Curiosities of Civilization Part 22

In this case 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. The small circulating pipes which conveyed the hot water throughout the several chambers were raised from the floor to about the extent of their own diameter, and the floors showed no signs of fire where the pipes were so removed; but in _every case_ where the prop or saddle which held the pipe up from the floor had been displaced, and the pipe had been allowed to sag and touch the floor, _the boards were charred_. It was understood that the temperature of the water in the pipes never much exceeded 300. The practical teaching of this case clearly is, that pipes should on no consideration be placed nearer to wood than the distance of their own diameters. Wood dried in the thorough manner we have mentioned is so liable to catch fire at the momentary propinquity of flame, that practical men imagine there must be an atmosphere of some kind surrounding it of a highly inflammable nature. In cases of pine wood we could well understand such a theory, as we know that a stick thrust into the fire will emit from its free end a volatile spirit of turpentine, which lights like a jet of gas.

"Mercers' Hall, burnt in 1853, was the victim of its hot-water pipes, which had not been in work more than four or five years. The vaulted room in the British Museum, which contains some of the Nineveh marbles, was fired--or rather the carpenters' work about--in a similar manner; and if report tells the truth, the new Houses of Parliament have been on fire several times already from a similar cause."

Under the heads "Incendiarism," "Doubtful," and "Unknown," are included all the cases of wilful firing. The return, "Incendiarism," is never made unless there has been a conviction, which rarely takes place, as the offices are only anxious to protect themselves against fraud, and do not like the trouble or bad odour of being prosecutors on public grounds. If the evidence of wilful firing, however, is conclusive, the insured, when he applies for his money, is significantly informed by the secretary that unless he leaves the office, _he will hang him_. Though arson is no longer punished by death, the hint is usually taken. Now and then, such flagrant offenders are met with, that the office cannot avoid pursuing them with the utmost rigour of the law. Such, in 1851, was the case of a "respectable" solicitor, living in Lime-street, Watling-street, who had insured his house and furniture for a sum much larger than they were worth. The means he adopted for the commission of his crime without discovery were apparently sure; but it was the very pains he took to accomplish his end which led to his detection. He had specially made to order a deep tray of iron, in the centre of which was placed a socket. The tray he filled with naphtha, and in the socket he put a candle, the light of which was shaded by a funnel. The candle was one of the kind which he used for his gig-lamp,--for he kept a gig,--and was calculated to last a stated time before it reached the naphtha. He furtively deposited the whole machine in the cellar, within eight inches of the wooden floor, in a place constructed to conceal it. The attorney went out, and on coming back again found, as he expected, that his house was on fire. Unfortunately, however, for him--if it is ever a misfortune to a scoundrel to be detected,--it was put out at a very early stage, and the firemen, whilst in the act of extinguishing it, discovered this infernal machine. The order to make it was traced to the delinquent: a female servant, irritated at the idea of his having left her in the house to be burnt to death, gave evidence against him. He was tried and convicted, and is now expiating his crime at Norfolk Island. Plans for rebuilding this villain's house, and estimates of the expense, were found afterwards among his papers.

The cla.s.s "doubtful" includes all those cases in which the offices have no moral doubt that the fire has been wilful, but are not in possession of legal evidence sufficient to substantiate a charge against the offender.

In most of these instances, however, the insured has _his reasons_ for taking a much smaller sum than he originally demanded. Lastly, we have the "unknown," to which 1,323 cases are put down, one of the largest numbers in the entire list, though decreasing year by year. Even of these, a certain percentage are supposed to be wilful. There is no denying that the crime of arson owes its origin entirely to the introduction of fire insurance; and there can be as little doubt that, of late years, it has been very much increased by the pernicious compet.i.tion for business among the younger offices, which leads them to deal too leniently with their customers; or, in other words, to pay the money, _and ask no questions_.

It is calculated that _one fire in seven which occur among the small cla.s.s of shopkeepers in London is an incendiary fire_. Mr. Braidwood, whose experience is larger than that of any person, tells us that the greatest ingenuity is sometimes exercised to deceive the officers of the insurance company as to the value of the insured stock. In one instance, when the Brigade had succeeded in extinguishing the fire, he discovered a string stretched across one of the rooms in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the house, on which ringlets of shavings dipped in turpentine were tied at regular intervals.

On extending his investigations, he ascertained that a vast pile of what he thought were pounds of moist sugar consisted of parcels of brown paper, and that the loaves of white sugar were made of plaster of Paris. Ten to one but the "artful dodge," which some scoundrel flatters himself is peculiarly his own, has been put in practice by hundreds of others before him. For this reason, fires that are wilful generally betray themselves to the practised eye of the Brigade. When an event of the kind "is going to happen" at home, a common circ.u.mstance is to find that the fond parent has treated the whole of his family to the theatre.

