For two centuries after the Great Fire of London, much of British firefighting was a private subscription service: insurers' uniformed brigades protected buildings displaying their company's lead fire mark, and tales — partly embellished — tell of crews standing down at uninsured houses. The system's inefficiency became indefensible; the companies merged their brigades under James Braidwood in 1833, and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act finally made London's firefighting a public service in 1866.
Insurance brigade fireman no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
1666–1824
Insurance brigades and hand-pumped engines
London's 1666 catastrophe produced fire insurance, and insurance produced brigades: uniformed company men who protected buildings bearing their employer's fire mark. Technology moved with the money — Richard Newsham's London-built engines of the 1720s used an air vessel to throw a continuous stream, and cities from Philadelphia to New York imported them. Benjamin Franklin's 1736 Union Fire Company helped spread the volunteer model across America, making the fire company a social institution as much as a service.
What else was happening then
1666
The Great Fire of London creates fire insurance
The September 1666 fire destroys more than 13,000 houses and 87 churches. Within a year, Nicholas Barbon founds the first fire insurance business, and insurers soon field their own brigades that protect buildings displaying their company's metal fire mark. For a century and a half, much of London's firefighting is done by competing private companies with paying customers.
1720
Edo organizes the machibikeshi
Magistrate Ōoka Tadasuke organizes Edo's townsmen into 47 iroha-named fire companies, the machibikeshi, recruited largely from tobi — the agile construction workers and steeplejacks who could tear down buildings to cut firebreaks. Each company's matoi standard, held aloft on a roof beside the fire, marked its ground; the hikeshi became celebrated, tattooed folk heroes of the city.
1811
Napoleon militarizes the Paris pompiers
After a fire at the Austrian embassy's ball in July 1810 kills guests celebrating Napoleon's marriage while the city's firefighting collapses in confusion, Napoleon signs an 1811 decree creating the sapeurs-pompiers de Paris as a military unit under army discipline. The Paris fire brigade remains a French Army formation today, and Marseille's is a unit of the Navy.
1824
Edinburgh appoints James Braidwood
Edinburgh establishes what is often called the world's first municipal fire brigade and puts 24-year-old James Braidwood in charge. Weeks later the Great Fire of Edinburgh tests it. Braidwood drills his men at night, insists on entering buildings to attack a fire's seat rather than spraying from the street, and in 1830 publishes the first modern firefighting manual.
Where that work lives now
The trade that runs toward what everyone else flees — from Rome's vigiles and Edo's matoi bearers to today's wildfire crews and 24-hour rescue shifts.
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