Pat Poland recalls a time when the insurance companies themselves fought the flames

The first organised firefighting body since the days of the splendid Roman Vigiles, some 1,200 years before, came into existence in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London in 1666. A wily doctor by the name of Nicholas Barbon was the first to propose a system of fire insurance on property, and he was soon followed by others, anxious to cash in on the new concept.

Barbon responded by going a step further. As an added incentive to prospective clients (and to diminish his own losses), he announced the setting-up of a private fire brigade that would respond quickly to any house on fire that was insured with him. This was ground-breaking stuff, almost 200 years before the concept of public fire services was first mooted.

The first insurance company to locate in Ireland was the Royal Exchange Assurance. In 1722 it appointed its first Irish agent, Luke Gaven, with offices on Dublin’s Abbey Street. An advertisement recorded that:
“Firemen, powerful Engines, and other Instruments are in constant readiness in case of accident, maintained at a large expense for the security of the public. The men are distinguished by a uniform of light green, with gold badges, bearing the figure of the Royal Exchange, the Emblem of the Company.”

Over time, insurance fire brigades were also established in Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Derry.

For many years the story was repeated that if a brigade arrived at a fire and found the property was not insured with their company, they would go back to their station with no attempt made to fight the blaze.

Another suggestion has been that the ‘wrong’ brigade, far from assisting the ‘right’ one on arrival, would actually hinder their efforts at firefighting by cutting their hoses or generally causing mayhem.

When one considers it objectively, it stands to reason that no fire brigade could allow a conflagration to develop unchecked: the possibility being that their company insured, if not the adjacent property, then very likely the property next to that.

The advent of the insurance fire brigades gave Ireland something which it had never had before: an organized approach to fire suppression. As reliance on the decrepit parish pumps (the manual fire engines maintained, by law, by the Church of Ireland) diminished, the insurance brigades acquired a certain status as quasi-public institutions, with their firefighters regarded as holding a kind of public office.

The firefighters were under the direct control of a brigade’s foreman and engineer, who, in turn, answered to the agent. The firefighters were usually part-time, and were hired on the explicit understanding that, on receipt of an emergency call, they would (and could) leave their place of work immediately and make straight for their company’s ‘engine house’ (i.e., fire station).
The engineer, who looked after the engines and premises, usually lived on, or near to, a company’s fire station. The engineers were full-time employees, proficient in elementary hydraulics, pump operation and fire fighting techniques. They, and the foremen, were selected by the agents for their leadership qualities: on – and off – the fire ground their word was law.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own