturbance, the lad emerged from the 
 smoke, saying, as he rushed for more water, " I have 
 got it almost out ! " And soon it was quite out, 
 and the serious danger over. Not a word of this 
 praiseworthy action was reported. Yet it would 
 no doubt have prevented many other fires if pub- 
 lished and commented upon in the newspapers of 
 the day. Nor do I believe that the boy ever 
 received a "thank you, sir," from the insurance 
 company, for whom he saved thousands of dollars. 
 
 The best managed fire I ever saw was dashed out 
 in a few minutes by a woman who worked with en- 
 tire self-possession, and taught a man and her 
 daughter to do so also. A kettle of tar had boiled 
 over in a wheelwright shop, and set the stock, chips, 
 and shavings under a work bench on fire. The 
 workman now seeing the fire, took the kettle of tar 
 from the fire-place to the door, dropping the burning 
 tar all the way, and throwing it out to the side of 
 the shop, where there was a large hole into the 
 cellar down which the burning tar ran upon the 
 chips and shavings which were scattered about 
 there. 
 
 A pretty kettle of — tar one would say! A 
 
A WOMAN PUTS OUT A FIRE. 11 
 
 dense black smoke enveloped the row of buildings, 
 and gave the alarm to the firewoman. The wind 
 was blowing a gale to add to the danger. In a 
 moment she seized two pails, filled one and telling 
 her daughter to fill the other, and to pump into the 
 trough, she sprang to the fire, and dashed her pail 
 of water under the bench where was the first fire. 
 
 In a few seconds came another paU which went 
 into the same place, and drowned out that part of 
 the fire. Now came help, the first man to her 
 assistance. Dashing her next pail of water on the 
 flames along the floor, she pointed to the fire in 
 the cellar, and told him to put it out, which, follow- 
 ing her example, he did from the water in the 
 trough, which was now almost full, for the girl 
 stuck to the pump, as her mother did to the fire. 
 By this time the mother had put out all the fire in 
 the shop, and the danger was over, as half a dozen 
 men came rushing up too late to be of any service. 
 If the fire had not been attacked until they arrived, 
 a whole neighborhood would have been destroyed 
 ia an hour. Just as the fire was out, though the 
 smoke was so dense that nothing could be seen in 
 the shop, the workman came out of' it, as black as 
 a tar-barrel, and with lamp-black enough upon him 
 to have fitted out a dozen negro minstrels ! 
 
 I doubt if the brave heroine of this exploit was 
 ever thanked by more than one of the half a dozen 
 
12 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 owners of the buildings in danger, or received a re- 
 ward from those for whom she saved many thou- 
 sands of dollars. Nor did the account of the fire 
 go into the papers to teach, and encourage other 
 women and. men to follow her example in similar 
 times of danger. 
 
 A house far from help from engines took fire on 
 the roof, and before it was discovered a large portion 
 of one side of the roof was on fire. A young lady 
 of the house caught a mop and pail of water, and 
 telling the others to bring more water, she got on 
 the roof, and dashing out the flames vdth the mop, 
 soon did for the house what Mrs. Partington could 
 not do with the Atlantic Ocean. She mopped out 
 the fire, and saved their pleasant home from de- 
 struction. The excellent lesson she taught the 
 world wiU first be told in this book. If it had 
 been told ia the papers of the day, many a fixe 
 would have been mopped out, many another home 
 
 saved. 
 
 CAUSES OP ETEE. 
 
 The general use of inflammable oils for lighting 
 houses, often sold when it is more dangerous than 
 gunpowder to life and property, the careless man- 
 ner of setting stoves and funnels and furnaces, 
 the introduction of steam and hot water, and the 
 careless manner of their arrangement for heating 
 buildings, are wholesale causes of the great increase 
 
MANSARD ROOFS. 13 
 
 of fires. The construction of buildings, so that if 
 the fire has burned through a partition, ceUing, or 
 stairway, it is out of sight, and with an excellent 
 draft, often better than that of the chimney, it 
 rapidly and safely travels over, and destroys them, 
 is another prolific source of danger. 
 
 The introduction into houses and manufactories 
 of chemicals which may take fire from spontaneous 
 combustion, the enormous and careless use of 
 matches, the employment of cheap and careless 
 workmen and watchmen in situations of danger from 
 fires, all add greatly to the number of fires, while 
 the story of the danger of Mansard roofs was told 
 with awful force by the fire at Boston last No- 
 vember. 
 
 A very great cause of fires is the wicked reck- 
 lessness of our people, who will not be taught by 
 such dreadful lessons. Look at the wooden Man- 
 sard roofs which have been erected in Boston and 
 vicinity since that great fire. Think of the dread- 
 ful fire on Hanover Street where so many lives 
 were lost, and then read in the papers of the 
 hundreds of similar buildings about the city ! 
 The general want of knowledge of the best way 
 instantly to attack fires when small and easily 
 extinguished, and an almost entire want of effi- 
 cient machines for that purpose, and a want of 
 the self-possesssion which persons having them 
 
14 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 require, are other causes in the long list. I once 
 saw where a barn had been burned from the centre 
 of a nest of buildings, to which the " great box, 
 little box, band-box, and bundle," would have been 
 but a feeble comparison. I asked a friend how 
 they were saved. " Do you recoUect lecturing on 
 fires at the State House once ? " said he. " Yes." 
 " Well, I bought an engine, and soon after, that 
 barn took fire. It set the buildings on fire on 
 every side of it, and I, with half a dozen men to 
 give me water, went right round, dashing out the 
 flames on one, and then another, and keeping them 
 wet until the barn burned down ; they were all 
 saved." "When I say that my friend was Mr. 
 Benjamin Cutter, of Pelham, New Hampshire, 
 the farming portion of my readers will have no 
 doubt the work was well done. 
 
 But the cause, perhaps, more than all others 
 combined, is the fact that our fire departments 
 are so arranged that from the time that the fire 
 is first seen, the telegraph people told of it, the 
 horses put to the engines, the engines taken to the 
 fire, then attached to the hydrants, or the reser- 
 voirs, and the hose taken to the fire, and the water 
 is turned on to the fire, is upon an average at least 
 fifteen minutes; while a fire doubling its propor- 
 tions at first every minute, and soon quadrupling, 
 works its way through a building in that time, or 
 
THINK OF THESE THINGS. 15 
 
 if in a dry time and a gale of wind, has become a 
 conflagration, and as at Portland, Chicago, and Bos- 
 ton, acquired a power which the engines cannot 
 control. 
 
 No one who reads this chapter can fail to per- 
 ceive that the means by which buildings may take 
 fire have been increased much more rapidly than 
 those for arresting the fires. We know that fires 
 are best managed if instantly attacked when small ; 
 yet we so arrange our fixe fighting systems that 
 they cannot be thus attacked. We say " a stitch 
 in time saves nine," and then do not take the stitch. 
 We say " Light blows kiU the devil," but do not 
 strike the light blows ; that " a short horse is soon 
 curried," and wait until our fires are full grown ; 
 that " delay makes the danger," and then always 
 delay. Is it not better to give more attention to 
 this important subject than to wait until more 
 cities, God only knows which they may be, are de- 
 stroyed. Thii^k on these things I And think- 
 ing, act upon them. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HOW TO PEESEBTE LIFE EEOM DESTRTJCTION BY 
 EIKB. 
 
 Since the great fires of the two years past the 
 press has teemed with plans, some wise and many 
 unwise, upon the question of how to prevent fires. 
 But very few words or thoughts for the protection 
 of life from the same danger, have been presented. 
 And yet the value of a life, that is a life worth 
 preserving, cannot be weighed in the same scale 
 with houses and warehouses. 
 
 In the large cities and towns, costly means are 
 provided for fighting fires, and many thoughtful 
 persons have provided extinguishers and small en- 
 gines for preventing them. But neither the large 
 or the small engines can be of any use for saving 
 the life of persons whose clothing has taken fire 
 from the dangerous oils in common use, or from 
 matches, or from stoves or open fire-places. 
 
 And yet a knowledge of how to instantly apply 
 means to be found in every house, would prevent al- 
 most every catastrophe of this kind. There should 
 be a hearth-rug if possible in every room in the 
 
PROTECTION OF LIFE. 17 
 
 house in which a fire is kept, an oTercoat in the 
 hall, and blankets or woolen bed clothing in eyery 
 bedroom in the house. 
 
 The first great requisite of safety is that the 
 person whose clothing has taken fire should not 
 lose his presence of miad. Throwing one's self 
 upon the floor and wrapping a rug or blanket or 
 overcoat about one, would occupy two or three 
 seconds, and the danger would be over. The rea- 
 son for lying down is, that then the flames burn 
 quite slowly towards a vital part, but almost in- 
 stantly while standing upright. 
 
 If persons awake in the night and find the room 
 filled with smoke, they should get out of bed and 
 creep with the face as near the fioor as possible 
 to a door or window. A room may be so full of 
 smoke as to suffocate any one standing up, and be 
 perfectly safe to breathe in, a few inches from the 
 floor. Mr. Braidwood relates the following inci- 
 dent upon this subject : — 
 
 " A fire had broken out in the third floor of a 
 house, and when I reached the top of the stairs 
 the smoke was rolling in thick heavy masses, 
 which prevented me from seeing six inches before 
 me. I immediately got down upon the floor, above 
 which for the space of about eight inches the air 
 seemed to be remarkably clear and bright. I 
 could distinctly see the feet of the tables and 
 
18 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 other furniture of the room ; the flames in this 
 space burning as vivid and distinct as the flame of 
 a candle, while all above the smoke was so thick 
 that the eye could not penetrate it. The fire had 
 already burnt out of five windows in the apart- 
 ment, yet when lying flat on the floor, no inconven- 
 ience was felt except from the heat.',' 
 
 Never reenter a house on flr^ from which you 
 have escaped for anything of trifling, value. Noth- 
 ing but the life of some of the family should 
 tempt you to do it ; and not then- until you have 
 coolly measured the danger. Many lives, are lost 
 in the attempt to save others. If you do attempt 
 to save a life, recollect the following rule of the 
 London Fire Brigade. " He (the Superintendent) 
 never allows any man unaccompanied by another 
 to enter a building on fire." The loss of life in the 
 Boston warehouses is a lesson on this subject. 
 Stores and their contents may be constructed or 
 purchased. Life cannot. 
 
 THE DANGER I^OM LAMPS. 
 There should be special laws prohibiting the sale 
 of oils made of benzine and similar dangerous 
 substances, which mixed vnth kerosene is the cause 
 of the loss of so much life and property in the 
 United States. A lady who is careful of and 
 anxious for the safety of her family, said to me, " I 
 
DANGEROUS OILS. 19 
 
 asked for Downer's oil, and was told they did not 
 sell it. They, however, had a safe oil which would 
 not explode. They poured some of it into a plate, 
 and lighting a match, they put it upon the kero- 
 sene, which put out the fire on it." And so she 
 supposed she could use it with perfect safety. 
 This experiment is performed all over the country 
 as follows : A fellow of no learning or character 
 sets himself up in the oil business. His stock in 
 trade is a barrel of benzine and a gallon of kero- 
 sene oil. His oil is a famous new chemical discov- 
 ery. It will bum more quickly, give more light, 
 and is more safe than any other, as it is made on 
 Philosophical Pbesciples! And you cannot 
 explode it if you try to do so all day. Then the oil 
 is poured on the tin pan or plate, the match applied 
 to the fluid, and of course the fire is extinguished. 
 Now for the mystery. Benzine does not explode, 
 but the vapor which rises from it does. When 
 the benzine is poured upon the plate the vapor 
 passes off into the air safely* When it is gone, the 
 match is applied with the aforesaid result. But 
 when the dangerous oil is in a lamp, the vapor in 
 the lamp cannot find its way to the air, but fills 
 the lamp above the oil. Now we have the flame 
 of the lamp over the vapor. If we blow the flame 
 down to the vapor, or so shake the lamp as to force 
 a tiny stream of the vapor up to the flame, or the 
 
20 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 vapor increases until it fills the lamp and is 
 forced up by the side of the wick to the flame, the 
 vapor takes fire and burns its way back iato the 
 lamp, when the whole of the vapor explodes, set- 
 ting fire to the oil. Then the vapor sets fire to 
 and kills the person holding it, and the oil sets fire 
 to the house, which is often also destroyed. 
 
 These fires follow the introduction of such " Pat- 
 ent Oils " aU over the country where they are 
 sold. The maker of the oil grows rich in a 
 neighborhood, then migrates to another State to 
 follow the same devihsh vocation. I know of no 
 punishment worthy of the offense, unless we imi- 
 tate that of the ancient Romans, and sew him in a 
 sack saturated with his oil and set it on fire. 
 
 Never blow down the chimney of a kerosene 
 lamp to extinguish it. Never use great quart 
 lamps. They are very dangerous. If you have 
 them throw them against a stone walL Never buy 
 the cheapest oil, " Get the best." 
 
 Lamps when lighted in the morning without 
 being filled, and taken quickly about the house, 
 are very liable to explode. A neighbor left his 
 house before light in the morning some time ago 
 to do the morning, work of the barn. Not long 
 after he heard an explosion, and the bright light 
 in his house told him where was the danger. His 
 wife had risen, and lighting the kerosene lamp, 
 
A EABMLESS EXPLOSION. 21 
 
 •was walking across the room, when it exploded, 
 throwing the bumiag naphtha over her, and set- 
 ting her clothing on fire. She was quite near some 
 water which she at once used, and with the help 
 of her husband the fire on her person and on the 
 house was soon out. She was, however, badly 
 burned but her life was saved. 
 
 But many people will purchase poor oUs, if a 
 few cents cheaper than the best, and accidents will 
 happen in the best of families. A little anecdote 
 with its caution shall therefore end this chapter. 
 
 Sometime since I had a conversation upon this 
 subject with a gentleman, who had the good sense 
 to speak of it to his family, and they formed a 
 little Home Fire Brigade. Soon afterwards, a few 
 minutes after one of the young ladies had retired 
 for the night an explosion was heard. The family 
 rushed up-stairs and upon opening the room they 
 found the lamp exploded, but the young lady was 
 " as snug as a bug in a rug," the fire aU out and 
 the danger over. 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 HO"W TO PROTECT OTJE, HOMES AND "WOEKSHOPS 
 FKOM FIRE. 
 
 All cities and large towns are said to be " pro- 
 tected " by " fire departments ; " but small to-wns, 
 villages, and the farming population, however 
 much they may be assessed to pay for the town 
 engines, are most of them so far away that the 
 engines are of no use for preventing fires, while 
 they too often see their' 'barns and outhouses de- 
 stroyed by incendiary fires, set that there may be 
 a "good time'." 
 
 The common manual engine cannot be distrib- 
 uted in such places, as its house and the engine 
 would be too expensive, and there would not be 
 men enough found to work it, until the fire had 
 burnt out. The popular steam fire-engine for such 
 purposes would be about as useful as an elephant 
 for weeding carrots ! There are engines, cheap 
 and efficient, which can be worked by men or 
 women, boys or girls, and which should be pur- 
 chased by every respectable family in all the length 
 and breadth of the land., But as a vast majority 
 
A HOME FIRE COMPANY. 23 
 
 of our people do not know that there are such 
 useful machines, and as all are exposed to fires at 
 any hour, I propose to show that many fires can 
 be prevented by an earnest application of water 
 from the common utensils of the house. 
 
 A water-pail or two, a. pint pot, and an axe, 
 make a " splendid " apparatus for preventiag many 
 fires. Neither the man who doubts this nor all his 
 neighbors .owns a thousandth part as much prop- 
 erty as thejTjhave already saved or as niiich as they 
 will save, before every, person is properly protected 
 by something , better. ' A short time sidce,' On a 
 cold, windy day,; fire was discovered in a toom. of 
 a large house, in which there were two women 
 only. The room was very much on fire when first 
 seen. One woman pumped the water, took it to the 
 other, and begged- her to give up the house, and 
 save Avhat furniture, they could, and themselves ; the 
 other dashed the water on the fire as fast and as 
 well asvshe could, and eficourarged the fitrst to keep 
 on fighting the fire. The result' was that soon the 
 fixe gaVe in, and' retreated into the inside waste 
 places round the chimney — nice little places from 
 where fires can work their way out of sight to 
 every portion of a house. At this time a neighbor, 
 a fire engineer, arrived, and with a hatchet soon 
 cut his way into the fire, when a dipperful or two 
 of water dashed it out, and the hatchet was again 
 
24 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 put to work. He knew the efficiency of small 
 engines, and, said he, "when I went to work, I 
 would have given a hundred dollars for one." 
 There were plenty of them only a third of a mile 
 away. A man was sent to give word to the steam- 
 engine, two miles away, and to get the small ones. 
 He was a man of great ideas, and so sent for the 
 steamer, and neglected the small ones. But the 
 engineer's pail, hatchet, and dipper waited for 
 nothing. Crack went the hatchet, and slap went 
 water from the dipper, and in ten minutes or 
 so he had the satisfaction of resting, and thinking 
 that his neighbors, through, his noble efforts, had 
 not been turned houseless into the streets on one 
 of the coldest days of the winter. The same kind 
 of courage as that of the women and man, the 
 same simple little implements as well applied, 
 would prevent a great portion of the fires which 
 now afflict our country. The great steamer was 
 hurried down in time to find the fire out, and the 
 people quietly about their usual avocations. Some 
 years ago, a fire caught in the wood-box of a small 
 house, and an alarm was soon given to the neigh- 
 borhood, where, at one of the houses, a small 
 engine was kept. In the room on fire, the clothes 
 of a washing were hung up and were dried. They 
 caught, and burned like tinder. The fire had 
 charred the whole room, and nearly burned through 
 
STOP THE FIRE FIRST. 25 
 
 the partitions. Two men of good sense came to- 
 ward the fire from one side, and a young womaa 
 with an engine from the other. The men, with 
 plenty of water at hand, dashed it out just as the 
 engine was ready to do so. Here were two ways, 
 to " choke a cat" to prevent a fire. Either could; 
 have done it, if the other had not been tried, while 
 the house would have burned up before the great 
 engines of the town, two miles away, could have 
 known anything about it. 
 
 Many years ago a fire was discovered in a 
 woolen mill near Boston. The neighbors rallied, 
 and thinking it could not be saved, they went to. 
 work with a will to save such property as they 
 could reach. One of those people who look and 
 think as well as work, came in, and looking about, 
 he cried out, " Hold on here ! Let us put out; this 
 fiire, and then we shall have plenty of time to take 
 out the goods ! " In a minute he had them fight- 
 ing the fire, and in a short time it was out. It 
 was then quite as much work to return the goods 
 as it had been to extinguish the fire ! 
 
 Some years ago, a house was set on fire near 
 Mount Auburn. It was a new, unfinished house,, 
 and one of the rooms of the first story was in a 
 roaring, blazing fire when it was discovered. The 
 first man who got to the fire caught hold of the 
 nice new pump in the kitchen and wrenched it 
 off! 
 
26 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 But where there is a will there is a "way, and 
 soon a dozen men were engaged ia throwing water 
 from a neighboring ditch upon the fire, with pails. 
 Fire is a great coward, and gets out of the way of 
 such deluges as quick as possible, and this one did 
 not get into any room but that in which it was 
 discovered. Some time after the people who put 
 the fire out, had got home, and to bed, an engine 
 or two came, rushing from the neighboring city. 
 The fire was out long before they had got the 
 alarm. The pumip was brought back safely the 
 next morning. The man who "put the pump 
 out," was soon afterward chosen one of the fire- 
 wards ! At the next fire in the neighborhood, it 
 was a raw cold morning, and the fire was set in a 
 great barn. The neighbors got tubs and pails of 
 water and placed them so as to throw the water 
 upon the house, if it should get warm, and then 
 went nearer to the fire to keep themselves from 
 freezing. When lo ! our fire officer came rushing 
 up, mounted the roof of the house and 'threw water 
 for a long time on it, where it froze as fast as it 
 fell. Such people are found at every country fire. 
 I once saw a person go to work on a great shed 
 with an axe to cut it in two ! He could have done 
 his work in about a week, and with a scarf twenty 
 feet . wide. The fire soon drove him off. But 
 there is a bright side also. I never yet went to a 
 
AXES AND WATER. 27 
 
 fire in the country, that I did not find numbers of 
 people willing to work, and who worked with a 
 will, and also with judgment. 
 
 If a house takes fire around a chimney, get your 
 axe or hatchet and a pail of water and tell the 
 people to bring a pint pot, and then go to work 
 quickly, for the smoke will drive you out if your 
 work is not soon fijiished. A few blows with the 
 axe and a pint Qr two of water, and so on ; the axe 
 and the water will make short work of quite a fire. 
 A fine large house was observed to have smoke in 
 the upper rooms, and upon examination fire was 
 found in the partition, set from the chimney. 
 Fire! was cried, and the people soon filled the 
 house. All could see where the fire was, and its 
 crackling could be heard. Yet no one suggested 
 an axe to enable the water to be got upon it. Soon 
 the smoke drove them away, when they cleared the 
 house, and waited for the Steamer. When this had 
 arrived, the fire had burned the upper half of the 
 house, and as there was no water for the steamer 
 or other great engines, the fixe made short work of 
 the other half. The people and the firemen of 
 that village looked on at its destruction, never once 
 supposing that the fire preventive arrangements in 
 that town were not perfect ! Many long years 
 since, a farmer on his way to Boston with a load of 
 wood, on a cold, windy morning, when the ther- 
 
28 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 mometer was at zero, saw a small light before him. 
 As he approached, it grew larger, and he saw it 
 was a house on fire on the roof, a long distance be- 
 fore him. Leaving his team to follow as it would, 
 he ran on to alarm the family ; soon he saw some- 
 thing white flying about the roof of the house, and 
 before he arrived, the something white took the 
 form of the old man of the house, who in the 
 smallest possible amount of clothing, had got upon 
 the roof and was dashing the water, brought by the 
 family to him, upon the fire. The fire wilted, and 
 a bundle of shingles and a few boards was all that 
 was required to repair the house. By the time the 
 farmer had helped the " man in white " to empty 
 a mug of cider, the wood team came along and the 
 farmer went off with it, — a better fireman for 
 what he had seen that night. These examples of 
 how buildings may be saved when on fire without 
 engines, should prompt every person, male or 
 female, to instantly attack fires. Thousands of 
 houses are burned every year, which could have 
 been put out in a few minutes, and with the loss of 
 a few dollars, if they had been earnestly fought 
 with the common pails of the house for weapons. 
 
 The excitement, terror, and confusion attending 
 fires would be almost entirely prevented, if every 
 person would at once do what they could to help 
 extinguish a fire. 
 
A PAIL IN TIME. 29 
 
 There is no more danger when -vrorking at a fire 
 than there is from any other kind of earnest hard 
 work. And there is no place where an ardent 
 effort is likely to be more successful than when 
 fighting fire. 
 
 A few minutes' cool and well directed hard work 
 has often saved many thousands of dollars. 
 
 No person will save a house by his or her earnest 
 work without teaching others, who will also be suc- 
 cessful if placed in like trying circumstances. 
 Many years ago my father woke up in the night, 
 and found the room full of smoke. He called Fiee 
 up the stairs, and then found the fire in a closet, 
 and put it out with a few pails of water. About 
 fifteen minutes afterwards, his apprentice, nineteen 
 years old, came down the stairs nicely dressed and 
 ready for a day's work. Father dressed himself 
 after he had put out the fire. If he had not, the 
 apprentice might have been burned to death, as he 
 slept just over the fire. 
 
 A nurse had come to the house that day, who 
 took up the wood ashes, and placed them in a 
 wooden bucket, which she put in a closet. She 
 was a pretty good nurse for mother and the baby, 
 but a wonderful person to nurse a fire, as this little 
 story illustrates. 
 
30 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 A DWELLING-HOTJSE SAVED FEOM DESTEITCTION. 
 It was washing-day, and the washing was almost 
 over, when the good lady, as she was taking out a 
 basket of clothes for the line, saw smoke coming 
 down the stairway from the upper portion of the 
 house. Dropping her basket, she rushed up to 
 see what caused it, and found one of the rooms on 
 fire near the chimney. Flying down to the wash- 
 room, she caught a pail, filled it with water from 
 a wash-tub, and in half a minute from the time 
 she saw the smoke, she had dashed the water upon 
 the fire. This was followed by another, and then 
 the hatchet came- into use, and one more pail of 
 water, and there was a clearing up of the room, 
 as the fire was out. The agent for the insurance 
 company said to me that he had not the slightest 
 doubt that had the woman left the house and 
 given a fire-alarm, before the engine could have 
 got there and at work, the fire would have insured 
 the total destruction of the building. The damage 
 was only about five dollars. 
 
 KEROSENE EIEE PUT OUT. 
 
 In the same -townv a very careful domestic over- 
 turned a kerosene lamp, which broke on the floor, 
 and set the oil instantly all ablaze. She gave the 
 alarm, when the " man of the house," with most 
 
PUTNAM AND TEE FIRE WOLF. 31 
 
 Wismtable clothes to parade tlie street with, entered 
 the room, and seizing the blanket from the bed, 
 he smothered the fire in a moment or two ; then, 
 while putting on his pants, he had the happiness 
 of thinking he had saved about $10,000 as quick, 
 as easy, and with as little clothing on, as ever 
 was done by any other man ! 
 
 If people, when they discovered such fires, would 
 follow the example of these persons, there would 
 be very few fires indeed. The fires, when so 
 small, are extinguished with the greatest ease ; yet 
 the same fire, in a few minutes more, would have 
 got over the rooms and into the ceilings, and de- 
 stroyed the buildings. 
 
 In 1757, while General Putnam was at Fort 
 Edward, the barracks took fire and were destroyed. 
 They were within twelve feet of the magazine, 
 containing three hundred barrels of gunpowder. 
 Putnam took a position between the fire and the 
 magazine, where he could throw water upon it. 
 The buUdiag and its dangerous contents were 
 saved. The brave officer was so badly burned 
 that all the skin peeled from his hands, and he 
 was sick for a month. In the times before fire 
 departments were originated, such deeds of bravery 
 were not uncommon; nor are they now, where 
 there are no fire brigades, or where engines fail to 
 arrive in season to protect property ia danger. 
 
32 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 This was proved at the great Boston fire, where Mr. 
 Pratt saved his house, and at Hovey's store, and at 
 the fire fight on Oliver Street. But when depart- 
 ments were organized, and great engines procured, 
 the people left the work to the firemen, which 
 they could often have better done themselves, and 
 little fires which some one, imitating the brave 
 Putnam, could have extinguished in a few min- 
 utes, sometimes destroyed whole villages or towns. 
 Now the young soldier could have been shielded 
 from the awful heat by a door or wide board 
 placed between him and the fire, as is now often 
 done by firemen ; and if he could have had a small 
 engine, he could have saved the property with but 
 little danger. As he did his duty without means, 
 we should learn to do all our duty with them, 
 and fires of considerable magnitude would then be 
 instantly dashed out. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 A NEW FIBB PEEVENTIVE SYSTEM. 
 
 Beeoee describing a new preventive system^ 
 let us see if there are such, faults in the old as to 
 make it so inefficient as to require a change. Take 
 the Boston Fire Department for an example. The 
 people of Boston, having adopted a system, have 
 spared no expense to make it as perfect as possible. 
 Men, horses, and engines are as good as can be 
 found. If anything is wrong, it is in the system 
 alone. The evils attending it are its tendency to 
 show, its great expense, and its inefficiency. The 
 last is the important objection, and let us see how 
 great it really is. 
 
 A fire is discovered ; in the confusion, a minute 
 or two is lost before any one is sent to give the 
 alarm. The average time to run to the nearest 
 box is two minutes; to find the person who has 
 the key, tell him where the fire is, and for him to 
 open the box and give the alarm, two minutes 
 more. There is no doubt that the time from when 
 the fire is seen until the telegraph tells three hun- 
 dred thousand people that there is a fire, averages 
 
34 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 five minutes. Next, the horses are attached to 
 the engines in one or two minutes, when the first 
 engine is taken to the fire in from three to five 
 minutes, the engine attached to the hydrant, and 
 the leading hose taken to the fire in five minutes 
 more. Five minutes- to telegraph, five to harness 
 and get to the fire, and five more to get water 
 upon the fire, or at least fifteen minutes is lost, 
 upon an average, from the time a fire is discovered 
 before water is thrown upon it. Now, if the fire 
 would wait fifteen minutes, the only result of the 
 delay would be that the great engines would cause 
 a great waste and loss by water. They would 
 always put out the fire, but the water loss would 
 be a serious one. 
 
 But the fire is seldom so accommodating. It 
 burns on, always doubling its proportions every 
 minute, and often in dangerous places quadrupling 
 its proportions every minute. 
 
 If it has doubled each minute for the fifteen, 
 the result is a great loss by fire and water. If it 
 has quadrupled, it is a total loss of the building on 
 fire ; and if there is added to that crowded and 
 dangerous buildings and a high wind, there is a 
 dreadful conflagration. 
 
 Such has been the history of the Boston depart- 
 ment since the introduction of steam fire-engines. 
 The Fourth of July fire at East Boston was so 
 
GREAT FIRES AND GREAT ENGINES. 35 
 
 small, when first seen, that a man took a pail, to 
 which was attached a cord, to fill from the wharf, 
 and with the water he would have extinguished the 
 fire, but the cord untying, the bucket floated away, 
 and the loss by fire in five hours was half a million 
 of doUars. This is one example. The turret fire, 
 also at East Boston, of which the president of the 
 company making the turrets for war vessels wait- 
 ing for them at the Navy Yard, said to me : "I 
 could have covered the fire with my hat if I could 
 have reached it, or have put it out with one of 
 your engines in a minute ! The loss was $250,000, 
 besides the loss of the use of the iron-clads for a 
 year. Still another was the destruction of the 
 Winthrop House and Masonic Temple, of which 
 the police reported that, when they arrived (not 
 when the fire was first seen), it could have been 
 easily put out with a few buckets of water. And 
 who does not recollect the great fire which began 
 in a hay-store near the Boston and Maine Depot, and 
 which for a time was one of the most splendid fire 
 battles ever fought by the Boston firemen. The 
 men worked like heroes; the splendid engines 
 almost outdid themselves. But the fire rushed on 
 through the hay and straw stores and the stables, 
 then on to the great depot on one side, and the 
 rows of wooden buildings filled with numerous 
 families on the other, while a great cloud of smoke 
 
36 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 rolled over the city, from wHcli dropped millions 
 of sparks, one of which set fire away off on Charles 
 Street. Firemen fell into the flames, but were 
 taken out without a loss of life. Many thousands 
 of dollars worth of property were destroyed. Who 
 seeing that terrible battle could have believed that 
 this monstrous fire, when first seen, was so small, 
 only on one bundle of hay, and that within a few 
 feet of the door, out of which it could have been 
 pitched in a moment, or the fire dashed out with a 
 small engine in two seconds ! 
 
 These are a few of the many instances of the 
 inefficiency of the present system under the most 
 favorable circumstances, for the department of 
 Boston is one of the best in the world. 
 
 But why has not this inefficiency been discovered 
 before ? Just as the streets of Boston have con- 
 tinued narrow and crooked. Just as the Boston 
 Board of Health nursed the small-pox until the 
 people would not longer endure the nuisance, and 
 so turned reformers. Just as the London Fire 
 Brigade, when Ericsson, our turret hero, with 
 John Braithwaite of London, made a splendid 
 steam fire-engine in 1829, did all they could to 
 annoy its workmen, and would not, if possible, 
 allow it to play at fires. Of this we have the 
 following account : — 
 
 " This engine worked with the greatest success 
 
POUND FOOLISH. 37 
 
 at the fixe at tlie Argyll Rooms, -when the cold 
 was so severe that the manual engines quickly 
 became frozen and useless, but the steamer worked 
 incessantly for five hours without a hitch, throwing 
 its stream clear over the dome of the building, at St. 
 Charles Street, Soho, at the burning of the English 
 Opera-house, and Messrs, Barclay's brewery, be- 
 sides many others of less magnitude, at all of which 
 it rendered signal service in preventing the fire 
 from spreading. For these gratuitous services and 
 the great outlay encountered by Mr. Braithwaite, 
 he received but little patronage and sUpport from 
 the general public ; and from the insurance com- 
 panies, who must have been benefited some thou- 
 sands of pounds by his exertions, he received the 
 magnificent testimonial, presented to his men, of 
 OTie sovereign ! In short, the managers of the Fire 
 Brigade declined to entertain Mr. Braithwaite's 
 proposals, and their servants, when they met him 
 with his engine at fires, which he for a long time 
 attended gratuitously, perpetrated every possible 
 annoyance towards him, so that he ultimately 
 withdrew in disgust from the new field in which 
 he had hoped to have both profitably and usefully 
 employed his talents and resources." 
 
 These are the reasons ! And such have been the 
 reasons why every improvement has been opposed 
 in all tim6s. But if the present steamers are not 
 
38 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 sufficient, why not add more ? Well, double the 
 number, and see the result. The same time to 
 hesitate, to run to the telegraph box, to attach the 
 horses, to attach the hydrant, and get the leading 
 hose out to the fire; a minute or two saved in 
 running to the fire; so that were the expense 
 increased to a million of dollars annually, the 
 efficiency for preventing fires would be but slightly 
 increased. For fighting them, if the water supply 
 was sufficient (as it is not), they would be more 
 efficient, of course. But do not forget that pre- 
 venting and not fighting fires is what we most 
 need. The fires of Chicago and Boston prevented, 
 would have saved nearly $300,000,000. 
 
 No person who reads the daily papers can fail to 
 notice the great number of persons who are killed 
 in one way or another by pistol shots. A ball 
 from one of these little instrupients will as effectu- 
 ally kill a man as will a six or a sixty pound shot, 
 and in a much more decent manner. Now the 
 same degree of intelligence and ingenuity which 
 has been devoted to the weapons for destroying 
 man, has been expended upon little machines for 
 extinguishing fire. In this country where the one 
 great idea for years has been to throw the largest 
 stream of water, we don't understand this. 
 
 But small engines were introduced into the Lon- 
 don Fire Brigade in 1848, since which time one has 
 
KING AND BADDELTS TESTIMONY. 39 
 
 always been' attached to the great engines. When 
 they reached the fire, it was fought, if large, by 
 the great engine, but if small, a great fire was pre- 
 vented by the little one, and with only a slight 
 loss by water. 
 
 Let us now learn the English opinion of these 
 little machines, after fifteen years' experience. 
 Mr. Charles E. King, C. E., in a paper upon the 
 suppression and extinction of fires read before the 
 London Society of Arts, in 1863, said : " From the 
 great apparent difficulty of successfully dealing 
 with large fires, it is manifest that those plans will 
 be most advantageous which can be applied at the 
 commencement of a fire. And for this purpose, 
 the ordinary hand pump cannot be surpassed. 
 The great success which has attended its use both 
 by firemen and civilians, is in many well authenti- 
 cated cases truly marvelous. Many fires which 
 upon their first discovery could have been covered 
 with a hat, for want of such an apparatus as a 
 hand pump and a pail of water, have grown into 
 extensive conflagrations." 
 
 In the discussion which followed the reading of 
 Mr. King's paper, the experienced Mr. Baddely 
 said : " In its early stages, fire in most cases is 
 quite manageable, and that is the time when it 
 can be dealt with, with the greatest chances of 
 success. Of all modern inventions for fire extin- 
 
40 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 guishing purposes, nothing in my opinion is so 
 really useful as the little hand pump. Many years 
 of controversy ensued before the late Mr. Braid- 
 wood could be brought to regard the hand pump 
 ■with favor. The result of the experiments with 
 the little hand engines was so satisfactory, that 
 every fire-engine in London travels with one ; and 
 they have been the means, in the hands both of 
 firemen and civilians, of saving thousands of 
 pounds worth of property." 
 
 The " experienced Mr. Baddely " had no doubt 
 given more attention to fire apparatus than any 
 person in Europe or America. He had taken out 
 twenty-two patents for new engines or fire appara- 
 tus. He designed the cabinet fire-engine for the 
 Duke of Bedford's picture gallery, at Belvoir Cas- 
 tle, great numbers of which have come into use in 
 England ; the farmer's engine, the portable fire- 
 engine, adopted by the London Fire Brigade, and 
 by Mr. Braidwood in 1848. 
 
 In 1858, Mr. Braidwood wrote of them after ten 
 years' experience ; " There should be a tank on the 
 top of each staircase," he was writing of the great 
 London warehouses, " with six fire buckets, and 
 three small pumps. The officers and work people 
 seeing them every day, would be certain to run to 
 them in case of fire, and small accidents might be 
 extinguished at once, and the iron doors and 
 roofs kept cool in case of one room taking fire." 
 
THE LONDON PUMP. 41 
 
 This advice was unheeded, and on a pleasant 
 morning in 1861 a slight smoke was seen rising 
 from a pile of hemp. The " officers and workmen" 
 had nothing to work with, and before the firemen 
 arrived, the fire had got so far into the great ware- 
 houses, that all the Fire Brigade with the great 
 river steam-engines, throwing thousands of gallons 
 of water per minute, could not extinguish it for a 
 fortnight. The loss of merchandise, etc., was $11,- 
 000,000. But worst of all, Mr. Braidwood, whose 
 advice, if followed, would have probably prevented 
 the fire, was himself crushed to death by the fall- 
 ing of the walls, thrown down by an explosion of 
 saltpetre. 
 
 From " Fires, Fire Engines, etc.," we -take the 
 following description of the " London Pump." " It 
 is now a force pump easily worked by one pierson, 
 so that an efficient and very compact miniature fire- 
 engine is the result. It will throw about six gal- 
 lons of water per minute thirty feet and upwards, 
 in a strong and continuous stream, and by direct- 
 ing the water on the fire, it will soon knock out 
 what, if left a few minutes longer, would almost 
 always end in a disastrous conflagration. These 
 hand pumps are extensively used in London, and 
 in the late Lambeth Fire Brigade, and they are 
 extensively used by those in the country, their con- 
 venience and advantages being proved to be be- 
 
42 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 yond question. It is a remarkable fact tJiat while 
 at the great conflagration in Tooley Street in 1861 
 (where Mr. Braidwood was killed), the steam en- 
 gines were pOuring tuns of water per minute into 
 the burning buildings, without producing the 
 slightest effect, Beal's Wharf was saved, and the 
 progress of the flames eastward ayerted, by means 
 of a hand pump. There can be no doubt that had 
 there been a few of these little pumps at hand when 
 the great fire in Gresham Street was first discov- 
 ered by the watchmen, their employment with a 
 few gallons of water would have prevented the 
 great destruction of property that ensued." 
 
 This fire in Gresham Street, was a carpet ware- 
 house and contents, and the loss was $900,000. 
 
 In connection with the statement of the fire at 
 Tooley Street, where the fire was kept from Beal's 
 Wharf by a little engine, it seems proper to give 
 an account of a similar instance which took place 
 in Boston, at the great fire on Fort HUl, July 10, 
 1852. The fire was seen when it was on an old 
 stable in an alley way leading from Belmont Street. 
 It was so small when seen, and the alarm given, 
 that a man, one of the engineers of the Boston Fire 
 Department, who was present, said of it to me, " I 
 could have covered it with the shawl on your arm, 
 if I could have I'eached it, or put it out in half a 
 minute with your pump." It was, however, out 
 
NO ENGINE TO BE HAD. 43 
 
 of his reach, on a low stable, which could have 
 been reached by the water from the pump. There 
 was a high wind, and the fire spread with fearful 
 rapidity by the burning wood flying over and 
 lighting on buildings some distance from the main 
 fire. For a time there were fears that a large por- 
 tion of the city would be destroyed. The fire 
 burned the Sailor's Home, and the Boylston School- 
 house, but its greatest fury was spent in a great 
 number of large buildings, each of which was 
 crowded with numbers of poor families. 
 
