Mark Fletcher speaks to Jane Rugg, the Curator of the London Fire Brigade Museum to dig into the organisation’s past in the year of its 150th anniversary
The London Fire Brigade was formed by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act of 1865 under the leadership of Superintendent Sir Eyre Massey Shaw. In its earliest guise, before its official status as a citywide entity, it actually comprised a number of ‘brand-coloured’ privately operated companies financed by insurance companies in order to fight fires that broke out in establishments for which they provided insurance. Indeed, it is thought that the reason that fire engines are red is because one of the leading insurance companies at the time was The Sun (now Royal Sun Alliance) whose corporate colours were red.
It was not all a bed of roses though – with a lot of competition between the retained companies – and even sabotage in the form of slashed hoses. The problem was they all wanted to be the first to arrive. This unhealthy competition eventually came to a head in 1833 when the ten largest insurance companies joined their fire services together to form an alliance known as the London Fire Engine Establishment – the forerunner of public service – under the leadership of James Braidwood. With 80 fire-fighters and 13 fire stations, the unit was still a private enterprise and was still funded by the insurance companies and, as a result, its primary remit was still to save material goods.
Braidwood came from Edinburgh, which already had public fire service, and he bought about some semblance of unification and organisation, with fire-fighters all wearing the same uniforms and undertaking similar training, but still with the insurance companies’ insured assets in mind. It took a large fire in Tooley Street in 1861, which lasted for two weeks, at a cost of £2 million (a lot of money back then), for the insurance companies to finally start lobbying the British Government to provide fire-fighting services at the public’s expense. As a result, in 1865, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act was passed and the brigade finally became public and paid for through taxes.
The new Metropolitan Fire Brigade, under the leadership of Sir Eyre Massey Shaw, saw many changes, including the introduction of new technology, primarily in the form of steam-powered pumps. Braidwood had vetoed the idea of steam power, preferring manual pumps, but Massey Shaw argued that it was cheaper to buy coal to power the engines than it was to supply beer to those who helped man the pumps. It is here that a little beer-related clarification is needed. Early manual pumps demanded a lot of grunt work and often over a long period of time, so local people were drafted in, with the promise of beer (eventually beer tokens). In fact, the insurance-financed companies would often run through the streets shouting ‘beeroh’ in order to drum up the necessary manpower.
Massey Shaw was a very strong figure, who often got his way and even though the first experiments in steam power had taken place in 1829, it was not until much later that they made their debut on the streets of London. This was primarily down to the initial resistance from Braidwood and the misguided belief that the water pressures would damage buildings. Compounding these issues was resistance from some elements of the public – who rather selfishly saw their regular supply of free beer potentially drying up.
In 1904, under a remit from the newly formed London County Council, the brigade was renamed as the London Fire Brigade. It moved into its new headquarters on the Albert Embankment in Lambeth in 1937, where it remained until 2007.
Throughout its history, the Brigade has been subject to a lot of influence from other brigades and agencies abroad, including the adoption of brass helmets, which came from the French Pompiers. Indeed Massey Shaw travelled the world to get inspiration for his new organisation. The brass helmets were eventually phased out when electrocution became a hazard and the Brigade moved over to cork helmets, becoming the first brigade in the country to experiment with cork/rubber constructions. Interestingly, things have now gone a full circle, with modern fire-fighting helmets being based on modern French helmet designs. While we are on the subject of helmets, and as an interesting aside, the reason why higher-ranking fire-fighters have white helmets is because Massey Shaw’s own brass helmet was sliver plated. All other fire-fighters have yellow helmets, reflecting the original brass colour.
A lot of phrases the brigade still uses today also came from this time period. The phrase “being on or off the run” – meaning heading out of coming back from an incident – comes from use of steam-powered pumps, which used to be stored on a slope or run in order to give the horses a helping hand when they first started moving. Many of the expressions also stem naval terms, as Massey Shaw initially made it compulsory for fire-fighters to have served in Navy, prior to joining fire service. It is for this reason that the fire brigade uses watches, rather than shifts and lines as opposed to ropes. They also eat in a mess, not a dining area.
From a technology standpoint, smoke helmets were used with bellows (like diving equipment) in the early 1900s, changing to self-contained compressed oxygen in 1913. These masks were incredibly cumbersome though, as the fire-fighter also had to carry the crystals used to absorb the CO2. Amazingly, compressed air only came in in the 1970s. 1900 also saw the introduction of hook ladders, with the London Fire Brigade being the first to use these following an incident at a factory on Queen Street where some girls were trapped and the normal long ladders wouldn’t work.