There is another cla.s.s of incendiary fires which arise from a species of monomania in boys and girls. Not many years ago the men of the Brigade were occupied for hours in putting out no less than half a dozen fires which broke out one after another in a house in West Smithfield; and it was at last discovered that they were occasioned by a youth who went about with lucifers and slily ignited everything that would burn. He was caught in the act of firing a curtain in the very room in which a fireman was occupied in putting out a blaze. A still more extraordinary case took place in the year 1848, at Torluck House, in the Isle of Mull. On Sunday, the 11th of November, the curtains of a bed were ignited, as was supposed by lightning; a window-blind followed; and immediately afterwards the curtains of five rooms broke out one after another into a flame; even the towels hanging up in the kitchen were burnt. The next day a bed took fire, and it being thought advisable to carry the bed-linen into the coach-house for safety, it caught fire three or four times during the process of removal. In a few days the phenomenon was renewed. The furniture, books, and everything else of an inflammable nature, were, with much labour, taken from the mansion, and again some body-linen burst into a flame on the way. Even after these precautions had been taken, and persons had been set to watch in every part of the house, the mysterious fires continued to haunt it until the 22nd of February, 1849. It was suspected from the first that they were the act of an incendiary, and upon a rigid examination of the household before the Fiscal-General and the Sheriff, the mischief was traced to the daughter of the housekeeper, a young girl, who was on a visit to her mother. She had effected her purpose, which was perfectly motiveless, by concealing combustibles in different parts of the house.

The most ludicrous conflagration that perhaps ever occurred was that at Mr. Phillips's workshops, when the whole of his stock of instruments for extinguishing flame were at one fell swoop destroyed. "'Tis rare to see the engineer hoist with his own petard," says the poet; and certainly it was a most laughable _contre-temps_ to see the fire-engines arrive at the manufactory just in time to witness the fire-annihilators annihilated by the fire. A similar mishap occurred to these unfortunate implements at Paris. In juxtaposition with this case, we are tempted to put another, in which the attempt at extinction was followed by exactly the opposite effects. A tradesman was about to light his gas, when, finding the c.o.c.k stiff, he took a candle to see what was the matter; whilst attempting to turn it, the screw came out, and with it a jet of gas, which was instantly fired by the candle. The blaze igniting the shop, a pa.s.ser-by seized a wooden pail and threw its contents upon the flames, which flared up immediately with tenfold power. It is scarcely necessary to state that the water was whisky, and that the country was Old Ireland.

Spontaneous combustion is at present very little understood, though chemists have of late turned their attention to the subject. It forms, however, no inconsiderable item in the list of causes of fires. There can be no question that many of those that occur at railway stations and buildings are due to the fermentation which arises among oiled rags.

Over-heating of waste, which includes shoddy, sawdust, cotton, &c., is a fearful source of conflagrations. The cause of most fires which have arisen from spontaneous combustion is lost in the consequence. Cases now and then occur where the firemen have been able to detect it, as, for instance, at Hibernia Wharf in 1846, one of Alderman Humphery's warehouses. It happened that a porter had swept the sawdust from the floor into a heap, upon which a broken flask of olive-oil that was placed above dripped its contents. To these elements of combustion the sun added its power, and sixteen hours afterwards the fire broke out. Happily, it was instantly extinguished; and the agents that produced it were caught, red-handed as it were, in the act. The chances are that such a particular combination of circ.u.mstances might not occur again in a thousand years.

The sawdust will not be swept again into such a position under the oil, or the bottle will not break over the sawdust, or the sun will not shine in on them to complete the fatal sum. It is an important fact, however, to know that oiled sawdust, warmed by the sun, will fire in sixteen hours, as it accounts for a number of conflagrations in saw-mills, which never could be traced to any probable cause.

By means of direct experiment we are also learning something on the question of explosions. It used to be a.s.sumed that gunpowder was answerable for all such terrible effects in warehouses where no gas or steam was employed; and as policies are vitiated by the fact of its presence, unless declared, many squabbles have ensued between insurers and insured upon this head alone. At the late great fire at Gateshead, a report having spread that the awful explosion which did so much damage arose from the illicit stowage of seven tons of gunpowder in the Messrs.

Sisson's warehouse, the interested insurance companies offered a reward of 100_l._ to elicit information. The experiments inst.i.tuted, however, by Mr.

Pattinson, in the presence of Captain Du Cane, of the Royal Engineers, and the coroner's jury impanelled to inquire into the matter, showed that the water from the fire-engine falling upon the mineral and chemical substances in store, was sufficient to account for the result. The following were the experiments tried at Mr. Pattinson's works at Felling, about three miles from Gateshead:--

"Mr. Pattinson first caused a metal pot to be inserted in the ground until its top was level with the surface; and having put into it 9 lbs. of nitrate of soda and 6 lbs. of sulphur, he ignited the ma.s.s; and then, heating it to the highest possible degree of which it was susceptible, he poured into it about a quart of water. The effect was an immediate explosion (accompanied by a loud clap), which would have been exceedingly perilous to any person in its immediate vicinity. The experiment was next made under different conditions. The pot into which the sulphur and nitrate of soda were put was covered over the top with a large piece of thick metal of considerable weight; and above that again were placed several large pieces of clay and earth.