 The scene at the fire therefore was fearful. The 
 women and children screaming — the heaps of fur- 
 nitui-e thrown into the streets, impeding the fire- 
 men, until they took fire and burned up, the fall- 
 ing buildings, and the roar of the flames, spread 
 terror through aU but the firemen, who never gave 
 way for a moment, and who after five hours' 
 work arrested the fire, but not until nearly sixty 
 buildings were swept away. In the time of great- 
 est confusion, when the furious conflagration was 
 sweeping down upon a large three-story wooden 
 building, at the head of one of the wharfs on which 
 were buildings containing United States bonded 
 goods of great value, and the wooden building had 
 taken fire on the outside from the intense heat, 
 and there was not an engine to be had at any sacri- 
 fice, as all were holding the fire at other places, a 
 
44 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 man exclaimed, " I can put that fire out with our 
 little engine I Where is it ? In the stable. Bring 
 it ! In a moment he brought a little rotary pump, 
 which, made in New York, had been sent to Boston 
 and exhibited in Congress Street, where persons 
 were invited to try it. How often had I done 
 that. And oh, how I wanted that engine ! How 
 I worked it, and saw what it would do to save my 
 house at Watertown if it caught fire, before the 
 great engines could get news of the fire, and run 
 two mUes to us ! But it is money which makes 
 engines as well as mares go, and I never had 
 the money to buy it, and it was now at this fire, in 
 order, and close to this great wooden house on fire 
 on the outside. It was in the upper story in a 
 minute, and a stream of water thrown back upon the 
 house soon dashed oft" the fire, and then the water 
 thrown upon the highest part of the house trickled 
 down to the bottom of the house, and so the en- 
 , tire wharf was made perfectly safe ! The engine 
 was played until the fire had burned past. That 
 little engiae saved all the property on that wharf, 
 and it would have prevented the great fire of No- 
 vember from spreading to the second store, and 
 would have saved in buildings, merchandise, and 
 loss of time, etc., more than §100,000,000. This 
 assertion wUl be likly to make some of my readers 
 doubt all I have said. But go with me to Hovey's 
 
ON THE ROOF OF HOVEY'S. 45 
 
 store. See the dreadful fire opposite ! See the 
 flames, throwing an intense heat across the street, 
 and the store just ready to break out into another 
 fire to add to the awful conflagration. But look 
 again I See, the Mansard roof is coyered with 
 blankets, and look now ! See the water thrown 
 upon them ! The fire grows more intense, and it 
 is almost impossible to throw the water there ! 
 But look again ! See that young man out on the 
 roof in the fiery air ! Now he can reach every 
 part of that roof, and they give him all the water 
 he needs. The fire is hotter, his cheeks bhster, 
 his eyes almost scorch, but the brave man never 
 falters a moment ! Steadily the water is. thrown 
 on one and another part of the roof, and at last 
 the store is safe and the hero creeps down from his 
 dangerous position, where a false step, or a slip 
 would have sent him to the street a mangled corpse. 
 But the store is saved, and his only loss is a face 
 completely blistered on the side exposed to the 
 fire ! That Fort Hill engine, or any of the little 
 ones now on sale, with eight or ten feet of hose, 
 would have saved the store, with one tenth part of 
 the water used, and without any one out on the 
 roof. Still you doubt this. But is it not worth 
 while to see if it is true. Mr. Baddely said, " the 
 results of the experiments with the little hand- 
 engines was so satisfactory," etc. So would they 
 be here. 
 
46 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 But I have not yet done with English testimony 
 in favor of small engines. I entreat my readers to 
 read every word of it, for it is my fuU belief that 
 the safety of our cities and large towns for the 
 future will depend vastly more upon the question of 
 their introduction than upon any other. " In nearly 
 every fire in a dwelling-house, whilst the people 
 are vsdthin and awake, there can be no reason to 
 doubt, that if a simple and ready means of sup- 
 pressing the fire at its first start were at hand, and 
 used directly, most of the disastrous conflagrations 
 which are almost of daily occurrence would never be 
 heard of. If the records of the various volunteer 
 and paid fire brigades be inspected, the remark 
 will continually be found, " extinguished with hand 
 pumps," by which it will be seen that even after 
 the time required to give the alarm and fetch the 
 engine has clasped, the fire has often been put out 
 by a squirt and a bucket or two of water. As a 
 rule, it will be found that we trust too much to 
 other people, and too little to ourselves to subdue 
 
 any fire Could any arrangement insure 
 
 the application of water to a fire of the usual de- 
 scription within the first five minutes of its com- 
 mencement, the progress of two thirds of them 
 would be effectually resisted." Words of wisdom 
 from which we may learn wisdom if we will. It 
 will be seen that the small engines were only carried 
 
"SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN'S" TESTIMONY. 47 
 
 by the brigade on the large engines, and coxild not 
 be got to the fire and at work under ten or fifteen 
 minutes. The great idea -with them is to have 
 them at work in five or ten minutes, but the plan 
 I am about to propose, will have one at work in 
 one, and several in case of need in two or three 
 minutes. 
 
 And now for American testimony in favor of 
 little engines. It is not as easily found as in Eng- 
 land, for we have been educated for fighting, and 
 not for preventing fires. An acre of raging fire, 
 and a dozen steam fire-engines fighting it, is a 
 glorious sight to most of us. But the Chicago and 
 the Boston fires have been too much for us, and 
 we now occasionally hear that " we are getting it a 
 little too strong," which gives a hope that we 
 may before long have and use a preventive system. 
 The " Scientific American," the best paper in the 
 United States to examine and answer such ques- 
 tions, in the number for July 22, 1871, says, " A 
 quick practical means of extinguishing fires at their 
 commencement, on hand, ready for immediate use 
 in every building, would lessen the destruction of 
 property by fire to an extent difficult to estimate. 
 The rule is that the beginnings of fires are small 
 and their progress comparatively slow. In most 
 cases a very little water judiciously applied will 
 extinguish a fire within five minutes of its ignition. 
 
48 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 It is for this reason that small portable hand 
 forcing pumps have been approved by the most ex- 
 perienced firemen, as the very best means, all 
 things considered, for extinguishing fires." It also 
 calls the attention of manufacturers to these pumps, 
 and hopes many fortunes will be made by the sale 
 of them for so good a purpose." 
 
 From the " American Artisan " we copy from 
 Henry Ward Beecher's sermon, the day of the Bos- 
 ton fire. " The disaster might teach the folly of 
 heaping story on story not fire-proof. How sensi- 
 ble ! First a story of granite, then another of 
 granite, then a third of granite, then a fourth of 
 granite, and then — a Mansard roof. Admirable 
 for business, everybody says. Yes, and admirable 
 for fires. Splendid buildings, with an invitation to 
 the fire-devil on every roof. The disaster should 
 also' show how needful it is that every business 
 house should have a supply of water — a fire de- 
 partment for itself." 
 
 Just what I want, only that every business house 
 will not have it, and if they once procured it many 
 of them would neglect it. Therefore I would make 
 it the duty of the cities to furnish it and to keep 
 it in order, when the people, on seeing the fire, will 
 put it out for their own safety, their self-interest. 
 
 The "Artisan " also says editorially: " When a 
 fire occurs, somebody has always been either care- 
 
MR. HAYES'S TESTIMONY. 49 
 
 less, ignorant, or imprudent. In erecting builds 
 ings, laying out streets, handling or storing mer- 
 chandise, constructing fire apparatus, and in all 
 that pertains to the origin, prevention, and com- 
 bating of fires, we are dealing with well-known, 
 and uniform physical and chemical laws. If we- 
 have neglected to heed those laws, and suffered the. 
 consequences, let us own it frankly, and seek ta 
 profit by the lesson. Let us apportion both blame 
 and praise where they justly belong, and leave to 
 old women the notion that when fires fail to be ex- 
 tinguished, or stoves don't work well, it is owing 
 to some mysterious condition of the air." 
 
 But if we have not as much home testimony, it 
 is as good as can be found. Mr. John L. Hayes, 
 Secretary of the National Association of Wool 
 Manufacturers, and editor of their " Quarterly 
 Bulletin," prepared a few years since a paper for 
 his " Bulletin," entitled, " Fires in Woolen MiUs, 
 their Causes, and Means of Prevention and Ex- 
 tinction." It was found to be so useful that it was 
 pubKshed by itself, and thus many copies were dis- 
 tributed through the country. A friend procured 
 a copy for me, and hardly ever did I receive such 
 pleasure from a work as from that. Much of it was 
 new to me, and all was good. It of course makes 
 a specialty of that which he wrote about, — woolen 
 mills, but as the almanacs say, it will answer for 
 4 
 
60 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 any other buildings. There was but one fault with 
 it : it was published for a few people, and not for 
 sale. The great mass who so much need the 
 knowledge, would never get it. I shall therefore 
 use it, because it will, if known, do good to 
 others. The first music-book ever published in 
 Germany, which contained lessons for children, and 
 music suited for them, so that they could learn to 
 read music, was not written in the German lan- 
 guage ! So of Mr. Hayes' pamphlet. The great 
 number to whom it would be useful would never 
 see it. Mr. Hayes published the extracts from 
 King and Baddely on this question of small en- 
 gines, and soon after he had an opportunity to 
 practically see the usefulness of such means of ex- 
 tinguishing 'fires. 
 
 In the '"Bulletin" of April 1872, he says : " Since 
 the publication in a former number of our article 
 on ' Fires in Woolen MiUs,' the subject has never 
 been lost sight of. At the time we wrote, we 
 thought the most practical suggestion contained in 
 pur article was the following." Then he repro- 
 duces the extract from C. E. King and the remarks 
 of Baddely, and he says : " Shortly after the article 
 referred to, our attention was called to a pamphlet 
 published in 1858, by Mr. Joseph Bird of Mount 
 Auburn, Mass., entitled ' Fires and Fire-sys- 
 tems,' and we formed the personal acquaint- 
 
MR BIRD ON SMALL ENGINES. 61 
 
 ance of Mr. Bird, This gentleman has been for 
 many years an enthusiastic inyestigator of the 
 causes of fires and methods of extinction, and pos- 
 sesses more theoretical and practical knowledge of 
 the subject than any person whom we have ever 
 met. 
 
 " Mr. Bird, in his pamphlet, thus speaks of the 
 smaU engines or hand-pumps, which he compares 
 to small arms in the hands of light infantry, steam- 
 engines being compared to light artOlery. 
 
 " ' But what are the small and the light artillery 
 engines ? ' First, small engines. Any force-pump 
 which one man, woman, or boy can work, and 
 which wiU force twelve gallons of water per minute 
 through twenty feet of hose and a three-eighth inch 
 
 pipe, wiU answer ' These simple machines 
 
 will be foimd large enough to subdue much the 
 largest portion of our fires. But who will work 
 them ? The people who have buildings on fire, and 
 their neighbors. WiU. they not be too much fright- 
 ened to work them ? They are frightened with the 
 present system, for they have no means at hand 
 for their protection. Can anything be more ap- 
 palling ? A fire in your house, the engine is not, 
 and cannot come for some time to your aid. The 
 fire takes possession of each room and story, and 
 you have before you a blazing mass of flame ; and 
 your house, your castle, the home of your loved 
 
52 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 ones, is destroyed. What can be more frightful ? 
 How would you feel, if suddenly beset by a couple 
 of savage dogs, when you had no means of repel- 
 ling them ? How different you would feel, if, just 
 as they were about to spring upon you, you could 
 clutch a club in one hand, and in the other a re- 
 volver I How you would make the fur fly ! So 
 would a man feel and act if, when he had discov- 
 ered a fire, he had at hand the means of putting it 
 out." 
 
 The following is the testimony which Mr. Hayes 
 gave in an important patent case in court : — 
 
 "A little hand-pump, costing not more than 
 from ten to twenty dollars, which could be man- 
 aged by one man, is regarded by fire engineers as 
 the most valuable of modern inventions for extin- 
 guishing fires, because it may be applied at the 
 first moment it is seen. This is also the prin- 
 cipal element of the value of the modern fire ex- 
 tinguisher. Expensive fixed apparatus is placed 
 in most modern mills for the same reason. I refer 
 to the apparatus called sprinklers. In the numer- 
 ous experiments which have been made in Europe 
 and this country to determine the comparative 
 value of steam fire-engines, rapidity of time with 
 which the steam can be got up to work the engines, 
 is generally set down as the first element of com- 
 parison. Fires as a rule extend after ignition, in 
 
MR BIRD'S EXPERIMENT. 53 
 
 a constantly accelerating ratio as to the time wliicli 
 elapses from tlie &st moment of ignition, partly 
 from the multiphcation of centres of ignition, and 
 partly from the development of inflammable gases. 
 Every minute saved at a conflagration in providing 
 the means of extmction is regarded by fire engi- 
 neers as of the utmost importance. This expresses 
 my opinion as to the value of time." 
 
 Mr. Hayes also says : " Since the above was in 
 type, Mr. Bird has kindly consented to perform 
 some experiments, for the special purpose of ena- 
 bling us to speak, from actual observation, of the 
 efficiency of the small engines. The experiments 
 which we witnessed were made at Mount Auburn. 
 Three old resin barrels, partly filled vpith shavings, 
 were fully ignited. The fire was almost instantly 
 extinguished with less than a bucket of water, 
 thrown by one of Johnson's pumps. Twelve resin 
 barrels, placed in a pile, and thoroughly ignited, 
 making an intense flame, were as rapidly extin- 
 guished by a hand-engine of Mr. Bird's, of some- 
 what greater power than Johnson's, but easily 
 carried or operated by one man. Finally, a tem- 
 porary building, made of boards thoroughly dried, 
 the building being about ten feet long, six wide, 
 and twelve high, containing two old resin barrels 
 and a shelf covered with shavings, upon which 
 had been poured a quart of kerosene, was set on 
 
54 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 fire. "When the flames were at full height, a stream 
 from Mr. Bird's hand-engine extinguished the fire 
 in less than a minute. Comment upon these facts 
 is superfluous." Recollect that Mr. Hayes -wrote 
 this, not for the public, but for the business men 
 who own and manage the woolen mills of the 
 country. He also says of the Johnson pumps: 
 " Every mill should have at least two of these 
 pumps on each floor." And again : " So sanguine 
 and earnest are we in this advice, that we declare 
 it to be, in our opinion, the most important practi- 
 cal suggestion which has ever appeared in the 
 pages of this Bulletin." 
 
 Possibly some reader may say, Mr. Hayes and 
 Mr. Bird mutually admire each other. I cannot 
 answer for Mr. Hayes, but Mr. Bird most certainly 
 admires him, and hopes that so far as the idea of 
 extinguishing fires is concerned it is mutual. And 
 we have a right to respect each other, for we are 
 almost alone in this great war for the safety of our 
 country from fires. 
 
 Mrs. Lydia Maria Child lately wrote to me : — 
 " I am glad you are interesting yourseK for the 
 general introduction of garden engines, which I 
 consider a blessing to any neighborhood. A few 
 years ago our house took fire, and the L portion 
 of it was nearly consumed. The whole house must 
 have gone, if there had not been three or four 
 
SNOW TO PUT OUT FIRES. 55 
 
 garden engines in the neighborhood, which were 
 promptly brought to the rescue. These kept jets 
 of water continually playing upon the main body 
 of the house and upon the roof, and thus got the 
 fire under control, and finally extinguished it. I 
 have ever since felt a lively gratitude to the in- 
 ventor of these little and useful machines." 
 
 If every person whose house or other buildings 
 have been saved by buckets, small engines, or by 
 snow in winter — for many fires have been kept 
 from spreading into conflagrations by this means, 
 — could tell the stories of their success, it would 
 need nothing else to change our present method. 
 We should at once employ every possible method 
 which could put out a fire. I have known several 
 houses prevented from taking fire by snowballing 
 them until the fires opposite had burned out. 
 Snow, also, while lying on roofs and other exposed 
 places, is one of the best possible protections from 
 fire. A house was once found on fire in the first 
 story, and the pump was frozen and no water could 
 be found. It was filled half full of snow in five 
 minutes, and the fire " snowed out." 
 
 But let us see what James Braid wood, of the 
 London Fire Brigade, says : — . 
 
 " It has often been a matter of surprise that so 
 small a portion of the public attention should be 
 directed to the matter of extinguishing, fires. It 
 
56 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 is only when aroused by some great calamity that 
 people bestir themselves, and then there is such a 
 variety of plans proposed to avert similar cases of 
 distress, that to attempt to concoct a rational plan 
 out of such a crude, ill-digested, and contradictory 
 mass of opinion, requires more labor than most 
 people are inclined to give to it," etc. 
 
 " If the whole experience of the country were 
 brought together and maturely considered, and 
 digested by persons competent to judge, I have no 
 doubt that a system might be introduced suitable 
 to the nation and to the age in which we live. 
 Instead of hearing of ' dreadful loss ly fire,^ and 
 the *■ great exertions ' made to extinguish it, all 
 the notice would be, — ' Such a place took fixe ; the 
 engines arrived, and it was extinguished.' 
 
 " It would be useless for me to enter into the 
 details of a plan which I have little hope of ever 
 seeing realized." 
 
 It will be seen, from these quotations from the 
 superintendent of the London Fire Brigade, first, 
 that he is surprised people give so little attention 
 to the best manner of extinguishing fires ; second, 
 that he believed a system could be arranged which 
 would prevent dreadful losses by fire ; and third, 
 that he had little hope of seeing it accomplished. 
 
 I propose to show why he could not bring about 
 the result he so much -wished to accomplish. 
 
THE LONDON FIRE BRIGADE. 57 
 
 THE LONDON FIRE BEIGADE. 
 
 In 1774 Parliament enacted a law requiring 
 each, parish of the city of London to procure and 
 maintain two fire-engines, to be under the charge 
 of the beadles and the parish engineer. The num- 
 ber of these engines was more than three hundred. 
 In the course of time, they were allowed to get 
 out of repair, and otherwise out of order. They 
 "were too small to be of much service at great fires, 
 and too large to be got at work in time to put out 
 a fire when first seen. 
 
 The insurance companies interested in the safety 
 of the city, aware of the inefficiency of the parish 
 engines, purchased each two engines. There was 
 no superintendent, and each engine went and came 
 from fires at its pleasure. 
 
 In 1833 all the engines of the companies were 
 organized into the London Fire Brigade, and placed 
 under the direction of Mr. James Braidwood, who 
 then gaTe up the charge of the Edinburgh Fire 
 Brigade. 
 
 Under his excellent care this brigade became 
 one of the most efficient in the world. In 1855 
 there were thirty-six engines, each drawn by two 
 horses and capable of discharging about eighty 
 gallons of water per minute, or about two thirds 
 the power of the Hunneman engines of this coun- 
 
58 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 try. They were kept in nineteen stations, the 
 force of men were one hundred and twelye, and 
 there were forty horses. Only twenty of the en- 
 gines could be taken to a fire at once or until other 
 horses were procured. The men were always at 
 the stations. When the engines arrived at the 
 fire, men to work the brakes were taken from the 
 crowd, and they received as compensation a shil- 
 Hng for the first hour and sixpence for every other 
 hour they worked. In 1848 a hand pump was at- 
 tached to each large engine, and when they arrived 
 at the fire, if small, it was put out by the pump, 
 and if large, the others were put to work. 
 
 There was no telegraph, and no bells were rung ; 
 so when one of the police, or a pieman, or a cab- 
 man, or any one else saw a fire, they ran off to the 
 nearest station to teU the firemen. The first per- 
 son who told them was paid a shilling. Then the 
 firemen got ready to start for the fire, harnessed 
 their horses, when they drove off at a break-neck 
 pace for the fire. One of the directions to the 
 London police will best show the folly of the 
 London fire-alarm system : " Upon any watch- 
 man discovering a fire, he shall call the neighbor- 
 ing watchman to his assistance, and shall take the 
 best means in his power to put all concerned upon 
 their guard, and shall immediately send off notice 
 to the nearest office and engine-house. The watch- 
 
A NEW FIRE PREVENTIVE SYSTEM. 59 
 
 man who is dispatched to give these intimations 
 shall run as far as he can, and shall then send for- 
 ward any other watchman whom he may meet, he 
 himself following at a walk to commmiicate his 
 information, in case of any mistake on the part 
 of the second messenger." Every city in the 
 United States would be destroyed in a year if we 
 had so ridiculous a system of fire-alarm. Nothing 
 but the English fogs, and the better, safer manner 
 of building in that country could save them. See 
 in your mind's eye a portly Charley running half 
 a mile, and then hunting up another, and putting 
 him upon the run, perhaps to find a third when he 
 had run out ! Now, suppose a little engine at the 
 fire for the first man who saw it to throw water 
 upon it. If a pail or two of water then would not 
 . extinguish it, the whole brigade could not when 
 called in that foolish manner. 
 
 Mr. Braid wood also says : " The firemen are 
 drilled first daily, and then two or three times a 
 week for some months ; and this, with an average 
 of three calls a day, soon makes them acquainted 
 with the routine of their business. But it takes 
 years of constant work to make a good fireman ! " 
 One would suppose so, after a fire had been at work 
 as long as it would be from that method of giving 
 an alarm. 
 
 But hear Mr. Braidwood again : " When water 
 
60 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 is scarce, mud, cow or horse dung, damp earth, 
 etc., may be used as substitutes ; but if there seems 
 to be no chance of succeeding by any of these, and 
 the fire is likely to extend to other buildings, the 
 buildings next to the fire should be pulled down." 
 Quite a portion of Chicago was sayed by covering 
 one building with wet sand, and another was saved 
 by the careful use of a barrel of cider after the 
 water gave out. Perhaps the best use the State 
 police could make of some of the vile stuff they 
 sometimes pour into the streets would be to pour 
 it upon houses so exposed. Fire would be sure 
 to keep away from such a mixture if it were pos- 
 sible to do so. 
 
 The Fire Brigade of Paris, in 1866, consisted of 
 about twelve hundred men in ten companies with 
 a captain and two lieutenants. There were one 
 hundred and thirty stations, with one hundred and 
 eighty engines. The arrangement for fires con- 
 sists of these stations, so distributed that if a fire 
 breaks out the means of extuiction may be near 
 and arrive at once. 
 
 Each station is generally composed of one corpo- 
 ral and two firemen, and it is found that they, with 
 the assistance of the neighbors, can extinguish a 
 fire almost at its outbreak. If the fire grows more 
 serious, other engines are called. Each theatre 
 has an engine and two firemen at every represen- 
 
A NEW FIRE DEPARTMENT. 61 
 
 tation. The engines are worked by eight men, and 
 throw a large half-inch stream from ninety to one 
 hundred feet high. They are placed in a hand- 
 cart on an alarm, and carried to fires. A water-cask 
 on a cart, with one hundred gallons of water, is also 
 taken to each fire. Another cart also foUows, con- 
 taining aU necessary, fire tools. The advantage of 
 this system of one hundred and thirty stations 
 against the twenty of London, can be seen and ap- 
 preciated by every person acquainted with fires. 
 The Parisian engines can be taken from the carts 
 and carried into the upper stories if necessary. 
 
 And now let me sketch, in the form of a city 
 order, my plan for a new Boston Fire Department. 
 
 The Boston Fire Department shall be composed 
 of two separate fire brigades. 
 
 The first brigade shall be the present depart- 
 ment, leaving out the Extinguisher Brigade. 
 Every steam-engine shaU be altered, so that steam 
 may be thrown into buildings, where the flames 
 have not burst from the doors, windows, or roofs. 
 
 The chief of the second brigade shall place in 
 every building — which from their great dimen- 
 sions, or from the danger of taking fire of their con- 
 tents, or for the safety of those employed in them, 
 or for the safety of those who may be called there 
 for instruction, business, or pleasure, such as 
 churches, chapels, schools, halls, hospitals, the- 
 
62 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 atres, hotels, boarding-liouses, rooms where large 
 numbers of females are employed, stables, stores 
 in which are sold hay, straw, hemp, jute, manilla 
 grass, powder, dualine, or other similar substances^ 
 oils, distUled spirits, wooden ware, furniture, and 
 in every other store or manufactory, which may 
 be deemed by him or the poUce to be necessary 
 for the protection of the city from fire, — one 
 small engine, three buckets, and one axe, together 
 with a card of directions, as foUows : — 
 
 WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF PIKE. 
 
 If there is a fire on these premises, the men or 
 women appointed for that purpose will instantly 
 take the engine and play upon the fire the water 
 placed for them by other persons in the building. 
 
 A few minutes of cool, eiarnest, well-directed 
 work may save your building from destruction, or 
 preserve life, or possibly prevent a great fire, 
 
 N. B. — Every person in the building should 
 keep cool, and aid those engaged in putting out 
 the fire or keep out of their way. 
 
 , Chief of Second Brigade. 
 
 The expense of the Fire Plant shaU be assessed 
 on the owner or occupants of the building. 
 
 He shall also place in the dwellings, workshops, 
 or stores of such places as the police report oc- 
 
PRECAUTIONARY CARDS. 63 
 
 cupied by reliable men, at the expense of the city, 
 small engines so near each other that one of them 
 shall be within one minute of every building, in 
 every thickly settled portion of the city. The 
 engines shall be kept as near as possible in the 
 same place in each building. If a fire not on the 
 premises is put out by one of them before a steam- 
 engine has thrown water upon it, the keeper shall 
 be paid five dollars from the city. 
 
 Over a door of every building where an engine 
 is kept a plate with the letters B. F. D., shall be 
 placed. 
 
 A card with the following directions shall be 
 hung near each engine : — 
 
 When called to a fire, take or send the engine 
 instantly to it, and play the water already there 
 upon the fire. Recollect that the earnest, well- 
 directed work of a few minutes, may save your 
 building, or may prevent a great fire. 
 
 If you put out a fire in any place except your 
 own, before the steamer gets to work, you wiU be 
 paid five dollars. When you have done working 
 the engine, clean and hang it up to be ready for an- 
 other call. If it is not in order report to the police. 
 , Chief of the Second Brigade. 
 
 There shall be placed in every house, shop, or 
 store, where there is not an engine, the following 
 card : — 
 
64 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 BOSTON FIEE DEPAETMBNT. 
 
 If your building is on fire send for the small 
 
 engine at and fill your tubs and pails with 
 
 water, and take them near the fire to be ready for 
 use. Send also the alarm to the nearest telegraph 
 box. Do not remove your furniture, as the fire will 
 be out in a few minutes and make it unnecessary. 
 
 Keep this card hung up where it may be seen, 
 and call the attention of the inmates to it. 
 
 , Chief of the Second Brigade. 
 
 Such a fire preyentiye and fire-fighting depart- 
 ment should be placed in every city and large 
 town in the United States. Where the Holly or 
 other water-pressure system is in use, it would 
 only be necessary to add the small engines for 
 instant service. The hook and ladder companies 
 may remain as at present, but with a premium of 
 one thousand dollars for a ladder convenient, cheap, 
 and safe, which should be so great an improvement 
 as to cause its introduction by the city. 
 
 The cost of the Boston Fire Department for 
 1872 was $399,249. The cost of the three thou- 
 sand engines, chief and assistants, with cards and 
 all expenses, would be less than $50,000. That is, 
 the whole second brigade the first year, purchasing 
 all new engines, etc., would cost less than the land 
 
ECONOMY OF SMALL ENGINES. 65 
 
 and house of one steam-engine, and working it one 
 year ! The power of the twenty-one steam fire- 
 engines is ten thousand five hundred gallons of 
 water per minute; of the four thousand engines; 
 twenty-four thousand gallons per minute. The- 
 succeeding years the light brigade would cost per- 
 haps fifteen thousand. But even this is not ali 
 there is in favor of the new system. Almost all of 
 our fires would be put out without an alarm, and 
 there would be few or no more conflagrations. 
 
 Now as a very great proportion of the firemen 
 work out of the department, and could be em- 
 ployed all the time at fuU pay, the city could re- 
 duce their salaries one half, quite to their advan- 
 tage, and to that also of their other employers, and 
 that of the men as well. A saving of forty thou- 
 sand dollars per annum could be made in this way. 
 Then the saving from the present wear and tear 
 of engines, horses, etc., would be more than the 
 annual expense of the second brigade after the 
 first year. But the financial advantage which 
 would be felt most would be that of insurance. 
 The rate of insurance would not be more than one 
 haK of the present, while the insurers would be bet- 
 ter paid than at present. Millions of doUars would 
 be saved every year to the citizens of Boston. 
 
 There are two doubts which may arise in some 
 minds and which I propose to examine. 
 
 5 
 
66 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 The first is, Are the small engines reaUy so 
 efficient? I answer this question in the affirma- 
 tive, and ask that a competent committee be ap- 
 pointed to make the proper investigations and 
 experiments. All civilized nations do this when 
 proving the best munitions of war, and surely this 
 war of fire has become serious enough for us to 
 wish to employ the best weapons against it. 
 
 The second doubt is. Would the small engines 
 be worked efficiently? Would not those who 
 have them be confused, excited, or terror-stricken, 
 as people now are ? Ask an army without weap- 
 ons to stand up against one pouring showers of 
 bullets, grape, and shell into them ! Would not 
 they run away ia terror. The people near a fire 
 have now no means of offense against it. Put them 
 into their hands and they will at once go to work. 
 
 Every one of the four thousand men wiU become 
 firemen; and working firemen too, at the very 
 time and place where fire is most easily and suc- 
 cessfully arrested. 
 
 The buildings assessed for the engines would be 
 so much better protected that they would suffer no 
 loss. And as the buildings which are more unsafe 
 than others may also set fitre to those near them, 
 they should keep this protection for the general 
 safety of a city. 
 
 There can be no doubt whatever, that if, such a 
 
WHAT SAVED PART OF CHICAGO. 67 
 
 fire department as is here described had been in 
 working order the night of the Chicago fire there 
 would only have been burned Mrs. O'Leary's barn 
 and contents. The showers of sparks which flew 
 upon and set the half a dozen next buildings on 
 fire, would have been dashed out, and any further 
 danger prevented. But would the foreign popula- 
 tion have known enough to use the engines. Use 
 them? 
 
 At Chicago the foreign population kept the fire 
 from crossing Jefferson Street, and saved their 
 ovm property and millions of that remaining there 
 to-day. If they could do that with buckets, 
 they could have done ten times more with pails 
 and small engines. Not a dollar's worth of prop- 
 erty, except, perhaps, Mrs. O'Leary's bam, would 
 have been lost, if there had been a system of large 
 and small engines ; the sparks would have been 
 drowned out the moment they lit upon the roofs 
 of the small buildings near it. The fire on Sum- 
 mer Street would hardly have warmed the Man- 
 sard roof on Otis Street before little streams from 
 small engines would have been throwing water 
 out upon it from its windows. Every spark which 
 fell upon so many buildings at Portland, and set 
 so many fires in that gale of wind, would have 
 been drowned the second it lighted, and the only 
 loss to that city would have been, perhaps, three 
 hundred dollars. 
 
68 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 And the next half dozen dreadful conflagrations, 
 which are sure to occur sooner or later with the 
 present ridiculous system, may be averted by a 
 cheaper system, and the dreadful sufferings of 
 many houseless people prevented. 
 
 ME. DAMEELL ON SMALL ENGINES AND EXTIN- 
 GTJISHBES. 
 
 On page 620 of the " Report of the Commissioners 
 on the Cause and Management of the Great Fire in 
 Boston," Mr. Damrell gives his objections to the 
 use of Mr. Bird's idea of small engines, and tells 
 why and how he uses the extinguishers. 
 
 Question. " What do you think of these 
 little hand-pumps ? " 
 
 Mr. Damrell. " I thiok in some instances they 
 serve very well. But you must have a bucket of 
 water with you. You have got to carry a bucket 
 of water iu your hand. We have them in the 
 department ; we carry one on each carriage now — 
 Mr. Bird's pumps." 
 
 Qiiestion. " I understand that they are a part 
 of the London equipment, and are very well 
 spoken of ? " 
 
 Mr. Damrell. " Yes, sir. I use, instead of 
 them now, the Babcock Fire Extinguisher, and 
 have three companies organized. They run to 
 every fire. There are two men who make that a 
 
MR. DAMRELL'S OBJECTIONS. 69 
 
 specialty. They take the extinguishers and start, 
 and in ten seconds can get up a pressure of sixty 
 pounds to the square inch, which will throw a 
 stream forty feet by the power of its own effer- 
 vescence ; consequently we find that they are much 
 more effectual than the hand-pumps, where you 
 have to carry a bucket of water, as it only throws 
 a small stream. In the case of the extinguisher, 
 you have only got to hold it : the power is behind 
 it ; it is automatic." 
 
 In these few lines he discards the pumps, ap- 
 proves the extinguishers, and describes the manner 
 of using each kind. " We have them in the de- 
 partment." " "We carry one on each carriage 
 now." Does Mr. Damrell carry one in his car- 
 riage ? Is one carried on either of the steam fire- 
 engines? Is one taken to the fire on the hook 
 and ladder carriage ? or on the hose-carriage ? I 
 venture to say they are not carried on either one 
 of them. If they were, as there are only three 
 extinguisher wagons for the whole city, and as 
 there are twenty-one steamers, ten hose-carriages, 
 and seven hook-and-ladder companies, the small 
 engines would put out nine out of ten of the fires 
 which the extinguishers now do before these last 
 arrived at the fire. 
 
 But " you have to carry a bucket of water 
 in your hand." This tremendous objection is 
 
70 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 stated three times. It possesses Mr. Damrell like 
 a nightmare. Just imagine Mr. Bird, -with his 
 poor sciatic leg, standing at the head of State 
 Street -with a bucket of water in one hand and a 
 little engine in the other, and see him, when the 
 telegraph strikes an alarm, starting off with all his 
 might, hippity, hoppity, almost two miles an hour, 
 for a fire which may be one or five miles away ! 
 No, Mr. DamreU, Mr. Bird would do no such 
 thing ; but it would be a far better method than 
 that you have taken of using extinguishers. Mr. 
 Damrell has described his manner of using them, 
 and I venture to say that, under his introduction, 
 they have never put out a fire. Certainly no such 
 fact has ever found a place in the newspapers of 
 the day. I have described also my method of 
 using them. Let the people judge between us. 
 Mr. Damrell takes on his coal or other carriages 
 perhaps half a dozen little pumps, and never uses 
 them, and calls that protecting the city with them. 
 Mr. Bird places at least four thousand of them, 
 each capable of dashing out a fire equal to that 
 of from six to ten tar or resin barrels well on .fire, 
 or from twenty-four to forty thousand of them in 
 four thousand different places in a minute. I pro- 
 test against his manner of introducing my engines. 
 I say it is not a practical, common-sense way. I 
 say it is killing off an excellent idea by a mons- 
 
ABANA AND PBARPAR. 71 
 
 trous, foolisli way of putting it into practice. And 
 
 1 say also that Mr. Damrell's protection of the city 
 of Boston — that is, the putting out of its small 
 fires with three wagon-loads of extinguishers, and 
 his tremendous manner of using the small engines, 
 so well spoken of in Europe and this coimtry — 
 shows that he is willing to sacrifice the safety of 
 the city to the show of teams rushing through the 
 streets long after the time when four fifths of the 
 fires would have been put out by the method 
 described in this book for the use of small engines. 
 
 SMALL ENarSTES FOE MAJSTSABD KOOFS. 
 
 "So ITaaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood 
 at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto 
 him, saying 60, and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall 
 come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, 
 and went away, and said. Behold, I thought. He will surely come out 
 to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike 
 his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and 
 Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? 
 may I not wash in them, and he clean ? So he turned and went away 
 in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, 
 My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst 
 thou not have done it ? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, 
 Wash, and he clean? Then went he down, and dipped himself seven 
 times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God : and his 
 flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." 
 
 2 Kings t. 9-15. 
 
 The various plans proposed for extinguishing 
 fires since the Boston conflagration, have so far 
 failed entirely as regards the protection' of the 
 
72 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 whole city, as they have been too expensive. The 
 poorer portion of the city will never be protected 
 by them, and yet just there is where most of the 
 conflagrations will be almost sure to commence. 
 
 Many years ago Professor Peirce was so kind as 
 to examine into the efficiency of small engines used 
 at once, as compared with the large ones when 
 they could arrive ; and he said the advantage was 
 immensely in favor of the small ones. He offered 
 to be one of one hundred to purchase them for the 
 protection of Cambridge. But those engines would 
 have only gone into the houses of people who were 
 careful and whose buildings were isolated. The 
 city, the crowded, dangerous portion of it would 
 not have been protected. That the small engines 
 will put out fires, up to the size of ten or more 
 tar-barrels, has been, and can be proved at any 
 time ; but how could they have been of any use, 
 away up on a Mansard roof which could not be 
 reached by the powerful steam-fire engines ? In 
 1830, John Braithwaite of London, when his 
 splendid new steam-fire engine was at work upon 
 Barclay's Brewery which was on fire, and was de- 
 stroyed, saved the malt-house and three hundred 
 thousand dollars worth of malt in the following 
 manner : " The beams on one side of the malt 
 lofts had caught fire ; he went across one of the 
 'beams with two pint pots, carrying a gallon of 
 
HOSE THAT CAN BE BENT BACK. 73 
 
 water under Ijis arm, and by applying it on the 
 burning partj he extinguished the fire in the 
 beams and the malt was saved." "Light blows 
 kill the devil." 
 
 I wish to call particular attention to the follow- 
 ing' assertion. With any good hand-engine and 
 eight or ten feet of hose on the roof of the build- 
 ing, which first caught fire on its Mansard roof 
 from the first store on fire, to play from it, back 
 upon its own roof, it would not have taken fire ; 
 and with half a dozen of them in the stores next 
 to the first store on fire, only that one would have 
 been burned, and the conflagration so disastrous 
 to Boston would have been prevented. 
 
 There is not a Mansard roof in Boston from 
 which a little stream directed from it back upon 
 it, is not a sure protection against any danger 
 from such a fire as was that of the first store 
 burned in the great conflagration. The fire was 
 kept from Hovey's store without them, but it was 
 at the risk of life that a man went out as it were 
 into the fire upon the slippery roof and saved it. 
 The little engiue would have, while its pipe was 
 directed out and backwards, been vastly better, 
 and the man who held it perfectly safe. 
 
 The Princess Theatre was on fire. A piece of 
 blazing wood flew over another building and fell 
 into a leaden gutter. The lead was melted and 
 
74 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 fell into the building into some oil on a -work- 
 bench, which it set on fire. It was seen and in- 
 stantly put out. In five minutes there would have 
 been another great fire, but fortunately a work- 
 man saw the accident in time to avert its conse- 
 quences. 
 
 A great United States bonded warehouse is 
 entered by the watchman at nine o'clock p. m. 
 There is a little fire in some loose cotton away at 
 the other end of the store, a hundred feet from the 
 door. He is to watch against fire, but there is not 
 even a pail or a dipper. With a pail of water and 
 a London or Johnson pump he could have the fire 
 out in a minute. He shuts the door and calls the 
 Fire Department. Loss |600,000. 
 
 And we laugh at the folly of the people of Con- 
 stantinople ! 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OTJB DWELLIKG-HOTJSES. 
 
 Not long since I was in a splendid modem-built 
 house in one of the cities near Boston. From 
 cellar to attic I was shown how nice, cozy, con- 
 venient, elegant, grand, and rich were the different 
 portions of this house, which had been built with 
 the plans of an architect by first-rate carpenters, 
 masons, plumbers, and painters, and filled with the 
 fashionable furniture of the present day, with 
 books, music, and everything which could gratify 
 the most fastidious taste. It had all the modem 
 improvements. And such houses are springing up 
 in all our great towns and cities of our country, — 
 every one " with all the modem improvements ; " 
 and among those modem improvements there is 
 not one dollar expended to prevent the destruction 
 of these splendid buildings by fire. If the ever- 
 present element of fire — in charge often of the 
 most careless domestics, or from the furnace, fire- 
 place, or stove, the lamp, gas, pipe, match, or cigar 
 — once gets at work and finds its way into the ceil- 
 ing or partition or stairway, there is room for it 
 
76 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 to play " Mde-and-go-seek" from kitchen to parlor, 
 from cellar to attic, ia spite of the shrieks of the 
 family and neighbors, and the yells of the popu- 
 lace, or the earnest, hard work of the fire depart- 
 ment, when they arrive too late to be of any 
 , service. We then read : " The elegant mansion of 
 
 took fire last night, and in spite of the most 
 
 heroic efforts of the firemen, was totally destroyed. 
 Every effort was made by those who first saw the 
 fire to extinguish it, but it had burned its way 
 through into the ceiling (partition or stairway, as 
 the case may be), where it could not be reached, 
 and the smoke soon drove those who were so ear- 
 nestly engaged out of the house. The loss could 
 not be less than (anywhere from twenty to one 
 hundred thousand dollars). We most sincerely 
 sympathize," etc. ; but not one word of wisdom or 
 caution as to the manner of building, or procuring 
 means to prevent the destruction of another when 
 by carelessness or accident it once takes fire. 
 
 One thousand dollars expended on that house 
 in filling its partitions, ceilings, and stairways with 
 material which would not burn, and a mere pit- 
 tance for an axe, buckets, and a couple of pumps, 
 would have saved that house, and would save 
 ninety-nine of every hundred of such buildings 
 from destruction when they take fire, if people 
 would be wise enough to procure them. 
 
FIRE-PROOF DWELLING-BOUSES. 77 
 
 FIEE-PBOOF BAVBLLING-HOTJSES. 
 
 There can be little or no doubt that, mth a 
 proper amount of attention to the subject, and a 
 liberal amount of money to commence -with, there 
 could be dwellings erected of concrete, cheaper, 
 more durable, warmer in cold, cooler in warm 
 weather, and absolutely fire-proof. Many such 
 are now erected in England, Austria, and other 
 portions of Europe, and a few in this country. A 
 little of the money we may be called upon for 
 charity, to save from starvation the population of 
 a city destroyed by fire, would bring into use 
 houses which could not be destroyed. Here and 
 there are a few in this country, but some of them 
 are badly made, and some of the material does 
 not " stand the weather," and they crumble with 
 the frost. 
 
