Fire Brigades 1890

[Top-of-the-hill]

   I have a newspaper report of a fire in a small village in 1893, which my grandfather remembered. The report says that the Volunteer Fire Brigade arrived promptly, but I find that hard to believe, as the Brigade had to come from a village 3 miles away. I then began to wonder how they would have been called out. I doubt if there would have been any telephones at that date? Would the next village with a Post Office have been able to telegraph? Or would it have been a boy on a bike riding the 3 miles?

[AlanBoyd]

Your ideas were, apparently, spot on!

This is taken from the document at  http://old.essex-fire.gov.uk/_img/pics/pdf_1398868180.pdf as part of a discussion of the situation in or after the 1870s I think.

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Calls to fires were often delayed in getting to the local Fire Brigade due to the lack of modern communications. In town centers it wouldn’t have been too much of a problem to get a message to the Chief Officer alerting him of a fire, but then the firemen would have to be called out, which could take some time, horses would have to be brought to the fire station and hitched up to the appliance and then the Brigade would turn out to the fire. Valuable time would be lost and generally the fire would have taken hold of the premises. Outside of the town the problem of calling the fire brigade was far more difficult, in particular getting a message to the brigade. Various means were used, including sending someone on horseback to the nearest town or indeed sending a telegram from the local Post Office. As a result, the Brigade’s response was severely delayed. So even if a Brigade had the best equipment available, successful fire-fighting was still left to chance.

[AlanBoyd]

I suppose if the Fire Brigade happened to be running an exercise, or even finishing off a fire nearby, then the delay could have been shorter.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Thanks Alan! I believe the telegraph system developed in the mid-19th century, so the boy on the bike to the next village is probably the answer.
 

[GrahamSimons]

Irrelevantly bit not quite. Did my Fireman's Badge as a Scout many many years ago. The instructor fireman claimed their fastest call-out was 20 seconds - they were leaving on the fire appliance, blue lights going, for a practice when the call came in and was shouted from the phone in the station to the crew on the appliance..... Might be apocryphal of course

[Hollander]

There is a possibility communication could have been made by telephone in 1893, to either the fire station or local post office.
Until recently, I had a collection of the business correspondence from a Lancashire solicitor's office, in the year 1890.
A series of letters in this collection related to a request for 'the telephone apparatus' to be installed in both the solicitor's office, and at his home in a nearby small village.

[AlanBoyd]

Here are the results of a search at British Newspaper Archive for ['fire brigade' & telephone].

The number of hits for simply 'telephone' also take off between 1876 (37hits) and 1877 (8333 hits). This fits with the dates of Bell's invention(1876) and the establishment of the first telephone exchange in London (1879).

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Thanks for the interesting replies. I don't think there were any professional men in the village at the time.
  As an aside - when telling us about this fire, grandfather said "all the women in the parish came running". The fire was in a large carpenter's workshop, and I wonder if there was some sort of small explosion.

[AlanBoyd]

OK, I now need to read the newspaper report—can you tell us where and when please?