It was deemed necessary to try this experiment in an open field, away from any dwelling-house, and which admitted of the spectators placing themselves at a safe distance from the spot. The materials were then ignited as before; and when in the incandescent state, water was poured upon the ma.s.s down a spout. The result was but a comparatively slight explosion, and which scarcely disturbed the iron and clods placed over the mouth of the vessel. Another experiment of the kind was made with the same result. At length, a trial having been made for the third time, but with this difference, that the vessel was covered over the top with another similar vessel, and that the water was poured upon the burning sulphur and nitrate of soda with greater rapidity than before, by slightly elevating the spout, the effect was to blow up the pot on the top into the air to a height of upwards of seventy feet, accompanied by a loud detonation. With this the coroner and jury became convinced that, whether or not the premises in Hillgate contained gunpowder, they contained elements as certainly explosive, and perhaps far more destructive."

We may here mention, as a curious result of the Gateshead fire, that several tons of lead, whilst flowing in a molten state, came in contact with a quant.i.ty of volatilized sulphur. Thus the lead became re-converted into lead-ore, or a sulphuret of lead, which, as it required to be re-smelted, was thereby debased in value from some twenty-two to fifteen shillings a ton.

The great fire, again, which occurred in Liverpool in October last, was occasioned by the explosion of spirits of turpentine, which blew out, one after another, seven of the walls of the vaults underneath the warehouse, and in some cases destroyed the vaulting itself, and exposed to the flames the stores of cotton above. Surely some law is called for to prevent the juxtaposition of such inflammable materials. The turpentine is said to have been fired by a workman who snuffed the candle with his fingers, and accidentally threw the snuff down the bunghole of one of the barrels of turpentine. The warehouses burnt were built upon Mr. Fairbairn's new fireproof plan, which the Liverpool people introduced some years ago, at a great expense to the town.

Water alone brought into sudden contact with red-hot iron is capable of giving rise to a gas of the most destructive nature--witness the extraordinary explosions that are continually taking place in steam-vessels, especially in America, which mostly arise from the lurching of the vessel when waiting for pa.s.sengers, causing the water to withdraw from one side of the boiler, which rapidly becomes red hot. The next lurch in an opposite direction precipitates the water upon the highly-heated surface, and thus the explosive gas, in addition to the steam, is generated faster than the safety-valves can get rid of it.

A very interesting inquiry, and one of vital importance to the actuaries of fire-insurance companies, is the relative liability to fire of different cla.s.ses of occupations and residences. We already know accurately the number of fires which occur yearly in every trade and kind of occupation. What we do not know, and what we want to know, is the proportion the tenements in which such trades and occupations are carried on, bear to the total number of houses in the metropolis. The last census gives us no information of this kind, and we trust the omission will be supplied the next time it is taken. According to Mr. Braidwood's returns, for the last twenty-one years, the number of fires in each trade, and in private houses, has been as follows:--

Private Houses 4,638 Lodgings 1,304 Victuallers 715 Sale-shops and Offices 701 Carpenters and Workers in Wood 621 Drapers, of Woollen and Linen 372 Bakers 311 Stables 277 Cabinet-makers 233 Oil and Colour-men 230 Chandlers 178 Grocers 162 Tinmen, Braziers, and Smiths 158 Houses under Repair and Building 150 Beershops 142 Coffee-shops and Chophouses 139 Brokers and Dealers in Old Clothes 134 Hatmakers 127 Lucifer-match makers 120 Wine and Spirit Merchants 118 Tailors 113 Hotels and Club-houses 107 Tobacconists 105 Eating-houses 104 Booksellers and Binders 103 Ships 102 Printers and Engravers 102 Builders 91 Houses unoccupied 89 Tallow-chandlers 87 Marine Store Dealers 75 Saw-mills 67 Firework-makers 66 Warehouses 63 Chemists 62 Coachmakers 50 Warehouses (Manchester) 49 Public Buildings 46

If we look at the mere number of fires, irrespective of the size of the industrial group upon which they committed their ravages, houses would appear to be hazardous according to the order in which we have placed them. Now, this is manifestly absurd, inasmuch as private houses stand at the head of the list, and it is well known that they are the safest from fire of all kinds of tenements. Mr. Brown, of the Society of Actuaries, who has taken the trouble to compare the number of fires in each industrial group, with the number of houses devoted to it, as far as he could find any data in the Post-office Directory, gives the following average annual percentage of conflagrations, calculated on a period of fifteen years:--

Lucifer-match makers 3000 Lodging-houses 1651 Hatmakers 774 Chandlers 388 Drapers 267 Tinmen, Braziers, and Smiths 242 Carpenters 227 Cabinet-makers 212 Oil and Colour-men 156 Beershops 131 Booksellers 118 Coffee-shops and Coffee-houses 12 Cabinet-makers 112 Licensed Victuallers 86 Bakers 75 Wine Merchants 61 Grocers 34