 At Vienna, concrete houses are covered with 
 terra-cotta, which preserves them for centuries. 
 
 The time will soon come when timber and wood 
 will be too dear for poor people to use. The awful 
 waste of it by fire will soon make it as scarce as it 
 is at Paris. Then Yankee ingenuity will invent 
 dwellings in which there will be no wood, inside 
 or outside! Then a man's house will indeed be 
 his castle, his place of shelter, his ark of safety. 
 
 Would that Massachusetts in her wisdom could 
 
78 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 see that it would be for her interest to offer premi- 
 ums for this purpose, so liberal as to insure this 
 great blessing at once to all -within her limits. 
 Premiums for horses, mares, colts, buUs, cows, 
 calves, hogs, pigs, sheep, and goats ; premiums for 
 apples, pears, plums, peaches, corn, wheat, rye, 
 pumpkins, and squashes; aye, for thousands of 
 other things, all good and proper, and yet all com- 
 bined are not as important as that the people 
 should live in good, healthy houses, wholly inde- 
 structible by fire. I believe it would make people 
 more careful and more provident if they could 
 reahze that, once owning a house, it would always 
 be their own, and not subject to the risk of being 
 destroyed at any hour. Fifty thousand dollars 
 given for premiums for this purpose would save 
 millions of dollars worth of the firesides of the 
 people, and the feeling of security would be of 
 more value than untold millions. 
 
 A LETTER FROM THE SCXILPTOE POWBES. 
 
 There appeared lately in the " Providence Jour- 
 nal," a letter from the sculptor, Mr. Hiram 
 Powers, which I regard as an important testimony 
 on this point, and I give it entire. 
 
 Florence, DecenUier 2, 1871. 
 Mt dear Sik : — Your letter recalls to my mind what 
 I have more than once said to my countrymen, namely, 
 
LETTER FROM BIRAM POWERS. 79 
 
 That the day was not distant when one or more of our 
 American cities would be destroyed by fire. I made this 
 prediction to you, I remember, and I am sorry, indeed, 
 that it has been so soon fulfilled. It only requires a com- 
 bination of circumstances similar to those which existed 
 at Chicago, to lay in. ashes any other American city. 
 Let the cold be below zero, with a tempestuous wind 
 and the hour the dead of the night, when aU are at rest, 
 and a fire begin in some huge block of buildings full of 
 combustibles, petroleum, etc., and just in the spot to be 
 taken by the wind and swept through the city, and there 
 will be another Chicago disaster. It is true that Chi- 
 cago was built for a bonfire. Even the roofs were of 
 pitch, I have been told. It was the strong wind, how- 
 ever, which did the business, and will do it again with a 
 combustible city. And I fear that there is not in 
 America a city which is not combustible. There may be 
 some fire-proof buildings, but more depends upon their 
 isolation than their structure. The fire at Chicago swept 
 away fire-proofs and all in its way. 
 
 But it may be asked, " Is it possible to make a city 
 fire-proof? " I answer, yes ; and without any great ex- 
 tra expense. To prove this, I have only to say that al- 
 though there have been frequent fires in the city of 
 Florence during the thirty-four years of my residence in 
 it, not one house has been consumed, except a theatre, 
 and that was not entirely destroyed. Rooms, full of 
 goods, have been heated like ovens by ignited calicoes, 
 straw hats, etc., but as the floors above and below were 
 aU covered by thin brick tiles, the goods burned without 
 
80 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 ventilation. And as there was no flame, a smell like 
 that of a coal-pit soon gave the alarm, and the fire was 
 soon extinguished by no other engine than a squirt hold- 
 ing about a gallon, which discharged a well-directed 
 stream through some aperture. I once beheld some 
 firemen marching to a fire in Florence. Foremost were 
 three men with picks, next four men with buckets, then 
 three men with highly polished brass squirts on their 
 shovdders ; all marching with an air of pomp and im- 
 portance. The fire was at the residence of Mr. Clev- 
 enger, the American sculptor, and had been burning 
 tw6nty-four hours on the end of a joist just under his fire- 
 place. He had smelt something like a coal-pit for some 
 time, and at length perceived smoke rising from the brick 
 floor. On going below he found the room full of smoke, 
 and a rush-bottomed chair just under the joist was par- 
 tially consumed. But the joist was not yet burned off, 
 and why ? Because the fire was bricked down. It could 
 not rise and burst into flames. 
 
 The secret of fire-proof building then, is this : It must 
 be made impossible for the flames to pass through the 
 floors or up the stairway. If you will have wood floors 
 and stairs, lay a flooring of the thinnest sheet-iron over 
 the joists, and your wood upon that ; and sheath the stairs 
 with the same material. A floor will not burn without 
 a supply of air under it. Throw a dry board upon a 
 perfectly flat pavement and kindle it as it lies if you can. 
 You may make a fire upon it and in time consume it, but 
 it wUl require a long time. Prevent drafts, and though 
 there wUl stUl be fires, no house will be consumed. The 
 
LETTER FROM HIRAM PO WERS. 81 
 
 combustion will go on so slowly that discovery is certain 
 in time to prevent any great calamity. But the roofs, 
 the roofs, how about them ? Slate or tUes. Zinc melts 
 too easily. I believe that hard burned tiles, if flat, 
 would stand the frost at home ; and if so they constitute 
 the best roofing. My house has no joists. All the 
 floors are of tiles resting on arches. One of these arches 
 was made over a room twenty-five feet square, by four 
 men in four days. The bricks are about one and one 
 half inches thick, and laid edgewise, with plaster of 
 Paris. There was no framework prepared to lay them 
 on, unless you would so term four bits of wood which a 
 man could carry under his arm. And yet this arch is so 
 strong as to be perfectly safe with a large dancing-party 
 on it. I never have heard of one of those floors falling, 
 and they are absolutely fire-proof. Of course, light 
 arches like these would not do for warehouses. It would 
 pay, I think, to send out here for an Italian brick-mason 
 who knows how to build these thin but strong arches for 
 dwelling-houses. I know that there is a prejudice at 
 home against brick or composition floors. " Too cold in 
 winter," it is said. And so they are if bare, but cover 
 them with several thicknesses of paper and then carpet 
 them, and no one can distinguish the slightest difference 
 between their temperature and that of wood floors. 
 Who doubts this let him try the experiment with the 
 feet or the thermometer. The truth is that the brick or 
 composition floor is no colder in itself than wood — the 
 thermometer attests this, — but it is a better conduc- 
 tor. 
 
82 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 I do not insure my house as I know that it is not com- 
 bustible. Yours, truly, 
 
 Hiram Powers. 
 
 But until the good time comes when our houses 
 shall be fire-proof — let us consider the common 
 causes of fire in our dwellings, and first, 
 
 THE DANGBE OF ITKB FROM STOVES. 
 
 Most people suppose the principal danger from 
 the use of stoves is from defective flues. A fun- 
 nel is inserted into the chimney, through the par- 
 titions, in the cheapest and most careless possible 
 manner, and watched for a few days to see if it 
 takes fire. If it does not, it is pronounced " per- 
 fectly safe." Now the wood which it almost 
 touches may have just been cut from the forest, 
 and is as wet as a soaked sponge, and would hardly 
 take fire if put in a furnace. But in one, three, or 
 five years, the stove fires have made it as dry as 
 tinder, and then the red-hot funnel converts it 
 to charcoal, and the next time the funnel heats it 
 to two hundred and twelve, it takes fire from 
 spontaneous combustion. Then if the family have 
 read this book, they will extinguish the fire with 
 their little " Fire Brigade," with a loss of only a 
 few dollars, but if not, in the confusion and the 
 terror of the fire and smoke, and with nothing to 
 
DANGER FROM STOVES. 83 
 
 work ■witli, the fire •will run through, and destroy 
 the house in about an hour. 
 
 But another danger is where stoves are set, not 
 on the brick hearth, but in any part of a room, on 
 the wood floor, with only a plate of zinc, iron, or 
 tin between them. Mr. Braidwood says, " In a fire 
 at the Bank of England, the hearth on which the 
 stove was placed was cast iron an inch thick, with 
 two and a half inches of concrete underneath it ; 
 but the timber below it was fired." The heat 
 from the stove in a few years makes charcoal of the 
 wooden floor under the zinc or iron plate, when it 
 takes fire at two hundred and twelve, and the plate 
 above prevents the fixe rising upwards, so it burns 
 through to the space between the floors, and then 
 up, to all parts of the house, store, or warehouse. 
 If the fire breaks out in the daytime there is an 
 alarm, when the steamers pour in their water, and 
 the loss by fire and water is hundreds or perhaps 
 thousands of dollars. If it breaks out in the night 
 the building is destroyed with its contents, and i£ 
 in a gale of wind there is a destructive fire or a 
 conflagration. There are thousands of stoves in 
 our cities and towns, under which this manufacture 
 of charcoal is busily going on, and where a fire may 
 take place, any day or night. No stove should be 
 set except on a good brick hearth which should be 
 laid on sand, or some other non-fire conductor. 
 
84 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 Fires are continually discoyered wliere no direct 
 ■ agency can be found, and wliere they burst out so 
 far from the stove that no one suspects it, and yet 
 they are from that cause alone. Insurance offices 
 should refuse to take a risk on any property in 
 which a stove is used, which is not set on a brick 
 hearth. It should also be the duty of inspectors of 
 buildings to place such hearths under all stoves 
 which are used without them at the expense of the 
 occupants of the buildings. This may seem to the 
 occupants to be severe, but the safety of cities and 
 large towns require that means shall be applied, 
 both for preventing and for fighting fires which 
 may make them more safe than at present. And 
 i£ proper means of prevention are applied, we may 
 be certain that the rate of insurance will fall so 
 as to more than meet any expense we may incur 
 by doing it. 
 
 OP DAJSGBE PEOM F0ENACES. 
 
 If the property which has been consumed by 
 fires from furnaces in Massachusetts could be 
 footed up in one sum it would astonish even those 
 who are best acquainted with the subject. 
 Churches, halls, town and city halls, schools, and 
 dwelling-houses, have all suffered from this pro- 
 lific cause of fire, which has been reported as 
 "defective furnace." Years past this was true. 
 
DANGER FROM FURNACES. 85 
 
 A gentleman wlio had erected a number of dwell- 
 ing-houses, after three had been burned, took out 
 the rest and had others put in their places. There 
 were no more fires. But if we now wish a fur- 
 nace, and will give the workmen room enough, 
 there wUl be very little danger from fire from it. 
 But a church is to be erected. A committee of 
 popular members is chosen to direct the matter, 
 but who know nothing of building in general, or 
 
 of furnaces in particular. The house is to be 
 
 by , and is to contain the great room, for Sun- 
 day service, a great and a small vestry, and as 
 many other rooms as the oft quoted old lady, who 
 had a " great box, little box, bandbox, and bundle," 
 besides a kitchen large enough for a hotel, so that 
 the furnace, which most of all should have all pos- 
 sible room, is crowded into the smallest possible 
 space. The first year aR is safe, and perhaps the 
 second, and the committee laugh at the fools who 
 told of danger. At last there comes a cold Sun- 
 day. The congregation are almost frozen m the 
 morning service, and as they go out they each one 
 have a cross word at the sexton. Before they 
 have all " piled it on him," he is the most irate man 
 in town, and runs to inflict his anger on the poor 
 fire. How he makes it bum ! Then the wind rises 
 and the furnace gets hotter. In the afternoon the 
 house is hotter, and in the evening the windows 
 
86 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 must be opened, and before morning the splendid 
 churcli is a lieap of ruias. The same story will 
 apply to nine tenths of all other fires which have 
 been occasioned by furnaces, so crowded that the 
 wood touched, or was too near the heated flues, 
 or too near the fire. Room ! should be the cry 
 of the mason who is to set it. Try to purchase 
 the best furnace there is, give it aU the room 
 it wants, and then see the workmen set it, that 
 you may know where is the place of greatest dan- 
 ger. 
 
 If a fire takes from a furnace the fire depart- 
 ment should be notified as soon as possible. In the 
 mean time, if you have a small engine, put it to 
 work, and with an axe and plenty of water you 
 may be able to get at the place of danger, and 
 have the fire out before they arrive. Never cut a 
 hole into where there is fire until you have water 
 to throw upon the fire. But the best way to fight 
 a furnace fire is by prevention. " An ounce of 
 prevention is better than a pound of cure." Take 
 a pound of prevention in room, and insist upon- 
 a careful setting of your furnace by skillful work- 
 men. Then learn how to manage it, and neVer 
 heat it to its fullest extent ; and recollect that 
 by. using it carefully it wiU last a long time, and 
 all that time it will be safe, or as safe as any- 
 thing can be, where so much heat must be near 
 
ROOM FOR FURNACES. 87 
 
 wood. We shall never have perfect safety until 
 we make houses almost entirely of concrete or 
 brick. Let us hope that time will soon come. 
 
 OP MATCHES. 
 
 " Matches are made in heaven," but not friction 
 matches. It has long been the world's wonder 
 where aU the pins go to. But I think that in this- 
 country more matches are lost than pins. I have 
 sometimes, at a fire, required a light (for you see 
 a man with a little engine soon dashes out the light 
 of a fixe), and I have been surprised to see every 
 boy clap his hand to, his vest pocket to hand me 
 one. We all know how easy it is to lose a knife, 
 but for every knife lost, a gross of matches are 
 dropped in the wood-shop, among the chips and 
 shavings ; in the bam, among the hay and straw ;. 
 in the rooms,, to be swept up and put away in the 
 clutter-box, or in some other way get into places 
 where they may set fire. Many a man whose 
 property has happened to be well insured has been 
 suspected of setting fire to his buildings, when 
 they have gone ofE from the agency of a lost fric- 
 tion match. There were a thousand chances that a 
 mouse or a rat, or one of the five cows, or the horse 
 in Mrs. O'Leary's barn, set with a match the fire 
 which burned Chicago, than that she or any one 
 else was milking a cow who kicked over a lamp. 
 
88 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 Rats and mice like phosphorus, and they will try 
 to get the little of it which is on almost eyery 
 friction match. It is not every one which burns its 
 nose that sets a fire. If it did we should be sadly 
 off. But a gentleman not long since, while stand- 
 ing near a Uttle heap of rubbish, heard a mouse 
 cry out as if in pain. He saw him rush out of the 
 heap, and as he crossed the floor a tiny sneeze or 
 two attracted his attention. Looking back at the 
 rubbish he saw a little smoke rising from it, and 
 he at once went to work to unravel the mystery. 
 Carefully opening the heap he came to a burning 
 match which had already set fire to the heap. 
 Now the mystery was solved. The mouse found 
 the match and went for the phosphorus ; the match 
 took fire, which burnt his nose, when his squeal, 
 and the cough and sneeze, called the man to the 
 danger, and he was able to save his house without 
 a little engine. 
 
 A FEW WOEDS TO AMERICAN WOMEN. 
 
 By far the keenest suffering which is felt from 
 the fires of our dwellings or other property falls 
 upon the gentler sex. The man " roughs it," and 
 braves it with bold, strong words, but it sinks into 
 the heart of the female sex to be driven from her 
 home in such a fearful, frightful manner. Then, 
 with the new home I fear more care will be ex- 
 
WORDS TO AMERICAN WOMEN. 89 
 
 pended in that wMch is for the man than for the 
 woman. It is a shame, but, alas, I fear it is only 
 too true. The man knows much better what he 
 needs for his comfort than he does- of the necessi- 
 ties of his helpmeet, and so when the money is 
 expended it is too much, far too much, for his con- 
 venience, and too little for the comfort of his 
 " better half." For this I shall not advise you to 
 hold indignation meetings, or to insist upon the 
 right of suffrage, though I think that would be an 
 immense blessing to the male portion of creation. 
 I only propose to offer you a few words of advice 
 upon a subject to which I have given much atten- 
 tion, and to which most of you have given very 
 little, that of the best manner of extinguishing 
 fires in the house, if you should be so unfortunate 
 as to have one there. You are much more at home 
 than we of the stronger sex, and it is at the first 
 instant of the discovery of a fire that it can best 
 be put out. A pail or two, a dipper or two, and 
 an axe or a hatchet, well used, will, four times oiit 
 of five, put out the fires that occur in or about a 
 house in a few minutes. Do not be frightened 
 when you are told of a fire on your premises. It 
 can do no good, and may do much harm. Is it in 
 a chamber ? Do not open the door until you have 
 ready one or two pails of water and a dipper. 
 Call for help, but go to work yourself. You will 
 
90 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 feel mucli better than if you keep still and see 
 your house burning up. A lady in Milton made 
 up a fire in an open fire-place in an upper room, 
 where children slept in the night. Returning soon 
 after to the room she found it in flames. Carefully 
 pouring upon it the water of the pitcher first, she 
 found a pail of water and another pitcher full, and 
 with them she succeeded in quelling the fi^e. The 
 quilt, comforter, four blankets, flounce, feather 
 bed, and mattress were weU. burned before she 
 arrested it. The smoke from aU this must have 
 quite filled the room, and I fear most of you would 
 haye cried for help or given the alarm, when the 
 house would have been destroyed. The lady put 
 out the fire without giving an alarm to the inmates 
 of the house. While I commend her for her self- 
 possession, I think it would have been more safe 
 to have called them up. Mr. Braidwood never 
 allows a man to enter a house alone which is on 
 fixe. I have no doubt, however, she measured the 
 work to do, saw she could do it, and then went 
 about it and finished it. All honor to her, and 
 may her example be followed by all females (and 
 males, if they dare to) who find such fires at work 
 in their homes. A smoke arising from the cellar 
 is much more dangerous than from a room up- 
 stairs. If it is dense you had better not risk your 
 life without help, if it is at hand. 
 
FIRE IN MILTON. 91 
 
 Fires in the ceiling, partitions, in" the stairway : 
 first have your water and dipper ready, then break 
 a hole with an axe, through to it, and throw the 
 water with all your force, from the dipper, upon it. 
 You may have to make several holes, but if you 
 ■work with energy you will soon have it all out. 
 It will be better to exert yourself very much 
 indeed, saying your home, than to lose it. And 
 here let me ask you to purchase for this purpose a 
 Johnson pump. It is so Hght, so easy to handle, 
 and a woman can work it so nicely, and it is so 
 efficient that no family should be without one. 
 The Milton lady could have put out ten times 
 more fire with one of them than she could without 
 it. Then the water can be thrown by women to 
 the roofs of most houses. 
 
 But I wish to teU of a fire at Athol, Mass., and 
 of an excellent rule of a family there. A fire 
 was built in an air-tight stove, and a basket of 
 chips, left too near, took fire. When discovered, 
 the wooden mantel was on fire, and the carpet and 
 floor ; and the flames had risen to the ceiling. The 
 lady who saw it went through two rooms, took a 
 pail of water and a dipper, returned with them, 
 and put out the fixe. The rule was that there 
 should always be a pail full of water ready in the 
 house. It was ready, and the house was saved. 
 I have given directions in another place for you if 
 
92 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 your clothes take fire. Will you do me the favor 
 to read them. If " fire is found on the roof, and 
 you have a pump, you can easily put it out if your 
 house is not too high. The pump is worth its cost 
 for cleaning windo-ws. But it gives a feeling of 
 safety, which is of much more value than its 
 expense ; and the having it will call your atten- 
 tion to the subject, and you will think of what 
 you should do if you were in danger from fire. 
 The following anecdote of a great fire will, I think, 
 be of use to persons living in villages : — 
 
 A great manufactory, some distance from a 
 village, was in flames ; the vrind was blowing the 
 sparks and pieces of burning wood over the entire 
 village, which consisted almost entirely of wooden 
 buildings. The men were all off to the fire, and 
 the fire was catching on every house. The women 
 were equal to the occasion, and every fire was 
 climbed to and dashed out before it could do any 
 harm. No doubt they ran some risk ; but what a 
 pleasure it must have been, what a comfort, that 
 their beautiful village, the home of a thousand 
 people, was not in ruins, as was the great manu- 
 factory, the cause of the danger. In another place 
 I have related how well a woman mopped out a 
 fixe, and do not forget that the best managed fire 
 I ever saw was directed by one. It is much more 
 pleasant to fight a fire with all your might, even 
 
WOMEN FIREMEN. 93 
 
 if you lose your house, tlian to stand weeping 
 while it is burning, while the chances are twenty 
 to one that you wiU save it. It is not fair to have 
 the stories all on one side, therefore here is one of 
 caution. A woman, having a pot of grease, for 
 some strange reason placed it in the stove. Soon 
 it was time for tea, and the fire was started. A 
 great puff of smoke, a flash of flame, and open 
 burst the stove doors, to show the pot of grease 
 about to make a monstrous grease- spot ! Her 
 son, however, a bright boy, caught it, and it was 
 out of the window in a twinkling. The house was 
 saved from almost certain destruction, but the 
 hands of the boy were badly burned by his bril- 
 liant exploit, as it would be termed if telling a 
 story of a battle, ' 
 
 I do not suppose any lady ever wears jute about 
 her head; but will you be so good as to say to 
 your servant that it is very dangerous. Too often 
 do women lose their lives by this means. It is, 
 however, so much more respectable to say that a 
 person was burned to death by her clothes taking 
 fire, than that her head was burnt off by the jute 
 taking fire, that we seldom hear of such a " shock- 
 ing catastrophe ! " 
 
 Sometimes the clothes on a clothes-horse take 
 fire. Throw it flat on the floor, if possible. In 
 all such cases take care that your own clothes do 
 
94 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 not take fire, as this is a greater danger than all 
 others. When children are on fire, if they run at 
 you, be careful, or you may also be enveloped in 
 flames. If by running away from them a few 
 steps you can grasp a rug, shawl, overcoat, or any 
 other woolen cloth, you had better do so, as it will 
 be more safe for you and the sufferer also. Of 
 course, if the fire is not large, you can manage it ; 
 yet even then, if your hands are not covered 
 with a woolen cloth, they may be burned so as to 
 give jou much pain. If in the night you find the 
 house on fire and fuU of smoke, and cannot go 
 down the stairs, tie the ends of two sheets together, 
 and come down on the outside as fast as possible. 
 I think that families in the country should as much 
 as possible avoid sleeping above the second story. 
 There is no great danger at that height, but one 
 other adds greatly to it. 
 
 But there are other points than the safety of life 
 and from fire ia the house which ladies may under- 
 stand and defend from the attack of fire. Seldom 
 have I received such pleasure as one da^ the past 
 winter at the mansion of one of the princely mer- 
 chants of Boston. A daughter, who had looked 
 into the subject since the great fire, described the 
 dangerous places on the outside of the house where 
 sparks could light, and light the house into a new 
 fire. Then she described how she could reach and 
 
A BOSTON MERCHANTS DAUGHTER. 95 
 
 extinguisli them witli an engine. How I -wished 
 she and a company of her female friends could 
 have been at Otis Street at the November fire. 
 About 180,000,000 would have been saved by 
 them in an hour ! It may seem a service rather 
 unfit for young women to fight fires; but if the 
 men fail, as at that fire, and the women, by their 
 tact and ready -wit, can be so efficient, we should 
 be thankful for their assistance. They can at 
 least teach the men to adopt a system so efficient, 
 and that will perhaps be the work they can do 
 best at the present time. " If they will, they will, 
 you may depend on't ! " I hope they wiU. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OUR PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND "WAREHOUSES. 
 
 TuRNiNa now from private dwellings to stores 
 and public buildings, let us consider, first, eleva- 
 tors, and tben vrhat I call fire elevators, or ckip 
 and shaviag hatchways. 
 
 ELEVATOES. 
 
 One of the common items of city news, is that of 
 loss of life, or maimed for life, by people in ware- 
 houses falling down elevator passages. It is one 
 prolific source of the practice of our hospitals. 
 When such an accident occurs, those who see the 
 broken, crushed mass of humanity carried off to the 
 hospital or its home, are dreadfully shocked. A 
 few of them may possibly dare whisper that the 
 man-trap should not forever be set, to murder, or 
 worse, to cause the unfortunate person to linger 
 on, a poor crippled man, forever dependent on the 
 help of his friends, often little able to support 
 him. But the " package " is removed, and the 
 business of the merchant goes on just as before. 
 The trap continues set, because it would cost a 
 
ELEVATORS. 97 
 
 few hundred dollars to make a proper elevator, 
 whicli may be wanted for the purchase of the 
 next horse or carriage, with which to ride upon the 
 fashionable drives about the city. 
 
 Another item which helps to fill the news- 
 papers, is somewhat as follows : " Destructive Fire. 
 
 The warehouse of , was found on fire last 
 
 night by persons passing on the street. There 
 seemed to be but little fire, and that in the base- 
 ment. It soon however ran up the elevator, and 
 although the fire department was on hand as usual, 
 yet before they got to work the flames had broken 
 out in every loft, and the merchandise was all in 
 flames. The department succeeded in confining 
 the fire to one store, but the loss in that was very 
 large, probably some hundred thousands." This 
 would be varied, not exactly according to the 
 weather, but of the wind, so as to embrace several 
 stores, or a street, or as on the November fire 
 would become an awful conflagration, involving 
 dreadful loss of life and misery untold upon thou- 
 sands of people. Why then do not the merchants 
 provide themselves -with safety elevators, which 
 can never be open except when packages are pass- 
 ing through them ? Because it is not the law, 
 with a severe penalty, that they shall be placed in 
 every store, warehouse, etc. That is the simple 
 reason. It costs something. One man may have 
 
98 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 in his place of business such a proper safeguard 
 from aAvful accident, to life, or from the destruc- 
 tion of the city, and the papers may call attention 
 to it, and they are always willing to do their fuU 
 share of such good works, and thousands of owners 
 and people renting stores shall see them, and not 
 haK a dozen of them wiU be put up in a year, and 
 the inventor will grow poor after iuTenting what 
 if brought into use as it should be, would render 
 life and property much more safe. It is a good 
 time now to- make such a law. Those who have 
 not been burned out can well afEord to meet the 
 expense, and where new buildings are to be 
 erected the extra expense is but trifling. Our 
 papers constantly contain advertisments with mi- 
 nute descriptions of safety elcTators. The inven- 
 tors should for the next few months be overrun 
 with orders ; yet if there is no law enacted they 
 will sell about a dozen in the city, during the year, 
 when it should not close without there being many 
 thousands of them brought into use. 
 
 An excellent safety elevator which was patented 
 in 1856 by W. H. Thompson and E. P. Morgan, 
 had sold up to 1870, only sixty-five of them, and 
 almost every one of them were placed in manufac- 
 tories. There should be sixty-five hundred of 
 them in Boston. For the safety of the city, and 
 a protection against fire, they are required. For 
 
SAFETY ELEVATORS. 99 
 
 tlie safety of the firemen, who often have to grope 
 their way through buildings filled with smoke to 
 extinguish fires, they are required. For the pre- 
 vention of cruelty to animals, as man is an animal, 
 for how often do we read of a merchant, or his cus- 
 tomer, his clerk, boy, or one of the porters, 
 falling from one to haK a dozen stories, to be car- 
 ried off to a hospital a mangled creature, or to his 
 home a corpse. Does it cost a few hundred dol- 
 lars ? Not one. The greater safety from fire will 
 pay for them. The pleasant feeling of security 
 from accidents from their use would be worth 
 thousands of dollars to every man who pulls out 
 the old, and introduces a new safety elevator, 
 safe from dreadful accidents, and from fires. In 
 spite of the dreadful mistake of those who failed 
 to give an alarm to the telegraph for twenty min- 
 utes at the Boston fire, if there had been a safety 
 elevator in the first store which took fire, the fire 
 would most likely have never gone out of the 
 basement, and the loss by the fire would have been 
 less thousands than it was millions of dollars. 
 There are laws against smoking, drinking, selling 
 drinks, against taking a newspaper, loaf of bread, 
 or a thousand other trivial items. Now let us make 
 it a crime to set these man and fire traps all over 
 the city, and by a severe penalty compel every 
 person using an elevator to procure a safe one. 
 
100 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 Of all the dangerous things about a city none are 
 more to be dreaded than the open wood spaces 
 through which the refuse wood is sent from each 
 story to the basement, to be consumed by the fire 
 which is to furnish motive power for the manufac- 
 tory. They are chimneys of wood with openings at 
 each story. Then, when a fire catches at the bot- 
 tom, it rushes up the narrow space, roaring like a 
 chimney on fire, and in a moment or two, often be- 
 fore an alarm can be sounded, the great building 
 is on fire in every story, and before a steamer can 
 be got to work the fire has enveloped the build- 
 ing and become so intense that even the steam- 
 ers can be of little other use than to confine 
 the fire to the first building. It is to be hoped 
 that there are few of these dangerous places in 
 any city, as so many great buildings have been 
 destroyed by them, that it is found cheaper and 
 safer to construct them of iron. The Mason 
 and Hamlin reed organ factory, on Cambridge 
 Street, was burned from varnish taking fire in 
 the basement and running up the wooden chim- 
 ney. If the fire had been kept in the basement 
 by a sheet of iron, the first engine would have made 
 short work of it ; for want of that, it was in every 
 story before it got to work at it. The great piano- 
 forte manufactory, which was burned on the ground 
 on which now stands the St. James Hotel, was first 
 
CHIP HATCHWAYS. 101 
 
 found to be on fire in the third or fourth story, hav- 
 ing caught in the basement, and first seen up there, 
 though it was at work in all the lower stories. 
 There is not the smallest chance to put out such a 
 fire. It is a monstrous battle between the element 
 of fire and the combustible matter of the building, 
 while the firemen attempt to prevent the fire from 
 destroying other buildings. In a gale of wind the 
 firemen often have to fight almost like demons to 
 prevent the destruction of whole districts. I have 
 no doubt that quite often it has required the most 
 heroic and dangerous efforts of the firemen to pre- 
 serve a city from dreadful conflagrations, when such 
 great fire-traps have, in a few minutes, become 
 monstrous fires. The most stringent laws should 
 be enacted against aU such traps made of wood, 
 or even of iron, unless with doors which should 
 shut off each room, and which should always be 
 closed when not in use. I recollect a fire near the 
 railroad bridge, on Tremont Street, in such a build- 
 ing, which, when first seen, was so small as to 
 hardly have any flame. No means of putting out 
 the fire less than a steamer was thought of or was 
 at hand, and that half a mile away. Yet even 
 when that arrived, it was for a few moments diffi- 
 cult to see any fire. This state of things, how- 
 ever, was of short duration. The fire was in the 
 wooden " fire-elevator," and in a few moments the 
 
102 PROTECTION- AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 whole building was a mass of flames, which threat- 
 ened many others. By the noble exertions of the 
 firemen it was mainly confined to one great estab- 
 lishment, but the danger to a great portion of the 
 city was imminent. There should be stringent 
 laws against all such places, which might, in a gale 
 of wind, do immense damage. But must we have 
 laws for everything? Yes; against everything 
 which may endanger a city or town. We have 
 laws against shooting robins and sparrows, or 
 breaking off a shrub or flower in the Public Gar- 
 den. This is right; but a thousand times more 
 proper would be laws against every kind of care- 
 less use or abuse of fire. Think of Chicago and 
 Boston, and then say if this is not true. 
 
 I wish now to speak of common causes of fire 
 in our buildings, and first of — 
 
 DASGBE OP ETEE FEOM KTJBBISH IN CEIiAES. 
 
 " September 10, 1666. All the morning clearing our 
 cellars, and breaking in pieces all my old timber, to 
 make room and to prevent fire." — Pepy's Diary. 
 
 Every farm is said to have its clutter hole. I 
 am afraid every house has one also, and I am sure 
 that too many warehouses and stores have them 
 in the cellar. The danger in cities from the old 
 broken wood and paper-boxes, etc., is very great 
 indeed, and especially when the cellars commu- 
 
RUBBISH IN CELLARS. 103 
 
 nicate with elevators, such as are in common 
 use, but which, by stringent laws, should be pre- 
 vented. Fire, when it catches upon bales of 
 woolen or cotton, or similar goods, in the base- 
 ment of a store, bums very slow, but when it is 
 in a cord or two of dry boards and heaps of old 
 paper boxes, it soon creates a flame which destroys 
 the contents of the room, if luckily it does not 
 cause a dreadful conflagration. There are a great 
 many places in every city and town, " up-stairs 
 and down-stairs," which, if the merchants would 
 " clean up," to make room and to prevent fire, the 
 communities would be all the safer for it. Near 
 eight hundred such places were pretty effectually 
 cleared up one night and day last fall, but there 
 are many hundreds left which should be at once 
 attended to, that another desolating fire may not 
 occur. In basements where goods are packed, 
 there should be especial care of fire. Some years 
 since, on a windy day, I went into the basement 
 of a store, where there was a stove, in which was 
 a very hot fire, and the stove almost red hot. 
 Near it were piled up dozens of pails, packed in 
 straw, and the whole cellar was full of like com- 
 bustible matter. Knowing how easy it would be 
 for a cat or rat to overturn them, or the natural 
 tendency of such things to fall over, and the ab- 
 solute certainty of the destruction of the whole 
 
104 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 store, if once on fire, and the danger to the city 
 in a gale of wind, I cautioned a young gentleman 
 of the danger. I was answered good-naturedly 
 that it was no matter, they were well insured, if 
 the old thing did go up. He was an excellent 
 young man, and would not do what he thought 
 wrong. But the same remark is quite too common, 
 and the carelessness to which it leads, I think, is 
 the cause of not a few of our basement and other 
 fires. Such a remark would be looked upon as 
 almost a crime in a respectable store in Liver- 
 pool or London, and it should never be made 
 anywhere. 
 
 SMOKING DtmnSTG BUSINESS HOXmS. 
 
 There should be at once in every city and town 
 severe laws enacted against smoking in any build- 
 ing or street during business hours. Not only 
 many thousands, but millions of dollars worth of 
 property have been destroyed from this smoking 
 evil. It is said that fires cannot be set in this 
 manner ; and so it is said that they cannot by oiled 
 rags, and the one is just as true as the other. 
 Only a few days since a pretty little fire was got 
 up in a railway car, set by a lighted pipe, thrust 
 into an Irishman's pocket. Some time since a 
 gentleman in Jamaica Plain passing his barn saw 
 smoke coming out of the door. Following it back 
 
BATTERY WHARF AND LONDON FIRES. 105 
 
 into the harness room he saw fire in a coat, and on 
 taking it up to throw out of the barn, a pipe 
 dropped from it, showing the cause of the fire. 
 
 Not a few of the fires for which no cause is 
 found are of this origin. The great fire which 
 commenced on Battery Wharf, July 27, 1855, was 
 no doubt set by a workman who was smoking 
 about the loose and drying cotton. The loss was 
 fiye hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 The great fire at London in 1861, which de- 
 stroyed elcTen millions of dollars worth of mer- 
 chandise, etc., was said to have origiuated from 
 spontaneous combustion in hemp. But the chances 
 were ten to one that the cause was a workman's 
 pipe. The same cause may be assigned, I beheve, 
 for the fire in a cordage store which caused such a 
 sensation a few years since in Boston. A gentle- 
 man who is in the hay and straw business told me, 
 a few days since, that it was quite common, espe- 
 cially in wet weather, for people in the streets to 
 come in to the hay stores, while passing, if they 
 saw no one, and lighting a match and then their 
 pipe, to throw the match down among the loose 
 hay. He thought that almost all the hay fires 
 were caused in that way. He said their own men 
 were forbidden to smoke; but I beheve some of 
 their worst fires have been brought about by their 
 own workmen smoking " on the sly." He also 
 
106 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 said that most of the hay fires occur in wet 
 weather, the time when outsiders come in to light 
 their pipes. 
 
 I once saw a most careless act of Kghting a pipe. 
 Several workmen came out from breakfast to the 
 workshop, which was in a barn. One of them — 
 and shame to him a Yankee — caught up a hand- 
 ful of shavings, lighted them with a match, then 
 lighted his pipe with the shavings, and without 
 looking at them crushed the shavings in his hand 
 and threw them out of sight under the bench ! 
 There were cords of shavings about, and many tons 
 of hay in the barn ! But there was not a carpen- 
 ter's workshop there another day ! AU over the 
 country, fires are occurring from such causes, and 
 it would be well to enact that if we are to have 
 an eight or ten hour law, no portion of the time 
 should be spent in setting fires by smoking pipes, 
 or tobacco in any form. 
 
 STOKE HEEE BEIGADE. 
 People are too much accustomed to leave to 
 others what they could better do themselves. 
 How many wiU read this little work, and then 
 leave the whole question to be settled by the 
 present fire department. So have the people gone 
 on for years with the smaU-pox question, and 
 would have stiU, perhaps, had not some facts come 
 
HOTEL FIRE BRIGADE. 107 
 
 to light which startled the public to action. So 
 should the fires of Chicago, Boston, and other 
 places awaken the business portion of all other 
 cities to look into the subject for themselves. A 
 Boston merchant writes to the " Advertiser " that 
 he is going to get up a store fire brigade. So have 
 they at Hovey's store, and also at a few others. 
 Every head of an establishment should select some 
 man and have him get up a little band of the 
 inmates, who would be engine-men, axe-men, or 
 water-carriers, with others to take their places if 
 wanted. The idea that this will tend to make 
 them worse book-keepers or salesmen is absurd. 
 Every man will become more a man if he can put 
 out a fire or do any other good thing for you. 
 
 HOTEL PIBE BBI6ADB. 
 
 Many years ago there was a fire department in 
 the Burnet House, at Cincinnati. Every man had 
 some place assigned him, to which he instantly 
 hastened when the alarm bell struck. All hotels 
 should have hose always ready at a moment's 
 warning, with men to man it, and axe-men, fire 
 buckets, and small engines, with directions on 
 printed cards hung in every story, and men 
 trained to use them instantly, in case of an alarm 
 in the house. There would be very few lives lost 
 in hotels if these precautions were observed. The 
 
108 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 men should feel that their own safety depended 
 upon these " fire brigades," and that it was their 
 duty — a part of their contract as workmen — to 
 do what they could for the safety of the patrons 
 of the house. The dreadful disaster at the hotel 
 at Richmond, Virginia, some time since, would 
 not have occurred with such a system, as it 
 was seen when a few dashes of water upon the 
 flames would have kept them back until the in- 
 mates coidd have escaped. With such a system, 
 too, the " brigade " would have seen the dangerous 
 condition of the women at the hotel in New York, 
 and means would have been found to save them. 
 
 THE CHICKEEING PIEE BRIGADE. 
 
 This fire brigade, in their great piano-forte 
 warehouse on Tremont Street, is perhaps the best 
 private fire preventive establishment in the United 
 States, if not in the world. 
 
 Thirty fifty-feet lengths of hose are always at- 
 tached to water-pipes and ready in a moment. 
 
 Forty-five extinguishers are so distributed that 
 one may be at work in a minute. Axes, iron-bars, 
 spanners, and other tools are distributed about the 
 building. 
 
 One captain, ten lieutenants, and one hundred 
 and fifty men, are trained to fly to their places at 
 a cry of fire, or at the stroke of the fire-beU. 
 
THE CHICKERING BRIGADE. 109 
 
 Double iron doors separate the wings from the 
 main building in each story, and water keeps them 
 wet and cool in case of fire. 
 
 The chips are taken from the rooms in great 
 barrows, to the eleTator, and thence to the floor, 
 from whence they are wheeled to an iron room, 
 and kept for use. 
 
 The lumber in the dry houses is safe, as the houses 
 can be filled with steam in a few minutes. The 
 watchmen are trained to use the extinguishers, etc., 
 in case of fire in the night. 
 
 With their well-trained and intelligent workmen, 
 their means of extinguishing fires, they set a most 
 excellent example to aU other business places in 
 towns and cities. 
 
 The expense is of course great, but the Messrs. 
 Chickering have no doubt it pays them for all 
 the outlay. Three fires, one very dangerous, have 
 already been extinguished. The sight of the fire 
 tools and the drills of the firemen have no doubt 
 prevented many others. 
 
 OS BXJILDINGS WHICH ABB IN GEEAT DANGER 
 OF TAKING EIRE. 
 
 Of all the buildings exposed to fire none are in 
 such constant danger as the manufactories of fric- 
 tion matches. Yet it is very seldom that one of 
 them is destroyed. The reason is that, knowing 
 
110 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 the danger, and that the town or city departments 
 could not get the alarm and get to work until their 
 property was destroyed, they organize a fire bri- 
 gade of their own. Some of them have extin- 
 guishers and some little pumps, and some of them 
 both ; and yet most of the fires there are smoth- 
 ered out by a wet woolen cloth or a pint of water, 
 without waiting for the larger machines. 
 
