London’s Blitz-the firefighters story.

The London blitz begin in London 84 years ago this September. It was almost exactly twelve months after Britain had declared war on Germany. London was bombed for 57 consecutive nights.

London’s docks served as a beacon for further waves of enemy bombers. 7th September 1940-first night of the Blitz.

That first major raid took place over the 7 September 1940. It was followed by aerial bombardments, usually under cover of darkness, over the Capital and many of Britain’s major towns and cities. (It is estimated that over an eight month period, around two million homes were destroyed and between 40,000 and 43,000 civilians lost their lives, with many more injured in addition to those killed and injured fighting the fires and conflagrations resulting from the bombing raids.)

Yet despite these chilling statistics, the Blitz served to strengthen rather than weaken British resolve, invoking what we now remember as the famous ‘Blitz spirit’. Yet only two months before those serving the in the London Fire Brigade, and in particular those who had joined the newly created Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS), where often vilified in the press and, on occasion, by the general public as war dodgers!

The Prime Minister of the time, Winston Churchill, would later coin the phrase, “Heroes with grimy faces“, referring to all regular firemen and the AFS firefighters. It was a fact that St Paul’s Cathedral would not be here today were it not for them.

The Blitz started on a Saturday, Saturday late afternoon to be precise. To some it might have seemed that WWII had finally arrived at their doorstep, although there had been other German air-raids before that fateful day. For some unfortunate ones it was the last day of their lives. Whilst for members of the enlarged London Fire Brigade and the other Brigade’s in the London Region it was to be the start of their ordeal by fire. The bombs would rain down for 57 continuous nights before individual, but still devastating, mass bombing raids would continue until May 1941.

For those 57 continious nights, and then frequent raids beyond, London’s firemen and women worked in very demanding conditions. They worked throughout the raids, even while the bombs were falling. The firefighters were at risk from collapsing buildings and falling shrapnel from anti-aircraft guns, often working15 hours at a time, in clothes that were soaked through.

The Auxiliary Fire Service

The likelihood of a Second World War was already being planned for in the early 1930s. Although not widely publicised the then National Government, under the premiership of Ramsey MacDonald, were considering what arrangements would be necessary to cope with enemy aerial attacks on its strategic population centres. This was just one of many problems for the Government, not the least of which was the vast economic trouble the whole country faced in the wake of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent widespread depression it caused.

The London Fire Brigade’s, headquraters, hose-laying lorry used in the recruitment campaign for the AFS,
(Photo credit-London Fire Brigade.)

However, despite this background, the Home Office (then responsible for the Fire Service) held a series of seminars and secret planning meetings to deliver a strategy in the event of war and subsequent fire attacks on the British mainland from the air. London was considered a particularly vulnerable target from enemy action, not least because it was the nation’s seat of government and the City of London was crucial to the country’s financial and business interests. The London of the 1930s took on a vastly different look to the London of today. The River Thames provided easy access for shipping to the vast network of extensive docks and associated warehouses. The dockland warehouses, from Southwark and Blackfriars on the south bank and Tower Hill on the north bank, ran eastward to the Essex and Kent borders.

It was recognised at an early stage that it would require a massive expansion of the existing fire brigade(s) to deal with fires involving London’s central maze of narrow streets, warehouses filled with combustible products such as oils and grains and dockyards with acres of stacked imported timber. Failure to respond to such a challenge could leave London little more than a smoking ruin. However, before that day arrived the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) was formed and from March 1938 their numbers grew. Attracting the 28,000 proposed volunteers was a major logistical exercise. A massive recruitment drive was launched. Whilst sixty fire brigade vehicles toured London’s streets, a poster campaign was mounted and planes flew the over capital trailing recruitment banners. Even the Thames was used to advertise this new fire force and the Brigade’s high speed fireboat flew similar banners seeking recruits to supplement the London Fire Brigade’s river service.

The area we now know as Greater London had, prior to the outbreak of war, at least 66 fire brigades. This included the London Fire Brigade, the largest, which covered the whole of the former London County Council administrative area. Some of these other brigades were one fire engine outfits that only protected a small borough area while others had four or five stations such as West Ham and Croydon. Buildings and vehicles were seconded into service to house and equip this basically trained corps of AFS firemen and women that had now greatly expanded London’s fire service. Meanwhile garages, filling stations and schools, empty since the mass evacuation of children, were taken over and adapted as fire stations.

One of some 2000 taxis converted for World War II fire brigade use by Auxiliary firefighters in London and other major UK cities. Photograph taken in Lambeth High Street, outside the London Fire Brigade HQ.
(Photo credit-London Fire Brigade.)

Some 2,000 London taxis were brought into service and used to tow trailer pumps. The taxis were large enough to carry a crew and the hose was stored in the luggage compartment. However, the accommodation was frequently poor at best and the new volunteer firefighters spent many hours making good their bases and building their own wooden beds. In addition to this they erected brick walls over windows and sandbagged entrances to protect themselves from blast damage.

The Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) eventually had some 21,000 volunteer firefighters, all of whom had to undergo 60 hours of basic training. Here AFS firemen are undergoing hose drill, running out the hose and connecting it with a special spanner which he carried on his belt along with his axe. Firefighters were expected to complete this task both in daylight and in the dark.

The basic training was provided by firemen from the London Fire Brigade. Detached from normal firefighting duties, they put the new recruits through 60 hours of practical and theoretical lessons. Whilst some women chose to undertake dispatch rider (motorcycle) duties and others opted for motor driving most were trained in ‘watchroom’ duties and necessary procedures for mobilising fire engines and pumping units. Everyone underwent basic firefighter training. They were, of course, civilians. They had volunteered from every trade and profession, from every walk of life. Office workers, labourers, lawyers, tailors, cooks and cleaners had taken up the call to join the Auxiliary Fire Service.

Women Auxiliary Fire Service (WAFS) members receiving hose instruction from London Fire Brigade staff in the Headquarters drill yard at Lambeth, SE1. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

London regular and AFS firefighters spent many hours, sometimes days, at incidents during the Blitz, and they needed refreshments. Women of the Auxiliary Fire Service are seen here learning to prepare and cook meals for those on the Blitz front line.
(Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

AFS recruits were divided into different categories. This was based on their physical capabilities, their age, gender and skills. Men considered Class B performed general firefighting duties. B1s worked only on ground level, either pump operating or driving. Others recruited from trades on the Thames were classed for River Service work and whilst women would be in the thick of it none performed frontline firefighting duties. Those youngsters under 18 years of age became messengers equipped with either motorcycles or pedal cycles.

Those auxiliaries who became full-time firefighters on the outbreak of war received a weekly wage. Firemen earned £3 per week, women got £2. Those aged 17–18 received £1-5 shillings and the 16–17 year olds got £1 a week.

7th September 1940.

It was a lovely sunny day when, at 4.43 p.m. the air-raid sirens started over London. A 12-hour bombing attack was launched on the capital and the ‘all clear’ would not be sounded until 4.30 a.m. on the 8^th. In that raid, 1,600 people had been seriously wounded and 430 killed. Swathes of London’s docks and the surrounding areas were either totally destroyed or left as smouldering ruins.

For that first night only one in five of London’s firefighters had had any previous experience. The dangers they faced were numerous and unpredictable. During the war, more than eight hundred firefighters would be killed and more than seven thousand, seriously injured. Many of them blinded by heat or sparks. At the end of the ten-week onslaught of intensive bombing on London fire-crews were utterly exhausted by lack of sleep, excessive hours, irregular meals, extremes of temperature, and the constant physical and mental strain.

Warehouses ablaze following heavy bombing raids on the Surrey Commercial Docks in Rotherhithe, SE London. This raid took place on 7 September 1940 and was consider to be the start of the Blitz on London.

On the river, beside the Massey Shaw and London’s other fire-fighting craft, London’s air defence precautions included the River Emergency Service. More than a dozen pre-war pleasure steamers were converted to first aid and ambulance boats. They were moored at various points along the river including Silvertown Wharf, Wapping and Cherry Garden Pier, alongside the Beta III. A taste of what the fire-float crews, and others, endured on the Thames that first night (7th September) it is perhaps best illustrated by a personal account given by Sir Alan Herbert, who was in command of the Thames Auxiliary Patrol’s vessel Water Gypsy, which was heading downriver:

“Half a mile or more of the Surrey shore was burning. The wind was westerly and the accumulated smoke and sparks of all the fires swept in a high wall across the river.” He pressed on into the clouds of smoke: “The scene was like a lake in Hell. Burning barges were drifting everywhere. We could hear the hiss and roar of the conflagrations, a formidable noise but we could not see it so dense was the smoke. Nor could we see the eastern shore.”

As dawn broke on the 8^th September the scale of the destruction was revealed. In addition to the dead and the injured three main railway stations were out of action and one thousand fires were still burning, burning all the way up the river from Deptford to Putney. They included two hundred acres of timber ponds and stores in the Surrey Commercial Docks, destroying one third of London’s stocks of timber – timber which was badly needed for building repairs in the coming months.

London’s women at war-in this case serving within the AFS.

Women had worked as firefighters long before the outbreak of the Second World War. They had been employed by private brigades and others, like the one attached to the feminist Girton College in Cambridge- the first all-women “brigade” in the UK where students were taught by Captain Sir Eyre Massey Shaw, the first chief fire officer of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade.