It will be seen that this estimate in a great measure inverts the order of "dangerous," as we have ranged them in the previous table, making those which from their aggregate number seemed to be the most hazardous trades, appear the least so, and _vice versa_. Thus lucifer-match makers have a bad pre-eminence; indeed they are supposed to be subject to a conflagration every third year; while the terrible victuallers, carpenters, mercers, and bakers, at the top of the column, shrink to the bottom of the list. These conclusions, nevertheless, are only an approximation to the truth, since it is impossible to procure a correct return of the houses occupied by different trades. Even if a certain cla.s.s of tenements is particularly liable to fire, it does not follow that it will be held to be very hazardous to the insurers. Such considerations are influenced by another question,--Are the contents of houses forming the group, of that nature that, in cases of their taking fire, they are likely to be totally destroyed, seriously, or only slightly damaged? For instance, lodging-houses are very liable to fire; but they are very seldom burnt down or much injured. Out of 81 that suffered in 1853, not one was totally destroyed; only 4 were extensively affected; the very large majority, 77, were slightly scathed from the burning of window and bed curtains, &c. Among the trades which are too hazardous to be insured at any price are--we quote from the tariff of the County Fire-office--floor-cloth manufacturers, gunpowder dealers, hatters' "stock in the stove," lampblack makers, lucifer-match makers, varnish makers, and wadding manufacturers; whilst the following are considered highly hazardous;--bone-crushers, coffee-roasters, composition-ornament makers, curriers, dyers, feather-stovers, flambeau makers, heckling-houses, hemp and flax dressers, ivory-black makers, j.a.panners and j.a.pan makers, laboratory-chemists, patent j.a.pan-leather manufacturers, lint-mills, rough-fat melters, musical-instrument makers, oil and colour men, leather dressers, oiled-silk and linen makers, oil of vitriol manufacturers, pitch makers, rag dealers, resin dealers, saw-mills, seed crushers, ship-buiscuit bakers, soap makers, spermaceti and wax refiners, sugar refiners, tar dealers and boilers, thatched houses in towns, and turpentine makers.

The great ma.s.s of these trades bear "hazardous" upon the very face of them; but it is not equally apparent why that of a hatter should be so very dangerous, and particular portions of his stock uninsurable. We are given to understand that the stoves at which their manufacture is carried on, and the sh.e.l.l-lac and willow, are the causes of this p.r.o.neness to conflagrations. The memorable fire at Fenning's Wharf, which burnt with a fury to which that at the Royal Exchange and at the Houses of Parliament was a mere bonfire, originated at a hatter's on London Bridge, from which place it speedily spread to Alderman Humphery's warehouses in the rear, leaped across Tooley Street--at this spot 60 feet wide--and thus invaded the great river-side wharf. The two floating-engines belonging to the brigade were brought into service on the occasion, and although they threw between them fourteen hundred gallons of water a minute to the height of a hundred feet, they had not the slightest effect upon the burning ma.s.s.

Nothing shows better the relative degrees of hazard than the different rates charged for insurance. Thus an ordinary dwelling-house pays but 1_s._ 6_d._ per cent., while a sugar-refinery pays at least two, and sometimes three guineas per cent., or from 30 to 40 times as much. The same cla.s.s of houses pay different rates according to their locality. The residence which is charged 1_s._ 6_d._ in London, is, in St. John's, Newfoundland--a town famous, or rather infamous, for fires--charged by our English offices 1_l._ 11_s._ 6_d._ per cent. Probably the heaviest loss the Phoenix Office ever sustained was by the fire of St. John's, in 1846.

It is a notable fact, that the city of London, which is perhaps the most densely inhabited spot the world has ever seen, has long been exempt from conflagrations involving a considerable number of houses. "The devouring element," it is true, has made many meals from time to time of huge warehouses and public buildings; but since the great fire of 1666 it has ceased to gorge upon whole quarters of the town. We have never had, since that memorable occasion, to record the destruction of a thousand houses at a time, a matter of frequent occurrence in the United States and Canada--indeed in all parts of Continental Europe. The fires which have proved fatal to large plots of buildings in the metropolis have in every instance taken place without the sound of Bow bells. A comparison between the number of fires which occurred between the years 1838 and 1843, in 20,000 houses situate on either side of the Thames, shows at once the superior safety of its northern bank, the annual average of fires on the latter being only 20 against 36 on the southern side. For this exemption we have to thank the great disaster, if we might so term what has turned out a blessing. At one fell swoop it cleared the city, and swept away for ever the dangerous congregation of wooden buildings and narrow streets which were always affording material for the flame.

Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his "Handbook of London,"[43] gives the following curious information respecting its supposed origin:--

"The fire of London, commonly called the Great Fire, commenced on the east side of this lane (Pudding-lane) about one or two in the morning of Sunday, September 2nd, 1666, in the house of Farryner, the king's baker.

"It was the fashion of the true blue Protestants of the period to attribute the fire to the Roman Catholics; and when, in 1681, Oates and his plot strengthened this belief, the following inscription was affixed on the front of this house (No. 25, I believe), erected on the site of Farryner, the baker's:--

"'Here, by the permission of Heaven, h.e.l.l broke loose upon this Protestant city, from the malicious hearts of barbarous priests, by the hand of their agent, Hubert, who confessed, and on the ruins of this place declared the fact for which he was hanged, viz., that here began that dreadful fire which is described on and perpetuated by the neighbouring pillar, erected anno 1681, in the mayoralty of Sir Peter Ward, knight.'