 I have known of foundries in the country, 
 where, when there was a dry time, a workman 
 was stationed outside to see if the roof did not 
 take fire. Placing a ladder on the side of the 
 building, and a bucket of water at the foot of the 
 ladder, if a fire started he was a complete " fire 
 brigade " in himself, and before the fire could 
 spread a foot in diameter he dashed it out and 
 filled his bucket for another battle, which, instead 
 of being a defeat, as are almost all of our fires 
 between the town and the city departments, 
 always ended in a splendid victory. Now for the 
 reason . The " bucket brigade " was right at the fire 
 when it commenced, and the bucket contained 
 water enough to drown out all the fire in an 
 instant; yet those same httle fires, if neglected 
 until the whole village could be notified, and the 
 young men run to the engine, run it to the fire, 
 get it to the water, iE there was any, which often 
 there is not, and then get it ready to play, would 
 
MANSARD ROOFS. Ill 
 
 completely envelop and destroy the building, or 
 perhaps a village. 
 
 MAiiTSAIlD EOOPS. 
 
 From the history of the introduction of the 
 beautiful structures now becoming so fashionable 
 in this country, called Mansard-roof buildings, and 
 from the different manner of building them in this 
 country and that in Paris, two lessons may be 
 learned by such persons as care to grow wise as 
 they grow old. The first is the " masterly inac- 
 tivity " which attends the dissemination of real 
 improvements throughout the civilized world. 
 Mansard, an architect of Paris, the builder of the 
 celebrated Palace of the Tuileries and many other 
 of the best structures in Paris, and who invented 
 the elegant roof which bears his name, died in 
 1666, the year of the great fire of London. Yet 
 they have only been known in this vicinity about 
 twenty years, and it is not more than five years 
 since a New York letter-writer boasted that a few 
 of them were going up in that vicinity, though 
 they were becoming common here. The second 
 lesson is that the devil is almost sure to get his 
 claws into any real improvement and so to arrange 
 matters that more evil than good will attend its 
 introduction. The Mansard-roofed buildings in 
 Paris, from the wise manner of building in that 
 
112 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 city, where as mucli stone, brick, iron, mortar, and 
 rubble, and as little wood as possible, is used, with 
 tbeir wonderfully efficient fire brigade, make a safe 
 and elegant style of architecture. 
 
 The Mansard-roofed structures, as made in our 
 cities and villages, are the most dangerous build- 
 ings ever constructed, and if the fashion now so 
 prevalent of building them does not abate or 
 change, but they contiaue to increase for the next 
 five years, as they have for five years, they will 
 as assuredly cause the destruction of our cities, as' 
 any other effect follows its cause, as sure as the 
 tide ebbs and flows, or the sun rises and sets. In 
 many places the law forbids the erection of wooden 
 buildings to more than a certain height — say 
 thirty or forty feet, — but these buildings are car- 
 ried up from fifty to a hundred feet of wood, iron, 
 stone, and brick, on the top of which is placed a 
 wooden roof, covering from an eighth of an acre to 
 an acre of buildings, and from ten to thirty feet 
 high. Why, some of these immense structures 
 contain more boards, plank, joist, timbers, lath, 
 etc., than half a dozen country lumber-yards, 
 These monstrous buildings may seem beautiful to 
 the eye, and may add to the attraction of a city 
 when looked upon by those who do not know of 
 the danger which may attend their destruction by 
 fire ; but unless they can be built of some other 
 
PROPHECY AND FULFILLMENT. 113 
 
 material than they are at present, unless the -wood 
 can be kyanized so that it will not burli, or iron 
 substituted for wood, they should, at the next ses- 
 sion of the legislature, be forbidden by law, under 
 the severest penalties. 
 
 And now I wish here to quote from myself, as 
 there is nothing so true as a prophecy become fact. 
 In the Boston " Advertiser " for November 10, 
 1871, — mark the day of the month and the year, 
 — appeared an article upon this subject from my 
 pen, in which I said as follows : — 
 
 " Let us suppose one of these buildings, say for 
 instance that near the Boston and Maiae Railroad, 
 or at Devonshire Street, or that magnificent pUe 
 on Tremont and Boylston streets, to be well on 
 fire when the telegraph gave the alarm, in a pleas- 
 ant and cabn day. What a splendid battle there 
 would be between the element of fire and the 
 noble firemen with their beautiful and perfect 
 steam-fire engbies ! What a glorious time for the 
 papers ! The dreadful fire with its sheets of flame 
 and its awful clouds of smoke,. the intense heat, 
 the faUing walls, the wonderful iutrepidity of the 
 firemen, the jets of water reaching to the skies, 
 the noise and confusion worse confounded, would 
 make a scene never to be forgotten by those who 
 should be so happy as to see it. It would proba- 
 bly result ia a loss only of one building and of 
 
114 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 a few hundred thousand dollars, for the fire de- 
 partment can do wonders at such a time. Who 
 would not believe that the city was protected 
 from conflagrations, after seeing such a fire kept 
 within the building in which it originated ? But 
 let the bells ring the alarm which teUs of a fire in 
 one of those buildings when there is such a gale as 
 there was at the Chicago fire, and which there is 
 every month of the year and often every week in 
 Boston. Alas for the doomed city ! Place wood, 
 coal, and iron in a blast furnace and set the wood 
 on fire without applying the blast of air. The 
 wood will burn and disappear, while the coal and 
 iron wiU remain and become cold when the wood 
 has burned out, — but apply the blast of air. The 
 roaring flame of the wood heats the coal to its in- 
 tense white heat, which melts the iron so that it 
 may be run into moulds of any shape which the 
 ingenuity of man can conceive. It is the air-blast 
 which does this, working upon the elements upon 
 which it is directed. So the furious gale changes 
 in a moment the position of the fire department at 
 a fire. The great building vrill soon become an 
 awful furnace, the heat of which will prevent the 
 firemen from approaching near it. When the 
 streams rush from the engines they will be beaten 
 to the ground before they can reach the burning 
 building by the power of the vrind. The heat 
 
MANSARD ROOFS. 115 
 
 soon will become so intense that it wiU ignite 
 other buildings near it, and in this manner the fire 
 ■will take the attention of all and more than all of 
 any department. But now comes the real danger. 
 When that dozen lumber-yards in the roof is 
 once weU on fire, it wiU be taken, not by little 
 sparks only, but by cords, to fall into and upon 
 e^ery building within half a mile ! Every window 
 on the line of the gale will be broken into by the 
 fiery brands, every place where there is wood for 
 fire to catch upon, and fires will soon be rushing 
 from fifty of those windows or roaring from the 
 exposed wood. Such a fire (and they will surely 
 occur) will stop just when there is no more wood 
 to burn. The earnest men of the fire department, 
 with their apparatus, would • be as inefficient as 
 would the writer with one pf his ten-dollar ma- 
 chines. Then would come the story so lately told 
 of Chicago : " Awful conflagration ! Boston in 
 ruins ! Thousands of houses and the business 
 portion of the city in ashes ! Hundreds of men, 
 women, and children burned to death ! The peo- 
 ple starving ! Boston cries for help ! " Well, 
 thank God, Boston would have help. The noble- 
 hearted, the truly Christian people of this city 
 have so done their duty to every people in times 
 of distress that the tide of humanity would flow 
 back with interest. But Boston, with its great 
 
116, PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 humanity, its ample means, should, with its splen- 
 did schools, teach its people to be more than hu- 
 mane and great-hearted. They should be so in- 
 telligent and wise as to be able to guard against 
 such a\rful calamities as those just described, and 
 which are occurring somewhere almost monthly." 
 
 A year afterwards to a day, and Mansard was 
 the best abused Frenchman to be found ; but if the 
 people of Boston or any other city content them- 
 selves simply with abusing Mansard they have not 
 learned the first lesson of wisdom, which is, — 
 when things go wrong, don't abuse your neighbor, 
 especially if he is dead and buried, but ask your- 
 self what your mistake is. 
 
 DA:<rGEE FROM IXBES IN CHUECHES, HAULS, AND 
 THBATBES. 
 
 The danger to public buildings from fire is only 
 too often made known to us through the press. 
 Many theatres and some public halls have been 
 provided with hose, which, coiled up in great 
 unwieldly bundles, would require so long to 
 unroll that before the water could be got on the 
 fire, the fire would have driven the workmen from 
 the building. Extinguishers have also been kept 
 for this use, and are an excellent protection, much 
 better than the great rolls of hose. But the 
 French system is quite the best of any yet 
 
THE FRENCH SYSTEM AT THEATRES. 117 
 
 known. No performance can take place in any 
 theatre in Paris unless there is on the stage a 
 small fire-engine and two firemen. The scenery- 
 may take fire, but there is a dash of water from 
 the engine and aU. the fire is out ia a moment. A 
 small engine, and the workmen in our theatres 
 traiaed for this purpose, and always at their posts, 
 would insure our theatres from destruction, and 
 might save many hundreds of Hves. 
 
 BTJENING OP THE EICHMOND THEATRE. 
 
 This theatre was burned December 16, 1811. 
 Seventy persons perished, including the governor 
 of the State, and many of the first people of Vir- 
 ginia. The fire, when seen by the manager of the 
 theatre, was not two feet in diameter, and with the 
 system I have indicated, would have been extin- 
 guished in two or three seconds. 
 
 THE DREADFUL CATASTROPHE AT SANTIAGO, 
 CHILI, 
 
 By which a church was burned, and two thousand 
 persons perished in the flames, is one of the most 
 awful related in history. The church was illumi- 
 nated, and decorated with a great number of pic- 
 tures, etc. A candle fell over and set a picture 
 on fire, which burned slowly for a few moments. 
 The picture was not thirty feet from the floor, 
 
118 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 and not three feet square. The fire was soon com- 
 municated to other pictures and decorations, and 
 then, flying from one to another, it soon set every 
 part of the building on fire. The frightened audi- 
 ence, mostly "women, in their fear and haste, closed 
 the doors, which opened inward, and then as the 
 great mass rushed toward the closed doors, they 
 crushed each other to death, or were smothered, or 
 roasted to death by the flames. A little engine 
 and a pail of water would have put out the fire on 
 the painting in a second, and saved two thousand 
 lives. 
 
 A very dangerous practice has grown up within 
 a few years of decorating churches, vestries, public 
 halls, etc., with evergreens, at Christmas or for 
 the holidays. The idea is a beautiful one, and if 
 properly managed, that is, if the decorations are 
 taken out in three weeks, it is perfectly safe. But 
 the workers get weary when the fair or the holiday 
 festivals are over, and they are allowed to remain 
 until they are as dry, and much more dangerous, 
 than gimpowder. 
 
 Some years since a party of musicians from 
 Europe, after giving concerts in the United States, 
 visited Montreal or Quebec. The audience and 
 the singers were in the hall, when a lamp set one 
 of the dried trees on fire. For half a minute it 
 was quite small, and could have been dashed out 
 
A DISASTER AVERTED. 119 
 
 with water if there had been a pump at hand. 
 Then it flew from one tree to another, and from 
 one decoration to another, almost with the rapidity 
 of lightning. The fright and danger became ex- 
 treme. Many persons were injured, others were 
 burned, and the buildiiig was destroyed. 
 
 In 1794 the theatre at Capo d'lstria fell and 
 crushed the audience and actors in the ruius. 
 
 Some years since, when a great musical festival 
 was given in the Crystal Palace, New York, a 
 young mechanic, who was there as I was, to slug, 
 came to me and said, " Do you think the place 
 upon which we are to sing is strong enough to bear 
 us ? " "I don't know," said I. " Well," said he, 
 " I don't believe it is. I am a carpenter, and I 
 would not allow half the number of people to go 
 upon it that it is said are expected here to-night." 
 We went and examined it. Such a flimsy place to 
 hold thousands of people was never made before, 
 and I hope never will be again. A man could shake 
 it back and forth with one hand. We went and 
 found Mr. Bamum and told him of the danger. 
 " Well," said he, " what can you do ? " It was 
 then ten o'clock, and we were to sing that night. I 
 asked my friend. " Get a thousand of boards, and 
 a cask of the best nails, and haK a dozen men, and 
 I will see it shored up," said he. They were there 
 in less than an hour, and the boards were used as 
 
120 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 braces in every possible way to Btrengtben tbe 
 rickety concern. I don't believe it was possible 
 tbat we should not have bad an awful disaster if 
 it bad not been for my Boston friend, nor do I 
 believe it was, tbougb it managed to bold us, half 
 as strong as it should have been, for no building 
 should be erected to sustain great numbers of 
 people which cannot bear up twice the number it 
 can be made to hold. Just preventing a thousand 
 persons from being crushed to death is not enough, 
 when the author of this book is to be one of 
 them. 
 
 As buildings ' grow old, those which were strong 
 enough to bear all the people they could contain 
 when new, will become each season more unsafe. 
 The number of people occupying them increases ; 
 and in times of excitement the buildings may be- 
 come overloaded, and then another sensational dis- 
 aster will go flying over the telegraph lines. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SPONTAJJEOUS IGNITION AST) INCENDIABY HDBES. 
 
 I PROPOSE in this chapter not only to speak of 
 fires which properly come under these heads, but 
 also of those which from their singularity or the pe- 
 culiar lesson they may teach, it may be well to place 
 in a book of this kind. In 1846, Mr. Braidwood 
 was before a committee of the House of Lords, and 
 said: "It is my belief that by long exposure to 
 heat, not much exceeding that of boiling water at 
 212°, timber is brought into such a condition that 
 it will take fire without the application of a light. 
 The time during which this process goes on until 
 it ends in spontaneous combustion, is from eight 
 to ten years ; so that a fire might be hatching in 
 a man's premises during the whole time of his 
 lease without making any sign ! " Now the per- 
 son whose house is burned up, wiU say to the in- 
 surer, and to the community : " It was not the 
 furnace, the stove, or the steam-pipes, that set the 
 fire ; and he will call the carpenter, the mason, and 
 the other mechanics, who will agree with him that 
 it was impossible for fire to take from any such 
 
122 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 cause. Then tlie common people, wlio like to be- 
 lieve in anytliing mysterious, belieYe that there 
 was something strange about the fire which wiU 
 never be explained. The explanation of such fires 
 I propose to give, and to do it in the most simple 
 manner, avoiding aU words which might mislead 
 even those who have acquired only the most com- 
 mon education. 
 
 It is commonly imagined that the introduction 
 of hot water, hot air, and steam-pipes as a means 
 of heating buildings cuts off an 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 would suffice to ignite. The circular rim at 
 Apothecaries Hall which was used in the prepara- 
 tion of some medicament that required a tempera- 
 ture 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. Hosking, the author of the " Guide to the 
 Proper Regulation of Building in Towns," says : — 
 
 DAY AJSD MABTIN'S. 
 
 "Day and Martin's blacking manufactory was 
 heated by means of hot water through iron tubes. 
 In December, 1848, the wooden casing, etc., was 
 
DANGER FROM DRIED WOOD. 123 
 
 found to be on fire. Tlie only cause to be discov- 
 ered was tbe exposure for a long time of the wood 
 to the heated pipes." 
 
 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. 
 In every case where the prop which held the pipe 
 from the floor had been displaced, tTie hoards were 
 charred. 
 
 DANGER FEOM DBIED WOOD. 
 
 " Wood dried in the thorough manner we have 
 mentioned is so liable to catch fire from flame that 
 practical men imagine there must be some kind of 
 atmosphere surrounding it of a highly imflamma- 
 ble nature. A stick of piue-wood thrust into a 
 fire will emit from its free end a volatile spirit of 
 turpentine, which lights like a jet of gas." That 
 this vapor has been the cause of many fires I have 
 no doubt. Fires in drying-houses often occur, and 
 the reason has not been found. How easy it 
 would be for a little cloud of such vapor to float 
 off to a light, or to the furnace, to be lighted, and 
 to return to the dried wood a living flame, which 
 would, in five minutes, set the whole building in 
 a blaze. Many other buildings than dry-houses 
 have, I think, been fired in that manner. 
 
124 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 DAJSTGEB ETROM VAPOE. 
 
 That a vapor rises from inflammable oils is 
 weR understood ; but there are, as we have seen in 
 wood, doubtless others, arising from many things 
 heated for drying or. for some other purposes. In 
 1866 we are told of a fire in a wool-drying room : 
 " He entered the room with his lantern. Soon after 
 leaving he smelt smoke, and opening the wool- 
 drying room, he found it full of smoke. As soon 
 as the air was admitted the fire flashed all over the 
 room at once, as by flashes of lightning." In 1868 
 a similar fire occurred in a room for drying wool : 
 " The watchman entered it with his lantern. 
 Leaving it for a moment, he wished to return, but 
 found it fuU of fire, and was obliged to escape by 
 a window." 
 
 SPONTAIirEOtrS COMBUSTION IS AT PEESENT VBEY 
 UTTLB rnSDEESTOOD. 
 
 The London " Quarterly " for January, 1855, 
 says : " The cause of most fires from this source 
 is lost in the consequence." That is, the engines 
 arrive so late that the signs of the cause are 
 burned up. "A porter swept the sawdust from 
 the floor into a heap, upon which the oil (olive) 
 from a broken flask dripped. The sun shone on 
 the heap, and in sixteen hours it took fire." 
 
OILED RAGS. 125 
 
 OILED EAGS, COTTON AKD COTTON-WASTE, 
 HEMP, ETC. 
 
 Extracts from Mr. Braidwood : " Spontaneous 
 ignition is believed to be a very fruitful cause of 
 fires, but unless the fire is discovered almost at its 
 commencement it is difficult to ascertain that this 
 is the cause. It is generally accelerated by natural 
 or artificial heat. Sawdust, cotton, cotton-waste, 
 hemp, and most other vegetable substances wet 
 with oU. are very likely to take fire. The serious 
 fires in the railroad stations about London have 
 most of them commenced in the paint stores. In 
 a large fire in an oil warehouse a quantity of oil 
 was spilled the day before and wiped up, and the 
 wipings thrown aside. They were beheved to have 
 been the cause of the fire. No collection of rub- 
 bish or lumber of any sort should be allowed to be 
 made in any building of value." 
 
 A fire in Fall River was a mystery until Mr. 
 Eddy, who had the care of the building, found 
 that in a board just over the pipes were several 
 pitch knots. The turpentine distilled from the 
 knots and fell upon the pipe, and took fire from 
 its heat and set the building on fire. An iron pipe 
 containing steam not under pressure, packed in 
 shavings, passed overhead in a saw-null. The 
 shavings took fire and the mill was destroyed. 
 
126 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 Dr. C. T. Jackson supposed tlie turpentine dis- 
 tilled from the shavings. A box containing fine 
 sawdust was placed around a pipe conveying 
 steam from one mill to another. The box was on 
 fire a great number of times. There were twelve 
 fires in the city of Philadelphia in a year, ending 
 March, 1868, in woolen mills, from these and simi- 
 lar causes. Two fires from oily waste occurred in 
 Hartford. 
 
 Some clean woolen waste was once taken from 
 a mill and stored in a warehouse in Pearl Street. 
 The insurance companies notified the agent to 
 remove it. Objection to this was made, when 
 Mr. Gould placed some of it in a yard in State 
 Street. This was in August. It took fire in less 
 than twenty-four hours. Many other cases of 
 woolen mills could be stated, but these are suffi- 
 cient to warn persons of the danger. 
 
 The house of Mrs. Colburn, at Cambridge, took 
 fire from woolen rags saturated with Unseed oil. 
 Another fire at Cambridge was from the following 
 cause : At a house where were a number of work- 
 men one was using oiled rags. When the dinner- 
 bell rang he put his rags into his overalls, and 
 taking them off he threw them into a closet. 
 Before one o'clock a workman, who providentially 
 ate his dinner in the house, smelt fire. He found 
 the oiled rags had set the overalls on fire, and soon 
 the house would have been on fire also. 
 
ONE REASON ENOUGH. 127 
 
 A fine house in Cambridge was destroyed a few 
 years ago. Cause first, oiled rags ; second, no 
 small engine, — it was discovered when one could 
 have put out the fire ; third, when the people were 
 called where the telegraph box was kept the key 
 could not be found. I could give several other 
 reasons, but an old anecdote will perhaps be more 
 pleasant reading. One of the crowned heads of 
 Europe, while passing through one of his cities, 
 was not saluted, as is the custom. Some time 
 afterward the mayor of the city appeared at court 
 to apologize for the want of respect shown to his 
 majesty. " Sire," said the mayor, " I have one 
 hundred reasons why we could not fire a salute." 
 " Well," said the kiag, " what is the first reason." 
 " We had no powder, sire." " That will answer," 
 said the good-natured monarch, and he left the 
 mayor to get out of the palace as he best could. 
 
 It is a singular fact that while I was looking up 
 these and many other cases iu Cambridge, a person 
 was as busy trying to prove that fires could not be 
 set by oiled rags, and he made many converts. I 
 found one instance m a furniture warehouse, where 
 a handful of oiled rags thrown on a bench, on a 
 hot day in August, took fire in fifteen minutes ! 
 
 A singular case of fire was discovered at the 
 library of the Philosophical Society, George Street, 
 Manchester, England. On entering the room one 
 
128 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 afternoon a sofa was seen to be on fire. It was 
 taken into the yard and tlie fire extinguislied, when 
 the sofa was found to hare been stuffed with waste 
 woolen material from the mills, which, being oUy, 
 had taken fire. 
 
 A Tessel loaded with wool was set on fire by a 
 flask of oil broken in the cabin. The oil dripped 
 through the floor upon the wool, and the fire com- 
 menced. 
 
 A great building in State Street was destroyed 
 by fire a few years since from the following cause : 
 In the basement near the front of the store there 
 was a large tank, in which was kept vamish. 
 While filling it from casks the yapor, which some- 
 times is in such tanks, was forced out into the 
 cellar. Floating along, as does the smoke we 
 sometimes see in the air before a storm, it slowly 
 worked its way to the other end of the cellar, 
 where there was a lighted jet of gas. The moment 
 it touched the gas it ran back, a river of fire, which 
 droTe the men out of the cellar, set the varnish on 
 fire, and in an incredibly short time had set the 
 whole building on fire, and in spite of the spirited 
 exertions of the firemen it was totally destroyed. 
 A building was erected on the same lot, and soon 
 another fiire occurred in it, which should also show 
 the need of caution and care of all persons en- 
 gaged in such stores. A lot of linseed oil in bar- 
 
LAMP-BLACK. 129 
 
 rels was stored in the third loft from the street. 
 One of them leaked, and the oil ran along the 
 floor thirty or forty feet, until it leaked through 
 and fell into a barrel of lamp-black in papers. 
 This at once, of course, took fire, but it was dis- 
 covered in time to save most of the building. 
 
 It is a rule in most of the furniture warehouses, 
 where oiled rags are used, to bum them every 
 night in winter, but in the summer, when there is 
 no fire, they are thrown into the water. Then 
 they are picked up by boys, and sold into the junk 
 shops. Probably not a few of the many fires so 
 common in such stores arise from these rags from 
 the furniture stores. 
 
 A very nice lamp-black may be gathered from 
 the gas jet under the glue-pots of such establish- 
 ments. But great care is necessary, as it takes fire 
 very easUy. One of the men was told to be care- 
 ful of it by a foreman one day, and sure enough it 
 was then on fitre in his hands. 
 
 The following is an extract from " Fires and Fire 
 Systems " : " Spontaneous combustion is the power 
 of ignition inherent in animal and vegetable sub- 
 stances. The putrefaction of vegetables is known 
 to occasion the development of so much heat as 
 sometimes to cause their ignition. It has been 
 proved that hemp, jute, cotton, flax, etc., wheo 
 they are stored in a damp cellar, or left in a state 
 
 9 
 
130 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 of grease or oily dirt, may take fire." Mr. Old- 
 ham, of the Bank of England, knew of three fires 
 caused by greasy rags lying together. It was his 
 opinion that they would sometimes take fire after 
 they had lain safely for a year. I once knew of a 
 fire said to have been set by an incendiary, but 
 which I have no doubt caught from oiled rags, 
 some of which had lain where the fire caught for 
 many months. In 1858 a*quantity of asphalted 
 felt, stored in a yard at CamberweU, ignited, but 
 was seen and at once extinguished. In a few 
 weeks it was on fire again. " A heap of fine char- 
 coal ten feet square and four feet deep, in three 
 days was heated to 90° from 57°. On the sixth 
 day it had risen to 150°, and on the seventh day 
 it had taken fire in several places." 
 
 Dr. Jackson says : " Three times I have set fire 
 to charcoal at temperatures less than boiling water. 
 My first experiment was accidental. I took a 
 flask filled with gunpowder and laid it on a stove 
 to dry. I then took a paper of pulverized char- 
 coal, such as is sold by apothecaries for tooth pow- 
 der, the charcoal being wrapped in white paper, 
 and placed it on the top of the gunpowder which 
 was being dried upon the stove. Having occasion 
 to go out, I took off the paper of charcoal and laid 
 it upon the table. When I came back, in about 
 twenty minutes, I observed the paper smoking. 
 
DR. JACKSON'S EXPERIMENT. 131 
 
 The charcoal was completely consumed. During 
 all this time the gunpowder remained on the stove 
 unexploded." 
 
 The next experiment is thus told : "I had 
 occasion to use a piece of charcoal for blow-pipe 
 experiments. I went down into my cellar and 
 brought up a piece of Ught, fine, round charcoal, 
 suited for that purpose. It was damp. I laid it 
 on the top of a column stove to dry, directly by a 
 tin pan contaioing water, which was not boiling, 
 and never did boil there. I took the charcoal off 
 the stove and laid it on my table. A short time 
 afterwards I discovered it was on fire aU through 
 the piece. I laid it aside and it burned entirely 
 to ashes." " I repeated this experiment again, 
 watching it carefully, and with the same result." 
 Now let us see what the practical working of this 
 would be. The wood under a stove has, by con- 
 tinued heating, become charcoal. It is covered 
 with an oil-cloth carpet and an iron or zinc plate. 
 The charcoal takes fire, and as it cannot bum up 
 through the carpet and iron plate, it bums down 
 to the space below the floor. From thence it goes 
 off in any direction of the draft to the side of the 
 buUding, and then upwards, perhaps, even to the 
 roof, where the fire is first seen, or in any of the 
 stories, as the case may be. Such a fire, in the 
 daytime, may result in a damage of from a hun- 
 
132 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 died to thousands of dollars. In the night the 
 building is often a total loss. The papers -will 
 report the fires, " it was seen near the stove," or 
 it was first seen in the third, fourth, or fifth story, 
 or the attic, as the ease may be, or " the building 
 seemed to be on fire from the basement to the 
 attic." These fires are preparing aU over the city. 
 No careful man will ever put up a stove in such a 
 way, but he allows his workmen to do it for him. 
 
 A few years ago I went vyith my wife to one of 
 the great wholesale clothing houses in Boston. I 
 had occasion to go out of an errand, and when 
 I returned she said to me, " I think there has 
 been some kind of fire in that opposite room." 
 " Why ? " " WeU, there was quite a smoke and 
 a runniag of men, and water was carried in there." 
 Of course that was the place for me, and in I went. 
 A kind of tailor's furnace had been put up that 
 morning, fire-proof of course, and ia the first three 
 hours it had set the building on fire. Just sup- 
 pose that it could have waited a few hours, until 
 any time from twelve o'clock at night to three or 
 four in the morning. The story would have been, 
 
 » A great fire in Street ; loss $500,000." I 
 
 suppose I meddled with somebody's business, and 
 made some person angry with me, for I at once 
 told the firm of it. No such machine was ever 
 put up after that, without being carefuUy exam- 
 
WOOLEN BAGS. 133 
 
 ined by them. In this way we fail to "rely 
 enough upon ourselves, but trust too much to 
 others." 
 
 AU over oux stores, workshops, warehouses, and 
 in many dwelling-houses, the stove, furnace, steam 
 or hot water-pipes or gas-jets, are turning the 
 wood to charcoal. The causes of spontaneous 
 ignition in London, in 1859, were, charcoal, felt 
 tarred, and phosphorus, one each; wet hemp, 
 ropes, and mats, sulphur and saltpetre, two each ; 
 cotton waste, three ; greasy rubbish, four ; lamp- 
 black and oily rags, seven each. 
 
 The English books on this subject do not men- 
 tion woolen rags with oil, nor do the Boston Fire 
 Department reports often speak of them. Yet 
 they are certaialy one of the most prominent 
 causes of danger. The following from " Fires in 
 Woolen Mills," from which are many of the ex- 
 tracts in this chapter, should be remembered by 
 every person : " Managers and workmen should 
 know that spontaneous combustion is not an acci- 
 dental phenomenon. With the proper conditions 
 it is as certain as the firing of gunpowder with a 
 spark. The cask of gunpowder wiU not explode 
 tin the spark is applied. The pUe of oily waste, 
 harmless and innocent to all appearance, slowly 
 but surely takes from the oxygen of the air the 
 means for its own combustion, itself lighting the 
 
134 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 conflagration, which most frequently bursts forth 
 when manager and operatives are locked in slum- 
 ber ; " or father, mother, and children, i£ in a 
 dwelling. 
 
 KETW CAUSES OB" SPONTANEOTJS IGNITION. 
 
 We now know of many causes, but it cannot be 
 doubted that others will yet be discovered which 
 have set fires and are not yet suspected. A few 
 years since a freshet filled the basement of a large 
 machine shop in the western part of the State. 
 There were in the room many turning-lathes for 
 turning iron and steel. At the bottom of many 
 of them were piles of steel and iron waste. This 
 is the refuse cut or filed from the work while fin- 
 ishing it, and it is well saturated with oil. There 
 had always been such heaps there, but when the 
 water was drawn off, the heaps of iron dross and- 
 oil, left wet with water, began to steam, and 
 soon they were wheeled out for safety on to a 
 waste place, where the heap became red hot in- 
 side I A new combination for fire setting ! A 
 young woman in a house in my neighborhood 
 thought there was a smell of fire in one of the 
 rooms. Looking about she saw smoke rising from' 
 the centre-table, and upon it she found a line 
 which had been burned, the end of which was 
 then on fixe. Calling in the family, it was seen 
 
FIRE FROM WASTE HEAPS. 135 
 
 that the globe on the table, in which were swim- 
 ming about a pair of gold fish, was in the rays 
 of the smi, and had become a burning glass, and 
 was busily at work as an incendiary! Round 
 glass paper-weights hare also, by the aid of the 
 sun, become fire-setters. No such shaped glass 
 should be placed where the rays of the sun may 
 strike it. 
 
 Some of the many fires in the forests are sup- 
 posed to be set by the sun shining upon the gum, 
 which ooziug from the trees sometimes is formed 
 into the proper shape, thus becoming a sun-burner. 
 Very hkely, but nine out of ten of them are from 
 the laziness of persons who go into the woods, 
 make fires, and go off without extinguishing them. 
 
 And this leads to an important item for a book 
 of this kind. How many fires are a consequence 
 of burning of the waste of a garden, etc., near the 
 buildings. Wheel them away, and set them on 
 fire where they will be quite out of danger. And 
 never set any waste on fire on a windy day. WeU 
 do I recollect seeing the smoke of a fire at Ded- 
 ham. The servant was told to set fire to some 
 waste in. the afternoon. The wind had arisen 
 then, and it was unsafe. But obey orders was 
 the word, and soon the waste and a fine mansion 
 were on fire, which came near burning other valu- 
 able buildiDgs. Always have an engine with 
 
136 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 water when you make such fixes about the place. 
 If wanted for nothing else they will put out the 
 fire and so prevent " danger. If water is scarce, 
 cover up the remains of the fire with dirt. I have 
 known several fires for neglecting these cautions. 
 There was one in Cambridge a year ago. Some- 
 times the grass takes fire about a house or barn in 
 a dry time. If there is a high wind, and the fire 
 is near the building, a paU of water and a dipper 
 will almost always wet about the building enough 
 to keep it from catching. A small engine, how- 
 ever, will in this case do wonders. Some one once 
 told me that the grass was on fire near my barn, 
 when in a minute I was there with a pail and httle 
 engine. No one could have been more surprised 
 than myself at the instant beating out of the flame 
 for about forty feet each way. But in the country, 
 when the grass is on fire for many rods and run- 
 ning in every direction, stick right to your own 
 buildings until the fire is out there, and then help 
 your neighbors. Women should always avoid 
 going near where those fires are burning, as the 
 blaze often starts up after it has been dashed out 
 by brush or even water, and there would be danger 
 of their clothes taking fire. People too often do 
 great injustice to those who make fires in stores. 
 A store is on fire near the stove. The boy who 
 has charge of the fire is suspected of doing it by 
 
INCENDIARY FIRES. 137 
 
 carelessness. I was telling a mercliant of these 
 things, when he with the most earnest manner said 
 that he had now no doubt that he had once 
 wronged a poor boy in that way. 
 
 A fire of any kind occurs, and it seems as if the 
 very devil himself set even good Christians to give 
 any origin for it but the true one. By giving a 
 true statement of aU fires, we should soon know 
 almost exactly their cause, and thus be able to pre- 
 vent them. This would be even better than using 
 small engines ! 
 
 rffCENDIABT I-IEBS. 
 
 There are many kinds of incendiary fires. 
 
 Malicious incendiarism, or setting fire to revenge 
 some supposed personal injury, has in all ages 
 been known as a crime. It, however, very rarely 
 occurs ; and the fact that a person is so wickedly 
 disposed toward the man whose bmldings are de- 
 stroyed, often leads to his conviction and punish- 
 ment. 
 
 PBADDTTIiENT JNCENDIAEISM:. 
 
 This kind of incendiarism is in some countries 
 and cities very common. It prevails in the cities 
 of England, and in this and other coimtries. In 
 New York some of the insurance companies have 
 been compelled to refuse to insure certain classes 
 of people. The Irish people, to their credit be it 
 
138 PROTECTION AGAINST FIBE. 
 
 written, stand well in this respect. The fire mar- 
 shals' reports of that city give startling figures of 
 
 such fires. 
 
 PTBOMAIfriA. 
 
 This kind of- incendiarism, called in England 
 Monomania, though Tery rare, when it does occur 
 causes great fright and trouble to the famihes and 
 friends of the person so afflicted. In London, a 
 boy of fifteen set fire to his father's premises seven 
 times in one day. A girl, while on a visit to her 
 friends, set fire to the bed-curtains, to the window- 
 bhnds, to the curtains of the windows of five rooms, 
 the kitchen towels, a bed, and when the bedclothes 
 were removed to the coach-house for safety, they 
 were set on fire there five times. Furniture, books, 
 and indeed everything almost which would burn, 
 were set fire to. Fortunately the fires were seen 
 when small, and easily extinguished ; and at last 
 the incendiary was caught in the act of setting 
 fixe. There was no possible motive, and pyro- 
 mania was the only excuse. 
 
 This crime, or disease, is much more prevalent 
 in this country than in others. In Europe, it was 
 almost always persons from fifteen to twenty years 
 of age. In this country, children of from eight to 
 fifteen have been afflicted with it ; and it is quite 
 certain that persons have set fire after fire ia towns 
 where there were no engines, and where there 
 
RIVAL FIRE-ENGINES. 139 
 
 could be no possible reason except this pyromania. 
 Houses, bams, school-houses, and churches have 
 been burned, in out of the way Tillages, miles 
 away from engines, and where no motive of re- 
 venge or any other could be conceived. Little 
 boys, and even girls, have set fire to the property 
 of their parents, and of others; and while the 
 neighbors supposed them to be awful cMldren, 
 physicians, and those who knew the facts of this 
 disease, saw that they were sufEering a dreadful 
 infliction. 
 
 rffCENDIABISM POK DEVILTEY. 
 
 This dreadful crime, which was unknown ia this 
 country until the introduction of " suction engines," 
 as they were called, about 1830, was quite com- 
 mon in ancient Rome. " The rivalries of the 
 various companies of ancient firemen continually 
 caused disturbances and rows, just as was the case 
 in London prior to 1830, and in some of the cities 
 of America at the present day."' The punish- 
 ment of death was awarded to aU who willfully 
 fia-ed buildings, from the very earliest period. In 
 ancient Rome, where the crime was very common, 
 those found guilty were burned to death, by plac- 
 ing them in a sack covered with pitch, etc., which, 
 once on fire, gave. the crimiaal no chance of escape. 
 In this country, the excitement attending the 
 
140 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 rivalries of engine companies, causing incendia- 
 rism, was increased, until the rate of insurance was 
 more than twice what it would have been but for 
 that cause. Fires were set everywhere and at aU 
 times ; but not a Saturday night could pass in the 
 neighborhood of several crack companies, as they 
 were termed, without one, two, or three fires. In 
 a town near Boston, where there was an old, small 
 engine, years ago, the young men formed a com- 
 pany, and the town gave them a splendid new one. 
 In the next fifteen years the town was dotted all 
 over with the ruins of buildings set on fire by 
 " the boys," to call engines from other towns, so 
 that they might have the pleasure of "sucking 
 them or ruiming them over ! " At the same time 
 the young men — that is, those who " run wid der 
 machine," — grew more and more immoral, until it 
 was at last impossible for them to find a lower 
 position. One night, when one of the out-of-town 
 engines had been badly beaten, one of the mem- 
 bers, who had learned that an improved means for 
 throwiug water had been invented, proposed that 
 their engine should be supplied with it. It was 
 done, and within two days there was a fire in that 
 village, and the new made-up engine " walloped " 
 the old victorious one most unmercifully. This 
 last was taken home, put in perfect order, and 
 immediately a fire in that town was the result; 
 
MORAL STEAM ENGINE. 141 
 
 but wlien tlie engines got to work, the old splendid 
 engine was beaten by the one with the new works 
 as badly as before. 
 
 For all this fun and these exciting trials, some- 
 body's premises were burned by incendiary fires. 
 But now a challenge was given to try the two 
 machiaes. The result was that the " new works " 
 triumphed at every trial. The other engine was 
 taken home, the company disbanded, and there 
 was but one fire in the town for a year, and that 
 one accidental, and the loss not $100! But at 
 last there was an anxiety about the safety of the 
 town ! A company must be raised. The old peo- 
 ple said, " Keep quiet, and you will have no 
 fires;" but the boys at last formed a company 
 and took the engine, which was painted up and 
 put ia fine order. Some unwise persons said there 
 woidd be a fire the next Saturday night. There 
 was none, nor for the next two Saturday nights, 
 and the engine boys said : " Now what do you 
 think of the stories you have been telling about 
 us ? " But alas ! the iacendiary had been all this 
 time growing, and the next Saturday, and for five 
 successive ones, there were incendiary fires in that 
 town ! I do not suppose one of the fires was set 
 by a member of the company; but it matters 
 little to the family whose house and bam or 
 workshop is destroyed, who has set it ; it is the 
 
142 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 loss which they feel. The steam fire-engin( 
 that town at once killed off and choked 
 growth of the crime, let us hope, forever. '. 
 engine excitement became a national calan 
 It took our good boys from the schools, w] 
 they were taught good morals as well as read 
 etc., and placed them ia engine-houses, where \ 
 were taught to be rowdies, roughs, and wh 
 imfit members of engine companies or of soci 
 When they were disbanded from the engine, 
 a new company formed, it also grew in a few y 
 as bad as the first, and so new companies were 
 moralized every five or six years. The cri 
 committed at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and 1 
 York by engine-companies would, if told, astoj 
 and fill with dismay those who should read th 
 Even here, in and about good old puritanical !t 
 England, it was dreadful. I have seen a 
 house but little on fire — which could have been 
 out in two or three minutes with the smallest ha 
 engine, and yet when there was a line 'formei 
 large engines aU ready to play upon it -^ bur 
 the ground, because in the middle of that 
 there was an engine a little less powerful than 
 rest, and she was taken out and another pul 
 her place, that there might be a fair trial of 
 engines. Hundreds of fires, aye thousands of bu 
 ings have been destroyed in that wicked manm 
 
FAIR FIGHT WANTED. 143 
 
 At a fire near Boston, on a Saturday night in 
 1854, where the loss was $150,000, the engines 
 had got the fire almost out where it begun, but the 
 engine drafting from the nearest reservoir was 
 sucked by a more powerful one. The cry was 
 raised, " the reservoir has given out," and the 
 Kne broken up. Before another fine was formed, 
 half a dozen buildings were on fire, and the loss 
 was as above stated. But as more distant engines 
 arrived, one of them dropped her suction hose into 
 that reservoir, and found water enough there to 
 supply a line all the time of the fire I At the 
 same fire, when it had lit upon a large building, 
 and was quite small, a line was formed, and 
 broken, that it might be a fair fight, and the fire, 
 who never plays make believe, was all over the 
 house before the new line was ready to play, when 
 the battle began, and was a splendid one. I do 
 not know which engine conquered, but I do know 
 that the valuable house was destroyed, though it 
 could have been saved with a hand-pump with 
 ease. There were at one time ia the prison at 
 Charlestown, twenty-three convicts, sent there for 
 this crime of incendiarism. At the commence- 
 ment of the last war, a large number of young 
 men in this State were told that if they would en- 
 list in the army, the grand jury would be saved 
 some trouble, and their friends from disgrace. 
 