When the AFS was formed in 1938, a huge recruitment drive was launched to attract women as their fathers, brothers and husbands were signing up to join the Royal Navy, Army and RAF. At the mid-1930s there were still only 4,272 professional firemen in the whole of the UK, with nearly half of them employed in the London Fire Brigade.

When war broke out in September 1939, and with the AFS some 100,000 strong the ‘new’ firemen we seen as potentially posing a considerable threat to the regular fire brigades. Then to add insult to injury, as some saw it that ‘women’ were being allowed to join too! It was not a popular move with many of the men in positions of authority in the service. One chief officer even refused to admit women, declaring: “I would rather resign than be made to drill young girls and women to be firemen”.

But such macho sentiments like these had relatively little impact thankfully. With firewomen numbers increasing from 5,000 in 1940 to 20,000 six months later in 1941, the year the AFS was removed from local and placed under government control (and renamed The National Fire Service (NFS)) the numbers would rise to more than 90,000 women enrolled in the NFS by 1943.

Driving in pitch dark. The women were not expected to extinguish fires, although some did unofficially. Most were in supportive roles; drivers and despatch riders (a far more perilous job than it sounds) which would involve driving in pitch dark during enemy air raids.

Many others worked in the control rooms, usually putting in very long hours, but the women who attended air raids and fought fires alongside men seem to have been written out of history.

An internal Home Office memo from 1941 states that women’s duties were telephone and watchroom work, although it accepted that “it is not inconceivable that ultimately women may be accepted for observation duties and even as pump operators”.

Former FBU official Terry Segars writes in a later FBU history, Forged in Fire: “The reality … was that firewomen were more widely involved in active work than is generally acknowledged, and they could often be found in the midst of things during the blitz, whether helping out on the pumps, in control rooms close to the centre of the severest raids or delivering supplies to firefighters.”

Twenty-five firewomen lost their lives during the war.

London’s river fire service.

At the start of the blitz there was no stand-alone river service. It was an integral part of the London Fire Brigade and the London Fire Region. In 1938 twenty auxiliary fire-floats (they were not called fireboats until the creation of the National Fire Service in August 1941) had been ordered by the London County Council. These additional craft supplemented the London Fire Brigade’s existing five fire-floats: the newest being the high speed ‘James Braidwood’. The Massey Shaw (commissioned 1935), the Beta III (commissioned 1926) and the oldest two craft the Gamma II and the Delta II, which although decommissioned had been brought back into operational service.

The London Regional River Service and the fireboat attached to the River fire station 1RU at Battersea Bridge.

Auxiliary London firemen (AFS) under instruction in the use of a rocket-line as part of their fireboat drills and training. The rocket-line was a flare-type gun which fired a rocket, with a thin line attached, from the fireboat to the shore or vice-versa, to which a stronger line would then be attached. That bigger line could then haul fire hose, connected to the fireboat, to shore and supply water to land based pumps fed from the river via the fireboat’s pumps.

With its greatly increased numbers the boats, and a commensurate increase in river stations, London had the largest river-based firefighting force in its entire history. The additional boats, some of which were open whilst others had a small rear crew cabin, all carried two large capacity portable pumps, each with an eight hundred gallon per minute output. Mounted in the front of these ‘new’ craft was a monitor mounted on the front of each boat. Additionally the Brigade had seconded four Thames barrages. Each barge carried four one-thousand gallon per minute Dennis fire pumps and had twin holes cut in the stern plates. Six inch suction hose was fed through the holes and placed in the river. The barges, which could move in all directions, were manoeuvred by powerful jets of water from two of the pumps. The other two pumps on the craft were used to concentrate on dock and ship fire, although when moored all pumps could deliver the equivalent of five major land fire appliances.

The enlarged river force suffered its only fatality during the period of the ‘Phoney War’ when, on the 6th January 1940, River pilot George Sluman, who was employed by the LFB, was lost overboard when he fell from the Lambeth pontoon, opposite the Brigade headquarters building on the Albert Embankment. He was 53 and his body was recovered two weeks later on the 18^th January at Southwark Bridge.

In addition the LFB’s four existing river stations, the Battersea station was reactivated after its closure in 1937, there were another nine stations from Richmond in the upper reached down to North Woolwich. In that first week of the Blitz much of the river service was constantly on station, if not actively engaged in firefighting them supplying vital water supplies to those that were. Unlike their land counterparts, on the river, there was nowhere to run for cover. Occasionally the fires would come to them as blazing steams of molten poured for the quayside and onto the water.

( Following the Blitz, which ended in May 1941, lessons had been learned from bring together differing brigades to fight major conflagrations. At times this led to misunderstanding and confusion with mismatched equipment and chains of command. In August 1941 the National Fire Service was created, it came into being on the 18^th of that month. Contained in the London Region was the newly created River Thames Formation. It brought together the now renamed ‘fireboat’ stations of London, Kent, Surrey and Essex. It covered an area from Tilbury to Walton-on-Thames. Fifteen new river stations were added and the river firefighter’s strength had increased to 386. The now had a fleet of 30 fireboats and 40 adapted barges. Each pontoon was large enough to have two fireboats and two or three barges moored alongside.)

An AFS fireman’s tale.

Blitz in London — AFS firefighters salvage their bedding from the bombed-out Mansfield Road fire sub-station after it was seriously damaged in a bombing raid on 16 November 1940.

“At that time, there was quite a lot of friction between the London Fire Brigade members and the AFS. We were regarded as young upstart amateurs but as events proved, we were just as professional as they were.

At one time, their helmets were painted bright red so they were instantly recognisable as LFB men. I was stationed at Holloway, at sub-station 76X. We had three LFB men in charge of us, each whose rank was no higher than Fireman, but they had been given charge of the sub-station because of the emergency situation. One of these men was a big, well built, abrasive type of man. When he gave instructions at drill time he would use three swear words when one would have been more than enough.

One night, North London appeared to be getting more than its fair share of a heavy air raid. At Holloway, we had six appliances available and one by one they were ordered out to various incidents until only one was left of which I was the driver/pump operator. The man in charge of us was this particular LFB man. We were sent to an incident in the Finsbury Park area which turned out to be a warehouse behind a row of terraced houses.

Access was by a long wide yard between two houses. We saw that water was pouring down this yard like a river in flood. Our intrepid No 1 said;

“Follow me.”

So in single file, we splashed our way up the yard. I was immediately behind our leader when suddenly he disappeared! We could hear a lot of muffled cursing and splashing and looking down. All we could see was a red helmet just above the water line.

The other two crew members and myself managed to grab his shoulders and yank him to his feet. There was this big arrogant man looking like a drowned rat. We dare not laugh otherwise I think he would have killed us. It seemed that someone in their wisdom had removed the cover of a rather deep man hole to enable some of the excess water to get away and our No 1 became its first victim.

by ASF Fireman-George Woodhouse (Touse).

Falling from the skies.

Four-fifths of all bombs dropped during the Blitz were high explosives (HE). The German war machine constructed them of thin steel to maximise the effect of the blast, and they varied greatly in size. Some had a cardboard tube (like an organ pipe) attached which emitted an eerie whistling sound as the bomb plunged to earth. They were expressly designed to terrify the civilian population.

The smallest, and most common, were the 110lb bombs. There was also the 2,200lb bomb, nicknamed “Hermann” (named after the portly Hermann Goring). Then there was the “Satan” (4,000lb) and the largest bomb dropped on Britain was the “Max” that weighed 5,500lb.

The parachute bombs were very effective as they floated down and did not penetrate the ground. The damage they caused was widespread. Designed to smash through modern pre stressed-concrete industrial buildings in residential areas. The author of London at War 1939-1945 pointed out “as soon as one was seen falling, people would begin to move towards it: partly, perhaps, because they mistook the mine for a descending German pilot who needed to be lynched or apprehended; more probably because they wanted the silk of the parachute to make skirts or dresses.”

Incendiary bombs were small, but were very dangerous, as they could start fierce fires where they fell unless they were extinguished swiftly with sand or water. Thermite magnesium incendiaries were about eighteen inches long and only weighed around two pounds each, so thousands could be carried by a single plane. When ignited by a small impact fuse, the magnesium alloy would burn for ten minutes at a temperature that would melt steel, and metal particles would be thrown as far as fifty feet.

The George Cross was instituted on 24 September 1940 by King George VI. … I propose to give my name to this new distinction, which will consist of the George Cross, which will rank next to the Victoria Cross, and the George Medal for wider distribution. The medal was designed by Percy Metcalfe.

The George Cross remains the second highest award of the United Kingdom honours system. It is awarded “for acts of the greatest heroism or for most conspicuous courage in circumstance of extreme danger”, not in the presence of the enemy, to members of the British armed forces and to British civilians.

In 1940, during the height of the Blitz, there was a strong desire to reward the many acts of civilian courage. The existing awards open to civilians were not judged suitable to meet the new situation, therefore it was decided that the George Cross and the GM would be instituted to recognise both civilian gallantry in the face of enemy bombing and brave deeds more generally.

Announcing the new awards, the King said:

“In order that they should be worthily and promptly recognised, I have decided to create, at once, a new mark of honour for men and women in all walks of civilian life. I propose to give my name to this new distinction, which will consist of the George Cross, which will rank next to the Victoria Cross, and the George Medal for wider distribution.”

Blitz-Control rooms.