"This celebrated inscription, set up pursuant to an order of the Court of Common Council, June 17th, 1681, was removed in the reign of James II., replaced in the reign of William III., and finally taken down 'on account of the stoppage of pa.s.sengers to read it.' Entick, who makes addition to Maitland in 1756, speaks of it 'as lately taken away.' The house was 'rebuilt in a very handsome manner.'

"The inscribed stone is still preserved, it is said, in a cellar in Pudding-lane. Hubert was a French papist, of six-and-twenty years of age, the son of a watchmaker at Rouen, in Normandy. He was seized in Ess.e.x, confessed he began the fire, and, persisting in his confession, was hanged, upon no other evidence than his own. He stated in his examination that he had been 'suborned in Paris to this action,' and that three more 'combined to do the same thing. They asked him if he knew the place where he first put fire. He answered he knew it very well, and would show it to anybody.' He was then ordered to be blindfolded, and carried to several places of the City, that he might point out the house. They first led him to a place at some distance from it, opened his eyes, and asked him if that was it; to which he answered, 'No, it was nearer the Thames.' 'The house and all which were near it,' says Clarendon, 'were so covered and buried in ruins, that the owners themselves, without some infallible mark, could very hardly have said where their own house had stood; but this man led them directly to the place, described how it stood, the shape of the little yard, the fashion of the doors and windows, and where he first put the fire; and all this with such exactness, that they who had dwelt long near it could not so perfectly have described all particulars.' Tillotson told Burnet that Howell (the then Recorder of London) accompanied Hubert on this occasion, 'was with him and had much discourse with him, and that he concluded it was impossible it could be a melancholy dream.' This, however, was not the opinion of the judges who tried him. 'Neither the judges,' says Clarendon, 'nor any present at the trial, did believe him guilty, but that he was a poor distracted wretch, weary of his life, and chose to part with it in this way.' We may attribute the fire with safety to another cause than a Roman conspiracy. We are to remember that the flames originated in the house of a baker; that the season had been unusually dry; that the houses were of wood, overhanging the road-way (penthouses they were called), so that the lane was even narrower than it is now, and that a strong east wind was blowing at the time. It was thought very little of at first. Pepys put out his head from his bedroom window in Seething-lane, a few hours after it broke out, and returned to bed again, as if it were nothing more than an ordinary fire, a common occurrence, and likely to be soon subdued. The Lord Mayor (Sir Thomas Bludworth) seems to have thought as little of it till it was too late.

People appear to have been paralyzed, and no attempt of any consequence was made to check its progress. For four successive days it raged and gained ground, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house and street to street, at great distances from one another. Houses were at length pulled down, and the flames, still spreading westward, were at length stopped at the Temple Church in Fleet-street, and Pie-Corner in Smithfield. In these four days 13,200 houses, 400 streets, and 89 churches, including the cathedral church of St. Paul, were destroyed, and London lay literally in ruins. The loss was so enormous, that we may be said still to suffer from its effects. Yet the advantages were not few. London was freed from the plague ever after; and we owe St. Paul's, St. Bride's, St. Stephen's Walbrook, and all the architectural glories of Sir Christopher Wren, to the desolation it occasioned."

In addition to these advantages we acquired another, that of PARTY-WALLS--a safeguard which has prevented fires from spreading in the City, when whole streets have been swept away in a few hours in other parts of the metropolis, and especially in what might be termed the water-side suburbs of London--Rotherhithe, Greenwich, and Gravesend. The Act by which party-walls were enforced came into operation immediately prior to the rebuilding of the town, and has been rendered more stringent and effective from time to time by various amendments. The Building Act of the 7th and 8th of Queen Victoria contains the important enactment, that "no warehouse shall exceed 200,000 cubic feet in contents." Fire becomes unmanageable when it has access to large stores of combustible matter; under such conditions it acquires a "fortified position," and cannot, in the vast majority of cases, be reduced unless by an early surprise.

As the very heart of London is largely occupied with Manchester warehouses full of the most inflammable materials, the safety of the capital depends upon this restrictive law. The Manchester warehous.e.m.e.n, nevertheless, have managed to set that part of the Act at defiance. Let us take, as the latest and most flagrant example, Cook's warehouses. This structure, which within these last two years has raised its enormous bulk in St. Paul's Churchyard, and actually dwarfed the metropolitan cathedral by the propinquity of its monotonous ma.s.s, contains 1,100,000 cubic feet of s.p.a.ce open from end to end, or _nine hundred thousand feet more than it is ent.i.tled to possess_. If we were to take twenty-five ordinary-sized dwelling-houses, and pull down their party-walls, we should have just the state of things which is here presented to us. But it will be asked, if it is against the law, why do not the proper officers interfere? Where are the City surveyors? The reason, good reader, is this: the Manchester warehous.e.m.e.n of late years have adopted a new reading of the law--a reading which we believe no judge would allow, but which the surveyors have not yet ventured to dispute. "We escape altogether," say these gentlemen, "the provisions of the Building Act relative to warehouses, as, by reason of our breaking bulk, our places of business are not mere storehouses." That this reading is a violation of the spirit of the statute there can be no doubt; that it is also a violation of its letter we also believe; if not, it is high time that the law be amended upon this point; for we affirm, on the very best authority, that London has never since the great fire been in such danger of an overwhelming conflagration as it is now by the presence and rapid spreading of these huge warehouses, filled with the elements of destruction, and placed side by side, as though for the very purpose of producing the utmost mischief by contagion.

