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Rh captain in command told me that the city had, on an average, about six alarms of fire a week, I casually remarked that we had twenty-five a day in New York. He looked at me with wonderment and doubt, and when I repeated that we actually had between twenty and thirty alarms of fire a day in the alone, he threw up his hands and exclaimed, “Thank heaven, it is not as bad as that here, or our beautiful city would be destroyed!”

And so we find, thanks to superior building construction, less hurry and rush in business methods, and a wholesome regard on the part of the citizens for certain rigid laws covering the use of explosives and materials of all kinds which usually cause fire, the lot of the foreign fire-fighter is not as strenuous as that of his brother fireman on this side of the water. Because of the excellent character of the buildings abroad fires burn slowly, and rarely extend beyond the room or floor in which they start. Here, on the other hand, the conditions are entirely different. Our fires are larger, more destructive, and more frequent, compelling us to support not only the most effective, but most expensive, fire-departments in the world; and yet, in spite of all this, our annual fire losses are from ten to twenty times more than those of any country in Europe.

Better building laws and the universal adoption of fire-prevention ordinances, are going to change all this for us, in time, but as yet our annual fire loss stuns the average European by its enormous total.

London, the fire-department comes under the supervision of the city authorities, the looking after the administration of the “,” as it is



called; and this brigade, in management and routine work, is not unlike many large American fire-departments, though the apparatus used is radically different. A naval officer has always been chief of the London fire-brigade, and the firemen are usually recruited from the marine service, a time-honored custom giving preference to men who have been at least five years at sea.



It is argued that the work of a fireman is of a nature more readily performed by a sailor, who is not only accustomed to danger and exposure of all kinds, but is trained to climbing and working in perilous positions. These new men, after passing a severe physical examination before a medical hoard, are put through three months’ careful schooling at fire headquarters, where they are not only taught how to handle every tool and implement used in the brigade, but become skilled in life-saving work.

The fire stations in London are much larger than the engine-houses found in American cities, and some of the newer buildings in appearance are not unlike some of our better-class apartment-houses, Indeed, this is practically what they are—a kind of apartment-house or barracks for the men and their families, as well as a station for the apparatus and the horses; and here the firemen live, occupying little apartments of from three to five rooms, according to their rank and position. They are, therefore, in the houses and on duty at all times, with the exception of one day's leave of absence in every fifteen.