Control rooms were interesting places to be when their neighbourhood was under attack. Fire calls would pour in in by telephone and messenger, and it need an orderly system and well-trained operators-almost all women-if confusion were to be avoided.

Priorities and reserves presented many difficulties. If Mrs Brown rushed frantically into the station to say that her roof was blazing, was it possible to reply:

“We are sorry madam, but the fire service is reserving its last remaining appliance lest something more essential to the war effort than your house should catch fire, for example, the adjoining engineering factory of the nearby telephone exchange.”

There is much to be said for the slogan: ‘The fire that is burning is worth more attention than the fire that may never occur’. Important building around the capital have their own first-line fire defence, which could hold the fort until reinforcements arrived. On one occasion it happened that a message was passed by a fire station to a control at a higher level: ‘Called to a fire at Buckingham Place; no attendance from this station. On another occasion no immediate help was available when the House of Commons was hit by incendiaries.

Control room decisions were sometimes very difficult.

The Evening News-Tuesday October 1st 1940. By a Special Correspondent.

L.C.C. officials are tackling the job of making things as comfortable as possible for London’s heroic A.F.S. men and women. There have been little grumbles lately about the canteens and accommodation-chiefly lack of hot meals and drying facilities for cloths after long nights of dangerous firefighting. Ever effort is to be made to prevent any such troubled in the future.

Professional cooks have now been engaged at all stations and sub-stations so that meals can be prepared at any time and the number of field kitchens for use where there is any interruption of gas supplies is to be increased so that there will no hold-ups.

Emergency heating arrangements are being made to ensure the quick drying of saturated cloths.

In addition, it will be possible that extra premises will be acquired so that firemen temporary transferred from one station to another will not be overcrowded.

W.A.F.S. Helped: In the early days of the war the A.F.S. provided their own cooks. At some stations ‘W.A.F.S.’ took over the job-at others men who had had some experience. A few clubbed together to hire a cook. But when their work became arduous the Council [LCC] decided that cooks should be attached to all stations. This has now been done, and it is hoped that supplies of hot meals and drinks will always be ready when the firemen come off duty.

On the Spot: Mobile canteen vans now go around to all big fires started by incendiaries so that the firefighters may have and snacks on the spot.

But it is realised that men who have fought fires through intensive raids for perhaps eight hours or more want a hot meal before “turning in”.

An official of the L.C.C. said to me; “Everything possible is being done to ensure that the catering and accommodation are the best possible.” “There is plenty of food and all stations have facilities for cooking. With field kitchens to fill the gaps there should be no trouble.”

Station 72 – Soho Fire Station – 7 October 1940

Shaftesbury Avenue in W1 was bombed on several occasions during 1940 and 1941. On the 24th September 1940 two high explosive bombs hit the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Wardour Street damaging the Queen’s Theatre and St Anne’s Church, Soho. There were four casualties were reported but no fatalities. The buildings were assessed as dangerous when inspected by the Rescue Services. The next day, 25 September, an oil incendiary bomb hit near the intersection of Great Windmill Street and Shaftesbury Avenue bursting a water main.

Then at 7.45p.m. on 7^th October – after four nights in which Westminster escaped damage in the enemy raids on London – a high explosive bomb hit the doorway of Soho fire station, located at 72 Shaftesbury Avenue and close to Cambridge Circus, directly opposite the Palace Theatre. The Shaftesbury Avenue station (built in 1887 and renamed the Soho Fire Station in 1921 after the London Salvage Corps moved out) suffered severe damage and was virtually demolished. The station was replaced by a temporary structure-a structure that remined in place until 1983, when the current station was erected on the same site.

The dust was thick in the air and rubble, forty feet high, spreadeagled itself across Shaftsbury Avenue and onto the frontcourt of the Palace Theatre. Two passers-by sheltering in the doorway were killed outright and several of the firemen inside, sheltering in the basement emerged, covered in dust and some very shaken, but generally unhurt. Some firemen remained trapped in the watchroom, the entrance to which was completely blocked by fallen rubble.

When the first supporting crews from the near-by sub-station arrived, they found that not only had the Soho firemen from the basement released their colleagues from the watchroom they had also removed the three dust laden fire engines, two staff cars and two dispatch rider bikes from the station too. However, two were still missing. They were LFB Station Officer William Wilson and AFS Fireman Frederick Mitchell. It would take two days before their bodies were finally recovered.

The Evening News, in its edition on Tuesday 8^th October gave back page coverage to the ‘ALL-NIGHT LONDON RAIDS. Towards the tail end of the lengthy update was the sub-heading ‘FIREMAN KILLED’. The paper commented;

‘One fireman is dead, one is missing, and three are severely injured as the result of a bomb on a London fire station. The rest of the staff of the station got out of the debris unharmed.’ It was not the first tragedy to befall those attached to station 72 Soho. Seven Auxiliary firefighters died when a bomb hit the AFS sub-station at Jackson’s Garage in Rathbone Place (72X). It occurred around midnight on 18^thSeptember 1940, and Soho’s AFS substation was directly hit. The explosion demolishing the building and killing civilians as well as seven members of the AFS.

EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMOIRS OF FIREWOMAN. WINIFRED SLEET A.F.S. AND L.F.B.

“The blackout was a real hardship. Coming out of a well-lit room into the street was often fraught with danger if there was no moonlight. Once I found myself half blind, despite carrying the regulation torch, with its light blocked out by tape leaving just a tiny beam. Walking into the railing around a tree I suffered a black eye and split lip. That night, the now regular air-raid, a bomb fell on the bridge over the railway opposite. The bridge formed part of Liverpool Road which ran along the top of our street. I was on duty and went outside to look up towards the bridge. The buildings were still standing, minus the windows. It was a night to remember, as not long after, one of the men came in to say there was a strange swishing noise in the yard. We all went outside, and someone spotted a parachute dangling from the broken guttering, high up.

What seemed to be a long dark object was swinging around beneath it. At first, we thought it was an airman but it wasn’t the right shape, so we broke all the regulations and shone a torch up towards the roof. It revealed that what we were looking at was a land-mine capable of flattening the whole street. The station personnel, and any residents left at home in the street, were evacuated in minutes, and once again the bomb disposal unit came to our rescue.

As the raids continued stories began to circulate around the fire stations. We heard tales about warehouses in the docklands area, and how their contents were scattered in the bombing. Of fur coats and bales of expensive cloth and silks, floating down the gutters. Of the rivers of boiling sugar syrup from the Tate and Lyle sugar warehouse, and the horrors of the burning and exploding tins of paint. Paper was the worst, it smouldered for weeks, despite continual hosing down. When the perfume contents of the “Evening in Paris” stores were hit the bottles burst open and liquid perfume ran into the gutters. All the fire appliances in that area, had the wheels soaked in the stuff, and the fire stations reeked of perfume when the appliances returned. We heard that it put the men off their food it was so bad.

A lot of the casualties were men, fighting fires, on the boats and jetties. If they slipped and fell into the Thames, whilst wearing full gear of uniform, waterproofs and heavy boots, it was fatal unless a colleague saw them and got help.”

Balham. 14^th October 1940.

Tragically, Underground stations were not always the safest places to be. Over 60 would be killed at Balham underground station in October 1940 when a bomb hit the street above the station and collapsed the tunnels below. The bomb burst a water main and the combination of water and soil meant some drowned in the resultant slurry.

It was on the evening of the 14^th that one of the worst wartime disasters involving the London Underground took place. With German bombers overhead people had taken to the shelters, in south-west London this included the platforms at Balham underground station. Many trains were still running and commuters would be stepping over people using the station platforms for protection.

Although just 43 feet (13 metres) below ground, the Balham platforms were considered deep enough to be classed as an official shelter point. At exactly 2 minutes past 8 p.m. a bomb hit Balham High Road above the station. It caused a massive crater in the ground, and fractured a water main below ground. A bus, unable to stop, drove into the crater. It was an image of the London bombing that was circulated around the Allied globe.

The local Balham people had gone down into the Tube for safety, but instead they found something worse than the bombs. What they found was unknown, terror, women and children, small babes in arms, locked beneath the ground in a new Hell. One involving the power of water plus a cloud of gas. Those not killed outright were tragically either suffocated or drowned like rats in a cage.

The initial number of dead was unclear. Reports ranged from 64 to 68 people, although the Commonwealth War Graves Commission now officially records 66 deaths due to the flood of water and soil into the tunnel. In addition, more than 70 people were injured. What was certain is when the bomb actually struck: the clock on the underground platform stopped at 8:02pm.

Below ground the crater had struck right above a cross passage between the two platforms. Debris filled the short corridor however, with the water main broken the force of nature took an unkind hand as the water shifted vast quantities of soil into the tunnel system.

Mr Colin Perry was to later recount how the disaster was told to him. “The water main was burst and the flood rolled down the tunnels, right up and down the line, and the thousands of refugees were plunged into darkness, water. They stood, trapped, struggling, and panicking in the rising black invisible waters.”

Confusion reigned and rumour and gossip were already talking about hundreds of dead at Balham. But an inspection by Lt-Col. AHL Mount, the Chief Inspecting Officer of Railways at the Ministry of Transport the following day dismissed many of the claims as exaggerated. But his report gave a graphic insight into the aftermath of the disaster, as the London Fire Brigade was still pumping water out the following day and one of the three broken water mains was draining “into the crater like a small waterfall.”