Let us suppose, for instance, that a fire had once established itself in Cook's warehouses; to extinguish it would be out of the question.

Fire-engines would be perfectly useless against a body of flame which would speedily become like a blast-furnace, and burn with a white heat.

Who knows what would come after? Supposing the wind to be blowing from the south, we tremble for the cathedral. The huge dome is constructed entirely of oak, dried by the seasoning of 150 years, and the combustible framework is only lined on the exterior by sheet lead. It may be imagined that this would be protection enough against the enormous ma.s.ses of burning cotton and linen cloth which would speedily be blown upon it; but Mr. Cottam not long since stated, at the Inst.i.tution of Civil Engineers, that, "when the Princess's Theatre was on fire, part of his premises also caught. On examination, he found that it arose from a piece of blazing wood being thrown over from the theatre, which, falling into the leaden gutter, had melted it, and the liquid metal pa.s.sed through the ceiling on to a workman's bench, where there was some oil, which it immediately set fire to." The great dome would be in quite as much danger as Mr. Cottam's workshop. Engines would be useless at such a height even as the stone gallery, the place where large bodies of burning material would most likely make a lodgment. Irreparable as would be the disaster with which we are threatened in this direction, one quite as great lies in another.

Eastward of Cook's warehouses, and in the neighbourhood of a vitriol or some other chemical manufactory, is situated Doctors' Commons, the repository of the great ma.s.s of English wills. The roofs of this pile of buildings[44] are continuous; the buildings themselves are nearly as dry as the law itself. If one portion of the structure were to catch fire, nothing could save the whole from destruction. It may be urged that the block of buildings, which commands, like a battery, two such important points in the metropolis, is, after all, fire-proof, and, as far as danger from without is concerned, this is true enough; but as cotton bales are not fire-proof, it is an impossibility to insure safety from within. Iron columns in such instances melt before the white heat like sticks of sealing-wax; stone flies into a thousand pieces with the celerity of a Prince Rupert's drop; slate becomes transformed into a pumice light enough to float upon water; the iron girders and beams, by reason of their lateral expansion, thrust out the walls; and the very elements, which seem calculated under ordinary circ.u.mstances to give an almost exhaustless durability to the structure, produce its most rapid destruction. The great fire at Messrs. Cubitt's so-called fire-proof works at Pimlico is one of the latest proofs we have had of the entire fallacy of supposing stone and iron can withstand the action of a large body of fierce flame. We saw the other day portions of columns from this building fused as though they had been composed of so much pewter. Again, when the Armoury of the Tower was destroyed, the barrels of the muskets were found reduced to the most fantastic shapes, and some of the largest pieces of ordnance were doubled up. A stronger instance still was exhibited at Davis's wharf in 1837, when a cast-iron pipe outside the building was melted like an icicle. But such a fierce furnace is not at all necessary to destroy cast-iron supports, as it appears from the experiments of Mr. Fairbairn, that, at a temperature of 600 the cohesive power of the metal rapidly decreases with every increment of heat. Mr. Braidwood, in his paper on fire-proof buildings, read before the Inst.i.tute of Civil Engineers on February 29th, 1849, was the first, we believe, to draw attention to this serious defect in a material used so extensively in modern buildings. Since that paper was read, a case has come under his notice which clearly testifies to the truth of his position:--

"A chapel in Liverpool-road Islington, 70 feet in length and 52 feet in breadth, took fire in the cellar, on the 2nd October, 1848, and was completely burned down. After the fire it was ascertained that, of thirteen cast-iron pillars used to support the galleries, only two remained perfect; the greater part of the others were broken into small pieces, the metal appearing to have lost all power of cohesion, and some parts were melted, of which specimens are now shown. It should be observed that these pillars were of ample strength to support the galleries when filled by the congregation, but when the fire reached them, they crumbled under the weight of the timber only, lightened as it must have been by the progress of the fire."

But when we are considering the safety of Manchester warehouses, we are also considering the lives of the young men who are employed in them, and are in most cases located in the upper stories. In several of the wholesale warehouses in the City, as Mr. Braidwood informs us,--

"The cast-iron pillars are much less in proportion to the weight to be carried than those referred to, and would be completely in the draught of a fire. If a fire should unfortunately take place under such circ.u.mstances, the loss of human life might be very great, as the chance of fifty, eighty, or one hundred people escaping, in the confusion of a sudden night alarm, by one or two ladders to the roof, could scarcely be calculated on, and the time such escape might necessarily occupy, independent of all chance of accidents, would be considerable."

