London's early water mains were wooden pipes buried under the streets, and getting water at a fire meant finding and opening them. The turncock was the water company's man who knew where every main and fire plug lay and was paid a reward for arriving fast and turning the water on. Cast-iron mains and pressurized hydrants — and eventually municipal waterworks — dissolved the trade into the modern water utility.
Turncock no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
Antiquity – 1600
Bucket chains and the night watch
For most of urban history, firefighting meant neighbors, buckets and demolition hooks, stiffened in a few great cities by organized patrols. Rome's Vigiles combined fire duty with night policing for centuries; medieval European towns rang curfew — couvre-feu, 'cover fire' — ordering hearths banked for the night, and made citizens keep buckets and ladders by law. When those measures failed, the only real tactic was pulling down houses ahead of the flames to starve them of fuel.
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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