It took several months to clear the site with bodies still being recovered in late December. The line, which had been suspended between Tooting Bec and Clapham Common was reopened on the 8th January 1941, with the station reopening on the 19th January.

The week of 10^th-17^th October 1940.

By the first week of October 1940 four LFB fire stations and seven AFS substations had been hit and put permanently out of action. At each there had been serious casualties.

Any raid could bring oil bombs, high explosive land mines, incendiaries, and parachute mines. Each had its followers in the shape of raging fire, falling debris, and choking smoke. South of the Thames, in Southwark, one such major blaze involved the Blackfriars Goods Yard on Friday 10^th October.

However, using the London Underground as a mass air-raid shelter was not without its difficulties and its risks. Journalist Alison Barnes proclaimed at the end of her newspaper article, ‘that the airlessness, the lack of real ventilation was far more disturbing than all the noisy concrete horrors of London above ground.’

Footnotes.

London had been bombed for 57 nights. The enemies last consecutive raid came on November 3rd 1940. Although London would continue to attracted the devastating, and deadly, bombing raids like a magnet, the Luftwaffe had spread its net wide across the country. A new term ‘to Coventrate’ [meaning to ‘devastate by heavy bombing] entered the language after Coventry was attacked by the light of a full moon. Local factories, roads and railways were destroyed and 568 people were killed.
Merseyside received the unwanted accolade of being the second most heavily bombed place in the country. Hull, Swansea, Southampton, Portsmouth, Belfast, Bristol and Avonmouth also suffered. Clydeside, which had hoped it was out of range, was bombed in March. Not a single pub was said to be left standing. Over 4,000 homes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair in an already desperately poor area.
As the bitter winter bombing dragged on few places escape attack. The main targets are ports, ship yards and naval bases and major London raids in December through to early 1941..
In the eight months of attacks on greater London, some 43,000 civilians were killed. This amounted to nearly half of Britain’s total civilian deaths for the whole war. One of every six Londoners was made homeless at some point during the Blitz, and over 1 million houses and flats were damaged or destroyed. 327 of London’s firefighters lost their lives.

Paris to London Marathon Row.

LE MARATHON WHALER ROW DE SAPEURS-POMPIERS DE BRIXTON (LONDRES) E PARIS A LONDRES 1981. Nous remercions nos amis Francais pour leur hospitalité et nous espererons quils nous souhaitent un Bon Voyage.

Mike Bedwell was from the Royal Navy. He was a Lt Cmdr. and was one of two adjudicators for our Guinness Book of Records attempt. He arrived at the fire station mid-evening. We had previously talked on the phone a few times but this was our first actual meeting. Dressed casually, he spoke with a soft upper class accent and looked every inch the dapper gentleman I had already conjured up in my mind’s eye. In his late thirties, he was of average height and clean-shaven. But seemed immediately relaxed in the company of us firemen. He published a report of our efforts in the London Fireman magazine. His opening paragraph provides a flavour of his first impression of what he had let himself in for:

“Your sleeping space is a bit primitive but it’s all been swept out” I had to take Stn O Dave Pike’s word for the swept bit, for the primitiveness of the penthouse area of Brixton fire station extends to the wiring which makes a gallant but vain attempt to bring amps to dark places. I did a blind pilotage into my sleeping bag after sampling Saturday Night Fever in a Brixton chippy. I was telling myself that I should never have joined.”

We were booked onto the 6.30 am Sealink ferry from Dover to Calais. At 2 a.m. on the 24th August with the teams assembling the early morning banter started. The 27ft whaler was on the AA’s trailer,the four support vehicles packed and ready together with the three rowing crews of five plus the support team and our extra member…the Divisional Commander-the late Brian ‘Bill’ Butler in mufti.

en-route to Paris and the naval whaler on the AA’s trailer.

The journey to Paris went like clockwork. Much to my surprise and to the obvious delight of all, we were met at Calais by a police motorcycle escort that saw us on our way to Paris. There they were replaced by our opposite numbers from the Paris fire service who escorted us to our overnight stop at Messena, the largest barracks of the Sapeurs Pompiers in Paris. ‘Bill’ just loved all this special treatment and with a beaming smile and glass in hand asked, “How the effing hell did you arrange that?” Knowing it was solely down to the kindness of some French official who took pity on us when I wrote to tell them of our undertaking I lied “Put it down to good planning.”

Late afternoon we put the whaler into the River Seine at Pont Notre Dame, the starting point of this fund raising by adventure. Our planned early night turned out to be not so early as the wine and conversation flowed, highlighting the natural kinship that exists between firefighters everywhere but especially when there is a glass or two of wine to share and stories to exchange largely due to our overworked interpreters.

The rowers and support team were ready at 4.30am the following morning, some not so jauntily, after our “Entente-Cordiale”, ready to catch the first morning light and start the row. We rowed in non-stop relays from first light until the French lock system shut down at mid-night.

My most treasured memory was rowing with my Brixton crew and arriving at a small village near Noyon. It was towards evening and we had been rowing hard to make up some lost time in the schedule. There waiting by the lock were the local part-time Pompiers, all standing in line and dressed in their very best bib and tucker and accompanied by the Mayor and other village elders to welcome us. It would have been churlish to have refused the Champagne that, after the obligatory mayoral words, awaited us. Luckily Mike Bedwell was also fluent in French and made an appropriate response and gifts were exchanged before we were back in the bloody boat! That was not the only official welcome either. In the town of Thourotte we were given a formal civic reception and made honorary Freemen of the town. Once again ‘Bill’ Butler was smiling like a Cheshire cat and wondering how all ‘just’ happened.

The biggest challenge was the crossing of the Channel and rowing the tidal Thames. After landing at Dover, clearing Customs, most went to the harbour’s East Wall to witness the whaler’s arrival. Waiting was the Sun XXVI sea-going tug, our second lager escort ship. The skipper and crew thought us all quite barmy but they were genuinely delighted to be involved with our efforts. Now it was non-stop to Tower Bridge.

Reaching London fire stations that bordered the Thames, on both sides of the river, turned out to cheer us on. We ‘raced’ through the Thames Barrier and as we approached the Royal Naval College, Greenwich the last piece of the row fell into place. Prior to our departure I had arranged for the fireboat’s crew to bring down to Greenwich two other whalers. Now all three crews rowed from Greenwich to Tower Bridge for a combined finish. What we were not to know was that the Chief Fire Officer, Ron Bullers, and senior GLC politicians were there to greet us. With a swift “well done” they understood we had a marathon to finish and stayed on the fireboats to see us complete the Paris to London row.

The total time, from start to finish, was six days fourteen hours and one minute.

The footnote by Mike Bedwell in the Official Log sent to The Guinness book of

Records probably best sums up this remarkable week.

“Their unconventional style and technique might raise an eyebrow on the

least anchor-like of naval faces, but for sheer guts, stamina and determination no praise is too high.”

Sadly we did not make it into the record books this time! However, we did raise over £10,000 for charity and gave true value for money to our sponsors. I even managed a nice letter from Brian Butler congratulating me, but it never lasted long. A bollocking, for some misdemeanour, soon followed but it was nice while it lasted.

The presentation of the monies raised was held on HMS President, as the guests of the Royal Naval Reserve, The principal guest of honour for that evening was the LFB’s former Chief Officer, Joe Milner, who although retired (many of us thought he was actually forced out) was still highly regarded by us firemen. He accepted the cheque for the Benevolent Fund. Another cheque was handed to the International Year of the Disabled and joined us in a pint or three!.

We often talk of our brotherhood-this remains a week where I lived it 24/7. A week when, regardless of rank, we were all equals, support crew or rowers united by the most special of bonds. Just ordinary London firemen playing hard and working even harder.

The London Fire Brigade’s breakdown lorries. A short history.

1932 and the brigade’s first dedicated breakdown lorry pictured at the Southwark headquarters station.

Unlike the canteen van, there was only ever one breakdown lorry in the brigade fleet at any one time. They remained at the headquarters stations, firstly Southwark and then Lambeth, until the opening of the new Clapham fire station in 1960, when Lambeth’s breakdown lorry was transferred to the D Divisional HQ-D60.

The originals of the breakdown lorry can be traced back to Arthur Dyer, the Chief Officer of the LCC-LFB. (1918-1933). The advent, and progress, of the motorised fire engine brought both improvements and challenges to Dyer. Quicker and more efficient than their horse drawn counterparts Dyer realised he had too many fire stations and in the 1920s he closed 20 of them. The petrol driven appliances were also subject to the occasional mechanical failure and Dyer authorised the adaption of a Brigade lorry to act as the first breakdown lorry which could return the vehicles to the Southwark mechanical and vehicle workshops. However, the lorry also carried other lifting equipment, most notably a large lifting tripod, which could be deployed at the increasing number of special-service calls the Brigade was expected to deal with.

1936. The Morris designed Brigade breakdown lorry undergoing trials at the Southwark headquarters station yard.

His immediate successor (Major Cyril Morris. MC.) was largely responsible for the reorganisation and re-equipping his Brigade during his tenure (1933-1938). Among his many innovative designs (and introductions) was a purpose-built breakdown lorry-BYV 317. With a crew of two and based at Southwark, in addition to its vehicle recovery role, it also attended major accidents and supplemented the emergency tender crews with its heavy hot-cutting equipment.