The application of water would only aggravate the difficulty, for, if it touched the red-hot iron, in all probability it would cause it to fracture and render it useless as a support. It is well known that furnace-bars are very speedily destroyed by a leakage of the boiler, the effect of the steam on the under side of the bars being to curve and twist them. To insure a perfectly fire-proof building, we must resort to one of two courses--either we must divide large warehouses into compartments by solid brick divisions, and thus confine any fire that should happen to break out within manageable limits, just as we save an iron ship from foundering, on account of a circ.u.mscribed fracture, by having her built in compartments; or we must resort to the old Roman plan of building--that is, support the floors upon brick piers and groined arches well laid in cement, for mortar will pulverize under a great heat. The former plan has the great advantage that it insures the safety of the princ.i.p.al contents, as well as of the building itself. The new Record Office in Fetter Lane, is a perfect specimen of the kind, and is, perhaps, the only absolutely fire-proof structure in England, being constructed of iron and stone, and having no room larger than 17 feet by 25, and 17 feet high, with a cubical contents of only 8,000 feet. None of the rooms open into each other, but into a vaulted pa.s.sage by means of iron doors; and if the doc.u.ments were to take fire in any one of them, they would burn out as innocuously to the rest of the building as coals in a grate.

It must not be supposed that we disparage altogether the use of iron and stone in the erection of warehouses, even where they are built on the ordinary plan; for the outside structure they are invaluable, and render it safe from most extraneous danger. No better proof of this could be given than the experience of Liverpool, whose fires during the last half-century have been on the most gigantic scale. The larger bonded and other warehouses were generally built with continuous roofs, and with wooden doors and penthouses to the different stories, which always kindled when there was a fire on the opposite side of the narrow streets in which they were ordinarily placed. To such a lamentable extent had conflagrations increased about the year 1841, that the rate of insurance, which had been eight shillings per cent., ran up to thirty-six shillings.

This was about the time of the Formby Street fire, when 379,000_l._ worth of property was destroyed, and the total losses from the beginning of the century had not been less than three millions and a quarter sterling. The magnitude of the evil called for a corresponding remedy. A Bill was obtained in 1843 for the amendment of the Building Act; party-walls were run up five feet high between each warehouse, doors and penthouses were constructed of iron, the cubical contents of the buildings themselves were limited, &c.; and the effect of these improvements was so to diminish the risk that insurances fell to their normal rate. It cannot be said, however, that Liverpool has yet purged herself of the calamity of fire.

In ordinary dwellings and in public offices the use of iron and stone, again, cannot be too much commended: in such buildings the rooms are comparatively small, and their contents are not sufficiently inflammable either in quant.i.ty or quality to injure these materials. A marked diminution in the number of fires in the metropolis may be expected, from the almost universal use of iron and stone in new structures of this kind. The houses in Victoria Street, Westminster, built upon the "flat"

system, are, we should say, entirely fireproof, as the floors are either vaulted or filled in with concrete, which will not allow the pa.s.sage of fire. Nearly all Paris is built in this manner, and hence its freedom from large conflagrations.[45] Were it not for this, no city would be more likely to suffer, as the houses are very high, and the supply of water extremely bad. To Londoners it seems little better than a farce to watch the _sapeurs-pompiers_ hurrying to a fire with an engine not much bigger than a garden squirt, followed by a water-barrel--resources which are found sufficient to cope with the enemy, confined as it is within such narrow limits.

Without going to the expense of stone and iron, we might, by taking a hint from the Parisians, make the rooms of our private houses fireproof, by abandoning the absurd custom of separating rooms by hollow wooden floors and hollow wooden part.i.tions thinly coated with plaster--a method which has the effect of circulating the fire from the bottom to the top of the house in the quickest possible s.p.a.ce of time. If a fire breaks out in a room, the ceiling will, it is true, stop the flames for a considerable time; but the hollow part.i.tions full of air act as conductors, and the firemen have often found that the flames have spread from a lower to an upper apartment by this secret channel, without injuring the intermediate rooms, and without even its progress being suspected. As we understand that the Building Act is to be amended, we trust its emendators will extend the clause relating to party-walls to _rooms_ as well as to houses.

The expense need be but trifling, as will be seen by consulting the little work of Mr. Hosking, who was the first, we believe, to instruct the English public in the admirable methods of the Parisian builders. Instead of using flimsy laths for their part.i.tions, they employ stout oaken pieces of wood, as thick as garden palings; these they nail firmly on each side of the framing of the part.i.tion, fill the s.p.a.ce between with rubble and plaster of Paris, and thickly coat the whole of the wall with the latter.

The floors are managed in the same manner, as well as the under side of the stairs, which are thus rendered almost as fire-proof as a stone flight. Very many lives would be saved in Great Britain if this simple expedient were adopted by our builders, instead of making the stairs of ill-fitted wood, full of air-crevices, and covering their under side with a thin film of plaster; for fire always makes for the stairs, which form the funnel of the house; and hence the necessity for rendering them as secure as possible, in order to provide a line of retreat for the inmates.

