The Great Fire of Edinburgh was the catalyst for Britain's first integrated fire brigade.
In 1703, after a series of devastating fires in Edinburgh’s Old Town the city fathers were forced to act.
What followed was an Edinburgh Act of the Scottish Parliament for, “Quenching of Fires and Rules to be Observed by the Inhabitants Thereanent.” It began the slow process of building Edinburgh’s fire service into the first municipal brigade in Britain.
Fire BrigadeTraining
The new fire regulsations allowed 12 newly appointed firemasters to recruit a number of men on an auxiliary basis. With little fire training and armed with the most rudimentary equipment they endeavoured to fight the fires that blighted the lives of those that lived in the tightly packed lands (high tenements) and the squalid closes of Scotland’s capital city.
By the turn of the 18th century, Fire Insurance Companies originally started in London, were introduced in Edinburgh. These companies formed their "own ‘fire brigade’ and would tackle a blaze only if the building was insured by the company and displayed a plaque fixed at the entrance detailing the relevant policy number.
Fire Insurance
It was not uncommon for them to turn up at the scene of a fire only to find the building did not have the appropriate insurance cover. On those occasions they might simply stand and watch the building burn, or go home.
Inevitably it was realised that one integrated brigade was needed. However it wasn’t until 1824 that a man widely regarded as the father of the British fire service became the Firemaster of Britain’s first municipal fire service.
The remarkable young man chosen as the first Superintendent of Fire Engines was James Braidwood, a native of Edinburgh.
It was around 10 o’clock on the evening of 15 November 1824 only a few weeks after Braidwood’s appointment when a shout of fire was heard on the High Street.
Within an hour a number of fire engines had arrived on the scene followed by the, “Sheriff, Lord Provost, Baillies and other high personages.” In the absence of a central command each of them saw fit to issue often contradictory orders to the firemen.
By midnight the fire which had started in a printers shop on the High Street had advanced down Fishmarket engulfing four tenement blocks in its path.
A reporter from the Evening Courant an Edinburgh newspaper of the day described the scene, “Fire spread resistlessly…the scene was now awfully grand… the whole horizon was completely enveloped in lurid flame…”
The fire burned through the night defying the best efforts of the firemen to extinguish it. Along the front of the High Street four lands of six stories each had been destroyed, down towards the Cowgate near Conn’s Close two more. In the Old Assembly Close four lands of seven stories together with six smaller buildings in Borthwick Close burned to the ground.
Thirteen people, including two firemen, died during the Great Fire of Edinburgh.
The inquiry held afterwards exonerated Braidwood from any blame realising that there was no clear directive about who, precisely was in command during the fire.
Undaunted by his early experiences, James Braidwood spent the next eight years training and moulding a group of men into a disciplined and effective force.
In 1830, still only 29 Braidwood published the first book on fire fighting ever written in the English language, On the Construction of Fire-engines and Apparatus, the Training of Firemen and the Methods of Proceeding in Cases of Fire.
In his biography of Braidwood, Brian Henman describes this unique publication as the “foundation stone upon which the whole structure of modern British fire fighting has been built.”