The London Blitz and the breakdown is used to moved heavy debris following enemy bombing in south London.

1948 and Lambeth’s breakdown lorry is a major feature in the Brigade’s involvement in the Lord Mayor’s Parade in the City of London.

1955. The breakdown lorry captured in its operational role at a north London road traffic accident.

Transferred to the new Lambeth headquarters in 1937 the breakdown provided valuable service during the Blitz, assisting at the scenes of enemy bombings, and lifting/moving heavy debris. Not adverse to public outings it was a regular feature in the Lord Mayor’s Parades in the City of London.

Chief Officer Frederick Delve had guided the Brigade through the latter WWII years and was now overseeing the Brigade’s return to local authority control (London County Council). Delve gave a contract to Dennis of Guildford to provide the brigade with a new breakdown lorry-SLD 661. It became an important tool in the Brigade’s ability to deal with the aftermath of road traffic accidents, especially those involving heavy vehicles.

The breakdown lorry in its new home at Clapham fire station. Old Town,

1962. A regular call for the breakdown lorry was the recovery of crashed vehicles following road accidents.

Transferred to Clapham fire station on its opening (D60) it never made it to the creation of the Greater London Council. In 1964 it broke its back when the jib failed to go under an RSJ when on towing duties. It fell to Dennis to supply the Brigade’s last breakdown lorry-314 FLM. It maintained the five-ton capacity crane and a two-ton hydraulic winch.

Clapham’s new breakdown lorry (314 FLM) getting to work in the Old Kent Road. South London.

The breakdown lorry was not the busiest of appliances but they carried a talented crew. Trained in hot cutting and the limits of their equipment’s capabilities they were frequently a great asset to any officer in charge with the knowledge and skills they brought to the scene.

The London Fire Brigade breakdown lorry never made into the 1980s. It was withdrawn from service at the end of the 1970s and not replaced.

London’s fire brigade- a private collaboration (1832 -1866).

Certainly, within the City of London and that of adjoining Westminster fire cover had, since the early 1700s, been the prerogative of the private independent insurance companies. It remained that way until 1832. In that year the majority of insurance companies combined their forces, forming the London Fire Engine Establishment (LFEE), a single fire brigade made up of those previously independent.

The amalgamation of the Insurance brigades helped to remove some of the chaos, reportedly, frequently occurring at fires. Whilst the LFEE remained a private body, it was nevertheless recognised as the public fire service for the London area. An advert running on 1 January 1833 announced its goal was to provide better fire protection to the inhabitants of the Metropolis. But in 1862, when John Drummond, Esq., Managing Director of the Sun, and Chairman of the Committee for Managing Fire Extinctions, was questioned on the ‘principles on which the LFEE had been formed’ he replied ‘solely for the protection of the offices; it is an association of nearly all the offices in London’ (House of Commons, 1862).

James Braidwood, a Scot, led a force that consisted of 80 watermen and had 17 land and two river stations. The now Superintendent Braidwood, who had previously run the Edinburg brigade, brought with him formal training programs for his new firemen. He also required that they have working knowledge of the district to which they were appointed. However small the LFEE was considered to be a very efficient organisation at the time. But, according to the Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, the large insurance offices did not consider the protection the Brigade provided adequate for the City of London. They preferred fire protection to be publicly provided. London was expanding rapidly. The cost of protecting the metropolis from fire in 1833 was £7,988. By 1865 the cost had risen to ₤26,005.

James Braidwood-appointed the Superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment. 1833.

The Insurance companies were becoming acutely aware of the financial strain of fire protection. They sought opportunities to rid themselves of this burden. The insurance companies, involved in the LFEE, expressed their concerns over shouldering the duty of fire protection, therefore relieving the government of this duty. In a letter to the acting Prime Minister, and following the fire in which the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) was almost totally lost, they cited concerns were the failing conditions of the parochial engines and possibility of an insured property and an uninsured property catching fire at the same time.

Although the Insurance companies were willing to provide services to all in need, they were responsible only to their employers and through them to those purchasing insurance. Therefore, Insurance companies were not required to provide assistance to uninsured property, including public buildings. The insurance companies explained ‘….if during the late conflagration at Westminster, any insured property in danger, or any simultaneous fire or fires in other parts of the town, had imperatively called upon the Superintendent to devote the service of the engines elsewhere, Westminster Hall and the public property adjoining must have shared the fate of the two Houses of Parliament’.

The acting Prime Minister replied indicating ‘…the interference of Government would be productive of little benefit, while it might and probably would relax those private and parochial exertions which have hitherto been made with so much effect and so much satisfaction to the public’. The LFEE continued to supply fire protection to London for the next 30 years.

Braidwood wrote to the Commissioner of Public Works in 1854, to highlight his concerns with the safety of a particular warehouse being built on Tooley Street, which was too large and did not have the necessary fireproof measures in place. He wrote:
“The whole Building, if once fairly on fire in one floor, will become such a mass of Fire, that there is no power in London capable of extinguishing it, or even of restraining its ravages on every side and on three sides it is surrounded with property of immense value.”
Time would sadly prove the accuracy of James Braidwood’s warnings.

With London expanding, and the cost of fire-fighting growing, insurance companies struggled to continue to provide the service. It was clearly not a profitable endeavour for them. They were paid to provide insurance not to fight fires. The cost of offering fire protection now outweighed the benefit to them. Furthermore, because insurance companies were paid to provide insurance, an incentive existed for the offices to protect insured homes. An issue could certainly arise if both an uninsured property and insured property caught fire at the same time. The insurance companies would focus on the insured property and the uninsured would follow after.

A manual pump is being worked by volunteers whilst firefighters from the London Fire Engine Establishment (LFEE) direct their efforts and fight the fire.

There was no incentive for insurance companies to correct this problem because they were not paid to fight fires. The government however felt the services provided were adequate and turned its attention elsewhere. In 1836 The Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire was formed. It followed in the footsteps of the Fire Escape Society (1828), an organisation set up by philanthropists in reaction to the high death rate in domestic property fires. The Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire provided escape ladders at fires, working alongside the LFEE to protect the citizens of London from fire.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire provided escape ladders at fires, working alongside the LFEE to protect the citizens of London from fire.

Pre the LFEE London parish pumps, volunteer firemen and individuals owning and operating firefighting equipment continued to exist. Parishes while, perhaps, providing some assistance at fires had not improved the condition of their equipment. Volunteers continued to supplement the private brigades’ coverage, providing a great assistance to Braidwood and his force that were responsible only for the insured property located primarily in the centre of London. Despite having concerns about the fire service brought to its attention, the government declined to become involved.

Braidwood was killed in 1861 at a fire in Tooley Street. His death was said to have created confusion and disorganisation at the fire since there was no one appointed to lead in his absence. Further, the economic implications of the fire were profound. It cost the insurance companies over £2,000,000. The Insurance companies attempted to raise premiums, some by as much as 300 per cent. This created a loud response from both merchants and other business men who believed the size of increase was unjustified.

The insurance companies tried yet again to relinquish their fire-fighting duties. In a letter to the government, insurance companies note that ‘without any public authority whatever it [the LFEE] has for nearly 30 years extinguished the fires which have occurred in the metropolis and surrounding districts without inquiry and without charge’. The insurance companies pleaded for reconsideration of the state of the fire service: ‘In the opinion of the Committee such an increase in the number of fires and in the expenditure incurred, rendered a reconsideration of the whole subject imperatively necessary, more particularly as they were satisfied that a system for the extinction of fires which might formerly have been adequate for the metropolis, has now become very insufficient for its present greatly extended limits’ (House of Commons, 1862).

In response to the post Tooley Street uproar, a Select Committee was established to evaluate the system of fire protection in London. The Committee interviewed many witnesses to prepare its report discovering among other things that the insurance companies had been operating at a loss for some time. When John Drummond, Esq., Managing Director of the Sun was questioned regarding premiums he indicated that competition was such a factor that he doubted an increase could be carried into effect. Drummond was also asked why the insurance brigade (LFEE) would pay for fire extinction at all houses, to which he replied: ‘There is no reason why we should do so; we do so on the principle that it is our interest to put out every fire; that this house may not be insured, but that the next may, and that the one not insured may set fire to the other’ (House of Commons, 1862).

The report produced from the Committee noted that the insurance companies had agreed to supply fire suppression ‘so long as the expense was moderate’; however, the cost of the duty had now grown to a ‘magnitude’ which the insurance companies believed ‘they cannot continue to bear’. The report noted that of the £900,000,000 of insurable property only about £300,000,000 was actually insured. The final report also noted that the LFEE ‘as far as their means would enable them, have performed most ably and most efficiently. It has, however, been equally admitted by every witness that the present scale of their staff, engines, and stations is totally inadequate for the general protection of London and its immediate vicinity from the dangers of fire. This detail was admitted by the new Superintendent of the brigade, one Capt. Eyre Massey Shaw. (Appointed after Braidwood’s death.)

However, the Committee concluded that they consider the LFEE efficient for the protection of that part of London where the largest amount of insured property is located. They had no desire, or intention, to add to their expense by placing additional fire stations in situations where, if a fire occurs, it is not likely to cause such comparative injury to the offices as if it occurred in the water-side warehouse near the City. The final report from the Select Committee, and the details leading up to it, shed more light on why the insurance companies fought so hard to relinquish the duty of fire protection. The recurring argument that the cost of firefighting was rising significantly and the Insurance companies were not getting paid to fight fires.