144 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 They enlisted ! It would seem perhaps a pity to 
 tell these stories, and I would not, if there was not 
 reason for it. The old fire departments after the 
 introduction of the suction hose, were got up in all 
 honesty of purpose to extinguish fires. To save 
 yours, mine, every person's property, and yet 
 the tendency of it was such that more property 
 was destroyed than ever. More fixes were set by 
 our own children, our boys, — who but for the fire 
 system, would have been good young men, — than 
 the Indians ever set for us in all the Indian wars ; 
 yes, a hundred to one I Nor, if there was blame at 
 aU, were the young men as much to blame as the 
 miserable town officers, who, knowiag of these 
 evils, upheld the system, that they might hold 
 their petty office. This same system is still upheld 
 in many towns. Incendiaries are stiU grown with 
 as much certainty as is a crop of potatoes, or corn. 
 The lurid sky by night, the great smoke by day, 
 teU in hundreds of places in our country of the 
 avrful curse of the old-fashioned custom of playing 
 into each other by fire-engines. The lines would 
 seldom be formed until too late to save a building, 
 and the excitement and rivalry were the greatest 
 cause of the fires. 
 
 The steam-engines have been a blessing where- 
 ever they have been introduced, when dravni by 
 horses, for they have put out fires, and squelched 
 
BORSES FOR STEAMERS. 145 
 
 this kind of incendiarism. But let us see the 
 result when drawn by men. A town near Boston 
 purchased a steam fire-engine. They also kept in 
 commission one or two manual engines. The 
 steamer required fifty or sixty men, and the others 
 only twenty or thirty to draw them to the fire. 
 Of course the small manual would be at the fire 
 and at work, taking the honors from the steamer 
 every time, — and for this fires were set every 
 week I Horses were furnished for the steamer, and 
 she was put to work first, when the fires ceased. 
 The remedy for this, the worst kind of incendiarism, 
 is to do away with the old manual system of suction 
 engines. The best remedy for other kinds, is the 
 introduction of small engines. At present the 
 proof of a fire being set, is burned up before the 
 great engines can be got to work; but if water 
 could be got on the fire in one or two minutes 
 after it was discovered, the means employed by 
 the incendiary would almost always be saved, and 
 be witnesses against him. No man would set his 
 house on fire to save his insurance, if the chances 
 were ten to one that the fire would be put out in 
 two or three minutes, and that instead of his in- 
 surance he would get ten or a dozen years in the 
 state prison. 
 
 10 
 
146 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SYSTEMS, ITEW AND OLD. 
 
 riRE INSTIEAirCE. 
 
 It is -within the memory of many people, when 
 insurance against fire was unknown except in a few 
 large cities. If a fire occurred, their townsmen 
 ga.Ye the sufferers what would relieve their present 
 need, though seldom enough to keep them from 
 future want and suffering. Therefore when it be- 
 came known that for a few dollars per annum, the 
 buildings of a farm, or of the merchant or me- 
 chanic, would be replaced, if destroyed by fire, 
 there was an almost universal resort to that ex- 
 cellent means of safety. This result was hastened, 
 when some person, who was not insured, suffered a 
 loss, and when his neighbors were called upon, 
 as in past times, for aid, gate for answer, "He 
 might have had his buildings insured." In those 
 times buildings were seldom so crowded together, 
 built so high, or in any way so out of the reach 
 of the fire departments. Nor were there then the 
 friction match, the inflammable oils, or the dozen 
 other fire-setting materials which in our times have 
 
INSURANCE. 147 
 
 been introduced, or worst of all, the incendiarism 
 for fun, bread and cheese and rum, which for years 
 was the great curse of our country, and which is to 
 this day one of the most prolific causes of fire in 
 the country. 
 
 The business of the insurance offices was managed 
 with economy, and the result was that the insured 
 were sure of their money if their buildings were 
 destroyed, while insurance stock was one of the 
 safest investments for those who had money, and 
 immense amounts of the property of widows and 
 orphans were placed in them as the safest and 
 most profitable iuTestment which could be made 
 for them. For many years this pleasant state of 
 things continued, but it is hardly possible for such 
 perfection to last forever in this sphere, and the 
 invention of matches and the increase of the use 
 of pipes a thousand fold, with oUs and chemicals, 
 the dangerous nature of which was unknown to 
 many who had to use them, increased both the 
 number and magnitude of fires. Of course the 
 rate of insurance also increased, and the fixes 
 and rates at last became a burden. All this 
 while, buildings with tarred paper and tinder- 
 wood roofs were climbing heavenward out of the 
 reach of fire departments, and so when at last 
 the destruction of cities became an annual sen- 
 sation, and the insurance companies went up 
 
148 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 with them, the people who lost by them laid 
 all the burden upon the insurance companies as if 
 they already had not enough of their own to bear. 
 The insurance people made a grave mistake when 
 they insured those fire-traps at all. Twenty per 
 cent, per annum, wiU not be a safe premium for a 
 city or town, where those buildings are near 
 together, and where the only protection is steam 
 fire-engines. But why throw all the shot at the 
 poor insurance companies. We have not heard a 
 word against the merchants whose property was 
 destroyed by fire in the cities of Chicago and Bos- 
 ton. Yet they were as much at fault as the others. 
 The merchants were unfortunate, and so were the ' 
 companies, with this difference, that the companies 
 warned the merchants not to build such dangerous 
 warehouses. "We ridicule the fashions of the 
 women, but they all for the past century have not 
 cost as much as the great fires from dangerous roofs 
 have in a few years; nor have they ever had a 
 fashion even on their heads so ridiculous as the 
 great high bidldings of six or more stories with the 
 roof composed of tarred paper and pine-boards. 
 Insurance people are not perfect, as there is no per- 
 fection here. There are in their number — well what 
 there are in every class of men. But nowhere, ia 
 any business class of people, will you find more 
 intelligent, courteous, liberal, fair-minded men, 
 
INSURANCE. 149 
 
 more willing to do entire justice, nay, to help those 
 who have suffered by fire, than the officers of insur- 
 ance companies. They are careful, and if not we 
 must all lose by them. They sometimes seem to 
 suspect persons, or ask questions which may seem 
 to do so. But this they have learned to do from 
 their intercourse with customers who too often are 
 not honest men. 
 
 I cannot answer for the companies at Chicago ; 
 but I know that the officers of the Boston com- 
 panies, as gentlemen and careful, conscientious 
 business men, rank, in mercantile phrase, A No. 1, 
 when compared with any other class in the com- 
 munity. 
 
 I read lately in a journal that the rate of insur- 
 ance had been raised in Boston and in New York. 
 I not only see the necessity of it, but I also believe 
 that unless we can have our present buildings made 
 more safe, more indestructible, and our fire depart- 
 ments sooner at work at fires, with the rates 
 doubled, it wiU not continue to be a safe business, 
 or a proper investment for the property of widows 
 and orphans. It may be so for a few years, per- 
 haps, but it also is Hable to almost instant de- 
 struction from conflagrations which no department 
 is able to control in a high vnnd. " Unstable as the 
 wind ; " yet the entire property of millions of the 
 people of the United States is at the mercy of 
 the elements. 
 
150 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 Will the present season of great fires continue 
 in the future? This question is often asked by 
 persons who hope that the present apparent high 
 tide of fires will soon cease, and that we may soon 
 haye no more than there were ten, twenty, or forty 
 years ago. But there is no reason for such hope. 
 On the contrary, unless there is some decided 
 change iu the manner of erecting buildings, or of 
 arrfesting fitres, the fire records will grow longer, 
 and the figures of losses increase in number. 
 
 We are a new country. Timber has been so 
 cheap that we have built wholly almost of it ; or 
 if we haye built what we call brick, stone, or iron 
 structures, there is so much wood about them that 
 once on fire they are as easily destroyed as if only 
 of wood. 
 
 Our towns and the outer portions of our cities 
 have been usually laid out into large house-lots, 
 with the dweUing-house in the centre and sur- 
 rounded by beautiful trees and flowers, while 
 somewhere in the rear, the good man could find 
 room for most of the vegetables for the use of 
 the family. 
 
 Fires when they happened in such situations 
 burned a house without much danger to others. 
 One building lost at a fire created no great alarm 
 to the inhabitants, nor raised the rate of insurance. 
 But a gradual change is taking place all over the 
 
INCREASE OF FIRES. 151 
 
 country. The deligMful gardens are sold off for 
 house-lots, a person often selling a lot for a house 
 on each side of his avra. ; here and there a great 
 manufactory looms up, and in a few years streets 
 with beautiful residences environed by trees and 
 flowers have become thickly settled, with buildings 
 on the streets and with shops and stables, etc., in 
 their rear, thus more than quadrupling the danger 
 of fires. So long as this filling up process contin- 
 ues, the number of our fires will also increase ; 
 and when they are sufficiently crowded together, 
 and a fixe occurs at the same time that there is a 
 gale of wind, we shall have conflagrations. Per- 
 haps it is only by dreadful conflagrations that a 
 people can be taught to construct buildings which 
 cannot be burned. If this is true we are having 
 at present the teaching process laid pretty heavily 
 upon us. It will be sure, however, to increase. 
 Conflagration after conflagration will be as sure 
 to follow each other as any other effect follows its 
 cause. Would it not be a cheaper, a less disastrous 
 way of bringing about reforms in this direction, to 
 look carefully about us, and see if we may not 
 build so safely as to hardly require fire depart- 
 ments, or if we have any, that we may have them 
 at the fire on the instant of its discovery. Until 
 we do make these changes we may be assured that 
 the fires will rapidly increase, and that the rate of 
 
152 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 insurance will be forced upward as fast as tlie fires 
 grow ia number and magnitude. 
 
 We see such evils in our common business avo- 
 cations. When a machine does not work, or a 
 stove or furnace does not heat, we alter or change 
 them. If our pen, our paper, our ink is poor we 
 discard them for some other. If our iron, steel, or 
 if anything fails to satisfy us, we away with it and 
 get what will answer our purpose. Are we satis- 
 fied ; do we feel safe with our high Mansard roofs, 
 our crowded wooden buildings ; or are we like the 
 Wapping fishwomen, and like a good fire once in 
 a while just for a change. If that is true we are a 
 very happy people. If we are not pleased with 
 the fires, let us look to ourselves for the remedy. 
 
 The dreadful fires of San Francisco and other 
 cities of the gold regions afford a lesson from 
 which aU persons living in cities and large towns 
 may obtain a knowledge, which should enable 
 them to shun the danger of fires, by erecting build- 
 ings which wiU not easUy take fire and be de- 
 stroyed. The first great fire was in December, 
 1849, and the loss was f 1,500,000. The next was 
 May 4, 1850. Loss was $3,000,000. There was 
 another July 14, the loss of which was $5,000,- 
 000 ; and there were four other large fires the same 
 year. 
 
 May 3, 1851, two thousand five hundred build- 
 
THE CALIFORNIA FIRES. 153 
 
 ings were burned in less than nine hours, and the 
 loss was $17,000,000. Another fire on the 22d 
 June, destroyed property valued at $3,000,000. 
 
 November 12, 1852, the city of Sacramento was 
 burned. Ten lives were lost, and two thousand 
 buildings were burned. The loss was $12,000,000. 
 
 The city of Nevada was burned, with the loss of 
 $1,200,000. 
 
 May 14, 1^51, the town of Stockton was de- 
 stroyed. Loss $10,000,000. There were also 
 other large fires in these, and other towns in the 
 golden regions, amounting in aU to several mill- 
 ions of dollars. Such is a brief history of the 
 disastrous fires in those new cities, which sent a, 
 thrill of horror through the United States. 
 
 As at Chicago, money, provisions, building mate- 
 rial, in short, everything which could be of use to 
 the sufferers, was sent with an imsparing hand. 
 And now for the lesson. 
 
 When the people arrived in California, they 
 commenced to erect a city. But there was no 
 proper material with which to build one which 
 would be safe from destruction from fire. They 
 therefore put up thousands of buildings of light 
 boards, and of lath and plaster ; and the partitions 
 were of caUco, shirting, sheeting, and even paper. 
 These were crowded together, in a country sub- 
 ject to high winds and droughts, and of course, 
 
154 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 where there was no fire department. Of course, also, 
 the cities were destroyed in less hours or minutes 
 than they were days ia building. They were re- 
 built in the same manner and with the same result. 
 Then when the ground was once more covered 
 with the same material, or nearly so, the eastern 
 cities had sent fire apparatus, and a " splendid fire 
 department" was the consequence. Then came 
 another fire, and before the department could get 
 to work, whole streets of light wood, cotton cloth 
 and paper were on fire, and the department was 
 forced to seek safety by keeping out of the way of 
 the devouring element. 
 
 At length the people discovered that if they 
 were to have a city, it must be built of brick and 
 stone; and when they had at last succeeded in 
 erecting such buildings, and perfecting their fire 
 department, the conflagrations ceased to destroy 
 them. Still another lesson should be learned from 
 these western fires. After the first fires the build- 
 ings were not all of boards, cotton cloth, and paper. 
 Many fine warehouses were erected, only to be 
 destroyed in the great conflagrations caused by the 
 cheap structures others had put up, as at first. 
 People must not only erect substantial buildings, 
 but the law must require that only such shall be 
 made if a city is to be safe from destruction from 
 fire. 
 
REBUILD ON SOUND PRINCIPLES. 155 
 
 It was the careless manner of building which 
 was the cause of the conflagrations of Chicago and 
 Boston. Win those cities now rebuild so that fire 
 can never obtain the mastery over them ? I fear not. 
 
 A very few dangerous buildings, with open ele- 
 vators, and fiUed with great quantities of inflam- 
 mable goods, may cause the destruction of a city 
 in a furious gale of wind. 
 
 There must be strict laws against dangerous 
 buildings, and regulations for dangerous merchan- 
 dise. There must be an ever watchful care over 
 the fire departments, or they may, though composed 
 of excellent men and with good material, be formed 
 upon a system which will render them whoUy in- 
 efficient. 
 
 There is no danger that the ridiculous manner 
 of building which destroyed the golden cities will 
 ever be attempted in this section of the country ; 
 but the conflagrations of Chicago and Boston, and 
 the hundreds of fires in every direction, indicate 
 that we must build more safely and improve our 
 fire-preventive systems, or conflagrations will con- 
 tinue to afflict us and iu such a degree as to affect 
 our prosperity as a nation. 
 
 The great conflagration in New York of Decem- 
 ber 16, 1835 — when six hundred buildings, great 
 warehouses and stores were burned, involving a loss 
 of near $20,000,000 — was caused by the narrow 
 
156 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 streets, a gale of wind, and the intense cold whicli 
 froze up the engines, and rendered them useless. 
 
 The next great fire occurred July 19, 1845. 
 The loss was thirty-five men killed, and 15,000,000. 
 The cause was a terrible explosion of saltpetre, 
 which destroyed the building and two or three 
 others. Near two hundred warehouses were 
 burned. It commenced in a box factory, which 
 was next the warehouse containing the saltpetre. 
 
 How many such dangerous places are there at 
 the present time in our cities and large towns. 
 Tinder-boxes adjoining warehouses filled with salt- 
 petre, inflammable oils, or some other dangerous 
 substances, endangering whole cities. 
 
 THE ALBANY FERE. 
 
 In Albany, August 1846, a fire commenced ia a 
 small stable. The day was intensely hot. The 
 wind blew a hurricane, and the fire soon raged 
 with dreadful fury. It at length came toward 
 seyeral stables full of ~ hay with great numbers of 
 combustible buildings about them. A little water 
 would have checked it there, but alas, the engines 
 were all engaged elsewhere ; it was a one-idea de- 
 partment : Httle engines which could have arrested 
 the fire were not used, and " onward sped the 
 fire ! " Then again, the sparks flew away on the 
 wings of the wind two hundred rods from the con- 
 
THOUGHTS FOR BUSINESS MEN. 157 
 
 flagration, and soon another conflagration was at 
 its fiery work. Tow and canal boats, schooners on 
 the river, and five hundred houses with vast quan- 
 tities of merchandise, were destroyed. From what 
 city will the next great fire disaster send its dread- 
 ful story to the world ? When will the papers tell, 
 " that though there was a gale, a drought, and the 
 fire flew over and set fires on the liae of the wind 
 for miles, the small engines dashed them out in a 
 minute or two, and the splendid steamers, when 
 the fire came to an open space or square, succeeded 
 in arresting its progress with the loss of but a few 
 thousands of dollars." Echo answers — When ? 
 
 It .would be easy to continue these notices of 
 fires until they filled volumes. But any person 
 who would not be convinced with these, would 
 never be so. Suffice it to say, that if it is high 
 winds which makes great fires, we must find some- 
 thing which can compete with fires ia a high wind, 
 if it is crowded wooden buildings, we must not 
 crowd them ; if it is oils, saltpetre, etc., we must 
 place them where they will be safe, or at least will 
 not expose the property of "others if on fixe. 
 
 HOW MAT GREAT CONMiAGEATIONS BE EXTIN- 
 GTJISHED? 
 
 Not a little has been written and said of the 
 inefficiency of the Boston firemen, when the fire, 
 
158 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 once having the mastery, was racing, roaring 
 away in four different directions ; and when from 
 twenty to thirty, forty, fifty, seventy, or a hundred 
 buildings were on fire at once, and most of them 
 setting fire to others. One large buildiag on fire 
 adjoining others requires six or ten engines to 
 make everything safe all about it ; and at the same 
 rate, there were needed hundreds at the Boston 
 fire. I do not think it was possible to procure 
 steamers enough, nor do I thhik there was water 
 enough for them, if they could have been there in 
 season. Great conflagrations, especially in a gale, 
 usually burn through a town or a city, to the open 
 land, or to water, if there is any. There were many 
 places where the steamers made a stand against the 
 fire, and where the firemen worked like heroes, only 
 to be driven away, and see millions destroyed which 
 they hoped and nobly labored to save. There 
 were many other places where, when aU the 
 steamers were employed in other situations, the 
 fire slowly approached, and at last the heat, or 
 sparks, set a little fire, and as there was nothing 
 at aU to extinguish it vnth, another fire was kin- 
 dled, and went off on its fiery work of destruction. 
 For this the department was not at all at fault. 
 They worked with such engines and water as the 
 city furnished them with. Few can understand 
 the great difficulties under which the chief engi- 
 
CONFUSION AT FIRES. 169 
 
 neer and his assistants labored. Hundreds of mer- 
 chants whose property was doomed to destruction, 
 crowding about them frantic for aid and engines ; 
 then engines coming in all directions, asking where 
 to be placed ; the fire eyery moment changing its 
 front, or breaking out in new places, — created a 
 confusion, and often a panic, which would excuse 
 any one for doubting what to do, or for an error of 
 judgment, when he did giye an order. More 
 than this, at such times a very proper order may 
 be giyen, and before it can be executed, the fire 
 may so change that it would be the height of folly 
 to attempt to perform the duty. For myself, I 
 don't know what I could hare done ; and I am sure 
 I have hot a word to say against the engineer and 
 his assistants at the fire, but think there was a 
 great deal to commend. I think, however, that it 
 will soon be found that the best time to attempt 
 to work at conflagrations will be when they are 
 about three feet in diameter ! 
 
 In this statement I think all those who suffered 
 at the great fire, and their friends, will agree with 
 me. 
 
 The people of Boston have been generous to- 
 ward their firemen, and the expense of the de- 
 partment, however great, has never been grudged ; 
 but more than this is necessary for their safety 
 from fire. They must not only be willing to pay, 
 
160 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 but they must also look into the subject of fires, 
 and insist that if fires cannot now be attacked iu 
 season to prevent conflagrations, by the present 
 method, we must introduce others which can in- 
 stantly attack them when small, and extinguish 
 them at once. 
 
 A great number of firemen, with a great many 
 steam-fire engines poured an immensity of water 
 on hundreds of buildings on fixe or in danger of 
 taking fixe ; and at last, with almost infinite labor 
 the fire in the hundreds of buildings was drowned 
 out — after ten million times as much labor as 
 would have been required — by one or two httle 
 engines in the roof of the second building burned ! 
 
 There has been no great fire like that of Boston. 
 Conflagrations usually commence with wooden 
 buildings as at Chicago, and the sparks flying 
 on the wind drop on other buildings, setting fire 
 • to them faster than the great engines can be 
 moTed to them. Not so this great fire of Boston. 
 The portion of the city where the fire began was 
 almost entirely covered with Mansard roofs. Away 
 up, out of the reach of the engines, they most of 
 them were made of wood, boards on the frame, 
 tarred paper on that, over which were slates. 
 Added to that was the fact that the streets led 
 every which way, to use a country expression. In 
 a gale of wind, when the engines could not reach 
 
WIND DRAFT AT FIRES. 161 
 
 to the roof, there was nothing to save the city. 
 But there was no high wind. It was a quiet night. 
 Of course when fifty or a hundred great buildings; 
 filled with immense quantities of inflammable goods, 
 were on fire, a draft was created, which came to the- 
 fire from every direction. A gentleman testified 
 that his hat was violently blown toward the fire.. 
 Looking up, he saw the whole course of the smoke- 
 and sparks passing over him in the opposite direc- 
 tion. His hat would have blown north, south, or 
 east, if he had been on those sides of the fire. In 
 Paris, and other places in Europe where there are- 
 Mansard roofs on high buildings, they are not 
 made to burn, but are of substances indestructible- 
 by fire. It may be said that the steamers should 
 have thrown water upon the roofs. But they 
 did not, and the question is. What other protection 
 can we have ? 
 
 The heat of a large building may be so intense 
 that no man can live in the street near enough to 
 it to throw water upon a roof opposite the fire. 
 A striking instance of this occurred at a fire some 
 years since. It was a roaring gale of wind, and 
 the fire in a great building on Commercial Street. 
 When I got there a steamer was on each side of 
 the building throwing water upon the buildings on 
 the opposite side of the street. As the great 
 building, which was only on fire in one room in the 
 11 
 
162 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 third story, became ignited in other rooms, lofts, 
 and the roof, the fire became tremendous, and 
 the heat drove the men guarding the opposite sides 
 so far apart, that their streams could not meet 
 by nearly a hundred feet ; of course that was soon 
 on fire, which went rushing on down toward the 
 water. Again, on the opposite side of that fire 
 went down a hose from a steamer, and two men 
 holding the pipe kept the fire from the buildings 
 opposite. At that time I went home to Water- 
 town, my clothes frozen stiff about me. If you 
 ask why I was so foolish, my answer is, that I 
 then knew that no people in the world were 
 fighting fire to pbevent it. And I was deter- 
 mined, if possible, to find out what would prevent 
 fires. While on West Boston Bridge, the atten- 
 tion of the -passengers was called to the fact that 
 the fire was raging worse than ever. ' On arriving 
 home, I told my family that the fire had crossed 
 to the buUdings on the wharf, and would go to 
 the water. But the morning paper said the fire 
 burnt to the water, and so up on the other side, 
 where it had destroyed 600,000 bushels of gi-ain. 
 I told my friends that it was not so ; but that the 
 great fire we had seen on the bridge, had kept the 
 hosemen from going down on the opposite side of 
 the wharf, and so the fire crossed and went down 
 both sides at once. This was just what may have 
 
BOSTON MERCHANTS. 163 
 
 been the cause of the fire catching at Otis Street. 
 As what happened at that fire at the North End 
 could occur wherever there was a high wind and 
 great buildings, I looked to see if some other 
 means could not have protected the two places, 
 where the fire conquered the steam-engines. I 
 saw, for I had such experience, that small engines 
 in the opposite buildings, protected by the brick 
 walls, and playing upon the wood-work of the win- 
 dows and of the roofs, would be an ample pro- 
 tection for them, or that men by reaching out of 
 the windows, their arms guarded by wetted cloth, 
 and playing upon the wooden signs, the fire could 
 have been kept on the other side of the street. 
 
 I called the attention of a number of Boston 
 merchants to these facts ; first, that such fires in a 
 gale would rush right through the city, driving the 
 steamers before them ; and second, that small en- 
 gines used in that manner would be sure to suc- 
 ceed, where others failed. Every one of them felt 
 as I did ; and one of them, I think Mr. George B. 
 Upton, asked me to call upon Mr. Gardner Brewer, 
 who he thought would be glad to see me, for he 
 was quite interested upon the subject. He saw 
 my idea in a moment. I said, " A fire may take 
 west of this, and in a gale come down so wide that 
 the steamers cannot throw their streams so that 
 they may meet, and you have not the slightest 
 
164 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 protection." " Yes," said he, " and if tlie wind con- 
 tinues it will bum quite through the city." He re- 
 quested me to call upon the chief engineer ; and 
 teU him that he and other merchants wished 
 that some such method might be adopted. I knew 
 that would be of no use, for the engineer did not 
 know anything of organizing a new system ; so I 
 called on, and conversed with the committee on 
 the fire department. Here again every one saw 
 the idea, and again I was sent to the chief en- 
 gineer. I eaw him, and when I again saw the com- 
 mittee, their whole manner was changed. I knew 
 in a moment what was the matter. I had been 
 described as a " one idea man," by one who never 
 had an idea ; and so the whole thing was put back 
 a generation. Some time after the great fire, I 
 saw a communication in the " Boston Daily Adver- 
 tiser," which gave me so much pleasure, filled as it 
 was with common sense, that I inquired the name 
 of the author, and was told that it was Mr. Gard- 
 ner Brewer. I called upon him, although I sup- 
 posed he had long forgotten me, and in the con- 
 versation he said, " I wrote a long communication 
 to the city government in favor of your idea at 
 that time, and from that day to this have received 
 no answer." 
 
 Now I quote from the Fire Commission re- 
 port : " Joseph Barnes, Fire Engineer of East Bos- 
 
FIRE CROSSED FRANKLIN STREET. 165 
 
 ton, witness. Question. Do you know how the fire 
 got across Franklin Street ? Answer. Yes, sir ; I 
 was there and saw the whole of it. Q. Where did 
 it finally catch ? A. It caught in the upper part 
 of the buildings, on the Mansard roofs. By Mr. 
 Greene: Q. That was Brewer's building ? A. 
 I think so. • Then it worked right up Franklin 
 Street against the wind, etc. Q. Take that spot, 
 Franklin Street, right across ; suppose those roofs 
 had not been Mansard, with the customary wooden 
 trimmings, do you think the fire could have been 
 stopped there ? — And now conies the all-impor- 
 tant answer. — A. Well, I think it rather doubt- 
 ful. There was such intense heat that it was 
 almost impossible to stand there. In the first of 
 it, of com-se we stood over on the north side of 
 Franklin Street, but the heat came so heavy on us we 
 had to back out each way, that is, down and up ; I 
 bached up toward Washington Street." 
 
 The same story. The heat was too great for 
 the firemen to live in. They backed out, and the 
 fire, which could have been arrested by small 
 engines, protected from the fire by the thick walls, 
 crossed to the opposite side, and the result was 
 a loss of at least $25,000,000 ! Were the firemen 
 at fault ? No ; the old city government, the old 
 chief engineer, and the people of Boston, who 
 elect mep who know how to grind axes, to dine 
 at Parker's, but not how to protect a city. 
 
166 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 MISTAKES AT PIEES. 
 
 In the hurry and confusion attending the com- 
 mencement of fires, mistakes are the easiest things 
 in the world. The ten thousand people who 
 assembled at the fire of November, before an alarm 
 was given, and who did not give it themselves, 
 made the first ten thousand. The firemen who 
 did not get their hose up into the stores to play 
 down upon the fire, made a great mistake. These 
 were mistakes at the fire. But others of far 
 greater importance were made. It was a mis- 
 take to have neglected to provide horses, when 
 expressmen, coaches, omnibuses, and horse-cars 
 had began to run, after the horse epidemic had 
 almost ceased. But the great mistake of all was 
 that of not having " two strings to one's bow." 
 One kind of engine failed to reach the fire, and 
 there was " no other string." Who that has read 
 of great battles does not recollect that when bodies 
 of infantry have been upon the point of giving 
 way, they have been strengthened, and the tide 
 of war turned, by the arrival of cavalry or batter- 
 ies? And when batteries or cavalry have been 
 just ready to give way, how often has a charge of 
 a brigade of infantry sent the enemy away, sting- 
 ing with the shame of defeat. So at the Novem- 
 ber fire. When the steam fire-engines failed to 
 
THE TOWN CRIER'S ALARM. 167 
 
 throw water upon tlie Mansard roof wiich took 
 fire across the street from the first fire, there 
 should have been small engines taken up into 
 the garrets to protect them. They would have 
 been the infantry, to protect where the batteries 
 failed. " But," says a friend, " there were no 
 such small engines, which you call infantry, to do it 
 with." " True, my dear friend, there were none, 
 and that was the great mistake of the November 
 fire, and of the present fire-fighting system of this 
 country." 
 
 THE FmE-ALAUM TELEGRAPH. 
 
 That the fire-alarm is an excellent means of 
 calling the great engines to fires, is proved beyond 
 doubt, nor does there seem to be any fault found 
 with its management. If notice is not given at 
 the boxes it is the fault of others and not of those 
 at the office. But I wish to offer a suggestion, 
 which it has long seemed to me would add to its 
 practical usefulness. Many years ago I was in 
 the old town of Boston when there was a high 
 wind. I heard the town-crier, with his sonorous 
 voice, cry, "A great wind; look out for fire!" 
 The cry rang through the streets and was heard 
 in the houses and business 'portions of the town, 
 as he passed along. I thought then, and have ever 
 since, that it was an excellent idea, handed down 
 
168 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 from the olden times; and now that it has for 
 many years been thrown aside, let me propose 
 that it should be taken up by the telegraph. At 
 the commencement of eveiy hour, when there is a 
 dangerous wind, and at six p. M., when the busi- 
 ness fires of the city are to be put out, let the tele- 
 graph give an alarm, which shall be understood to 
 say, " Take care of fire." Now, the first thing to 
 be heard about such a suggestion will be, it cannot 
 be done. True as preaching, if left to the great 
 army of can't-be-dones. If the telegraph opera- 
 tor, or the chief engineer, or the fire department 
 committee, or the Mayor, say so, then they, one 
 and all, are unfit for their places. It can be done, 
 and will not cost the city one cent of additional 
 expense, and it might some time save the whole 
 city from destruction by fire. There will be no 
 display, no show off, but the city will be more 
 secure from this dangerous enemy. " An ounce 
 of prevention is worth a pound of cure," and four 
 clangs from the telegraph may prevent a confla- 
 gration which would destroy a town or city. Don't 
 wait untU the horse is stolen before you shut the 
 
 door. 
 
 ■WAENING SIGNALS. 
 
 In London, January, 1556, Alderman Christo- 
 pher Draper employed a man to go about his 
 ■ward by night with a bell. After ringing it at 
 
EXTINGUISHING FIRES WITH STEAM. 169 
 
 tinles he cried out, " Take care of your fires and 
 lights ; help the poor and pray for the dead." 
 Hence arose the ofi&ce of bellman in towns and 
 cities. So, too, the old curfew bell is a corruption 
 of the French couvre feu — fire-cover ; for when it 
 rang, it was a notice to all householders to shut 
 the door of his house, cover up his fire, and get 
 to bed. When the curfew was first rung, it was 
 at seven o'clock ; it was afterward changed to 
 eight, and then to nine. 
 
 STEAM FIRE-ENGINBS TO THROW STEAM INTO 
 BUILDriSrGS. 
 
 It is very singular that this improvement has 
 not been made in steam fire-engines. That a 
 building on fire, but which has not burned " out " 
 to the air, can be, iE not too large, instantly extin- 
 guished, and with one tenth of the loss, especially 
 if filled with merchandise, than it can be by water, 
 is true beyond a doubt. Many of our great ware- 
 houses are so large that no one or perhaps two 
 steamers could fill them, and thus they would not 
 be saved in this manner, unless brick or iron walls 
 are thrown across the buildings, as is the custom 
 in Liverpool and London. I propose to describe 
 the way the engines would be worked when this 
 steam arrangement was made and the steamers 
 altered so as to throw steam as well as water. 
 
170 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 On arriving at a building on fire, tTie men would 
 instantly perceive wlietlier water or steam should 
 be used ; if water, tbe arrangement for work would 
 go on as at present. If the fire was confined 
 within the building, the steam-pipe would be got 
 ready, while one man, with the proper sized auger, 
 bored a hole for the steam-pipe into some door or 
 window near the fire. That is all. Water or 
 steam. Now one, then the other ; and the prop- 
 erty of the city vastly better protected by it, and 
 at a very slight expense. Steam has often been 
 tried at different times ; and as it has been under 
 difficulties, it has often failed. These failures 
 were sure to have the widest circulation, while 
 success has often been kept out of sight. All 
 buildings in which steam is used should be pre- 
 pared so as to extinguish their own fires, which 
 would save a great amount of property to the 
 owners, and often to others. Persons owning such 
 buildings, and wishing to prepare them, may learn 
 how simple the manner is by calling to see the 
 kerosene works of the Downed Company at South 
 Boston. Of course such works, under the most 
 careful direction, often take fire. If a fire occurs 
 there, in a minute the doors are shut, and steam 
 turned into the building from the outside. In 
 from one to three minutes that portion of the 
 buildings is crowded with steam, and the fire is 
 
DOG AND LO COMOTIVE. 171 
 
 out, when at its leisure the steam is allowed to 
 escape, and the men go to their work again. One 
 of the neighboring business men took quite an 
 interest in this new way of getting rid of the 
 dangerous element, and as the steam smothered 
 out one fire after another, he became so excited as 
 almost to wish that the fire would for once come 
 o£E the conqueror. Hearing one day an unusual 
 noise in that direction, he looked up and saw 
 one of the buildings wholly enveloped in flames. 
 "There!" said he, "now they will catch it!" 
 and off he went, pell-mell, to get round to the front 
 and witness the destruction. On his way he had 
 to run a few rods out of sight of the fire. His last 
 look showed no diminution of the flames, but when, 
 after a run of ten rods, he turned into full view, 
 the steam had been turned on, and to his un- 
 bounded astonishment, not the shghtest sign of 
 fire could be seen ! He was as much taken aback 
 as was the great dog with the locomotive, when it 
 passed up and back on the Worcester railroad for 
 the first time. A magnificent, old, and intelhgent 
 dog was kept within about twenty rods of the line 
 of the railroad, and when the first engine went up, 
 making, of course, as much noise as possible, the dog 
 went for it. Rushing up to the bank under which 
 the great machine was flying along at its fullest 
 speed, he opened upon it his most furious bow- 
 
172 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 wow-wow! — only to find that it was almost out 
 of sight away up the road. He stood a moment, 
 apparently thinking of the tremendous apparition, 
 and then slowly went back to his kennel. He 
 was observed to be nervous all the day, as if 
 something unusual was going on, 'and he must be 
 on the alert. In the afternoon down came the 
 locomotive with its one car, and doing its very 
 best to burst itself with screaming, and to get to 
 Boston a little ahead of no time, i£ possible. But 
 the dog was prepared for his twenty-rod race and 
 an attack on the new fiery enemy. Away went 
 the " screaming fire-devil," and away went the 
 furious, barking dog ! When the four-footed ani- 
 mal looked over the bank there was nothing to be 
 seen, but turning his eyes eastward, he saw the 
 monster half-way down to where is now the AU- 
 ston Station ! " Mournfully and slow " went that 
 dog back to his home; and from that day, no 
 scream, rattle, crash, or roar which any train could 
 make, ever caused him to give a sign that he heard 
 it ! So also the merchant " gave up," and let the 
 steam take care of the fires at Downer's at its 
 leisure! It would be very easy to bring about 
 this much-needed change, as when application was 
 made for using steam-power in a proper place, it 
 could be granted on condition that the parties 
 should introduce steam-pipes for extinguishing fires. 
 
GUNPOWDER AT FIRES. 173 
 
 These would soon prove so efficient for that pur- 
 pose, that all persons owning buildings using steam 
 would find it for their interest to also introduce such 
 pipes. There need be no fear that there will be 
 too many ways to get rid of fires. It is because 
 we have had but one string to our bow, and that 
 sometimes lost for fifteen or twenty minutes, that 
 we have so many fires at last culminating in the 
 conflagration of November last. 
 
 GUNPOWDER TO ATEET CONPLAGEATIONS. 
 
 If upon this subject people only wrote or told 
 what they knew, very little indeed would be writ- 
 ten or said. 
 
 At the great fire of London, after two or three 
 days of attempts to avert the flames by pulling 
 down buildings, a resort was made to gunpowder, 
 and with what success the following extracts will 
 tell. Pepys says: "Now begins the practice of 
 blowing up houses in Tower Street, those next the 
 Tower, which at first did frighten the people more 
 than anything ; but it stopped the fire more than 
 anything where it was done, it bringing down the 
 houses to the ground in the same places they stood, 
 and then it was easy to quench what httle fire 
 was in it, though it kindled nothing almost." 
 This was Tuesday. Wednesday he says : " But 
 going to the fire, I find, by the blovnng up of 
 
174 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 houses, and the great help given by the workmen 
 out of the king's yards, there is a good stop given 
 to it, as well at Mark Lane end as at ours." Eve- 
 lyn, who was at the fire, thus describes it on Tues- 
 day : " The burning still rages, and it was now got- 
 ten as far as the Inner Temple — all Fleet Street, 
 the Old Bailey, Ludgate HiU, Warwick Lane, 
 Newgate, Paul's Chain, Watling Street now flam- 
 ing, and most of it reduced to ashes; the stones 
 of Paul's flew like granados, the melted lead run- 
 ning 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 water pipes, so 
 that no help could be applied. The eastern wind 
 still more impetuously drove the flames forward. 
 Nothing but the almighty power of God was able 
 to stop them, so vain was the help of man." Not 
 a word of gunpowder. He saw the fire in one 
 place and Pepys in another on Tuesday. Wed- 
 nesday he says : " It crossed toward White Hall. 
 Oh, the confusion there was then in that court! 
 It pleased his Majesty to command me, among 
 the rest, to look after the quenching of Fetter 
 Lane end, to preserve, if possible, that part of 
 Holbom, while the rest of the gentlemen took 
 their posts (for they now began to bestir them- 
 selves, and not till now, who hitherto had stood> 
 
GUNPO WDER AT FIRES. 175 
 
 as men intoxicated, with their hands across), and 
 began to consider that nothing was likely to put 
 a stop but the blowing up of so many houses as 
 might make a wider gap than any had yet been 
 made by the ordinary method of putting them down 
 with the engines. This some stout seamen pro- 
 posed early enough to have saved nearly the whole 
 city, but this some tenacious and avaricious men, 
 aldermen, etc.-, would not permit, because their 
 houses must have been of the first. It was there- 
 fore now commanded to be practiced." .... 
 And then he proceeds: "It now pleased God, 
 by abating the wind, and by the industry of the 
 people, that the fury of it began sensibly to abate 
 about noon, so as it came no farther than the 
 Temple westward, nor than the entrance of Smith- 
 field north ; but continued all this day and night 
 towards Cripplegate and the Tower, as made us 
 aU despair." Another writer says : " After it had 
 burnt three days and nights, some seamen taught 
 the people to blow up the next houses with gun- 
 powder, which stopped the fire." Burnet says: 
 "AU means used to stop it proved ineffectual, 
 though the blowing up of houses was the most 
 effectual of any." 
 
 Another says : " On that day (Tuesday) the 
 houses near the Tower were blown up, and the 
 same judicious plan was pursued in other places." 
 
176 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 But we are also told that " the fire continued in 
 the same excess all Monday, Tuesday, and Wed- 
 nesday, until afternoon the fire decreased, having 
 burned," etc. So we see how accounts differ, as 
 they do and will, of all great fires and battles, each 
 person telling the truth, from his point of view. 
 The buildings blown up at the fire in London can, 
 however, be no guide to people at fires in an 
 American modern city. They were from twelve 
 to eighteen feet high, with a very few and very 
 small windows and doors. "We, on the contrary, 
 build them as high as " all out-doors," and make 
 them up vyith one half of great windows. The 
 blowing up of the buildings at Nantucket would 
 have been no guide to the people of Boston, as 
 there was not the least similarity between the two 
 kinds of structures. The great question for the 
 people of this country to solve is. How shall we 
 erect our buildings and protect them by fire pre- 
 ventive, rather than by fire-fighting systems, so 
 that we shall never be compelled to resort to 
 untried methods by awful conflagrations ? Let all 
 the money for such purposes be expended in that 
 direction by careful experiments, and my word for 
 it, a hundred of the present rattle-trap buildings 
 of the kind we now build will tumble down in 
 the next century, where one will have to be blown 
 up to arrest fire. It will be seen in this connec- 
 
HISTORY OF EXTINGUISHERS. 177 
 
 tion that granite suffered at the London fire, as 
 well as at those of Chicago and Boston. EtcIjti 
 says, " the stones flew from Paul's lite gren- 
 ados." 
 