We have said that London is growing upwards to the sky--no house in any valuable portion of the metropolis being now rebuilt without the addition of at least one story. Eighty and ninety feet is getting a common height for our great offices and warehouses, which is tantamount to saying that a certain portion of the metropolis, and that a constantly increasing one, is outgrowing the power of the Fire Brigade, as no engine built upon the present plan can throw water for many minutes to such an elevation. Mr.

Braidwood foresees that he must call in the aid of the common drudge, steam. In America they have already introduced this new agent with some success, and in London we have proved its power in the floating engine.

Steam fire-engines, it is evident, will soon be brought into use, unless we do away with the necessity for engines at all by fixing the hose directly on the mains, as is done at Hamburg. But to effect this it will be necessary to relay the whole metropolis with much larger pipes, to increase their number, and at the same time adopt the constant-service system. At present, even if we had the water always on, the mains are often so small as to preclude the use of more than two or three hose--for, if the collective diameters of the areas of the latter exceed that of the pipe which feeds them, the pressure will cease, and no water will be propelled to any height through the jet. It cannot be denied, however, that if the streets of London were all supplied with capacious mains, and the different companies plugged them profusely (a thing they are very chary of doing, for fear of their being injured by the wear and tear of the fire-engines), London would be rendered far more secure than it is at present, as scarcely any fire could withstand the full force of constant streams of thousands of gallons of water per minute. At present the greater portion of the water is wasted; at the destruction of the Houses of Parliament, a body of this element equal to an acre in area, and twelve feet deep, flowed from the mains, a tenth part of which could not have been used by the twenty-three jets that were playing simultaneously.

It will not here be out of place to say a few words upon the method of extinguishing flame by means of the gaseous mixture contained in Phillips's fire-annihilators. According to a writer in the "Household Words," the ordinary-sized annihilator is less than that of a small upright iron coalscuttle, and its weight not greater than can be easily carried by man or woman to any part of the house. It is charged with a compound of charcoal, nitre, and gypsum, moulded into the form of a large brick: the igniter is a gla.s.s tube inserted into the top of this brick: inclosing two phials--one filled with the mixture of chlorate of pota.s.sa and sugar, the other containing a few drops of sulphuric acid. A slight blow upon a k.n.o.b drives down a pin which breaks the phials, and the different mixtures coming in contact ignite the ma.s.s, the gas arising from which, acting upon a water-chamber contained in the machine, produces a steam, and the whole escapes forth in a dense expanding cloud.

Mr. Phillips made some public experiments with his fire-annihilator three or four years ago, in which its power to put out the fiercest flame was fully proved. The timber framework of a three storied-house smeared with pitch and tar, upon being fired, was instantly extinguished: quant.i.ties of pitch, tar, and oil of turpentine, which only burn the stronger for the presence of water, were dealt with still more expeditiously. The valuable quality of rendering an atmosphere of dense smoke, in which no living thing could exist, perfectly respirable, was also shown in the most satisfactory manner. Since that time the machine has been brought into action at Leeds, where it put out a fire in an attic; and in a very serious conflagration, which took place in the spirit-room, and afterwards extended to the main hatchway of the mail steamer the _City of Manchester_, in the autumn of 1852, it was applied with the most perfect success. There can be no doubt that in all confined places the control of the annihilator over flame is omnipotent--acting much more speedily than water, and, unlike that element, doing no damage. When the flames are unconfined, the annihilator will prove of little use, because, the gaseous cloud that issues from it not being heavier than the air, it cannot be projected to any distance. As an auxiliary to the engine, it will be invaluable in many cases, as it will enable the fireman to go into places where at present he dares not enter, unless protected by the unwieldy smoke-jacket, the supply of air to which might at any time be cut off by rubbish falling upon the hose through which it is pumped to him by the engine.

Although it is foreign to our design to speak at length of agricultural fires, and incendiarism among farming stock, the subject is too important to be entirely omitted. One of the largest London insurance-offices, interested in farming stock, posts up bills about premises they have insured, which, after stating that no lucifers are to be used, or pipes are to be smoked, goes on to say, "_This farm is insured; the fire office will be the only sufferer in the event of a fire._" The inference is, that the labourer will feel more inclined to pay respect to the property of an insurance company than to that of the farmer. Yet it is far from being the case that the crime is always prompted by personal ill-will. One of the largest agricultural incendiaries upon record was a city weaver, who acted from a general spirit of discontent, without any hatred or knowledge of the owners. In other instances the sole motive is the "jollification"

which generally follows a fire upon a farm: this fact came to light at a trial in Cambridge, eight or nine years since, when a man who was sentenced to death for setting fire to a homestead confessed to having caused twelve different fires, his only object being the desire to obtain the few shillings, and the refreshment of bread, cheese, and ale, which are given to labourers on these occasions. On the other hand, if the farmer determines to give no recompense, the hangers-on have been known to put their hands in their pockets and watch his property burn with the utmost indifference, if not with glee.

The cause of fire which the farmer has mainly to guard against may be at one seen by the following table, for which we are indebted to the manager of the County Fire Office:--