There was a severe free-rider problem because of the difficulty of excluding uninsured properties. Premiums on the one-third of property in London that was insured were covering the cost of fire protection for the remaining uninsured two thirds. Even if competition had not impeded the implementation of increased premiums, it would have only affected those individuals already paying for the service. To operate profitably the insurance companies would have needed to find a way to charge individual home owners for fire protection, separate from the charge associated with insurance.

**Watling Street. Location of the headquarters station of the London Fire Engine Establishment. 1833-1866.**
(It also remained the headquarters station of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade until a new headquarters was built for Capt. Shaw. It was opened in 1878 in Southwark Bridge Road. SE1.)

The Watling Street headquarters and fire station. City of London.
(Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

Alternatively, insurance companies needed to find another body to assume the duty of fire protection. Following the Report an Act was passed in 1865 to transfer fire protection into the hands of the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW), a public authority. Public provision of fire protection began in London on 1 January 1866. The new Metropolitan Fire Brigade was created. With it a new post too, that of Chief Officer, the first being Capt. Shaw. The Insurance companies and parishes were officially relieved of their fire-fighting duties. Both were required, however, to contribute monetarily to the new public brigade. Insurance companies were mandated to pay at a rate of ₤35 per million gross insured (House of Commons, 1862). Those previously providing brigades were now required to pay for the service. In addition, insurance companies remained actively, and voluntarily, involved in monitoring the efficiency of the new institution. They served up recommendations for improvement of the fire service, including the development of several smaller stations versus fewer larger stations. Still with insurance cost concern the Insurance companies also formed the London Salvage Corps and in doing so deprived the new brigade of some its former firemen!

In addition to assuming the firefighting duty, the MBW through the MFB, also took on the services previously provided by the Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire. This transfer was driven by the Society which had experienced a drop in income. Additionally, the parishes which were now paying for fire protection believed protection of life should be included as part of their payment. The MBW eventually succumbed and took over the duty.

The transfer of firefighting from the private to public sector was not without difficulties. The financial situation was dire. The budget set for the brigade was tight and borrowing power of the MBW was restricted. The MBW received funds from the parishes and the insurance companies, as well as the government. Yet, financial troubles ensued. The new brigade had difficulty taking over mortgages of existing stations from the insurance companies, not to mention the need to build new stations where no coverage had been in place.

1866-Firemen of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Camden station.

The working conditions for the firemen worsened under the MBW Firemen were forced to work longer hours, and in uncomfortable settings. Pay and funds provided in the event of a loss were slashed: the LFEE had paid families of those lost ₤10 to cover funeral expenses, but the Board paid only £5. The MBW faced a serious manpower issue, fuelled by the small budget and the growing metropolis.

The early years for the new Chief, Capt. Shaw, were challenging to say the least. On its very first day the MFB faced its first major blaze at St Katherine’s Dock. In truth it was still the old brigade with just a new name. But in the years that followed Shaw moulded a brigade that became the leading fire brigade in the civilised world.

The London Fire Brigade (Lambeth) Control room (M2FH).

Until 1937, the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade had been located in Southwark Bridge Road. In July of that year His Majesty King George VI, accompanied by Queen Elizabeth, formally opened the new headquarters at 8 Albert Embankment.

His Majesty King George VI inspecting men of the London brigade at the official opening in 1937. The Chief Officer, Major Morris. MC. accompanies his Majesty.
Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.

The new headquarters was state of the art. It comprised the fire station, with accommodation for the firemen there, residential accommodation for the Chief Officer, Deputy Chief, and other senior officers. The complex included a Brigade training school, repair and maintenance workshops, drill tower and spacious drill yard for both drills and displays. From the imposing seven wooden appliance room doors Lambeth’s appliances could drive directly onto the Embankment. Directly opposite the headquarters was the new Lambeth river fire station pontoon. Located on the second floor of the headquarters was the brigade control room, which supported the six superintendent stations who responded to emergency calls requiring a fire brigade presence.

1937 and the headquarters 2nf floor control room showing a map of the brigade’s area and the location of its fire stations.
Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.

With the prospect of war imminent the Brigade’s Chief Officer, Cmdr. Firebrace, was seconded to the Home Office and his deputy, Major Frank. W. Jackson, commanded the renamed London Fire Service, which covered of boroughs and brigades surrounding the London Council County boundary. Part of the Brigade’s war planning response was to relocate the Brigade Control room into the basement of the headquarters. Thankfully, the period of the ‘phoney war,’ where the anticipated enemy attacks on London and the UK failed to materialise allowed the construction to proceed uninterrupted. The control room was completed in record time and in April 1940 Lambeth opened its new underground fire brigade control room. It was constructed to withstand a direct hit from a high explosive bomb and also to render ineffective a poison gas attack. The control room, which had its own reserve generator of lighting and forced ventilation, was also sealed by water tight doors. Above ground the ‘snorkel’ tower (which also provided an emergency escape route) was built in the shape of an obelisk and designed to pierce any debris from any building that might fall upon it.

1940. Part of the layout of the new basement, headquarters, control room.
Picture credit. London Fire Brigade.

1940. December; and officers of the brigade co-ordinating the disposition of London’s fire applances, and the fire situation, during a ‘Blitz’ attack on the Capital.
Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.

The Blitz on London commenced on the 7^th September 1940. In the underground control room, Major Jackson, with a small band of senior officers, watched the deployment on the big wall maps. Around London local control rooms had been established to deploy the vastly increased resources of the London regular brigade with the introduction of the Auxiliary fire service (AFS) prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The LFB brigade control room personnel were greatly supplemented by women of the AFS.

During the war many schools were left empty due to children being evacuated to the country. The Old Palace LCC School in St. Leonards Street, Poplar, was but one. It was commandeered for use as a sub fire station, for the men and women of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS). On the night of Sunday April 20th 1941, fire crews were standing by in anticipation of a heavy raid on the Capital. At 1.53am, a land mine, dropped from a Luftwaffe bomber, landed directly on the school. It hit the roof of the school and dropped down a stairwell and into the watchroom where two women were killed outright. The firemen waiting outside were caught by the blast, which demolished two thirds of the school building, and they were buried by falling masonry.

Rescue services, already hard-pressed, arrived too late for any lives to be saved.
Thirty-two firemen and two firewomen died at The Old Palace School, the largest number of Fire Brigade lives lost in a single incident, in peacetime or war. Winifred Alexandra Peters was one of the two firewomen killed

With the establishment of the National Fire Service (NFS) in August 1941 the London area comprised of five fire forces (reduced to four in 1943) and the area resembled the Greater London area the Greater London Council became in 1965. Lambeth’s basement control room retained its central co-ordination role. From 1945 to March 1948 the NFS was occupied in maintaining a peacetime service. The Fire Service Act of 1947 imposed duties on all UK fire brigades.

(1) It shall be the duty of every fire authority in Great Britain to make provision for fire-fighting purposes, and in particular every fire authority shall secure—

(c) efficient arrangements for dealing with calls for the assistance of the fire brigade in case of fire and for summoning members of the fire brigade;

Big improvements had been made by which London’s fire brigade handled calls. The system of calls being directed to ‘superintendent’ stations around London ceased in 1948. During the war years two-way radio had been increasingly, and successfully, used to send radio information to and from fires and other incidents. Because the radio had to be operated from a central point the birth of the modern control room came into being in the basement of the Lambeth headquarters. Significant alterations were made to the former control, in fact it was totally revamped.

The ‘new’ underground Brigade control room.
Picture credit; London Fire Brigade.

The control worked a card index system which recorded every thoroughfare in the London area. When a 999 call was received the control operator would locate the address and card gave details of the station ground, the six nearest stations, locations of the nearest special appliances and a route card No (eg NA46) which would tell the station crew attending which route card map would lead them to the address on their call slip.
Picture credit; London Fire Brigade.

Typical route card for the Greater London Council-London Fire Brigade. The numbers and abrviations told the control operators the local station names and where the nearest special appliances were located. This system remained unaltered from that used by the London County Council Lambeth control.

The ’new’ control was opened in 1948. It was where all ‘999’ calls were received in the LCC area and station appliances could be ordered to incidents. (In 1949 the LCC also decided to abolish street fire alarms-which had caused increasing numbers of false and malicious calls.) The call sign of the Brigade control radio scheme was M2FH. The control room would remain unchanged until 1966 when it once again underwent a major revamp. The LCC had authorised the adoption of a new mobilising system in 1963, the teleprinter involved the transmission of calls to fire stations by teleprinter, with phone lines used as a fail-safe back up system. However, due to delays in the supply of automated telephone equipment the system did not come into operation until the Greater London Council was created in 1965.

With the help of both the Home Office and the Post Office (GPO) the now Chief Officer, Mr L. W. Leete, the Lambeth control had the advantage of both the teleprinter and automated telephone system when it went live in 1965. (It was formally opened in 1966 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by His Majesty Prince Phillip, made a visit to the Brigade’s centenary celebrations at the Lambeth headquarters.)

11th November 1966. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth unveils a plaque to mark her visit to the Lambeth headquarters and the Brigade Control room.
Photo credit: London Fire Brigade

A london fire station teleprinter installed in the stations covered by the Lambeth Control room.