 If our American merchants will learn that it i* 
 better to acquire a name for strict integrity and 
 honesty of purpose, rather than to show off flimsy 
 goods, in great, scarecrow buildings, amd our 
 people will patronize them for it, rather than ape' 
 the follies of the worn-out families of Europe, we 
 shall have more happy families, less " irregulari- 
 ties " in mercantile and family matters, and shall be 
 more worthy the glorious independence which our 
 fathers achieved for us, while their wives and chil- 
 dren lived in buildings we have learned to despise. 
 
 HISTORY OF EXTINGUISHEES, ETC. 
 
 Many attempts have been made to discover 
 some substance by which fires could be extin- 
 guished more readily than by water. 
 
 In 17-34 a German physician invented balls of a 
 composition, which, thrown into a fire, burst with 
 violence and instantly quenched the fire. 
 
 In 1761 a composition of alum, sal-ammoniac, and 
 other matters was invented and used for the same 
 purpose. The same year Dr. Godfrey made suc- 
 cessful experiments, and gunpowder was the mo- 
 tive for scattering the chemicals about the fire. 
 
 12 
 
178 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 In 1792 a composition was made, by which two 
 men and forty measures of the composition put 
 out a fire that would have required twenty men 
 and one thousand five hundred measures of water. 
 The same year public experiments were made to 
 prove that wood and similar matter might, be made 
 incombustible by fire. 
 
 In 1794 Dr. Van Marum commenced experi- 
 menting, but found that he could extinguish more 
 fire with water than with any other chemical which 
 others had used or which he could find. In 1797 
 he prepared a building of dry wood, twenty-four 
 feet in length, twenty-three wide, and fourteen 
 high, with two doors on one side and two windows 
 on the other. The inside of the building was 
 thickly coated with pitch, and covered with 
 twisted straw, wood shavings, and cotton soaked 
 in turpentine. He says, " very soon after lighting 
 it, the flames, being rendered more brisk by the 
 wind, were everywhere so violent that it was con- 
 sidered as almost impossible to extinguish them." 
 In a little more ,than four minutes it was extin- 
 guished with five buckets of water. The next 
 experiment was more successful, three minutes and 
 five gallons of water. 
 
 In 1792 an association of London architects 
 reported that good party-walls were the best 
 means for preventing the spread of fire from one 
 
OLD FIRE EXPERIMENTS. 179 
 
 building to another. From this we may suppose 
 that party-walls which, from the fire of 1666 had 
 so preserved the city, had been neglected, for their 
 report was made in consequence of the " numerous 
 fires." Directly following the report of the archi- 
 tects occurs the following remark : " Every fire, 
 however large, must evidently have originated 
 from a small beginning, and could doubtless have 
 been prevented from assuming large and destruc- 
 tive proportions, were the means of checking its 
 incipient mischief easily and quickly obtainable. 
 Fires continually become destructive from delays 
 in bringing the engines to the spot, from the want 
 of water when they have got there, or delay in 
 getting the engines to work." From this we see 
 that the want of instant means of attacking fires 
 has long been felt in England. 
 
 In 1797 Sir Samuel Bentham proposed placing 
 tanks on the tops of buildings, connected with 
 pipes laid aU over the premises to be protected, 
 and throughout the various floors, with provisions 
 at various points for the attachment of hose and 
 branch pipes, so that in case of a fire breaking 
 out, the pressure on the tank would furnish an 
 immediate and powerful jet at whatever point it 
 might be needed. This plan is largely adopted 
 in manufactories at the present day. In the work- 
 shops of the London and South Western Railway 
 
180 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 cast-iron pipes are perforated with small holes in 
 the direction required, are laid along the roofs on 
 the LQside, and so arranged that each shop or por- 
 tion supplied with these pipes can be put in con- 
 nection with the water supply, and on turning a 
 cock the pressure of the water drives it through 
 the tubes and Out at the various holes, deluging 
 the whole area, vrith which they are in connection, 
 and most effectually drowning out any fire that 
 may have broken out, etc. 
 
 In 1812 Sir WiUiam Congreve patented a sim- 
 ilar means of deluging all or any portion of a 
 building Avith water. 
 
 In 1816 Captain Manby, of London, invented a 
 portable apparatus, which was the origin of the 
 present extinguisher. He made successful exper- 
 iments with them, and they were brought to the 
 notice of the insurance companies and refused, as 
 a few years later was Ericsson and Braithwaite's 
 splendid steam fire-engine. This engine was made 
 every way in the same manner of the present fire 
 extinguisher, and it was carried to the fire in a 
 hand-cart containing six of them, or in a wagon, 
 with horses. It was slung over the back when 
 worked, and the contents, when mixed, threw 
 themselves upon the fire. In the English work 
 from which this account is taken is a notice of 
 the great French invention, now called the " Ex- 
 
EXPERIMENTS. 181 
 
 tinguisher," to whicli it adds, " as brouglit out by 
 Captain Manby, ia 1816." 
 
 In 1820 it was proposed to furnish every house 
 in London with a machine on wheels, containing 
 ten gallons of water. 
 
 In 1828 salt was proposed as a preventive 
 against fires, and reservoirs of brine were to be 
 kept at various places. 
 
 The next experiment was with pearlash, which 
 was said to be used at Liverpool and other places 
 in England. I made an experiment with this in 
 presence of some friends, according to the " book." 
 I put out a fire with it surprisingly quick, and the 
 hopes of the spectators were wonderfully raised. 
 They were ready to cry Eureka. But the same 
 kind of experiment was made next with water 
 only, when, presto ! it was extinguished in half the 
 time of the other. If a person had seen only the 
 first experiment, and written an account for the pa- 
 pers, it would have been somewhat as follows : — 
 
 " Wonderful and important discovery ! An ex- 
 periment was made yesterday with a new chemical 
 for extinguishing fires. It worked in the most 
 surprising manner, and a new era in protecting 
 buildings may soon be introduce^.. We are not 
 at Hberty to reveal more at present, but the public 
 may soon expect to hear that a complete change 
 in the manner of extinguishing fires will be 
 adopted," etc. 
 
182 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 In 1855 Dr. Clanny gave, as a means for pre- 
 venting a large fire, five ounces of ammonia and a 
 gallon of water. The Chicago and Boston fires, 
 being very large fires, would probably have re- 
 quired more of these substances, say a pound of 
 ammonia and half a dozen gallons of water ! 
 
 The extinguishers are excellent machines, and if 
 they had been introduced truthfully, and with a 
 regard to the safety of towns and cities, would per- 
 haps have had a permanent place in the fire bri- 
 gades of the world. But the first great error was, 
 that they were said to put out tar, pitch, resin, 
 oils, etc., while nothing else would do it. 
 
 From actual experiment, this has been proved 
 to be incorrect. A water-engine, playing water 
 only, and six or eight gallons of water per miaute, 
 will put out all the tar, pitch, resin, oils, or any- 
 thing else which any extinguisher can, and as they 
 would not cost one fourth as much, of course 
 when distributed through a city, where they would 
 be got to work so much sooner, would be sixteen 
 times better. 
 
 Until the present time, no attempt has been 
 made to have small engines or extinguishers dis- 
 tributed through a city, where they could be put 
 to work in one minute, instead of fifteen, except 
 for private protection. The result has been that at 
 the dreadful conflagrations of Chicago and at Bos- 
 
ABUSE OF SMALL ENGINES. 183 
 
 ton tliey were entirely ignored. They not only 
 did no good at those fires, but at Chicago it is be- 
 lieved that more than a thousand of them were 
 destroyed " unwept and unknown," and hundreds 
 of them shared the same fate in Boston, They 
 were purchased to protect the property of some 
 one store or manufactory, but not to prevent fires 
 anywhere else. But the fires started somewhere 
 else, which could and should have been prevented, 
 and grew into conflagrations, and the extin- 
 gnishers were burned without so much as a notice 
 in any accounts of the fires in either city. Their 
 introduction into Boston, has been in accord with 
 the tendency of the department to sacrifice effi- 
 ciency to show. 
 
 First, half a dozen in a single wagon. Five min- 
 utes lost before they could be told of the fire, five 
 more to get off, and ten at least before they could 
 reach the fires on the average. Thus they would 
 reach nine out of ten fires long after the steamers, 
 which would have to drown out a small fire with 
 a deluge of water, or wait until it had grown 
 large enough to require a deluge, unless it was one 
 of those slow mouldering fires which, if let alone, 
 would be likely to go out of itself ! I venture to 
 state that they have not yet put out one fire, 
 which if there had been a system of large and 
 small engines, once well at work, would not have 
 
184 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 been put out -without an alarm, and with almost 
 no loss at all. They are said to have been very 
 useful at a fire at the north part of the city, where 
 they saved a Catholic school after the fire had 
 burned through its wiadows, etc. No doubt of 
 that, and that perhaps if they had not been there 
 just at the moment, the result would have been a 
 conflagration. But with small engines there, the 
 fire would never have got into the buildiug at all. 
 The little streams from the engines on the inside, 
 directed back upon those windows, would have 
 kept them and the building perfectly safe, while 
 others of them could have probably dashed out the 
 Httle fire when it was first seen and before an 
 alarm was given, or held it in check until the ar- 
 rival of the first steamer. 
 
 I was quite near the office of the " Old and 
 New," when the alarm told that there was a fire in 
 that building. I know how the steamers arrived 
 before the extinguishers, how when they did arrive 
 and went to work, one of the men came so near 
 suffocation, as to prove that the steamers should 
 have put out the fire rather than have waited for 
 the fire to grow so large. I went into the build- 
 ing after the fire and made proper inquiries, 
 and now 1 assert, that a Johnson pump, at any 
 time for five minutes from the time the fire was 
 first seen, would have put it out in a minute, and 
 
WHY NOT A SMALL ENGINE? 185 
 
 ■with not one hundredtli part of tlie damage wliich 
 was caused by waiting for the extinguishers. 
 
 The fire at Chandler's store, put out by an ex- 
 tinguisher in a minute or two, would have de- 
 stroyed that store if the extinguisher had not been 
 taken there from the neighboring store. Before 
 the alarm could have been given, and the. steam- 
 ers got to work, the smoke would have been so 
 dense that a stream could not have been got to 
 the fire, which, as at the Winthrop House, would 
 have gone all over the store destroying it at its 
 leisure. 
 
 A small fire-engine would have done all which 
 the extinguisher did, but iu a few minutes 'more 
 neither that, the extinguisher, or the steamers 
 could have got within reach of the fire for the 
 smoke in the building. Then the fire would have 
 soon lighted up the streets, and there would 
 have been a great battle, and the store and con- 
 tents, about equally damaged by the fixe and the 
 water, would have been a total loss, and the next 
 morning's papers would have gone over the old 
 stereotyped story of the wonderful efficiency of the 
 Boston Fire Department. All true as a fighting 
 department, but a delusion, if we want a fire 
 preventive system. An ounce of prevention is 
 worth a pound of cure. Every few days we read 
 that the extinguishers prevent a fire. But how 
 
186 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 ■small a part of the city they can protect. That is, 
 to be near enough to know of the fire before the 
 alarm is given. If they are better and cheaper 
 than small water-engines, let it be known, and 
 then have them placed so that they can be almost 
 instantly used at every fire. Imitate the wisdom 
 of all civilized nations, and by careful experiment, 
 prove and know which are the best and most effi- 
 cient, and then take the best for general use. 
 " Prove all things. Hold fast to that which is 
 good." 
 
 NEW riKE PEEVENTIVE METHOD. 
 
 About twenty years since a writer in the Boston 
 papers, who had returned from Germany, gave an 
 account of a kiad of gymnast fireman who would 
 mount to the roofs on the highest stories, without 
 ladders and vrith great rapidity, and recommended 
 that the same practice should be introduced into 
 Boston for extinguishing fires. Young men were 
 soon found who by practice could mount up on 
 the outsides of buildings, but when they had got 
 to the top of a building, they had no hose, nor 
 buckets, nor engines ; so when they had remained 
 long enough in their pleasant situation, they imi- 
 tated the king with forty thousand men who 
 marched up a hill and then marched back again. 
 They came down as wise as they went up, and the 
 
FIRE AT THE TEMPLE HOUSE. 187 
 
 wliole tliing died away. And yet, out of that idea, 
 so useless "without engines, a most excellent and 
 common-sense manner of preventing some kinds 
 of fires may be organized. Suppose a fire in the 
 second, third, or fourth story of a building is dis- 
 covered, which has filled the rooms and entry up 
 there with smoke, so that entrance cannot be got 
 to it that way. Now suppose that there were 
 distributed throughout the city a thousand iron 
 ladders, with great hooks on the upper end to 
 hook into the window where the fire is, and that 
 there were kept with them a thousand engines 
 with say twenty feet of hose. An engine could be 
 taken into the loft below that on fire, and the hose 
 taken up outside to the vrindow and the pipe 
 inserted in a few minutes, and thus many fires 
 could be put out in a few minutes which, when 
 the great engines had got to work, would have 
 become so far advanced as to destroy the building 
 and contents. Do not be afraid of having too 
 many ways of getting rid of fires. We shall 
 always have more of them than we want in this 
 world. 
 
 FIEB AT THE TBMPI^ HOUSE. 
 
 "At 10.20 o'clock this morning, word was 
 brought to the Bulfijich Street engine-house that 
 a fire was in progress at the Temple House in 
 
188 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 Bowdoin Square, next the Revere. Without wait- 
 ing for the horses,' members of the Extinguisher 
 Steamer Four and the insurance companies seized 
 the Chemical Engine and drew it to the scene, 
 where a line of hose was taken into the fourth 
 story, and under the personal direction of the 
 chief, the fire was almost instantly extinguished 
 with an application of less than ten gallons of 
 watex, although the quantity of carbonic acid gas 
 evolved was evidently great. The service rendered 
 by the Babcock in this instance was almost invalu- 
 able, for the time which would have been occupied 
 in getting an engine in service would have admit- 
 ted a disastrous spread of the fire. As it is, the 
 damage will not exceed f 100." The above extract is 
 from the Boston " Journal." In the " Globe " we 
 are told that " the chief engineer will probably rec- 
 ommend that four of these machines be purchased 
 for service in the fire department." Seeing these 
 notices in the papers, I went to the Temple 
 House to see about the fire. I knew the impor- 
 tance of having fire attacked at once, and was right 
 glad that the papers of Boston could at last teU 
 their readers, what I have so long endeavored to 
 get before the people, that " the time which would 
 have been occupied in getting an engine in service 
 would have admitted a disastrous spread of the 
 fire." The Gerrish Market, which was burned, 
 
LMSSON FROM THIS FIRE. 189 
 
 endangering a large part of tlie city, and tlie fire 
 in whicli, when first seen, was not two feet in 
 diameter ; the Winthrop House and Masonic Tem- 
 ple, whicli the police reported could have been put 
 out with a few pails of water ; the Fourth of July- 
 fire, which, when first seen, could have been dashed 
 out with a bucket of water ; the turret fire, which 
 could have been covered with a hat ; and the hay 
 fire, which was, when first seen, only on one 
 bundle of hay, and could have been dumped into 
 the street in a minute, — these fires and many 
 others, I say, causing a loss of millions of dollars, 
 sufficiently prove this, and it is pleasant to know 
 that the people are to be taught it through the 
 press. But now let us see how Boston is to profit 
 by it. At the time of this Temple House fire, 
 which was very near the Babcock, every other 
 portion of the great city was left to the tender 
 mercies of the element of fire and the steamers, 
 " for the time which would have been occupied in 
 getting an engine in service would have admitted 
 a disastrous spread of the fire." Just so, exactly. 
 There was never a more important truth told. 
 The minutes lost between the time that the fire is 
 seen and that at which water is thrown upon it, 
 has, since the steam fire-engines have been in use, 
 cost millions of dollars before the great conflagra- 
 tion ; and the $100,000,000 of that dreadful fire, 
 
190 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 and the extra insurance in consequence of this 
 delay has, perhaps, been more than all the other 
 losses. Now, on this expensive fact an effort is 
 making to introduce another kind of engines, one 
 of which was so successful in putting out the fire 
 at the Temple House. I examined the fire there 
 this February 13, 1873, and I assert that, with 
 a Johnson pump, I, or any man of any experience, 
 could, if there had been just such a fire in each of 
 the four stories, have put them all out in five 
 minutes, — that is, so far as water was concerned ! 
 With the " fire brigade " I have described in this 
 book for all hotels, the public would have never 
 knovm of the fire, for it would, with their " axe, 
 buckets, engine, and firemen " in the house, have 
 been out in five minutes, as it would have been as 
 it was, only that the firemen were just round the 
 corner, and could as well be called as not. We 
 are told that " the quantity of carbonic acid gas 
 evolved was evidently great." Do not the people 
 of Boston know enough to examine for themselves 
 and ascertain if water will not extinguish as much 
 fire as will an equal amount of that which is 
 thrown from the extinguishers, and at one fifth 
 the expense, when they are without carriage, 
 wheels, etc., or one twentieth of what it costs when 
 they have them ? If not, let them engage a com- 
 mission, the president of Harvard University, the 
 
WHAT WILL IT COSTf 191 
 
 head of the Institute of Technology, and Professor 
 Horsford, or any other three men who are compe- 
 tent, and care for no especial system, but who would 
 be glad to hare the city and the whole country 
 adopt the very best method of extinguishing fires. 
 Let us look a little closer into this. Twenty- 
 one of the "Babcock's" would cost forty-two 
 thousand dollars ; and to work them a year, that 
 is, for horses, men, changes, etc., as much more, 
 or eighty-four thousand dollars. They could not 
 be got to work on an average, for they would sel- 
 dom be called until the telegraph struck, in much 
 less than fifteen minutes ; and supposing them 
 capable of extinguishing one himdred tar barrels 
 per minute, we should have a force of twenty -one 
 hundred of the barrels per minute. Now, for less 
 than fifty thousand dollars, we may have a force 
 of forty thousand barrels per minute, and one of 
 them at work in two minutes, and half a dozen, if 
 wanted, in three or four minutes, though one of 
 them would extinguish five out of six of all our 
 fires, if put to work in two minutes. And this is 
 not all. In at least a thousand of the most dan- 
 gerous places in the city there would be " fire bri- 
 gades " to be worked in a moment when a fire was 
 seen ! The cost of the fire department — more than 
 $300,000— and the dreadful fire of November, 
 show how serious the question is ; and when a man 
 
192 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 who has giyen so mucli attention to the subject as 
 to enable him to understand it, tells you of the 
 dangers, and you do not examine into it and 
 adopt the best system, you wiU bitterly reap the 
 consequences. 
 
 PORTABLE APPARATUS. 
 
 " "We would earnestly recommend the general use 
 of fire extinguishers and hand-pumps, in every 
 building ; these would prevent many fires from 
 becoming serious, and they would inspire confi- 
 dence in cases of alarm of fire." — Report of the 
 Commissioners on the Fire. 
 
 An experience of years with extinguishers and 
 small engines, compels me to say, that few will get 
 them, and the number will be much less who will 
 attend to the detail and keep them in order. No 
 doubt there were a thousand extinguishers de- 
 stroyed by the fire in Chicago, and hundreds in the 
 Boston fire ; yet one of them, or a little pump or 
 two, would have prevented the Chicago fire, or pre- 
 vented the spread of it to more than one building 
 in Boston, if every portion of those cities had been 
 protected by them. 
 
 The first question about a new means of protec- 
 tion should be, " Is it efficient ? " Of the small en- 
 gines the answer is, " They wiU extinguish ten tar 
 
NEED OF ORGANIZATION. 193 
 
 or resin barrels per minute each, or the number 
 proposed for Boston, forty thousand barrels per 
 minute." The next movement should be to so 
 place them that every fire should be attacked long 
 before the telegraph could even give an alarm. Do 
 we not organize infantry, riflemen ? What would 
 be thought of a commission which should do away 
 with these arms of defense, and should earnestly 
 recommend the people to purchase them ? It may 
 serve to illustrate the manner of using them, to 
 suppose them introduced in the following manner : 
 Three thousand engines, ten regiments, and thirty 
 companies. Each company would have its armory. 
 This would cost many thousands of dollars, and 
 then when the alarm-bell rang, all of the hundred 
 men would run to the armory, take their engines 
 and waiting for the word of command when aU had 
 arrived, they would be oil double quick to the fire ! 
 Take another illustration. The police are kept in 
 their difEerent stations until a couple of drunken 
 fellows get into a row. The people gather by thou- 
 sands as now at fires, and at last the telegraph tells 
 the men of the proper station of the row, and ofE 
 they march with pistols and billies. Arrived upon 
 the scene of action, the crowd is so great that it is 
 impossible to reach and arrest the rioters, who now 
 have increased by their several friends joining them 
 
 to thousands ; the biUies and pistols would be used 
 13 
 
194 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 upon the crowd, who after a time would run away 
 from this fusillade, and most of the rioters with 
 them, and the morning papers would report as fol- 
 lows : " Dreadful Riot ! Last night there was a 
 dreadful riot in Street, and when the Po- 
 lice arrived they were obliged to fight their way into 
 the scene of bloody carnage, when they succeeded 
 in arresting six persons, who were so badly wounded 
 that they could not get away. The police were 
 obliged to carry them to the station in wagons. 
 We regret to say that no less than eight persons 
 were killed, and seyenteen wounded, who were in 
 the crowd looking at the rioters." How does this 
 differ from the stereotyped account of fires, where 
 the " loss by water was far greater than by fire." 
 With a system of large and small machines, nine 
 times out of ten there would be neither loss by fire 
 or water. One day I had been showing a gentle- 
 man how efficient small engines would be, when 
 he observed, " Yes, every man should have one." 
 " But," said I, ' they won't do it." " Well," said 
 he, " they ought to, every man ! " " But " said I, 
 " you know that every man should get religion, 
 which he can have without price, yet you know 
 that, according to your belief, not one in a hundred 
 does become a Christian ; how then can you expect 
 that every person wiU purchase an engine to save 
 his house, if the engine costs ten doUars, when he 
 
HEROIC FIREMEN. 195 
 
 ■will not try to save Ms soul whicli he can do -witli- 
 out price." He illustrated his idea by never pay- 
 ing a cent for an engine ; and not long afterwards 
 his place of business was destroyed, though the fire 
 was seen when a small engine would have put it 
 out in a minute if there, and his property, and that 
 of others, would have been saved. 
 
 The small engines will need to be under super- 
 vision, and in their proper place in every building. 
 The cost of this would be very small, a few thou- 
 sand dollars per annum. 
 
 rniEMEN ALWAYS "WOEK NOBLY. 
 
 People never tire of praising the noble daring, 
 and the earnestness which firemen display at their 
 arduous and oftentimes dangerous work. With all 
 this I fully sympathize. The Commission on the 
 cause of the fire say, of the people who saved build- 
 ings on Oliver Street, at Hovey's store, and of the 
 occupants of the buildings on the west side of "Wash- 
 ington Street, who protected their buildings with 
 wet cloths and carpets : " Similar efforts on the 
 part of others would have saved property from 
 destruction The conduct of the gentle- 
 men to whom we have referred as aiding the fire- 
 men by their personal exertions, was in marked 
 contrast with the thoughtlessness of many specta- 
 tors who crowded the streets, and greatly impeded 
 
196 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 the efforts of the Department. In some cases vio- 
 lence -was necessarily used toward these persons. 
 Yet many of them would have gladly joined in 
 efforts to save property, if more well-directed efforts 
 had been made to that end." 
 
 Thank you, gentlemen. Here is the great truth 
 for the people to learn. The very thieves, the men 
 ■who, stole and carried off the himdreds of thou- 
 sands of dollars worth of property from the build- 
 ings on fire at Boston, had there been small en- 
 gines there with which they could work, would 
 have kept the fire from these buildings, and have 
 done it with aU their hearts, and have been better 
 men for it all their lives. Show any man how he 
 may protect the property of his neighbor from fire, 
 and he will work like a horse at an engine, pump- 
 ing or carrying water, as long as there is a hope 
 of success. The same men, with nothing to do, 
 will most of them stand in the way of the firemen, 
 and from them wiU drop out one, ten, or a hun- 
 dred men, who, seeing that the goods will be 
 destroyed by fire, think they may as well have 
 them as to see them burned. All about that fire 
 there were places where small engines might have 
 been of the greatest service, and where, afterwards, 
 the steamers failed. At every such place there 
 were men enough to work the small engines. Do 
 you suppose that men who rushed into buildings 
 
FIRES AT NEWTON. 197 
 
 and perished -while trying to save property, would 
 not have worked at anytliing which would stay the 
 progress of the fire ? I have taken small engines, 
 to fires for many years, and I never saw a tim& 
 when men and women, boys and girls, were not: 
 ready to aid me in my efEorts at saving property.. 
 And I know, too, from pleasant experience, that, 
 young men who were fast becoming fire-rowdies,, 
 when they worked like heroes at a fire to save the 
 homes of their neighbors, have changed and became 
 likely, hopeful young men, and grown up good 
 citizens. This is the tendency of helping at fires, 
 — to ma,ke men better, more human, and civilized. 
 
 THE NEWTON EIRE DEPAETMENT. 
 
 This beautiful town, one of the most pleasantly 
 located in the State, is divided into near a dozen 
 pretty villages, interspersed by hills and valleys, 
 some almost in a state of nature, while others are 
 tmder the highest cultivation, and dotted over with 
 the fine country homes of successful Boston mer- 
 chants. In several of the villages there are steam 
 fire-engines, in some of the others the old manual 
 engine is used, and in two, at least, they have 
 chemical engines. However inefficient the steamers 
 may be for want of water, or for the distance from 
 the fire, they are far better than the others, as they 
 prevent the tendency to rowdyism, etc., which is 
 
198 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 almost sure to grow up were the others are used. 
 Some months ago an alarm of fire was given in 
 the village now called Newton, formerly Angier's 
 Corner. No fire could be seen outside of the 
 building said to be on fire, for many minutes. The 
 fire was so small that it could have been dashed 
 out in a minute by one of the Johnson, or other 
 pumps invented by Newton men, in a minute. 
 Even when the nearest steamer arrived, it could 
 have been put out by either of the small pumps in 
 a few minutes ; but no such common-sense efficient 
 means had been provided ; and the steamer could 
 not at once be got to work ; and the fire, soon in 
 the rooms and cellars filled with shavings and lum- 
 ber, bid defiance to all the steamers, manuals, and 
 chemicals which could be got together. So there 
 was a great battle. All- night, and even the next 
 day, water was thrown upon the ruins. A few 
 short comments, as an expert, I propose to offer 
 upon this great battle. A ten-dollar engine — one 
 of which should be within a minute of every part 
 of the villages, in every such great building, and in 
 every large, valuable private house in the town — 
 would have extinguished that fire, and with less 
 labor than was expended by the person who gave 
 the alarm. The department saved the village. 
 Yes, with the slight wind. But with a gale of 
 wind blowing over the village the fire would have 
 
FIRSS AT NEWTON. 199 
 
 as certainly made its track through the village, 
 as the neighboring Charles River follows its course 
 to the sea, though it is to be hoped it would not 
 have been as crooked as is that of the river. 
 
 The buildings of the town of Newton are not as 
 safe from fire-danger since as before the fire, for 
 the tendency of all such fire excitements is to 
 make incendiaries, not directly out of the fire 
 department, but from those who follow it, and 
 glory in a fire as a place for fun and excitement. 
 
 Some time after this great fire, as the cars from 
 Boston stopped at a depot near the Centre, the pas- 
 sengers saw a house in the neighborhood on fire. 
 It was one of those sudden outbreaks which arise 
 from grease, tar, or some similar substance on fire, 
 and the house was threatened with speedy destruc- 
 tion. There were engines enough in town to put 
 out a hundred such fires if they were there, and 
 with water at hand. As it was, they might as well 
 have been frozen up at the north pole. For a 
 moment the passengers let the fire burn on. Then 
 one of them, catching a pail or something, ex- 
 claimed, " Let us put out the fire," and at it he 
 went, followed by a dozen others. Such work 
 almost always- is successful, and in a few minutes 
 they had driven the fire out of the house, and were 
 on their way home, happy ia the consciousness 
 of doing something to save the property of their 
 
200 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 neighbors, better firemen, and so better members 
 of society. There was more than ten times as 
 much fire and danger at this fire, which was put 
 out by a few men with pots, kettles, and a pail 
 or two, than there was for several minutes at the 
 fire which, neglected at Newton, became so great 
 a fire and kept the department at work all night, 
 and caused the out-of-town steamers to be sent 
 for. Now if the town of Newton wiU purchase 
 and distribute small engines about the town (for 
 they are vastly better than pails and dippers 
 alone), at an expense which one steam fire-engine, 
 land, house, horses, etc., and the pay of the engiae- 
 men for one year will cost, and distribute cards of ' 
 directions for the people, so that they may know 
 how to work them, the small engines will extinguish 
 nine out of ten of all the fires which will be La 
 the town for the next ten years. Delay makes the 
 danger. How often have the engines of the town, 
 when an alarm has been given, gone rushing off 
 miles to fight a fire which had so far gone over a 
 building as to render it of no possible value. How 
 often has the result been " total loss." How sel- 
 dom " the engine extinguished the fire with a loss 
 of a few dollars." I know when I see such ac- 
 counts that it is the system and not the firemen 
 who are at fault ; but I want the system changed, 
 that the good people of Newton, and of the State, 
 
FIRE IN HABVARD UNIVERSITY. 201 
 
 the United States, aye, tte world, may rest secure 
 from great fires and conflagrations. 
 
 EDUCATION PQE TIREMEN. 
 
 " 'Tis education forms the common mind, — 
 Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." 
 
 " The firemen are drilled first daily, and then 
 three times a -week for some months, and this with 
 an average of three calls a day soon makes them 
 acquainted with the routine of their business ; but 
 it takes years of constant work, to make a thor- 
 oughly good fireman." So says James Braidwood, 
 speaking of the men of the London Fire Brigade. 
 
 I propose that every boy and girl who gradu- 
 ates from a grammar school in the United States, 
 ' should be an educated firema!n or firewoman. Not 
 like those of the London Brigade, but that they 
 should know how at once to attack fires, and with 
 the knowledge and means which would almost 
 always insure success. It was my pleasure some 
 years since to have conversations with a former 
 President of Harvard University upon this subject 
 of fires. He also taught his children what to do 
 if a fire occurred on the premises. One of the 
 boys when in college woke up one night, and found 
 the outer room of his suite on fire. The ther- 
 mometer was below zero, the water-pipes were 
 frozen up, and the nearest water was to be had at 
 
202 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 a pump quite a distance from the building. He 
 had bathed the night before and that water had 
 not been thrown away. By using it with care, a 
 little water just where it was wanted, there was 
 enough to extinguish the fire. In the mean time 
 the fire had been seen by a watchman, who gave an 
 alarm which brought out all the fire department. 
 So much for an education which now cannot be 
 acquired in any school in the country. While 
 thinking of the ex-president, I will write an anec- 
 dote he told me, for I think it may be of great use 
 to any person who does not know of the practical 
 way of extinguishing fires which it illustrates. 
 
 When a lad he sometimes worked in. a cabinet- 
 maker's shop. One day he helped the workmen 
 make up part of a barrel of varnish. In the even- 
 ing when the owner came home and was looking 
 about the place, he saw the varnish barrel. To 
 satisfy his curiosity, he took out the bung, and 
 looked into the barrel, and to aid his vision he 
 held the light near the bung-hole, when presto ! 
 the vapor from the barrel met the blaze of the 
 lamp, and ran back into the barrel ; the varnish 
 took fire, and in two hours the great shop, sheds, 
 stock, furniture, and I think the house and barn, 
 were in ashes. Now for the lesson. " If," said 
 the President, "the man had clapped his hand 
 instantly upon the bung-hole, or put the bung in. 
 
FIREMEN MADE IN SCHOOLS. 203 
 
 or, if too hot, lie had seized a rag or a piece of 
 board, and covered it, the fixe would have been 
 out in a moment." Asking my readers to remem- 
 ber this, I pass to my lesson upon the education of 
 firemen. 
 
 Every grammar-school teacher should be able to 
 tell of the danger of spontaneous combustion, of 
 each new chemical as it is discovered, of the dan- 
 ger of friction matches, oils, etc., and how to avoid 
 the danger if they set fire to a house, or to the 
 clothing on a person. They should also have at 
 the school an engine, with which they should at 
 special times experiment before the highest class, 
 both of boys and girls, and should also have a 
 hatchet or an axe, or both, and explain how fire 
 may now work its way over a building between the 
 walls of the ceihng or partitions, and that the walls 
 can easily be broken by an axe or hatchet, when 
 water enough to put out the fire may be thrown 
 into such places with the engine. They should be 
 taught that water will put out kerosene, tar, resin, 
 and similar substances which may have taken fire 
 about the house, and above all, they should teach 
 the value of a calm, collected, fearless, and earnest 
 method of attacking fire and of meeting any dan- 
 ger. 
 
 This should be also taught to the pupils of all 
 the State and city Normal Schools, and experi- 
 
204 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 ments made with small fires, to show how very 
 effective such means are when early applied, to put 
 out even fires of considerable magnitude, and which 
 would insure the destruction of buildings a few 
 minutes later. 
 
 All this should be done with the decorum and 
 dignity which a subject so solemn as the destruc- 
 tion of our homes, often aU our earthly possessions, 
 is entitled to. I mention this because I am 
 sorry to say that a large portion of our boys and 
 young men have been taught that the great use of 
 an engine is to play more or farther than another, 
 while the safety of the community is a matter of 
 secondary importance. Therefore the appearance 
 of a fire-engine in the streets is a signal for fun 
 and jollity. It should no more be so, than should 
 be a small-pox- ambulance. Children and young 
 people who go to fires for fun, also acquire bad 
 manners and habits, and soon become immoral ; 
 while the youth taught how to be useful at fires 
 goes home a better and more thoughtful person 
 for having in some way been instrumental in sav- 
 ing the building of a neighbor from destruction. 
 I have known many young persons ruined soul and 
 body by runniag with engines, and I have also 
 known others who have helped me, while fighting 
 fires, grow up thoughtful men. I am sure that 
 each of these two tendencies is certain. The 
 
PROTECTION TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS. 205 
 
 one tending downwards, and the other upwards. 
 Teaching this would, make our homes more safe, 
 and our children would be, growing under such 
 influence, better, more easily governed, and more 
 likely to make intelligent and useful citizens in 
 the community. In all this avoid using any kind 
 of engines which are set upon wheels to be run to 
 fires. The devil has no such aid as that. More 
 young men have gone out of our schools, good and 
 virtuous to be made over into roughs and black- 
 guards in this way than any other that I know of 
 in our country. 
 
 Experiments should be made with extinguishers 
 and small engines, without wheels. This will at 
 once show by practical experience that for pro- 
 tecting a whole village, town, or city from fire, the 
 small engine is so much cheaper than the other 
 that the same money appropriated for the engines 
 would make the place at least ten times more 
 efiicient than by the purchase of extinguishers. I 
 most earnestly and respectfully ask our Educators, 
 our Board of Education, their Secretary, Presidents 
 of Colleges, and the School Committees of the 
 towns in the State to give this subject their most 
 serious attention, as I believe it is of great impor- 
 tance, as it would make the property of the com- 
 munity more safe, and be a means for the moral 
 improvement of young people. It is delightful to 
 
206 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 sing, and all wlio haye tlie capacity, should leajn 
 to sing, but the most heartfelt song of thanksgiving 
 we think, would come from a family whose house 
 had been preserved from destruction by fire, 
 through the knowledge their children had acquired 
 in school upon that important subject, the best 
 MANNEK OE INSTANTLY EXTINGUISHING EIEES. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 HISTOEIO FIBES. 
 
 As we refer back to some great storm, earth- 
 quake, or other convulsion of nature, as data by 
 which to recall events, or to compare with events 
 of a similar kind, so for more than two hundred 
 years 
 
 THE GEEAT EIRE OP LONDON 
 
 has been the measure by which historians have 
 compared the fires of other times, and all of them 
 falling far below it, until the dreadful conflagration 
 of Chicago. 
 
 All, however, which is known about that awful 
 fire, except to a few readers, is that it burned a 
 great portion of the city, and that it ended the 
 desolation which the plague brought upon the 
 eity. Its lessons of caution, as regards the proper 
 manner of building and of the means of preventing 
 fires, cannot but be useful to all who will study 
 them ; and as there were persons who were at the 
 fire, and who wrote excellent descriptions of it, 
 which enable us to compare it with the conflagra- 
 tions of Chicago and of Boston, it can hardly fail 
 to be interesting to the general reader : — 
 
208 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 " This dreadful and deplorable fire broke out in 
 the dead time of Saturday night in the house of Mr. 
 Farryner, a baker, in Pudding Lane, when the eyes 
 and senses of all were locked up ia sleep. The 
 house was a wooden building, pitched on the out- 
 side, as all the rest in the lane were; the lane 
 too exceeding narrow, and, by the jutting over of 
 the several stories, the houses on each side almost 
 met at top. Add to these, that the house in 
 which the fire began being full of brush and fag- 
 got wood, the fire soon got to a head, and furiously 
 seized on the neighboring houses on all sides, run- 
 ning four ways at once. It fell upon the Star Inn, 
 then fuU of hay and straw ; whence communicating 
 its fury to New Fish Street, it set all on a flame. 
 And another branch raging down the lane, laid 
 hold on Thames Street, the repository of aU com- 
 bustibles, as butter, cheese, wine, brandy, sugar, 
 oil, hemp, flax, resia, pitch, tar, brimstone, cord- 
 age, hops, wood, and coals ; where, redividing itself, 
 it ran both eastward and westward with a fury 
 inexpressible, and attacking the adjacent lanes, 
 committed the most deplorable ravages; and its 
 two main branches meeting at London Bridge, 
 soon reduced all the buildings thereon, together 
 with the water machines under the same, whereby 
 they were at once deprived of the assistance of 
 that element (the new river water not being then 
 
FIRE OF LONDON IN 1666. 209 ■ 
 
 laid into those parts), whereupon it immediately 
 got to such a head as to triumph over aU means, 
 whatsoever. 
 
 " As it happened on Saturday night, and in the- 
 dead of the vacation, a vast number of the principal 
 citizens were in the country either about business; 
 or pleasure, and their houses left in the care of 
 servants, took off a great number of hands that 
 otherwise would have been of great service in 
 helping to extinguish the flames. 
 
 " The spring- and summer had been the driest 
 in the memory of man, whereby the houses, which 
 were all built of wood, without party-walls, were 
 prepared, as it were, for fuel for this terrible con- 
 flagration. 
 
 " At the breaking out of the fire a violent east 
 wind blew ; which continuing to rage for the space 
 of three days, it drove the flames with such an ex- 
 cessive rapidity, that, considering the nature of the 
 buildings, it was of itseK sufficient, vrithout the 
 help of villainy, to reduce the city to a chaos. 
 
 "After this dreadful and destructive fire had 
 for three days raged with the utmost violence, and 
 seemingly in contempt of all means used to extin- 
 guish the same, it was at last, by the ceasing of 
 the wind, conquered ; after it had laid waste and 
 consumed the buildings on four hundred and thirty- 
 six acres of ground, four hundred streets, lanes, etc., 
 U 
 
210 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 thirteen thousand two hundred houses, the cathe- 
 dral church of St. Paul, eighty-six parish churches, 
 six chapels, the magnificent buildings of GuUd- 
 hall, the Royal Exchange, Custom-house, and 
 BlackweU Hall, divers hospitals and libraries, fifty- 
 two of the companies halls, and a vast number of 
 other stately edifices, together with three of the 
 city gates, four stone bridges, and the prisons of 
 Newgate, the Fleet, the Poultry and Wood Street 
 compters ; the loss of which, together with that of 
 merchandise and household furniture, by the best 
 calculation, amounted to ten millions seven hun- 
 dred and thirty thousand and five hundred pounds. 
 Yet, notwithstanding this terrible devastation, only 
 six persons lost their lives thereby, 
 
 " Whatever the unfortunate citizens of Londgn 
 suffered by the late dreadful fire, 'tis manifest, 
 that a greater blessing could not have happened 
 for the good of posterity ; for, instead of very 
 crooked, narrow, and incommodious streets (fitter 
 for a wheelbarrow than any nobler carriage), dark, 
 irregular, and ill-contrived wooden houses, with 
 their several stories jutting out, or hanging over 
 each other, whereby the circulation of the air was 
 obstructed, noisome vapors harbored, and vermin- 
 ous, pestilential atoms nourished, as is manifest by 
 this city's not being clear of the plague for twenty- 
 five years before, and only free from contagion for 
 
FIRE OF LONDON. 211 
 
 three years in above seventy. But, since the en- 
 largement of the streets, and modern way of build- 
 ing, by the reedifying of London, there is such a 
 free circulation of sweet air through the streets, 
 that offensive vapors are expelled, and the city 
 freed from pestilential symptoms for these eighty- 
 nine years." — From Maitlancfs " History of 
 London." 
 
