Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

217 FIREMEN OF THE BRITISH ISLES. II THEN the Great Fire of London V V occurred, during the first week of Sep- tember in the memorable year 1666, the only appliances for the extinction of fire were a few buckets and brass squirts, worked by hand. Water engines had been invented 1,800 years before, and at that very time there existed in the city of Nuremberg a horse engine which, with the aid of twenty- eight men, was capable of throwing an inch jet to a height of 80 feet. But it was not until four years after the Great Fire that a Dutch engineer invented the suction pipe and hose. The seventeenth century had almost expired before an enterprising insurance company—the famous Hand-in-Hand Office — determined to take measures to than 37 inches, a height of not less than 5 feet 5 inches, and a record of continuous employment since their seventeenth year. It was formerly a rule that they must be seamen, but the rule is not now enforced, in order to give stalwart and agile artisans an opportunity of entering the service if they can prove themselves to be capable. It is the experience of the authorities, however, that a maritime training is the best, and of the present strength of the Brigade no less than 335 men have served in the Royal Navy, while of the remainder the greater number have spent their early years in the mercantile marine. In some provincial brigades, espe- cially in the Midland districts, it is found that . - ... * ■ ,-j. 1 holo 1 Gregory & Co., Strand. FIREMEN AT DRILL. DROPPING INTO THE SHEET. protect itself against serious losses by establishing a fire brigade of its own. Another century elapsed before a regular fire watch was organised in London, and in 1832 the brigades belonging to the insurance companies were combined into the London Fire-engine Establish- ment, and placed under the charge of the heroic James Braidwood, who lost his life in the terrible Tooley Street fire of 1861. Four years after that disaster the establishment was taken over by the Metropolitan Board of Works, and in 1889 by the London County Council. The number of men employed by the insurance companies in 1832 was 80; the fire staff of the brigade in 1901 was 1,136. The Metropolitan Fire Brigade has served as a model and training J ground for most of the brigades ’ now scattered throughout the king- dom. Some account of its adminis- tration is therefore essential to a proper understanding of the question how firemen are made. Candidates for appointment as firemen must not be more than thirty years of age, must have a chest measurement of not less 28