In 1965, the amalgamation of the various brigades onto the new London Fire Brigade provided an impressive array of new (and some not so new!) equipment. This included three additional control rooms at Stratford, Wembley, and Croydon, each with a designated area on control. However, Lambeth maintained jurisdiction over its former LCC area and took on a co-ordination role of major incidents.

The Lambeth basement control room layout.

The shutters finally came down on Lambeth’s M2FH control room in 1974 after twenty-six years of continuous mobilising. Its control staff were dispersed to the three remaining control rooms, with Lambeth control’s mobilising area being absorbed by them. mobilised by the control staff at the Croydon control room, who were responsible for mobilising all stations south of the River Thames. The other two control rooms were located at Wembley, the old Middlesex Fire Brigade control room, and Stratford, the former West Ham Fire Brigade control. Wembley covered the west of London whilst Stratford mobilised the east.

A central mobilising control would eventually return to Lambeth and, once again but for now it was an end of an era as the other three controls mobilise their additional new charges.

This blog is dedicated to all LFB control room personnel, past and present. A vital ingredient to a successful team.

First fatals.

If there is one event that unites firemen, regardless of whether they are a retired fireman or one of today’s firefighters (perhaps something we would much prefer didn’t unite us) then at the top of a very short list would be that first fatal fire. You would have to be someone very special if the sad details of that happening were not permanently etched in your brain. I know mine are, some fifty-seven years after that particular ‘shout’.

I was a mere probationer on Lambeth’s Red Watch. I got an occasional ride on the pump but most duties I’m riding the back of the PE and slowly gaining in confidence as the ‘shouts’ mount up. Our Station Officer, Don Brown, had returned from extended sick leave after he was hit over the head with a beer bottle at a shout on Brixton’s ground on New Year’s Eve. Its 1967 and I’m eighteen. The guvnor’s return sparks a noticeable rise in our working jobs, much to the dismay of some who think he should go off sick again.

Tools of the trade for a London fireman. A belt and axe; belt line; a bicycle lamp(worn on the belt); and PVC protective gloves. Image: copyright of Pete Weight (reproduced with his permission).

What I would later call ‘bread and butter’ jobs, the numerious fires in surrounding LCC built council flats and derelict buildings were a probationers dream. Those tasked to keep me under their wing cared about the ‘job’ and were bloody good role models. Their language might have been ripe at times but I was learning on the job and although you hoped you were doing the right thing at the right time their supervision ensured, 98% of the time, it was. The everyday hosereel jobs, the noxious stink of smoke, red and sore eyes whilst coughing up soot, and with snot down the front of your tunic, were all part of the everyday mix. If you were lucky enough, a wink or a nod indicated ‘well done boy’. The Red Watch names I can recall with clarity. A couple of the jobs, in those first six months, stand out but (just after I past my six-monthly probation) the events of that day remain crystal clear.

It’s a day duty. A couple of the White Watch had already come onto the station and given the nod to the on-duty guys so that they can shoot off at five p.m with a mutual exchange. But there would be no mutual exchanges that day. The call was to a fire in a flat in Kennington Road. SE1. Lambeth’s pump-escape (PE); pump(P); and turntable ladder(TL) turn out and Southwark’s P makes up the initial attendance. Eric Burns, now out of his probation, and I are in the back of the PE. Both wearing the hook belts, Eric grabs the hydrant location book and shouts out the location to Dick Richardson our Sub Officer in charge of the PE. As we head down Black Prince Road we hear Lambeth control summoning our pump telling them additional calls have been received. They are send on Southwark’s PE additionally.

London firemen’s boots and leggings in readyness. Image: copyright of Pete Weight (reproduced with his permission).

Even as a sprog I was beginning to tell the difference from the smell of one smoke from another. Turning into Kennington Road we could smell the smoke from the fire. Dick Richardson remained as a cool as ever, without turning around he told us we have a ‘job’. As we drew closer to Wedgewood House, a series of former London County Council 5 storey flats, opposite the Imperial War Museum gardens, there was a distinct smell of burning mattresses. The smell got to you every time. Smoke you could almost taste. A smell was just a prelude for what was awaiting for us. A scene of utter despair.

The desperate screaming of the young mother coming from the second floor flat balcony echo around the enclosed courtyard. They were sights and sounds that generations of London firemen had confronted before me, different settings, different locations, but the anguished heartache sounding exactly the same. For me this was all new. A situation where that poor woman put her total faith in us to save her children. Dick Richardson had already seen the oily brown smoke forcing its way around the window frames facing Kennington Road. As Lambeth’s machines drove into the courtyard, Dick jumped down from the engine before it stopped and was gone.

Lambeth’s pump-escape. Circa 1967. Image-London Fire Brigade.

As we jumped down from the PE we saw the woman being held back by a neighbour, her screams still filling our ears near the open flat door. Even before the guvnor got down he sent the message “make pumps four-persons reported.” Dick, meanwhile, had raced to the second floor. Teddy Walsh was the Leading Hand on the TL and one of pump crew grabbed Proto breathing apparatus sets, slung them over their heads and turning them on as they ran. Their mouthpieces were put their mouths unsecured. They were not the only ones running. The three drivers were feeding out hose, putting the pump’s tank of water into the PE’s whilst Charlie Watson, the long standing TL driver and senior hand, was heading to the hydrant with a standpipe, key and bar. Despite his years of experience Dick was unable to force himself into the hallway without BA. He shouted down to the guvnor; “need two more up here in BA, the kids are at the back of the flat.” There was furious and intense activity all around me. Activity I would become all too familiar with whenever lives were involved in a fire.

George Newton was Southwark’s guvnor. He arrived as we had got the hose pulled up, by line, to the flat. He heard Dick’s call and had his BA crew heading in as he grabbed Eric and I. “Get an extension ladder around the back quick.” With someone from Southwark’s crew we did just that. The pitch was not hard and the brittle glazing smashed as soon as the top of the ladder touched the blackened window. The pent up heat and smoke rose up the side of the flats.

As we climbed, with Eric leading and a hosereel jet with us, the windows of an adjoining room were opened by a BA fireman and more heat and smoke escaped from the flat. At the window Eric cleared away the broken glazing but our entry into the room was momentarily halted because of the hot gases and smoke still forcing its way out. But the needs of the children proved too much for Eric and he forced himself through the window. I followed not knowing what to expect!

For a few seconds we were both disorientated. We had half stepped, half fallen onto the room across a bed. The room was a charred shell. The BA crew had hit the ceiling with jet at some point and plaster covered every surface, including the bed. Nothing in that had not been severely burned. The heat was still radiating from the walls, the steam mixing with the smoke. We managed to kneel and then stand. As our eyes adjusted to obscured scene we noticed the strange, inter-twinned, shape under fallen plaster on the bed we had just crawled over. Moving closer we looked on in dismay before fully realising what we had just discovered. The charred remains of the siblings, locked together in an embrace of death.

We were mere make-weights now as the two guvnors conferred with Mr Samler-the B Division Red Watch Assistant Divisional Officer (ADO) who had arrived from the Clapham HQ. Dick was old school and the escape was got away and we were headed back to the station. We drove back in silence. Dick Richardson said, when we arrived, we would talk about the shout on the next shift. (I can’t recall if we ever did?)

We got back to the station well after 1800 and into the evening shift. The White Watch were usually subdued, none of their normal banter, as we hung our kit up in the gear room. The only words spoken were to book out in the watchroom. I caught my train home from Waterloo. That night, in the privacy of my bedroom, the emotion came out as tears flowed for those two little innocents.

A very junior London fireman.

Whilst the old grey cells continue to function Southwark will always hold a special place in my memory banks. It was the place that introduced me to the LFB; it was also the location of my very last day in the Brigade too. In the intervening years I served at Southwark fire station twice, was privilege to run the recruits’ section and play a part in the revamp 0f Southwark STC and orchestrated the fight to save Southwark from closure. (We won that time…) A tale that will resonate with many-the first introduction with that scruffy, run-down place simply referred to as Southwark.

Southwark fire station. 94 Southwark Bridge Road. SE1. An extension to the original Metropolitan Fire Brigade headquarters, opened in 1878 and location of the London Fire Brigade training school.

Fifty-nine years ago, my adventure with the LFB started. My junior fireman’s application form, having been completed in my best joined up writing, was sent off. What it lacked in school exam results (or academic prowess) was made up for by selling my Sub Aqua skills for all they were worth. If this made any difference I never discovered. But just after my sixteenth birthday, in January 1965, I was invited to attend the junior firemen selection tests with the LCC/LFB at Southwark. The place showed none of its former glory days and was largely now hidden behind its semi-derelict, four-storey, frontage facing on Southwark Bridge Road. It was behind this frontage that our futures would be determined.

The LCC recruitment hut, for that is all it was, a shabby wooden hut, was located on the northern side of the training school. It stood at the end of a long narrow cobbled yard. The civilian staff welcomed us and ticked off our names of that day’s candidates. We were a collection of hopefuls, but nervous, adolescent lads. We were in stark contrast to the other firemen recruits there. They all looked at least ten years older, much stronger, and far more self-assured than us kids!