 Burnet says : " The summer had been the dri- 
 est that was known of some years. And London 
 being for the most part built of timber fiUed 
 up with plaster, all was extreme dry. On the 
 second of September a fire broke out, that raged for 
 three days, as if it had a commission to devour 
 everything that was iu its way. On the fourth it 
 stopt, in the midst of very combustible matter." 
 Another writer says : " The magistrates of the 
 city assembled quickly together, and with the 
 usual remedies of buckets, which they were pro- 
 vided with. But the fire was too ravenous to be 
 extinguished with such quantities of water as those 
 instruments could apply to it, and fastened stUl 
 upon new material before it had destroyed the old. 
 And though it raged furiously all that day, to that 
 degree that all men stood amazed, as spectators 
 only, no man knowing what remedy to apply, nor 
 the magistrates what orders to give : yet it kept 
 within some compass," etc. 
 
212 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 " But in the night the -wind changed and carried 
 the danger from thence, but with so great and irre- 
 sistible violence, that as it kept the English and 
 Dutch fleets from grappling, when they were so 
 near each other, so it scattered the fire from pur- 
 suing the line it was in with aU its force, and spread 
 it over the city : so that they who went late to 
 bed at a great distance from any place where the 
 fire prevailed, were awakened before morning with 
 their own house's being in a flame ; and whilst en- 
 deavor was used to quench that, other houses were 
 discovered to be burning, which were near no place 
 from whence they could imagine the fire could 
 come," etc. 
 
 The fire was flying over the heads of the spec- 
 tators and setting new fires, to bum together into 
 one conflagration. 
 
 " The fire and the wind continued in the same 
 excess all Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, till 
 afternoon, and flung and scattered brands burning 
 into aU quarters ; the nights more terrible than 
 the days, and the light the same, the light of the 
 fire supplying that of the sun. And indeed who- 
 ever was an eye-witness of that terrible prospect, 
 can never have so lively an image of the last con- 
 flagration till he beholds it." 
 
 The following testimony in favor of brick build- 
 ings is from the same writer : " It was observed 
 
ORIGIN OF THE LONDON FIRE. 213 
 
 that where the fire prevailed most, when it met 
 with brick buildings, if it was not repulsed, it was 
 so weU resisted that it made a much slower prog- 
 ress ; and when it had done its worst, that the tim- 
 ber and all the combustible matter fell, it fell down 
 to the bottom within the house, and the waUs stood 
 and inclosed the fire, and it was burned out with- 
 out making a further progress in many of those 
 places ; and then the vacancy so interrupted the 
 fury of it, that many times the two or three next 
 houses stood without much damage." 
 
 The people of London, as at Chicago and Bos- 
 ton, and as they will at all such conflagrations, 
 believed that the city was set on fire. The fol- 
 lowing extract will give a sufficient reason for this 
 one : " There was never any probable evidence that 
 there was any other cause of that woeful fire than 
 the displeasure of God Almighty. The first acci- 
 dent of the beginning in a baker's house, where 
 there was so great a stock of faggots, and the 
 neighborhood of much combustible matter of 
 pitch and resin and the like, led it in an instant 
 from house to house to Thames Street, with the 
 agitation of so terrible a wind to scatter and dis- 
 perse it." A very instructive and interesting les- 
 son may be learned from the following account of 
 the saving of a great amount of stationers' goods 
 and their loss afterwards. The loss of the sta- 
 
214 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 tioners was £200,000. "All those who dwelt 
 near Paul's carried their goods, books, paper, and 
 the like, as others of greater trades did their com- 
 modities, into the large vaults which were under St. 
 Paul's Church, before the fire came thither : which 
 vaults, though all the church above the ground was 
 afterwards burned, with all the houses round about, 
 stiU stood firm and supported the foundation, and 
 preserved all that was within them ; untU the im- 
 patience of those who had lost their houses, and 
 whatsoever they had else, in the fire, made them 
 very desirous to see what they had saved, upon 
 which all their hopes were founded to repair the 
 rest. It was the fourth day after the fire ceased to 
 flame, though it still burned in the ruins, from 
 whence there was still an intolerable heat, when 
 the booksellers, especially, and some other trades- 
 men, who had deposited all they had preserved in 
 the greatest and most spacious vault, came to be- 
 hold all their wealth, which to that moment was 
 safe ; but the doors were no sooner opened, and the 
 air from without fanned the strong heat within, 
 but the driest and most combustible matters broke 
 into a flame, which consumed all, of what kind so- 
 ever, that till then had been unhurt there. Yet 
 they who had committed their goods to some lesser 
 vaults, at a distance from that greater, had better 
 fortune ; and having learned from the second ruin 
 
SIR JOHN EVELYN'S DIARY. 215 
 
 of their friends to haye more patience, attended till 
 the rain fell, and extinguished the fire in all places, 
 and cooled the air : and then they securely opened 
 the doors, and received all from thence that they 
 had there." 
 
 The following extracts from the diary of Sir John 
 Evelyn, describing this fire, are of great value, as 
 he was a good writer, and he had foretold the 
 danger unless more care was used in the disposi- 
 tion of the more dangerous substances about the 
 city. He also drew a plan for rebuilding the city, 
 which would have been a great improvement, but it 
 was rejected, as was that of Sir Christopher Wren. 
 
 Sept. Sd. " The fire continuiag, after dinner I 
 took coach with my wife and son and went to the 
 Bankside iu Southwark, where we beheld that dis- 
 mal 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. 
 .... 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 
 (for it likewise kindled back against the wind as 
 
216 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 well as forward), Tower Street, Fenchurcli Street, 
 Gracious Street, and so along to Brainard's Castle, 
 and was now taking liold of St. Paul's Cliurcli, 
 to which the scaffolds contributed exceedingly. 
 The conflagration was so universal, and the people 
 so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not 
 by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred 
 to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or 
 seen but crying out and lamentation, running 
 about like distracted creatures without at all at- 
 tempting to save even their goods ; such a strange 
 consternation there was upon them, so as it burned 
 both in breadth and length, the churches, public 
 halls, Exchange, hospitals, monuments, and orna- 
 ments, leaping after a prodigious manner, from 
 house to house and street to street, at great dis- 
 tances one from the other ; for the heat with a long 
 set of fair and warm weather, had even ignited the 
 air and prepared the materials to conceive the fire, 
 which devoured after an incredible manner houses, 
 furniture, and everything. Here we saw the 
 Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges 
 and boats laden with what some had time and cour- 
 age to save, as, on the other, the carts, etc., carry- 
 ing out to the fields, which for many miles were 
 strewed with movables of all sorts, and tents erect- 
 ing to shelter both people and what goods they 
 could get away. Oh the miserable and calamitous 
 
EVELYN'S DIARY. 21T 
 
 spectacle ! such as haply tlie world liad not seen 
 since the foundation of it, nor be outdone till the 
 universal conflagration thereof." 
 
 This little piece of prophecy, which tends to show 
 how much larger was the Chicago fire than that of 
 London, calls to my mind another which occurred 
 soon after the settlement of Boston and vicinity. 
 The Assembly gave a committee of persons in- 
 structions to build a road from the settled portion 
 of Watertown (near the mill) to that portion of 
 it west, now Waltham, and so toward Weston. 
 The committee no doubt made an excellent road, 
 and so reported ; and had they concluded their re- 
 port there, all would have been well, but some 
 persons can never stop when they have told their 
 tale, and so they added, " and we suppose there 
 will never be wanted a road any farther west- 
 ward ! " But to the fire. " All the sky was of a 
 fiery aspect, hke the top of a burning oven, the 
 light seen above forty miles round about for many 
 nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold 
 the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in 
 one flame." This wiU be better understood when 
 I say that the roofs of many houses were covered 
 with pitch, and burned with great fury and rapid- 
 ity, while ia the narrow streets and lanes, almost aU 
 the houses were made of timber, like the log-huts of 
 new countries, which burned slowly, but with an 
 
218 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 intense heat for days. There were hundreds of 
 acres of this terrible heated, slow fire, and on the 
 outside the on-rushing fire, catching upon the 
 buildings not yet burned. At Chicago, the fire 
 burned out almost as fast as it ran forward ; espe- 
 cially was this true of the west and north divis- 
 ions. It was also true to some extent at the 
 Boston fire. If the buildings had burned as long 
 and as intensely at Boston as at London, when the 
 fire was arrested upon the outside lines, there 
 would have been about sixty acres of solid fire on 
 the ground which had been burnt over. " The 
 noise and crashing 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 an 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 
 miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoon burn- 
 ing, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. . . . 
 London was, but is no more." 
 
 They were " forced to stand stiU and let the 
 flames bum on." The only means for throwing 
 water upon the fire were buckets (for the en- 
 
EVELYN'S DIARY. 219 
 
 ffines were only the fire-hooks for pulling down 
 buildings); and it will be at once seen that while 
 water could only be thrown from them ten or 
 twelve feet, the heat of the terrible fire, when it 
 had spread over many acres, would prevent those 
 working with buckets from approaching within an 
 hundred feet of the fitre. The heat of the Chi- 
 cago and Boston fires, from the height of the build- 
 ings, was so great in many places, that the fire- 
 men with their great steamers could not approach 
 near enough to throw water with any effect into 
 the fire or on the stores which were catching upon 
 the outside. 
 
 On the fourth he writes : " 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, Wat- 
 ling Street now flaming, and now most of it reduced 
 to ashes ; the stones of St. Paul's flew like grana- 
 dos, 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 demohtion 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." 
 
220 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 Sept. 5th. " It crossed towards Whitehall ; but 
 oh, the confusion there was then at that court ! It 
 pleased his Majesty to command me among the 
 rest to look after the quenching of Fetter Lane 
 end, to preserve if possible that part of Holbom, 
 whilst the rest of the gentlemen took their several 
 posts, some at one part, some at another (for now 
 they began to bestir themselves, and not till now, 
 who hitherto had stood as men intoxicated, with 
 their hands across) and began to consider that 
 nothing was likely to put a stop but the blowing 
 up of so many houses as might make a wider gap 
 than any had yet been made by the ordinary 
 .method of pulling them down with engines ; this 
 some stout seamen proposed early enough to have 
 saved near the whole city, but this some tenacious 
 and avaricious men, aldermen, etc., would not per- 
 mit, because their houses must have been of the 
 first. It was therefore now commanded to be prac- 
 ticed, and my concern being particularly for the 
 Hospital of St. Bartholomew near Smithfield, 
 where I had many wounded and sick men, made 
 me more diligent to promote it ; nor was my care 
 for the Savoy less. It now pleased God by abat- 
 ing the wind, and by the industry of the people, 
 when almost all was lost, infusing a new spirit 
 into them, that the fury of it began sensibly to 
 abate about noon, so as it came no farther than 
 
EVELYN'S DIARY. 221 
 
 the Temple westward, nor than the entrance of 
 Smithfield north ; but continued all this day and 
 night so impetuous towards Cripplegate and the 
 Tower as made us all despair ; it also broke out 
 again in the Temple, but the courage of the mul- 
 titude persisting, and many houses being blown 
 up, such gaps and desolations were soon made, as 
 with the former three days' consumption the bach 
 fire did not so vehemently urge upon the rest as 
 formerly. There was yet no standing near the turn- 
 ing and glowing ruins by near a furlong's space." 
 So we see, the heat was too great for persons to 
 approach the great mass of ruins within near forty 
 rods ! 
 
 This is what he had written to his Majesty : 
 " The costl and wood wharfs and magazines of oil, 
 resin, etc., did infinite mischief, so as the invective 
 which a little before I had dedicated to his Majesty, 
 and published, giving warning what might prob- 
 ably be the issue of suffering those shops to be in 
 the city, was looked on as a prophecy. The 
 poor inhabitants were dispersed about St. George's 
 Fields, and Moorfields, as far as Highgate, and 
 several miles in circle, some under tents, and some 
 under miserable huts and hovels, many without a 
 rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board, who 
 from delicateness, riches, and easy accommoda- 
 tions, in stately and well furnished houses, were 
 
222 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 now reduced to extremest misery and poverty. In 
 this calamitous condition I returned with a sad 
 heart to my house, blessing and adoring the distin- 
 guishing mercy of God to me and mine, who in 
 the midst of all this ruin was like Lot, in my little 
 Zoar, safe and sound." 
 
 Sept. 1th. " I went this morning on foot from 
 Whitehall, as far as London Bridge, through the 
 late Fleet Street, Ludgate HUl, by St. Paul's, 
 Cheapside, Exchange, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, 
 and out to Moorfields, thence through ComhiU, 
 etc., with extraordinary difficulty, clambering over 
 heaps of yet smoking rubbish, and frequently mis- 
 taking where I was. The ground under my feet 
 so hot, that it even burnt the soles of my shoes. 
 In the mean time his Majesty got to the Tower 
 by water, to demolish the houses about the graft 
 [the ditch or moat], which being built entirely 
 about it, had they taken fire and attacked the 
 White Tower where the magazine of powder lay, 
 would undoubtedly not only have beaten down and 
 destroyed all the bridge, but sunk and torn the ves- 
 sels in the river, and rendered the demolition beyond 
 all expression for several miles about the country." 
 On his return one would suppose he passed through 
 the ruins of Boston or Chicago. " At my return 
 I was infinitely concerned to find that goodly 
 Church of St. Paul's now a sad ruin, and that 
 
EVELYN'S DIARY. 223 
 
 beautiful portico (for structure comparable to any 
 in Europe, as not long before repaired by tbe late 
 King), now rent in pieces, flakes of vast stone split 
 asunder, and nothing remaining entire but tbe in- 
 scription in the architraye, showing by whom it 
 was built, which had not one letter of it defaced. 
 It was astonishing to see what immense stones 
 the heat had in a manner calcined, so that all the 
 ornaments, columns, friezes, and projectures of 
 massy Portland stone flew off, even to the very 
 roof, where a sheet of lead covering a great space 
 
 .... was totally melted," etc "Nor yet 
 
 was I able to pass through any of the narrower 
 streets, but kept the widest ; the ground and air, 
 smoke and fiery vapor, continued so intense that 
 my hair was almost singed, and my feet unsuffer- 
 ably surheated. The by-lanes and narrower streets 
 were filled up with rubbish, nor could one possibly 
 have known where he was, but by the ruins of 
 some church or haU, that had some remarkable 
 tower or pinnacle remaining, I then went towards 
 Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen 
 two hundred thousand people of all ranks and de- 
 grees dispersed and lying along by their heaps of 
 what they could save from the fire, deploring their 
 loss, and though ready to perish for hunger and des- 
 titution, yet not asking one penny for relief, which 
 to me appeared a stranger sight than any I had yet 
 
224 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 belield. His Majesty and Council indeed took all 
 imaginable care for their relief by proclamation for 
 the country to come in and refresh them with pro- 
 Tisions. In the midst of aU this calamity and con- 
 fusion, there was, I know not how, an alarm begun 
 that the French and Dutch, with whom we were 
 now in hostility, were not only landed, but even 
 entering the city. There was ia truth some days 
 before great suspicion> of those two nations join- 
 ing; and now, that they have been the occasion 
 of firing the town. This report did so terrify, 
 that on a sudden there was such an uproar and 
 tumult that they ran from their goods, and taking 
 what weapons they could come at, they could not 
 be stopped from falling on some of those nations 
 whom they casually met, without sense or reason. 
 The clamor and peril grew so excessive that it 
 made the whole Court amazed, and they did with 
 infinite pains and great difficulty reduce and ap- 
 pease the people, sending troops of soldiers and 
 guards to cause them to retire iato the fields 
 again, where they were watched all this night. 
 I left them pretty quiet, and came home suffi- 
 ciently weary and broken. Their spirits thus a 
 little calmed, and the afright abated, they now 
 began to repair into the suburbs about the city, 
 where such as had friends or opportunity got shel- 
 ter for the present, to which his Majesty's proc- 
 lamation also invited them." 
 
PEPYS'S DIARY. 225 
 
 And now for Pepys's "Diary," the man who 
 ells of everything ; most of which carries us so 
 lear the fire that we almost feel the heat, and 
 over our faces from the smoke, ride with him on 
 he river, eat or drink with him at home or at the 
 )eer-shops, visit the king ; in short, we learn all 
 ,bout the fire, and almost everything else, in or 
 lut of his family. 
 
 " September 2, Lord's Day. Some of our 
 naids sitting up late last night to get things 
 eady for our feast to-day. Jane called us up 
 i,bout three in the morning, to tell us of a great 
 u-e they saw in the City, so I rose and slipped on 
 ny night-gown, and went to her vdndow; and 
 ihought it to be on the back side of Mark Lane at 
 ;he farthest, but being unused to such fires as fol- 
 owed, I thought it far enough off ; and so went 
 ;o bed again, and to sleep. About seven rose again 
 ;o dress myself, and there looked out at the win- 
 low, and saw the fire not so much as it was, and 
 arther off. So to my closet to set things to rights, 
 liter yesterday's cleaning. By and by Jane comes 
 md tells me that she hears that above three hun- 
 Ired houses have been burned down to-night by 
 he fire we saw, and that it is now burning down 
 ill Fish Street, by London Bridge. So I made 
 nyself ready presently and walked to the Tower, 
 knd there got up upon one of the high places. Sir 
 
226 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 J. Robinson's little son going up with me ; and 
 there I did see the houses at that end of the 
 bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this 
 and the other side the end of the bridge ; which, 
 among other people did trouble me for poor httle 
 Michell and our Sarah on the bridge. So down 
 with my heart full of trouble to the Lieutenant of 
 the Tower, who tells me that it begun this morn- 
 ing in the King's baker's house [his name was 
 Faryner], in Pudding Lane, and that it hath 
 burned down to St. Magnes Church and most part 
 of Fish Street already. So I down to the water 
 side, and there got a boat, and through bridge, 
 and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell's 
 house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned 
 that way, and the fire running farther, that in a 
 Tery little time it got as far as the Steel Yard, 
 while I was there. Everybody endeavoring to 
 remove their goods, and flinging into the river, or 
 bringing them into lighters that lay off ; poor 
 people staying in their houses as long as tiU the 
 very fire touched them, and then running into 
 boats or clambering from one pair of stairs by 
 the water side to another. And among other 
 things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to 
 leave their houses, but hovered about the windows 
 and balconies tiU. they burned their wings, and 
 fell down. Having stayed and in an hour's time 
 
PEPYS'S DIARY. 227 
 
 een, the fire rage every way, and nobody, to my 
 ight, endeavoring to quench it, but to remove 
 heir goods, and leave all to the fire, and having 
 een it g^t as far as the Steel Yard, and the wind 
 nighty high, and driving it into the City ; and 
 verything after so long a drought proving com- 
 >ustible, even the very stones of churches, and 
 ,mong other things the poor steeple [St. Law- 
 
 ence Poultney], by which pretty Mrs. 
 
 ives, and whereof my old schoolfellow Elborough 
 3 parson, taken fire in the very top, and there 
 )umed till it feU down : I to Whitehall (with 
 b gentleman with me, who desired to go off from 
 he Tower, to see the fire, in my boat) ; and there 
 ip to the King's closet in the Chapel, where peo- 
 )le come about me, and I did give them an ac- 
 ount dismayed them aU, and word was carried 
 n to the King. So I was called for, and did teU 
 he King and Duke of York what I saw, and that 
 inless his Majesty did command houses to be 
 )ulled down, nothing could stop the fire. They 
 eemed much troubled, and the King commanded 
 ue to go to ray Lord Mayor [Six Thomas Blud- 
 TOrth] from him, and command him to spare no 
 louses, but to pull down before the fire every way. 
 The Duke of York bid me teU him, that if he 
 TOuld have any more soldiers, he shall; and so 
 lid mv TiOrd Arlino'ton afterwiirds. as a preat 
 
228 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 secret. Here meeting witli Capt. Cocke, I in his 
 coach, which he lent me, and Creed with me to 
 Paul's, and there walked along Watling Street, 
 as well as I could, every creature coming away 
 loaden with goods to save, and here and there 
 sick people carried away in beds. Extraordinary 
 good goods carried in carts and on backs. At 
 last met my Lord Mayor in Canning Street, like 
 a man spent, with a handkercher about his neck. 
 To the King's message, he cried, like a fainting 
 woman, ' Lord, what can I do ? I am spent ; 
 people wiU not obey me. I have been pulling 
 down houses ; but the fire overtakes us faster 
 than we can do it.' That he needed no more sol- 
 diers ; and that for himself, he must go and re- 
 fresh himself, having been up all night. So he left 
 me,, and I him, and walked home ; seeing people 
 almost distracted, and no manner of means used 
 to quench the fire. The houses too so very thick 
 thereabouts, and fuU of matter for burning, as 
 pitch and tar, in Thames Street ; and ware- 
 houses of oil, and wines, and brandy, and other 
 things." Much has been said of the inefficiency 
 of the Mayor at this fire. But let us look at the 
 facts, just where Pepys gave him the command of 
 the king to pull down buildings. Hundreds of 
 buildings must have been on fire, burning in every 
 direction, and there were no means of throwing 
 
PEPYS'S DIARY. 229 
 
 vater except from buckets, and the engines for 
 )ulling down buildings were small and wholly 
 mfit to pull down the heavy timber buUdings. 
 besides, the people were under no officers, and the 
 Hayor, the only fire officer, was not a fire officer at 
 lU. The fire must have been so hot that no per- 
 on could have gone near enough to throw water 
 ipon it, and it had become a conflagration ; and the 
 lilayor, when asking men to do what he and every 
 >ne could see would be of no use, and who could 
 )ossibly save a few valuables from their burning 
 louses, mightwell exclaim, " People will not obey 
 ne." No, the city must have and ought to have 
 )een destroyed, a warning to aU people to invent 
 neans to protect a city from fire. No man living, 
 hen or since, could have saved it with the means 
 le had at his command. But to return to the 
 ' Diary " : " Here I saw Mr. Isaac Houblon, the 
 landsome man, prettily dressed and dirty, at his 
 loor at Dowgate, receiving some of his brother's 
 hings, whose houses were on fire ; and, as he says, 
 lave been removed twice already ; and he doubts 
 as it soon proved) that they must be in a little 
 ime removed from his house also, which was a sad 
 onsideration. And to see the churches all fiUing 
 nth goods by people, who themselves should be 
 [uietly there at this time. By this time it was 
 
230 . PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 my guests, who were Mr. Wood and his wife Bar- 
 bary Shelden, and also Mr. Moone: she mighty 
 fine, and her husband, for aught I see, a likely 
 
 man Soon as dined, I and Moone away, 
 
 and walked through the City, the streets full of 
 nothing but people, and horses and carts loaden 
 with goods, ready to run over one another, and 
 removing goods from one burned house to another. 
 They now removing out of Canning Street (which 
 received goods in the morning) into Lombard 
 Street, and farther : and among others I now saw 
 my little goldsmith Stokes receiving some friend's 
 goods, whose house itself was burned the day after. 
 .... And I to Paul's Wharf, where I had ap- 
 pointed a boat to attend me, and took in Mr. Car- 
 casse and his brother, and carried them below and 
 above bridge too. And again to see the fire, which 
 was now got farther, both below and above, and no 
 likelihood of stopping it. Met the King and Duke 
 of York in their barge, and with them to Queen- 
 hith, and there called Sir Richard Browne to 
 them. Their order was only to pull down houses 
 apace, and so below bridge at the water side ; but 
 little was, or could be done, the fire coming upon 
 them so fast. Good hopes there was of stopping it 
 the Three Cranes above, and at Buttolph's Wharf 
 below bridge, if care be used ; but the wind carried 
 it into the City, so as we know not by the water side 
 
PEPYS'S DIARY. 231 
 
 what it do there. River full of lighters and boats 
 taking in goods, and good goods swimming in the 
 water, and only I observed that hardly one lighter 
 or boat in three that had the goods of a house in, 
 but there was a pair of virginals [spinets] in it. 
 Having seen as much as I could now, I away to 
 Whitehall by appointment, and there walked to 
 St. James's Park, and there met my wife, .... 
 and walked to my boat ; and there upon the 
 water again, and to the fire up and down, it still 
 increasiag, and the wind great. So near the fire 
 as we could for smoke ; and all over the Thames, 
 with one's faces ia the wind, you were almost burned 
 with the shower of fire-drops. This is very true : 
 so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes 
 of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses, one 
 from another. When we could endure no more 
 upon the, water, we to a little ale-house on the 
 Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there 
 stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire 
 grow, and as it grew darker, appeared more and 
 more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between 
 churches and houses, as far as we could see up the 
 hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody 
 flame, not like the fire flame of an ordinary Gie. . . . 
 We stayed tiU, it being darkish, we saw the fire as 
 only one entire arch of fire from this to the other 
 side the bridge, and in a bow up the hiU for an 
 
232 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 arch of above a mile long : it made me weep to 
 see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire, and 
 flaming at once ; and a horrid noise the flames 
 made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin. 
 So home with a sad heart, and there find every- 
 body discoursing and lamenting the fire ; and poor 
 Tom Hater come with some few of his goods saved 
 out of his house, which was burned upon Fish 
 Street Hill. I invited him to lie at my house, 
 and did receive his goods, but was deceived in his 
 lying there, the news coming every moment of the 
 growth of the fire ; so we were forced to begin to 
 pack up our own goods, and prepare for their re- 
 moval ; and did by moonshine .... carry much of 
 my goods into the garden, and Mr. Hater and I did 
 remove my money and iron chests into my cellar, 
 as thinking that the safest place. And got my bags 
 of gold into my office, ready to carry away, and 
 my chief papers of accounts also there, and my 
 tallies into a box by themselves. So great was our 
 fear, as Sir "W. Batten hath carts come out of the 
 country to fetch away his goods to-night. We did 
 put Mr. Hater, poor man, to bed a little ; but he 
 got but very Httle rest, so much noise being in my 
 house, taking down of goods. 
 
 "3c?. About four o'clock in the morning, my 
 Lady Batten sent me a cart to carry away all my 
 money, and plate, and best things, to Sir W. 
 
PEPYS'S DIARY. 233 
 
 Rider's at Bednall Green. Which I did, riding 
 myself in my night-gown, in the cart ; and. Lord ! 
 to see how the streets and highways are crowded 
 with people, running and riding, and getting of 
 carts at any rate to fetch away things. I find 
 Sir W. Rider tired with being called up aU night, 
 and receiving things from several friends. His 
 house full of goods, and much of Sir W. Batten's 
 and Sir W. Pen's. I am eased at my heart to have 
 my treasure so well secured. Then home, and 
 with much ado to find a way, nor any sleep aU this 
 night to me nor my poor wife. But then all this 
 day she and I, and all my people, laboring to get 
 away the rest of our things, and did get Mr. Tooker 
 to get me a lighter to take them in, and we did carry 
 them (myseK some) over Tower Hill, which was 
 by this time full of people's goods, bringing their 
 goods thither ; and down to the lighter, which lay 
 at the next quay, above the Tower Dock. And 
 
 here was my neighbor's wife, Mrs. , with her 
 
 pretty child, and some few of her things, which 
 I did willingly give way to be saved vdth mine, but 
 there was no passing with anything through the 
 postern, the crowd was so great. The Duke of 
 York come this day by the of&ce, and spoke to us, 
 and did ride with his guard up and down the City 
 to keep all quiet (he being now General, and hav- 
 ing the care of all). This day, Mercer being not 
 
234 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 at home, but against her mistress' order gone to her . 
 mother's and my wife going thither to speak with 
 
 W. Hewer, beat her there, and was angry 
 
 At night lay down a little upon a quilt of W. 
 Hewer's in the office, all my own things being 
 packed up or gone ; and after me my poor wife 
 did the like, we having fed upon the remains of 
 yesterday's dinaer, having no fire nor dishes, nor 
 any opportunity of dressing anything. 
 
 " 4th. Up by break of day, to get away the rest 
 of my things ; which I did by a lighter at the Iron 
 Gate : and my hands so full, that it was the after- 
 noon before we could get them all away. Sir W. 
 Pen and I to the Tower Street, and there met the 
 fire burning three or four doors beyond Mr. How- 
 ell's, whose goods, poor man, his trays, and dishes, 
 and shovels, etc., were flung aU along Tower Street 
 in the kennels, and people working therewith from 
 one end to the other ; the fire coming on in that 
 narrow street, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir 
 W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, 
 ' did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it there ; and 
 I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of 
 my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. 
 And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig an- 
 other, and put our wine in it ; and I my parmazan 
 cheese, as well as my wine and some other things. 
 .... This afternoon, sitting melancholy with 
 
PEPYS'S DIARY. 235 
 
 Sir W. Pen in our garden, and thinking of tlie cer- 
 tain burning of this ofl&ce, without extraordinary 
 means, I did propose for the sending up of all our 
 workmen from the Woolwich and Deptford yards, 
 .... and to write to Sir W. Coventry to have 
 the Duke of York's permission tp puU down houses, 
 rather than lose this office, which would much hin- 
 der the King's business. So Sir "W. Pen went 
 dovTn this night, in order to the sending them up 
 
 to-morrow morning Only now and then, 
 
 walking into the garden, saw how horribly the sky 
 looks, all on a fire in the night, was enough to put 
 us out of our wits ; and, indeed, it was extremely 
 dreadful, for it looks just as if it was at us, and the 
 whole heaven on fire. I after supper walked in the 
 dark down to Tower Street, and there saw it all 
 on fire, at the Trinity House on that side, and the 
 Dolphin Tavern on this side, which was very near 
 us; and the fire with extraordinary vehemence. 
 Now begins the practice of blowing up of houses 
 in Tower Street, those next the Tower, which at 
 first did frighten people more than anything ; but 
 it stopped the fire where it was done, it bringing 
 down the houses to the ground in the same places 
 they stood, and then it was easy to quench what 
 little fire was in it, though it kindled nothing 
 almost, W. Hewer this day went to see how his 
 mother did, and comes late home, telling us how 
 
236 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 he hath been forced to remove her to Islington, her 
 house in Pye Corner being burned ; so that the fire 
 is got so far that way, and to the Old Bayly, and 
 was running down to Fleet Street ; and Paul's is 
 burned, and aU Cheapside. I wrote to my father 
 to-night, but the post-ofi&ce being burned, the let- 
 ter could not go. 
 
 " 5th. I lay down in the office again upon W. 
 Hewer's quilt, mighty weary, and sore in my 
 feet with going tUl I was hardly able to stand. 
 About two in the morning my wife calls me up, 
 and teUs me of new cries of fire, it being come to 
 Barking Church, which is at the bottom of our 
 lane [Sethiage Lane] . I up ; and finding it so, 
 presently resolved to take her away, and did, and 
 took my gold, which was about 2350Z. W. Hewer 
 and I are down by Proundy's boat to Woolwich ; 
 but, Lord ! what a sad sight it was by m(5onKght 
 to see the whole City almost on fire, that you 
 might see it plain at Woolwich, as if you were by 
 it. There, when I come, I find the gates shut, but 
 no guard kept at all ; which troubled me, because 
 of discourses now begun, that there is a plot in it, 
 and that the French had done it. I got the gates 
 open, and to Mr. Shelden's, where I locked up my 
 gold, and charged my wife and W. Hewer never to 
 leave the room without one of them in it, night or 
 day; .... Home, and whereas I expected to 
 
USE OF GUNPOWDER. 237 
 
 have seen our house on fire, it being now about 
 
 seven o'clock ; it was not But going to 
 
 the fire, I find by the blowing up of houses, and the 
 great help given by the workmen out of the King's 
 yards, sent up by Sir W. Pen, there is a good stop 
 
 given to it, as well at Mark Lane end, as ours 
 
 I up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw 
 the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw ; 
 everywhere great fires, oil cellars, and brimstone, 
 and other things burning. I became afraid to stay 
 there long, and therefore down again as fast as I 
 could, the fixe being spread as far as I could see it. 
 .... Received good hopes that the fire at our end is 
 stopped, they and I walked into the town, Fanchurch 
 Street, Gracious Street, and Lombard Street aU in 
 dust. The Exchange a sad sight, nothing stand- 
 ing there but Sir Thomas Gresham's picture in the 
 comer. Into Moorfields (our feet ready to bum, 
 walking through the town among the hot coals), 
 and find that fuU of people, and poor wretches 
 carrying their goods there, and everybody keeping 
 
 his goods together by themselves Drunk 
 
 there and paid twopence for a plain penny loaf. 
 Thence homeward, having passed through Cheap- 
 side, and Newgate Market, all burned ; and seen 
 
 Antony Joyce's house in fire And I 
 
 lay down and slept a good night about midnight. 
 .... But it is a strange thing to see how long 
 
238 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 this time did look sLace Sunday, .... and I 
 had almost forgot the day of the week. 
 
 " Qth. Up about five o'clock ; . . . . and there 
 
 is now one broke out I went with the 
 
 men, and we did put it out in a little time; so 
 that that was well again. It was pretty to see 
 how hard the women did work in the cannells 
 [street gutters] sweeping of water; but then 
 they would scold for drink, and be as drunk as 
 
 deyils And so to Westminster, thinking to 
 
 shift myself, being all in dirt from top to bottom ; 
 but could not there find any place to buy a shirt 
 or a pair of gloves. 
 
 ^tJi. Up by five o'clock ; and, blessed be God, 
 
 find all well My father's house, and the 
 
 Church, and a good part of the Temple the like. 
 So to Creed's lodging, near the New Exchange, 
 
 and there find him laid down upon a bed 
 
 There borrowed a shirt of him, and washed .... 
 
 I home late to Sir W. Pen's So here I 
 
 went the first time into a naked bed, only my 
 drawers on ; and did sleep pretty well : but still 
 both sleeping and waking had a fear of fire in my 
 heart, that I took little rest." 
 
 I am sure that no intelligent person will read this 
 account of the fire by Pepys without pleasure and 
 profit. We follow him through the streets and on 
 the river ; on the tower, and up the steeple. Every- 
 
THE PLAGUE. 239 
 
 where he tells what he sees so simply that we see 
 it also. We learn from these accounts of the fire 
 that it is not safe to build cities of wood. Alas ! 
 how soon may the dreadful lesson again be taught 
 by the destruction of some of our wooden cities. 
 We see that the stone buildings in London suffered 
 as much as did those of Chicago and Boston. We 
 learn that brick was least liable to destruction by 
 fire. We learn that i£ we buUd a city mostly of 
 wood, eyen if the walls are of stone and brick, and 
 omit to procure a proper defense from fire, that in 
 the dry time and the great wind, a httle fire 
 neglected' will soon become a dreadful disaster. 
 And we also learn that, in the wonderful goodness 
 and mercy of an Almighty Providence, an awful 
 conflagration may become the greatest blessing 
 to a city. 
 
 As but few people can now know what the 
 plague really was, which was thus burned out of 
 London, a few extracts from Maitland's history 
 are inserted. It appeared in May of the year 
 before the fire for the last time. More than sixty- 
 eight thousand persons died of it, and ninety-seven 
 thousand was the bill of mortahty for the year 
 1665. The first week, when nine persons died, 
 it created some alarm. It soon increased to forty- 
 three. In June, the number was four hundred 
 and seventy per week, and " it put the nobility, 
 
240 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 gentry, and principal citizens upon tlie wing of 
 safety, all being instantly in an amazing hurry, 
 and the city emptying itself into the country, the 
 roads were excessiyely crowded with travellers 
 and passengers." But in July, the bill increasing 
 to two thousand and ten (per week), " all houses 
 were shut up, the streets deserted, and scarce any- 
 thing to be seen therein but grass growing, in- 
 numerable fires for purifying the infected air, 
 coffins, pest-carts, red crosses upon doors, with the 
 inscription, ' Lord, have mercy upon us ! ' and poor 
 women in tears, with dismal aspects, and woeful 
 lamentations, carrying their infants to the grave." 
 And scarcely any other sounds to be heard than 
 those incessantly emitted from the windows, of 
 "Pray for us! " and the dreadful call of '■^ Bring 
 out your dead ! " 
 
 " In the month of September Death rode tri- 
 umphant, for having (if I may be allowed the 
 expression) borrowed Time's scythe, he mowed 
 down the people like grass." The first week the 
 burials were almost seven thousand; the next, 
 there were five hundred less ; but the week follow- 
 ing, when the number was seven thousand one 
 hundred and sixty-five, the people "fell into an 
 abyss of horror and despair," " for now they fell 
 into an apprehension that in a few days the living 
 would not suffice to bury the dead." From this 
 
TEE PLAGUE OF 1348. 241 
 
 time it decreased, until the city was restored to 
 its usual health. 
 
 Of the great plague of 1348 we read as fol- 
 lows : " The rejoiciugs which had spread over 
 the whole nation for the conquest of Calais, and 
 other great exploits and successes of King Edward 
 in France, were sopn damped, especially ia this 
 his capital city, where a terrible pestilence, that 
 broke out in India, and in its western progress 
 ravaged all the countries through which it passed 
 iu the most horrible manner, by sweeping away 
 near all the inhabitants of each, and at length 
 arriving in this city, carried off such a multitude 
 of people, that it reduced provisions very low, as 
 may be seen in the following specimen : — 
 
 " A fine horse, formerly worth 40s., at Qb. 8c?. 
 
 " The best fed ox at 48. Od. ; the best cow 
 Is. 0(?. ; the best heifer or steer Os. 6c?. 
 
 " The best wether Os. Ad. ; the best ewe Os. Zd. ; 
 the best lamb Os. 2d. ; hog Os. 5d." 
 
 It continued to increase until the burial grounds 
 could not contain the dead, and a lot was pur- 
 chased by the Bishop of London, and more than 
 50,000 persons were buried there. And even this 
 was not capacious enough, and others were built 
 in which no less than 50,000, or 100,000 in all, 
 were buried who died from this dreadful pestUence 
 which " broke out in India." Did it not take the 
 cholera roads ? 
 
 16 
 
242 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 PERES AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 
 
 This city has suffered more from dreadful fires 
 than any other in the world in the last one hun- 
 dred and fifty years. 
 
 In 1729, more than 12,000 buildings were de- 
 stroyed, and 7,000 persons perished. 
 
 In 1745, a dreadful fire lasted eight days, of 
 which we have no details. 
 
 In 1749, one fire burned 12,000, and another 
 10,000 buildings. 
 
 In 1751, 4,000 houses were burned. 
 
 In 1756, a fire burned 600, and another 15,000 
 buildings, and 100 persons. 
 
 There were great fires in 1761, 1765, 1767, 
 1769, and 1771. 
 
 In 1778, 2,000 buildings were destroyed. 
 
 In 1782, the first fire burned 600, the second 
 7,000, and the third 10,000 buildings, 50 Mosques 
 and 100 corn miUs. 
 
 In 1784, 10,000, and in 1791, 32,000 buildings 
 were burned. 
 
 In 1792, and 1795, two fires burned 14,000 
 buildings. 
 
 Since that time a standing article of European 
 news has been " Great Fire in Constantinople." 
 Another has been one ridiculing the system of 
 small engines used there. 
 
FIRES AT CONSTANTINOPLE. 243 
 
 In 1870, 7,000 houses were destroyed, and the 
 loss was said to be 1125,000,000. That the num- 
 ber of buildings and amount of loss is exaggerated 
 while crossing the ocean, is to be hoped by every 
 humane person, but the accounts, to those who 
 know the amount of misery they must inTolve, 
 seems shocking. Small engines only are used, and 
 for a long time I was troubled to know how there 
 were so many dreadful fires. At last I found the 
 following account by a traveller. " For the citi- 
 zens dare not quench the fires that burn their 
 houses, because officers are appointed for that pur- 
 pose." Oh, the millions of millions worth of prop- 
 erty destroyed in other countries in that same 
 manner. 
 
 But the manner of using those Uttle engines. 
 They are about as far apart as the steamers are in 
 Boston, and get to work often in from fifteen to 
 twenty miautes, when the fires have become so hot 
 as to make it almost impossible to throw water 
 from them upon the fires. The Boston Depart- 
 ment could hardly do worse with them ! But 
 when a nation or a city continues for centuries to 
 allow such buildings, and such a fire protective 
 system, as shall make such awful results as have 
 been recorded at Constantiaople, is it not a duty of 
 the nations in congress, to force them into common 
 sense ideas, or to merge them into other nations, 
 
244 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 wMcli will make tliem keep up in the onward 
 march of the world ? 
 
 There have been plenty of such national con- 
 gresses in the interests of the rulers of Europe. 
 Now let us have them in the interest of humanity. 
 
 THE QTIEBEC CONTLAGEATION OP 1866. 
 