The First World War saw immense pressures being placed on the Brigade, especially in terms of conscription. This was not so much of an issue for the centre of London, but many of the smaller brigades in Greater London suffered… and not just regarding manpower, many horses were conscripted too, which lead to a real push for them to deploy motorised appliances.
Word War 2 also had a profound effect on the way the service was run. Auxiliary Fire Services were set up to act locally and took over garages and schools. With their “make do and mend” philosophy they used a variety of vehicles, including vans and lorries that had been converted to carry equipment and water. WW2 also saw the introduction of control units. These early precursors to modern incident rooms and teams were used to deliver messages and foster greater communications and better liaison between the multiple units in operation. Women were also invited to join, primarily in a support capacity in control units or as drivers; but we have to wait until 1982 before we see the first operational female fire-fighter.
Another big change at the time saw the unification of hoses and couplings. London used to send crews to other cities, but London’s fire-fighters used round threads on their hoses, which often did not work with the couplings used by other brigades. This issue bought about the introduction of the instantaneous couplings, which are still being today. Trailer pumps also saw action during the Second World War and were used to relay water from the Thames to the fire. With a real shortage on brigade vehicles, the brigade often commandeered taxi cabs to pull the trailers. There were also numerous emergency water tanks, some of which were specially built, but others comprised water-filled bomb craters, which had to have safety signs erected around them, because children would often swim in them without knowing how deep they were.
Initially the fires service had terrible reputation at the start of the war, due to the fact that a large number of conscientious objectors joined up. They were known as ‘army dodgers’, but when the blitz began people’s attitudes to them changed and they became known as heroes with grimy faces. WW2 also saw fire-fighters who were artists being given extra money by the Government to paint their experiences. These painting were initially hosted at Royal Academy before being taken across the Atlantic in the Government’s efforts to drum up US support.
Post war, civil defence was the big phrase and the brigade was renamed the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority. This new authority undertook lots of large-scale planning and greater cooperation with the other emergency services became the norm. Post war also saw further developments in technology, once again driven by necessity following loss of life at two large-scale fires. Two market fires – Covent Garden in 1949 and Smithfield in 1950 – highlighted the issues of fire-fighting in basements. The first new introduction was the use of guidelines with two different knots – long knots for heading in and short knots for heading out – the idea being that fire-fighters could feel the knots at two-metre intervals and make an estimation of the distance they had travelled. The other new idea was the use of breathing apparatus control boards, which used removable/replaceable tags to indicate who was in a building (tag removed) and who had come back out (tag replaced).
Looking a little closer to this century, the Moorgate train crash in 1975 had a huge impact on the evolution of communications between fire-fighters and their control, with the development of comms equipment that could operate underground. Indeed, the Figaro system was used for the first time at Moorgate, despite still being in a developmental stage. The crash incident went on for several days and the medium-wave based Figaro system was immensely useful, replacing the Walkie-talkies that had been used up until then. The Kings Cross fire in 1987 also saw the introduction other new regulations, but in terms of the fire brigade, the big change was the evolution of the uniform. Most fire-fighters were still wearing woollen tunics that did not differ all that much from Victorian designs. Kings Cross lead to experimentation with Nomex materials and the helmets were finally upgraded from the cork varieties to precursors of the modern helmets we see now. The new Inferno uniforms also exhibited a change in colour to burgundy and subsequent developments saw the introduction of air pockets in the linings to keep fire-fighters cool.
The modern London Fire Brigade is now a completely different organisation to those in the past and has seen a huge shift in responsibilities. Far from being am overtly reactive organisation that relied on the general public’s capacity for beer consumption and pump handling, it is now incredibly proactive, offering a number of services in addition to its core remit, including fire safety checks, regulation and legislation appraisal, smoke alarms campaigning and many more.
Now the fifth-largest fire service in the world, with nearly 5,992 staff, including 5,096 operational fire-fighters and officers based at 103 fire stations, it is indeed a far cry from its original 13 fire stations and 80 fire-fighters.
It has a fascinating history (I have only touched the surface) much of which will be on display when its museum reopens after moving back to its original location at the listed former headquarters on Albert Embankment. Of particular interest is a fire boat that was named after Massey Shaw. Still in one piece thanks in part to a lottery grant, it was the most powerful fire boat in the Brigade and even took part in the Dunkirk evacuation, when it transported more than 600 soldiers in just one night. On this trip one injured soldier had his injured arm dressed in Massey Shaw’s flag. The soldier’s family found it years later and donated it back to museum.
www.london-fire.gov.uk