 The great conflagration at Quebec, October 
 1866, burned 2,500 buildings, rendered houseless 
 18,000 persons, and was one of the most disas- 
 trous of the many great and distressing fires which 
 ever afflicted that city. The actual loss, 13,000,000, 
 was much less than that of many fires in the United 
 States, but the number of poor people who were 
 thrown upon the world penniless, and with only 
 the clothing on their persons, was probably greater 
 than had ever occurred from any fire in the United 
 States. And . now for the lesson. " About five 
 o'clock yesterday morning (Sunday), the flames 
 were bursting out over Trudel's shop or bar-room 
 in the lower flat. They were flrst discovered by 
 the lower police, who at once raised the alarm, and 
 their numbers being soon augmented by a few 
 persons who chanced to be passing on their way 
 to church, for their morning devotions, the door 
 was burst in, and an attempt made to stifle the 
 fire, but it proved ineffectual, as the opening of the 
 doors only served to give vent to the flames, and 
 
TSE QUEBEC FIRE. 245 
 
 before a few minutes had elapsed, tlie whole inte- 
 rior of the house, which was a wooden one, was 
 in a blaze, the inmates having only time to save 
 themselTes." This idea of stifling the flames by 
 bursting open the doors before there was water at 
 hand with which to quench it, was one of great 
 brilliancy, and should be remembered, so that we 
 may avoid similar disasters ? 
 
 " By the time the alarm was given, and the 
 Fire Brigade had arrived, the fire had made rapid 
 headway, having communicated to the adjoining 
 house on the west side, and was burning with 
 great fury." A northeast gale was blowing at 
 the time, and when the engines were ready to 
 throw their streams of water upon the spreading 
 flames, there was no water, nor could they get a 
 drop for more than an hour. 
 
 A description of such a fire is needless. Other 
 reasons than the want of water were given for the 
 great magnitude of the conflagration; such as 
 drunken gambling in the groggery all night, the 
 crowded wooden buildings, etc., but they may be 
 omitted. 
 
 When a fire occurs in the midst of a himdred 
 acres of crowded wooden buildings, the wdnd blow- 
 ing a gale at the time, and we are told that for 
 more than an hour there was no water for the 
 engines, we have no need to inquire for further 
 
246 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 reasons why the &e was not quenched until twen- 
 ty-five hundred buildings were destroyed. But we 
 do think that almost every "Yankee" wiU 
 " guess," it would be best to have " two strings to 
 one's bow ; " either to have insured a supply of 
 water, or to have prevented the fire from being 
 " smothered by bursting open the doors " as long 
 as possible I 
 
 THE CHICAGO PIEE. 
 
 Extracts from the report of the Chicago Fire and Police Comr 
 missioners on the great conflagration. 
 
 "The fire originated in a two-story bam in the rear of 
 137 De Koven Street. .... Intelligent citizens who 
 lived near the fire testify that it was ten or fifteen min- 
 utes from the time they first saw the fire before, any 
 engines came upon the ground "When they ar- 
 rived there were from three to five buildings fiercely 
 burning. The fire must have been burning from ten to 
 fifteen minutes, and with the wind blowing strongly 
 from the southwest, and carrying the fire from building 
 to building in a neighborhood composed whoUy of dry 
 wooden buildings, with wood shavings piled in every 
 barn and under every house, the fire had got under too 
 great headway for the engines called out by the first 
 
 alarm to be able to subdue it Upon arriving at 
 
 the fire. Marshal WUUams ordered the second, and soon 
 after the third alarm to be turned in'; but these only 
 called the distant engines, and many valuable minutes 
 elapsed before they could reach the fire and get to work. 
 
THE CHICAGO FIRE. 247 
 
 when the strong wind had scattered, the fire into many 
 buildings, all dry as tinder, spread it over so large an 
 area the whole department were imable to cut it off or 
 prevent the gale from carrying burning shingles and 
 brands over their heads, and setting on fire buildings far 
 away from the main fire. After it had got into the 
 high church at the corner of Clinton and Mathew 
 streets, and thence to the match factory and Bateman's 
 planing miQs and lumber, it was beyond the control of 
 the fire department." 
 
 Extract from Chief Engineer Damrell's report, of the Boston 
 Department. 
 
 " The great fire on Sunday night originated in a stable 
 on De Koven Street. It was discovered by a policeman 
 when it Was very small. Hoping to extinguish it with- 
 out sounding an alarm, he set to work to do so, but find- 
 ing the fire was too much for him, he called," etc. 
 
 So we see that the fire, when first seen, was very 
 small; There is no doubt in the minds of those 
 who know the power of small engines, that one or 
 two of them would have kept the fire in the first 
 building, and a few would have put out easily 
 every fire which caught on the three or four 
 buildings from it. And all this before the arrival 
 of the hose carriage, eleven, or the engines, nine 
 and six blocks away. So the fire, having nothing 
 to arrest it, until the opposing force was as noth- 
 ing, cut a rather narrow swath of flame through 
 
248 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 the city. " Why," said a sufEerer, " when the fire 
 caught upon that house," pointing to a new house, 
 " two houses three or four 'blocks off, over where 
 you see those double houses, were aU on fire." An 
 owner of a planing miU said : " The fire had 
 passed by, and we thought we were safe, when all 
 at once the fire was aU around us." Nothing will 
 so well describe how this happened as to repeat the 
 old saying, describing a storm of snow and wind 
 — " round and round the house and peeps in every 
 crack." Just that happened after the fire had 
 cut the first swath of its awful night's work, and 
 the engines had left to keep it if possible, some- 
 where in check. The cart-loads of living coals 
 flew on the wiags of the wind into every crack and 
 cranny, under, over, and upon every building to 
 the right of the track of the fire, when, of course, 
 there being no protection against them, some of 
 them were soon in flames. Instantly the first 
 scene was acted over; a new swath went flying 
 after the first, and then another, untU, as we were 
 told by an intelligent person, " the fire went rush- 
 ing down four or five times, one after another, 
 right through the city." This was one of the 
 ways that the fire seemed, as has been said, to 
 " back up against the wind." So the little one, 
 which could have been crushed out in a few min- 
 utes (see the " Chicago Tribune " of December 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE. 249 
 
 13) became a thousand, and one hundred and 
 sixty acres of the West Diyision of Chicago in a 
 few hours was a smoking, blackened mass of ruins. 
 When the fire reached the great buildings, the 
 tremendous heat, excited by the force of the gale, 
 set fire to the right of the line of fire faster than 
 the coals, and they found no mischief to do. The 
 force opposing the fire was steam fire-engiaes, and 
 not half enough of them. That the men did their 
 duty I have not a doubt, but the system is just 
 what batteries were in our late war, splendid 
 when supported by infantry, but unsupported, 
 just what the engines were at Chicago. Not one 
 victory should we have won against an army 
 armed with batteries and infantry, with only bat- 
 teries for our brave defenders. So we see defeat 
 after defeat in our battles with the element of 
 fire, great fires here, there, and everywhere ; and 
 so we shall continue to do until we adopt the 
 common-sense system in our fire department which 
 is now established throughout the armies of the 
 civilized world. 
 
 THE BOSTON EIBB. 
 
 This great conflagration, which destroyed seven 
 hundred and seventy-six buildings, and an im- 
 mense amount of other property, valued in all at 
 
 ),000,000, commenced in a building numbered 
 
250 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 83 and 85 Summer Street. When first seen, the 
 fire was in the basement. With the new fire pre- 
 ventive system described in this work, it would 
 probably have been extinguished there, and with- 
 out an alarm to the city. But no such common- 
 sense system had been adopted, and although 
 thousands of people soon arrived at the spot, the 
 flames, first doubling, and then quadrupling every 
 minute, leaped up the elevators, and a roarLiig,_ 
 raging fire was set in every loft, and iu the roof. 
 No one of them gave the alarm to the fibremen 
 until it had been seen in the city of Charlestown 
 and the towns of Belmont and Watertown, and 
 no doubt in many other towns in the viciaity of 
 Boston. Fifteen minutes after the Charlestown 
 police saw it, — a great fire on the first building, — 
 and at least five minutes after, two men drove from 
 the Payson estate, in Belmont, where they saw the 
 fire burst out into a great flame, which they sup- 
 posed was not a mile away, to the Mount Auburn 
 post-office, where they found the alarm had been 
 given, and the fire found to be too distant to take 
 small engiues, the Boston Fire Departmeiit had not 
 been notified that there was a fire in Boston. 
 For this strange neglect, precisely the same which 
 caused the destruction of Chicago, neither the 
 Boston department nor the telegraph were to 
 blame. The people of Boston collected by thou- 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE. 251 
 
 sands to see a great fire, but every one of tHem 
 neglected to do what would have saved a great 
 number of lives and nearly $80,000,000. If any 
 person not employed in or owning a building on 
 fire was paid five dollars for doing this service only 
 when there was a fii-e, all that dreadful fire would 
 have been prevented. But this is not all. " Too 
 much is left to the firemen, and we do too little to 
 protect ourselves," say the English works on this 
 subject. The foolish, senseless saying, "I never 
 go to a fire until the walls are so hot that I caimot 
 lay in bed," has lost many a house, store, ware- 
 house, shop, etc. Every man, aye, every woman, 
 should, when a fire is in their immediate neighbor- 
 hood, at once see if they cannot help to extinguish 
 it, and go away only when they cannot be of ser- 
 vice, or the firemen arrive and want their places. 
 But the devil has checkmated this good intent 
 also. I have known a man in Cambridge run with 
 a little engine on his arm to fires, and get so 
 instantly to work that the fires would often be all 
 out before the great engines could be got to work. 
 And I have known the great engine's stream, when 
 the fire was out, and the people of the house were 
 thanking him for saving their home, thrown full 
 in his face for putting out the fire. No, the peo- 
 ple feel that the firemen must, and they must not, 
 put out a fire. 
 
252 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 A most unfortunate state of things was seen 
 when the telegraph did give the alarm. The dan- 
 ger that the heat from the first building would set 
 fire to those opposite and on the side of it, in- 
 creased every miaute ; yet the engines came slowly 
 to their work, and then could not throw water 
 upon the roofs of the exposed buildings, where 
 was the greatest danger. 
 
 It was just here that the fire department failed, 
 and allowed the fire to become a conflagration. 
 There were rows of wooden tarred paper roofs 
 upon which once catching hold, the fire could 
 run like a race-horse in haK a dozen different 
 directions ; but a little stream thrown back on the 
 Mansard roofs of the exposed buildings would have 
 protected them. Alas ! the steamers failed ; it was 
 a one idea department ; no other method had been 
 thought of in Boston, though used for years ia 
 Paris and London. The fire caught, and ran its 
 horrible race through and over the doomed city. 
 But think of that Mansard roof on Otis Street, 
 which, catching fire, was the cause of the dire dis- 
 aster. It is not on fire now, though the heat is 
 tremendous, and it must soon be ia flames, unless 
 water can be throvm upon it. The steamers can- 
 not do it, and there is no other means at the hands 
 of the Boston Fire Department. But a small en- 
 gine, throwing no more than six gallons of water 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE. 253 
 
 per minute from the inside, out, and back upon the 
 exposed roof, would have made it as impossible to 
 take fire as if it had been thrown by an earthquake 
 into the Atlantic Ocean ! Other little engines 
 would hare kept the fire from the stores on the 
 sides, and there would have been a loss of only 
 one building and its contents. Instead of horrid 
 rivers of fire, running in half a dozen directions, 
 roaring, crashing, flashing, devouring streets and 
 squares, with the steamers and their men from all 
 New England working in vain, there would have 
 been seen a little stream held by an arm covered 
 with wet cloths, and the loss would have been 
 $100,000 instead of 180,000,000!- 
 
 Do not laugh at this, unless you have done your 
 best to save buildings in similar places and failed. 
 Even then, do not be too sure, for another might 
 succeed when you did not. The Quincy fireman, 
 out on the roof at Hovey's store, saved that vrith- 
 out even an engine, but with great danger to his 
 life; and if that had been lost, so would have 
 been the store. I know of that which I write. I 
 have been successful when a wooden building was 
 m the most imminent danger of bursting into 
 flame from the heat of a great fire opposite. I 
 have thrown a little stream of water from the 
 upper window, which, cooling the top of the build- 
 ing as the nurse does the face, hands, etc., of 
 
254 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE 
 
 the raging, fevered patient, it trickled down to 
 the bottom, doing the same blessed work in its 
 downward progress. As the fire opposite grew 
 more furious, the glass cracked like frost-work, 
 and the white window -curtains toasted brown 
 through the glass. But the hand and arm, envel- 
 oped in a wet shawl, held the little pipe, and the 
 water, never failing, — though half a dozen men 
 fainted in the room, almost a furnace, — kept on 
 its steady work of bathing the outside of the build- 
 ing. It stands now at Brighton; and with the 
 same apparently tiny means at the Boston fire, 
 the store which took fire from the first would 
 now be standing, and seven hundred and seventy- 
 four other buildings, and seventy-nine millions of 
 dollars which were destroyed would have been 
 saved ! 
 
 The one idea system of only a few great steam 
 fire-engines, which go splurging through the 
 streets, and which, though wonderfully efficient 
 in many places after they have got to work, for 
 fighting fixes, can be of no more use for preventing 
 others, than would be a six hundred pounder for 
 killing mosquitoes, or a three-inch revolver for 
 penetrating the walls of a ten inch plated iron- 
 clad, should be abandoned. We may double, 
 triple, or quadruple our steam fixe-engines, and 
 double their power ; we may add great, monstrous 
 
THE BOSTON FIRE. . 255 
 
 " extinguisliers," drawn by powerful horses ; we 
 may adopt all the wonderful so-called improve- 
 ments which have been advertised in the papers 
 since the fire, at an expense of millions of dollars, 
 but the whole city of Boston will not be one tenth 
 part as weU protected as it will by the four thou- 
 sand small engines, as described in this work, at a 
 less expense the first year than the introduction of 
 one steam fire-engiae. 
 
 Examine the weapons of an army, — great guns, 
 for the reduction of forts and batteries, muskets, 
 rifles, and revolvers; of the navy, six hundred 
 pounders, and from those down to muskets, rifles, 
 and revolvers. Look at our means of travel — 
 from the great train of cars to the dog-cart and 
 shanks-mare ; our business teams — from the lum- 
 bering sis horse or ox wagon to the pretty express 
 drawn by a pony ; at our fish-hooks — from the 
 great hook for catching sharks to the one haK an 
 inch long for catching smelts. If a physician 
 wishes to give an injection, does he use for the 
 purpose a steam fire or a manual engine ? or if a 
 child has the croup, and he wishes to give it 
 ipecac, does he give it half a dozen pounds or 
 so ? or to bleed a patient, does he cut off the 
 jugular vein? E a farmer wishes to plough his 
 land, from which he has just taken off a hun- 
 dred cords of wood per acre, and which is full 
 
256 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 of stumps, rocks, and roots, would he use a lit- 
 tle one horse plough ? or if he used a great, 
 heavy plough on the rough piece, and it did the 
 work weU, would he use that to work up his gar- 
 den beds? If he came home hungry, would he 
 refuse to eat his dinner because he could not swal- 
 low it at one gulp, or because his wife placed by 
 his plate a knife and fork instead of a manure 
 fork and shovel ? We understand all this ; but 
 when we come to the question of extinguishing 
 fires, which of all others vary most in size, we 
 simply use means of one size, and then make such 
 an arrangement that it will not be possible for an 
 attack to be made in less than fifteen miautes, 
 while the fire goes on iacreasing, at first doubling, 
 and soon quadrupling every minute ! Who can 
 wonder that the "Fire Record" of the daily- 
 papers is so large, or that there are so many great 
 fires and conflagrations, or towns and cities de- 
 stroyed. And the fires will go on increasing in 
 number (it will not be easy to go beyond that of 
 Chicago) until we apply the same common-sense 
 rules for building and at fires which we do at our 
 common avocations. 
 
 May a merciful Providence direct us to be wise 
 in time to avert another such dreadful disaster as 
 we have just passed through. I am aware that I 
 am telling the tale of small engines over and over 
 
THE FIRE AT CEICOPEE. 257 
 
 again; but if I am correct in my statements, it 
 cannot be told too many times — that is, until the 
 engines are introduced throughout the country, 
 and the fires cease to be dangerous, when I mil 
 cease to talk or write of them. 
 
 THE PIEB AT CHICOPBE. 
 
 " One of our best workmen was in the wheel- 
 room at work. He had a shop-lantern of the best 
 kind, filled with sperm oil. By an accidental 
 blow this lantern was broken, igniting the grease 
 and lint on and under the gearing, which was at 
 no time in motion. From this point the flames 
 flashed oyer the accumulated lint on the belts, and 
 in the belt passages from floor to floor. So rapid 
 was the spread of the fire, that the mechanic, 
 together with the watchman who immediately 
 arrived, could only remain long enough to throw 
 two or three pails of water upon it, which seemed 
 to increase rather than diminish its force. They 
 then obtained water from the adjoining rooms and 
 the canal, but found their efforts unaTailing, and 
 immediately gave a general alarm. The pump- 
 room being on fire the pumps could not be started. 
 " J. W. Osgood, Agent." 
 
 The workman was one of the best, and so was 
 the lantern, and so was the oil. Therefore no one 
 
 17 
 
258 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 was to blame. The mills must be burned, and the 
 loss, 1900,000, be borne as it best can by the in- 
 surance companies and the stockholders. If they 
 &,re satisfied, — and the agent says, " the insurance 
 inspectors are, and that they absolve us from all 
 blame, and feel that eyerything was done to save the 
 property," — who shall complain, who shall dare 
 to find fault? That is one side of the picture. 
 Let us look at another side of it. It is a fact then 
 that the wheel-room of these great cotton factories 
 may contain, and some do, so much grease and lint 
 that if once on fire, it may, in spite of any pre- 
 ventiTC force, flash up from story to story, so that 
 in a few minutes the whole building will be in 
 flames. Now suppose that it was necessary that 
 the work was to be done at ten o'clock, A. M., in- 
 stead of ten o'clock, p. M. What would have been 
 the result ? Why, that two or three hundred or 
 more working girls and men would have been 
 roasted alive ! In the name of humanity I pro- 
 test against this horrid danger, not of cruelty to 
 animals, but to the poor workwomen who are lured 
 into such dangerous places for a pittance of a dol- 
 lar more or less per day. How many other wheel- 
 rooms in Massachusetts, in New England, in the 
 United States, are all ready with the lint and 
 grease, to, at the shghtest, and most proper and 
 respectable accident, repeat the horror of the fixe 
 
TEE FIRE AT CHICOPEE. 259 
 
 in the Cliurch of Santiago, Chili, by burning all 
 their inmates ? Is there no remedy ? If not, let 
 us know it, so that the poor women may earn their 
 daily bread at some more safe avocation. 
 
 But there is another view. How much grease 
 is required in the wheel-room ? The great cog- 
 wheels, which, turning, put in motion all the ma- 
 chinery, must be continually oiled. For this pur- 
 pose in this mill an amount filling a tank four or 
 five feet ia diameter and from fifteen to eighteen 
 inches deep, was in constant use. More than a 
 barrel of this inflammable mixture mixed with the 
 lint, and surrounded by the dry lint, so that at 
 any accident it might fly from story to story al- 
 most instantly setting fire to the whole building ! 
 How many such fires have there been ? How 
 many more will there be? How soon will hun- 
 dreds of poor creatures perish in such a fire ? Now 
 for the remedy. Such tanks must no longer be 
 used. Another kind are made and in use at Low- 
 ell, and no doubt at other places, of cast-iron, and 
 in such a way that it perhaps is impossible for 
 their contents to take fire. Again, the lint must 
 not be allowed to gather imtil it may become dan- 
 gerous if on fire. Do the agents say they cannot 
 do it? Then shut down youj mills. That will 
 clean off the Hnt in an hour! And once more, 
 pails of water. Mr. Braidwood has recommended 
 
260 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 piunps to put out just such fires in tlie London 
 warehouses, and Mr, John L. Hays tells of their 
 great efficiency in mills. For putting out the fire 
 in the tank, I have no doubt an extinguisher 
 would have been an efficient machine ; for dashing 
 out the lint on the walls, the small pumps would 
 have been the best. Again, one workman should 
 not go alone into such a place to work. Another 
 man, with a pump to dash out in a moment a fire, 
 as is done in the theatres at Paris, would have 
 prevented aU the fire and loss. In London, one 
 man alone is never allowed in a house on fire. 
 The tank of grease could have been covered at 
 very little expense. 
 
 The " grease " is made safe in some factories, 
 and the lint of course can be. For the protection 
 of the lives of the inmates, for the interest of the 
 stockholders and the insurance companies, and for 
 the general safety of cities, should not there be a 
 person in the interest of the State whose duty it 
 would be to have charge of such important inter- 
 ests as the safety of these great buildings from 
 fire ? 
 
 ISTEW yoke's danger. 
 
 That every man, horse, engine, and all the other 
 appliances of the Fire Department of New York 
 are as nearly perfect as possible, I do not presume 
 
NEW YORK'S DANGER. 261 
 
 to doubt ; but the city, from tbe vicinity of Trinity 
 Church to beyond Union Square, is constructed in 
 such a manner that should a fire occur in a dry 
 time, and ia a gale of wiud, it might end ia a 
 conflagration to which those of Boston and Chicago 
 would seem only as bonfires. 
 
 The HoUy system, perhaps the best in the world, 
 invented by Mr. Holly of Lockport, New York, 
 should be adopted, and Mr. Holly instructed to 
 place in the portion indicated, the very best and 
 most powerful engiaes he can construct (in the 
 smallest possible time). They should be kept in 
 full working force in every high wind. These, 
 vnth his new hydrants contaiaing hose, to be placed 
 near the doors of warehouses and manufactories, 
 by which great streams could be throvra. almost 
 instantly upon fires, and the hydrants in the 
 streets, would be equal to many hundreds of steam 
 fire-engines. New York has expended millions 
 for its parks and squares ; now let it give one or 
 two millions to prevent ittf destruction by fire. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The following letter is selected from the work 
 entitled " The Early Years of his Eoyal Highness 
 the Prince Consort. Compiled under the direction 
 of the Queen." 
 
 " CoBirEG, 18th October, 1838. 
 
 " Dbab GrBAXDMAMMA, — I haye again delayed 
 writing to you, but when a man is once sunk in 
 idleness, it is difficult to get out of it. 
 
 " I learned from your dear letter to Ernest, that 
 you are better, and that you haye moved into your 
 pretty winter residence, in aU its new splendor. 
 
 " How perishable it aU is, we felt seriously yes- 
 terday, when, if God had not held his protecting 
 hand over us, the whole palace of Coburg might 
 have become a prey to the flames, nor we our- 
 selves able in any way to escape. 
 
 " A fire is Ut in our rooms every morning, lest 
 we should find them cold when we come down to 
 town occasionally in the afternoon. 
 
 " It happened the day before yesterday, that we 
 stayed in town after the play, in order not to catch 
 
ROYAL FIREMEN. 263 
 
 cold driving back to the Kosenarr. The next 
 morning I was awakened by an unpleasant smell. 
 I sprang out of bed to see whether the register had 
 not been forgotten to be opened iu one of the stoves. 
 The smoke met me thicker and thicker, but I 
 could not discover anything. In the fourth room 
 I was met by the flames darting towards me ; it 
 was all on fire. I called out fire ! fire ! when Er- 
 nest and Cart came from their rooms to my assist- 
 ance. No living soul was in this wing of the pal- 
 ace, except us three ; it was also so early that 
 nobody was astir in the neighborhood. You can 
 fancy our alarm. We did not take long to con- 
 sider, but closed all the doors and shut ourselves 
 up with the fire. There were only two jugs of 
 water and one with camomile tea at our com- 
 mand, of which we made the most. Ernest took 
 my cloak and his own and threw them upon the 
 flames, while I dragged all my bedding there 
 and pressed the mattresses and large counterpanes 
 against the burniug wall. Cart (their servant) 
 lifted a marble table with incredible strength, and 
 threw it against a book-case enveloped in. flames, 
 causing it to fall down. Having thus subdued the 
 fixe, we could think of calling for more help. 
 
 ' " Ernest ran, just as he got out of bed, down- 
 stairs to the sentry, who gave the alarm, while I 
 and Cart were still working up-stairs. The heat 
 
264 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 and smoke were so powerful that all the windows 
 had fallen out; even the glasses of the framed 
 pictures were cracked, and the pictures shriveled . 
 in, and the paint of the doors is quite charred. 
 
 "Help now came in haste from aU sides ; a num- 
 ber of workmen brought water up and extin- 
 guished the smouldering fire. A book-stand with 
 many books, and aU our prints, two chairs and a 
 table, a looking-glass, etc.; have been burnt. 
 
 " There is no other harm done but that Cart and 
 I have burnt the soles of our feet, as we got bare- 
 footed iuto the cinders. 
 
 " The accident was caused by the ignorance of a 
 stoker who had heated a stove that was not meant 
 to be used, and on which books and prints were 
 lying and against which a quantity of maps were 
 standing. The only picture that was not injured is 
 the one of the fire at the palace of Gotha. ■ 
 
 " Farewell, now, dear Grandmamma, and always 
 love your faithful grandson, Albbbt." 
 
 It is to be hoped that all the young ladies and 
 gentlemen of America who imitate foreign people, 
 may, if a fire occurs in their dwellings or in the 
 immediate neighborhood, imitate those splendid 
 firemen, Albert, afterwards the first gentleman of 
 England, his brother and their servant Cart. A 
 better fought fire, a better description of one, or 
 
A GOOD LESSON. 265 
 
 a better letter to a grandmother, it will be difficult 
 to find. Fires would be few and far between with 
 such firemen. Thiok what they would have done 
 with a small engine ! I wish they had told us 
 which was the best to extinguish fire, water or 
 camomile tea. But the whole description is 
 capital. There cannot be a doubt that those 
 young gentlemen saved the splendid palace from 
 destruction. 
 
 Among many descriptions of fire which I have, 
 I select the following as one of the best lessons. 
 An old lady hearing screams of distress from chil- 
 dren, caught a blanket and ran into the room from 
 whence came the cries, to find that -the clothes of 
 her two grandchildren of eight and ten years of 
 age were on fire. .One of them had gone too near 
 the open fire, and her clothes catching fixe the 
 clothes of the other caught, while she was try- 
 ing to help her sister. Throwing them down iu- 
 stantly, she pressed the blanket upon them, smoth- 
 ering out the blaze, and then as quickly as possible 
 she extinguished the rest of the fire. The children 
 were dreadfuUy burned, as were the hands of the 
 grandmother, but the fire had reached no vital 
 part before they were thrown down, and they were 
 soon well and ia that class of children who are 
 careful of fixe, as it is to be hoped aU children wiU 
 be. 
 
266 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 GBBAT TKIUMPH OP THE BOSTON FIEE DEPART- 
 MENT. 
 
 Boston, Jvly 7, 1876. 
 
 The people of Boston passed last night through 
 a trial of intense excitement and danger, and 
 thanks to the splendid working of the new fire 
 department, the city has been preserved from 
 destruction. Our new department has been the 
 scene of no little rivalry for the past few months, 
 and while the small engines of course have put out 
 four out of five fires, the steamers have dashed and 
 smashed out several which ia ordinary times would 
 have resulted in great fires or conflagrations. Last 
 night the wind from the southwest was truly ter- 
 rific. At about twelve o'clock an immense struc- 
 ture at the south part of the city used as a wood 
 planiag-mill, and for workers of wood generally, 
 was found to be on fire. Before the telegraph 
 gave an alarm the fire had flown up the old fash- 
 ioned elevator, and the hatchway for letting chips 
 etc., to the basement, into every one of the six 
 stories, and the windows being open, before an 
 engine large or small got to work, there was a 
 mass of fire two hundred feet square and eighty 
 feet high, roaring and crashing before the specta- 
 tors, while great pieces of wood flew from the roof 
 upon other buildiags. The excitement of those 
 
THE NEW DEPARTMENT. 267 
 
 looking on became intense. The wooden signs, 
 and the windows of all the buildings opposite were 
 soon smoking, or in flames, and no help seemed 
 likely to prevent the destruction of the city. But 
 m an iacredibly short space of time, one window 
 and another opened on each of the four sides of the 
 great fiery furnace, and httle pipes were held out 
 by arms coYered with wet woolen cloths, and the 
 outsides of aU the buildings were kept wet and cool 
 with water. The immense amount of steam which 
 rose where it was applied, told only too plainly of 
 the great danger. Soon from one, and then 
 another wiadow, came great streams from the 
 steamers which were thrown oyer into the burning 
 building. In half an hour, no less than twenty 
 such great streams were thrown across, which soon 
 deadened the fire in the lower stories. By this 
 time, however, the three upper stories and the 
 Mansard roof, were one great raging, awful fire. 
 Thousands of great flaming pieces of wood flew 
 away, some a mile from the fire, crushing in win- 
 dows, and setting fire in hundreds of places, while 
 lesser pieces and millions of sparks flew over the 
 entire length of the city, setting fiLres in every 
 street, lane, and court, and even several in Charles- 
 town, the Navy-yard, and Chelsea, while a small 
 bam was burned away off at Kevere. And now 
 every person learned the wonderful efl&ciency of 
 
268 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 the small engines. More than two thousand of 
 them were on duty. Not a fire could light on a 
 building, but a stream was upon it in a minute. 
 In one place, a fire- was not discovered until it had 
 become so large as to seem quite beyond the con- 
 trol of the little pumps. A panic was likely to 
 ensue. Screams and shrieks were the order of the 
 moment, when a man with a pump came up and 
 asking for water, took a pail to it, and soon the 
 water was doing its blessed work. He had not got 
 rid of one pail before the fire was attacked on two 
 other sides, and in three minutes the firemen were 
 off for other fires. Little fires were put out in 
 every direction. A spark, or small piece of wood, 
 would light on a building, and the wind would 
 force it into a blaze in a moment. The next mo- 
 ment it would be dashed out. The chief of the 
 second brigade reports already eight hundred and 
 seventy-four fires put out by them. The people 
 soon understood the danger, and the remedy, and 
 water in pails and tubs was before almost every 
 house on the line of the fire. Never had the 
 people of Boston such cause for thanksgiving, as 
 on this the seventh of July, 1876. 
 
 P. S. — We are informed by the owners of the 
 building destroyed, that they shall rebuild of a 
 new material indestructible by fire. 
 
HO W REFORMS SUCCEED. 269 
 
 In one of Dickens's works two men were said to 
 be employed by the English government, whose 
 duty it was to show " how not to do it." If any 
 people wish " not to do " the work I have advo- 
 cated in this book let them apply to the heads of 
 the fire departments. But when you have proved 
 that large and small engines combined are as 
 practical and as useful as large and small arms in 
 an army, go to work as did the press and the peo- 
 ple in the late smaU-pox excitement; or as did 
 the Hon. Samuel A. Elliot, who introduced the 
 " paid fire department ; " or later, as did the 
 noble men who forced the present popular and 
 excellent steam fire-engines into the Boston Fire 
 Department. I know a gentleman of Boston 
 whose wife once clung to him in an agony of fear 
 and entreated him to give up the steam fixe- 
 engines, as she feared that if he persisted his Kfe 
 would be the forfeit. AU the persons I have 
 named, as do others, who have earnestly advo- 
 cated any reform, however good and useful, know 
 that there are " klu-klux " north, as well as south, 
 of Mason and Dixon's line. 
 
 I have, in this book, endeavored to show how 
 fires may be prevented. I have simply done what 
 is the duty of every one who sees a fire, — given 
 the alarm, as they would call " Fire." I have 
 had many discouragements, family afflictions, a 
 
270 PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE. 
 
 long-continued and painful malady, and a contin- 
 ual sense of my inability to do fuU justice to so 
 important a question. But the subject is of such 
 vast importance ; fires are increasing so rapidly ; 
 that I have felt I had no right to hold my peace. 
 
 If the reforms I have endeavored to prove 
 would be useful, by building almost entirely -with- 
 out wood, for dweUing-houses, and less high and 
 really fire-proof stores and warehouses, and a 
 preventive system by which fires may be instantly 
 attacked, is not adopted, fires wiU continue to in- 
 crease until the destruction of villages, towns, and 
 cities wiU be so great as to involve the country in 
 a great financial ruin. 
 
 I know how much more popular it would be to 
 advocate the introduction of larger engines, and 
 to appeal in that way to the popular feeling of the 
 times. But I also know that would be but the 
 means of keeping stiU longer the present popular 
 but unsafe and inefiicient system. The question 
 is one of too much solemnity for equivocation. 
 The truth must be told and the systems changed, 
 or disasters like those of Portland, Chicago, and 
 Boston will constantly fall upon us. 
 
 The awful loss of life and property, and the dis- 
 tress of thousands, aye, of hundreds of thousands 
 of families from this cause, I think, make the fol- 
 lowing quotation from " Elijah " a proper conclu- 
 
THE STILt, SMALL VOICE. 271 
 
 sion of a book whicli seeks to prevent the present 
 loss of life by clothing taking fire ; to urge people 
 to construct their dwellings of materials which fire 
 cannot consume, and to induce them to adopt fire 
 systems which will render impossible such dreadful 
 conflagrations as have lately astonished the civil- 
 ized world. 
 
 " Behold, God, the Lord, passed by ; and a 
 mighty wind rent the mountains around : brake in 
 pieces the rocks ; brake them before the Lord. But 
 yet the Lord was not in the tempest. Behold, 
 God, the Lord, passed by ; and the sea was up- 
 heaved ; and the earth was shaken. But yet the 
 Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the 
 earthquake there came a fire. But yet the Lord 
 was not in the fire. And after the fire there came 
 a stiU, small voice. AiSD in that STlii, small 
 
 VOICE, ONWAED CAME THE LOBD." 
 
IlfDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 "American Artisan" 29 
 
 American women, advice to 88-95 
 
 B. 
 
 Baddelj, Mr 39, 40 
 
 Barnes, Joseph (evidence) 164, 165 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward 48 
 
 Boston Pire, The 249-257 
 
 — Hovey's store . . . , . 44, 45 
 
 Boston Fire Department 33 
 
 Boston Kres 160, 161 
 
 Boston merchants consnlted 163-165 
 
 Braidwood, James, Superintendent London Fire Brigade . 17, 
 
 18, 40, 55, 56, 83, 90, 121, 125 
 Braithwaite, John 36, 72, 73 
 
 C. 
 
 Charlestown Fire 1 
 
 Chicago Fire, The 246-249 
 
 ChUd, Lydia Maria, her house saved .... 54 
 
 Conflagration at Quebec 244-246 
 
 D. 
 
 Damrell, John S., on small engines and extinguishers . 68-71 
 
 Danger from dried wood 123 
 
 furnaces 84, 87 
 
 lamps 18, 19 
 
 vapor 124 
 
 Danger to New York 260,261 
 
 18 
 
274 INDEX. 
 
 Day and Martin's Fire . . . . .122,123 
 
 Dog and locomotive 171, 172 
 
 Downer's Works at South Boston . . . .170,171 
 
 E. 
 
 Education for firemen 201-206 
 
 Elevators 96-99 
 
 English testimony in favor of small engines . 39-42, 46, 47 
 
 Ericsson, of Monitor fame 36 
 
 Experiments with oil 18, 19 
 
 Extinguishers burned at Chicago and Boston . . 183 
 
 history of 177-186 
 
 how used 183 
 
 F. 
 Fire about a chimney — house burned .... 27 
 
 Fire alarm telegraph 167,168 
 
 Fire alarms too late 33 
 
 Fire at Albany 150-157 
 
 Argyll Booms, London 36 
 
 Athol 91 
 
 Barclay's Brewery 72, 73 
 
 Beal's Wharf, how saved 42 
 
 Brighton 253,254 
 
 Chandler's store 185 
 
 Chicago — Jefferson Street 67 
 
 Chicopee 257-260 
 
 East Boston, July 4 34, 35 
 
 FallEiver — Mr. Eddy 125 
 
 Gresham Street 42 
 
 Masonic Temple 35 
 
 Milton 90 
 
 New York (1835) 155,156 
 
 North End 184 
 
 Santiago, Chili 117,118 
 
 the Temple House 187-192 
 
 Fire Brigade — Paris 60,61 
 
 Chickering'a 108, 109 
 
 Hotel 107, 108 
 
INDEX. 275 
 
 Fire Brigade — London 57-59 
 
 Store 106, 107 
 
 Fire Department — Boston (new) 61-66 
 
 Newton 197-200 
 
 Fire elevators 100-102 
 
 Fire exploit =— Benjamin Cutter 14 
 
 Fire from gold-fish globe 135 
 
 asphalted felt 132 
 
 ashes — house saved 29 
 
 burning garden waste .... 135, 136 
 
 decorations 118 
 
 greasy rags 130 
 
 jute 93 
 
 kerosene — store saved 30, 31 
 
 lamp-black 129 
 
 matches 87, 88 
 
 oil and lamp-black ... . . . 128, 129 
 
 oiled woolen rags 126, 127 
 
 stoves 82-84 
 
 Fire kept from United States bonded warehouses . . 43, 44 
 
 Fire insurance 146-149 
 
 Fire in a clothing house 132 
 
 a sofa 128 
 
 charcoal ■ • 136, 137 
 
 hay stores 105 
 
 heap of charcoal 130 
 
 house, how saved 25, 26 
 
 junk shops 129 
 
 machine shops 134 
 
 the Richmond Theatre 117 
 
 State Street, from vapor 128 
 
 United States bonded warehouse .... 74 
 
 vessel loaded with wool 138 
 
 woolen waste 126 
 
 Fire lady 9*' 9^ 
 
 Fire mopped out by a woman 12 
 
 Fire near Boston 1*^ 
 
 Boston and Maine Depot 35, 36 
 
 office of "Old and New" .... 184,185 
 
276 INDEX. 
 
 Fire on Battery Wharf 105 
 
 Commercial Street 161, 163 
 
 Port Hill 42 
 
 roof — house saved 27,28 
 
 Tire preventive system 33, 34 
 
 Fire-proof dwelling-houses 74 
 
 Fire put out by a woman 10 
 
 Fire shield 31 
 
 Firemen work nobly 195-197 
 
 Fires at Constantinople 242-244 
 
 mistakes at 166, 167 
 
 of San Francisco and other western cities . 152-154 
 
 prevented by snow 55 
 
 First steam fire-engine 30-37 
 
 Foolish action at fires 26 
 
 Foundry fires prevented Ill 
 
 French theatres — how protected . . . . 116,117 
 Funny use of a pump at a fire 25 
 
 G. 
 
 General Putnam as a fireman 31 
 
 Good workmen at fires 26, 27 
 
 Great triumph of the new Boston Fire Department . 266-268 
 Gunpowder, use of, at fires 173-177 
 
 H. 
 
 Hayes, John L. 49-54 
 
 Historic fires 207-238 
 
 Home fire apparatus 23 
 
 House on fire — how saved 23, 24 
 
 saved by a lady 30 
 
 House saved with bucket and dippers 3 
 
 Hovey's store 32 
 
 How not to do it 268, 269 
 
 How to do it . . . 269 
 
 I. 
 
 Incendiary fires 137-145 
 
 Incendiary fires, how to prevent 145 
 
INDEX. 277 
 
 J. 
 
 Jackson, Dr. C. T 126, 130, 131 
 
 Johnsou pumps .54 
 
 K. 
 King, Charles E 39 
 
 L. 
 
 Lady saves children 265 
 
 Lamp explosions 20, 21 
 
 Letter from Prince Albert 262-264 
 
 Lighting pipe in bam 106 
 
 London pump 41 
 
 " London Quarterly " 124 
 
 London small engines 38, 39 
 
 Manby, Captain 180, 181 
 
 Mansard roofs 111-115 
 
 Match manufactories 109 
 
 N. 
 
 New fire preventive method 186, 187 
 
 Nurse for baby and fires 29 
 
 0. 
 
 Our dweUing-houses 75, 76 
 
 P. 
 
 Plague of London 239-241 
 
 Portable apparatus 192-195 
 
 Powder magazine saved 31 
 
 Powers, Hiram, letter from 78-82 
 
 Premiums for fire-proof houses 78 
 
 Pyromania 138 
 
 R. 
 Eome, the penalty for setting fiare 139 
 
 S. 
 " Scientific American " . . . . , . 47 
 
278 INDEX. 
 
 Small engines, American testimony 47-55 
 
 Small engines for Mansard roofs .... 71-73 
 
 Smoking during business hours 104 
 
 Spontaneous ignition 122-137 
 
 Steam fire-engines to throw water or steam . . . 169 
 
 Steam fire-engine men rewarded 37 
 
 Steamers drawn hy men 145 
 
 Store on fire, saved hy a lad 9 
 
 T. 
 Time to extinguish conflagrations .... 157-159 
 
 U. 
 Unsafe stage 119 
 
 V. 
 
 Valuable fire officer 26 
 
 Van Marum's, Dr., experiments 178 
 
 Village saved by women 92 
 
 W. 
 
 Warning signals 168 
 
 "Water always ready 91 
 
 Water or steam 169, 170 
 
 Water too late at fires 33, 34 
 
 Will fires increase 150, 151 
 
 Woolen mill saved 25 
 
 T. 
 
 Young lady saves her life 21