There were around twenty prospective ‘cadets’ in that day’s selection intake. We were required to take the educational test; undertake physical exercises; and undergo a medical examination at County Hall. Finally, and if any got that far, attend an interview at the Lambeth Headquarters. Directed into a room in the hut we each sat at single desks where the ‘civvy’ took us through the English, maths, and dictation examinations. (I would discover that they used the same tests more than once because written on my wooden desk, and on the ruler, were answers to some of the sums and a couple the more difficult spellings. So, thanks to the aid of the desk and ruler I completed the tests. (But maybe we just had to prove we could actually read and write?)

Junior London fireman Geoff Kennett, one of the first to join the London scheme.

The two strength tests can next. These were conducted in the narrow-cobbled courtyard by someone wearing a fire brigade uniform. He introduced himself as a Sub Officer. Squat in stature he looked extremely powerful. In a surly voice he explained what was expected of us boys whilst trying to put us at our ease. We had to pass these two separate strength tests to go on to the next stage of the selection process.

The Sub Officer divided into pairs. Each pair being approximately the same height and weight. We were required to perform the fireman’s lift and carry our new found companion one hundred yards in less than one minute. By way of a demonstration, and without a pause for breath, the Sub Officer hoisted the largest of our group onto his shoulder and trotted off down the drill yard. At the end he about turned, fifty yards away, and effortlessly paced his way back. He had not the faintest hint exertion and walking as though he was not carrying anyone. It was our turn and the first ten moved towards their partners who they were to carry. Three either fell off those lifting or slid down their backs. One poor soul was lifted with such gusto that he was thrown completely over the shoulder of this youthful powerlifter; landing in an undignified heap on the ground. The Sub Officer sudden outburst of expletives, and its tone, made us quake in our boots. He told the powerlifter, in no uncertain terms, that he was meant to hold onto his partner and he was not “tossing an effing caber!” The poor lad, on the ground, was left feeling the lump on his forehead. He got little sympathy from the still berating Sub Officer. A man who seemed totally unimpressed by the antics of his juvenile charges.

Junior firemen training on an escape ladder at the Southwark training school.

He encouraged us to get our act together and dispatched the first pairs off down the yard. Some were clearly staggering under the weight on their backs. All made it, except for one. One rather rotund youth was clearly having trouble. As we were heading back up the yard he was still going down. Huffing and puffing and clearly struggling. The Sub Officer was not as hard as he made out. He let the sweating, and heavily breathing, lad catch his breath and try again. Sadly, he fared no better the second time. He went back to the hut and we did not see him again.

One down we moved onto the second test. This involved winding the handle on the side of a metal A-frame that was firmly secured to the ground. It had a wire running from a central drum, over a pulley and connected to a large weight that stood on the ground. You lifted the weight by turning the handle. This was, apparently, geared to make the test the equivalent of winding up a fifty-foot wheeled escape ladder, something we had seen the recruits using in the main drill yard. Again, the Sub Officer again demonstrated what was expected. Something he did with ease and we watched as the weight rose smoothly and rapidly to the top of the frame.

“That’s it my lovelies, just do that in one minute”.

He had done it in well under the time allowed. The powerlifter opted to go first. We looked on in horror as he struggled to raise the weight in the time. Red faced he was obviously relieved that he made it. Sadly, another of our number, even after a second attempt, didn’t. He was on his way home too. The rest of us managed it but not without a struggle.

Technical studies for the junior firemen at the Southwark Training school.

Just before lunch those remaining were given the results of the educational tests. Fire brigade fashion that is as two names were called out and told to go to the hut. We did not see them again either. The rest of us were sent off to training school canteen for lunch. This was our first glimpse of real junior firemen, the LCC’s first two squads. But they seemed rather puny against the other adult recruits. Our small group of potential cadets felt very conspicuous in our civilian clothes. Everyone else was wearing various types of firemen’s uniform and kit, so we huddled at a large corner table at the back of the canteen. We kept our heads down, ate our lunch, and said very little.

After lunch we were driven to County Hall, on the South Bank, for the medical examinations. County Hall was the headquarters of the then LCC and would soon become the new home of the enlarged GLC. We were driven there in a green box van. A van that had no side windows and we sat in the rear on the two rows of hard wooden bench seats. The driver, a grey-haired middle-aged stout, fireman was wearing old blue overalls. His trousers held up by a wide black leather belt that tried, in vain, to contain an enormous beer gut. He clearly enjoyed the short journey and derived great pleasure by throwing us out of our seats by turning corners too fast or braking hard, which seemed all too frequently.

London junior firemen visiting the scene of a major fire in Bermonsey, south London. 1964.

We arrived shaken and dishevelled at the steps of County Hall only to be directed by our grinning driver to its main entrance and told to ask for the medical department. Eventually, we found the medical department on one of the upper floors. We were immediately greeted by a nurse who handed out strange flute shaped glass containers that we were told to pee in. The medical continued with the doctor poking in our ears; sticking wooden sticks in our mouths; before reading from eyesight charts and having our hearing checked.

The doctor looked incredibly old with pale wrinkly skin. He had sunken eyes and narrow unsmiling mouth. He was also small and his white coat came down almost to his shoes. Whilst he listened to our breathing he wheezed noisily. His brown stained fingers giving a clue as to the cause! It was here the medical took a very different direction from our school medicals. I felt distinctly uncomfortable. We were told to drop our trousers and remove our underpants. With our private parts exposed they were given his professional scrutiny. I was instructed to cough whilst his shaky hand cupped my testicles! After the medical was over.

Junior firemen squads at the Lambeth headquarters and a PT demonstration rehersal for the Centenury display to be attended by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. 1965.

(Note: The height requirement, then, for a man [only men] joining the London Fire Brigade was five feet eight inches. If you joined the Junior Firemen scheme you had to be at least five feet six inches and reach five feet eight inches by your eighteenth birthday. How was this potential growth determined? Well, apparently, it was all dependent on the sizes of your balls. Some clever individual had come up with a formula that the size of your balls at sixteen could determine your height by eighteen. A dubious “fact” that indicated which of those under five feet eight inches had the potential to grow taller. Sadly for a few height-impaired cadets it was discovered that this very doubtful measuring system was not infallible. By the time they reached their eighteenth birthday their balls had delusions of grandeur and their size proved to be no indication of their owner’s ability to reach the required height.)

The last round of the day were the selection interviews, conducted at the Brigade’s Lambeth Headquarters. Transported again in the box-van we were escorted to the second floor and told to wait in an office. We were called one by one for interview. Our numbers dwindled as individual candidates were called for and made their way home without returning to the office. Eventually my turn came. I was shown into a very imposing office overlooking the river Thames. Two uniformed senior officers were sat behind a wide wooden desk.

Whilst one introduced themselves the other picked up a file and asked me to confirm if the details, he read out were accurate? Clear recall of the interview has faded but the officers appeared more interested in my swimming and sub aqua ability than anything else. Having rehearsed some impressive reasons for wanting to join the London Fire Brigade I was never asked why I wanted to join! They did however mention my failure at the previous eyesight test with the Metropolitan Police cadet scheme and pointed out that this is something they would have to investigate with the Medical Officer. They said they would be in touch and let me know if I had been accepted or not. The “or not” sounded rather ominous. Their decision would be notified by letter, and it was. The letter duly arrived at my parent’s home in Kent. I had been accepted and my LFB adventure started.

Footnote:

The Junior Fireman scheme was started in 1964 by the London County Council, prior to the change over to the Greater London Council (GLC) in April 1965. In 1969, and in the final months of the then Chief Officer’s tenure, the plug was pulled on the Junior Firemen’s scheme and the Swanley Training College was closed. The GLC cited financial reasons and despite strenuous opposition from the Labour GLC councillors they was no reprieve. Almost 300 boys (16-17 years old) entered the London Fire Brigade via the Junior Firemen scheme. Like their adult counterparts, some rose to higher rank, two to Chief Officer rank. One tragically died. Temporary Leading Fireman Michael Lee was killed at Goswell Road in 1969. Two former Junior Fireman remain serving in the LFB after over fifty years continuous service.

Hazchem. A short history of the involvement of the LFB, and most notably that of Charles Clisby in promoting and introducing the Hazchem scheme.

An explosion at Dudgeons Wharf, on the Isle of Dogs in east London in 1969, killed one demolition worker and five London firemen. There was no information on what an apparently empty oil storage tank had contained.

Dudgeons wharf post explosion. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

The funerals of the firemen killed at the Dudgeons Wharf disaster. 1969. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

It was four years later (1973) that the then Department of the Environment started to formulate legislation to protect the public from accidents involving road tankers carrying hazardous substances. This followed a horrific accident in December 1972, when a tanker carrying fuming sulphuric acid ran into another tanker, in fog. The second vehicle gashed the side of the acid carrying tanker and 13 tons of the hazardous chemical started to pour out onto the motorway. A woman, following the tanker in her car, stopped and got out of her car. She walked towards tanker, with a view (it was assumed) of trying to assist, she did not notice the swirling fumes. Overcome she fell into the brown liquid. At the Inquest the pathologist stated the woman was unidentifiable and it was only a section of bone that there was any indication that it came from the body of human female.

The explosion at the Nypro (UK) chemical plant at Flixborough, near Scunthorpe, in 1974 left 28 dead and 36 seriously injured. In the previous six years there had been 25 major fires at chemical and petroleum plants in Britain. This led to the Fire Certificates (Special Premises) Regulations 1976 where the Health and Safety Executive took responsibility for fire safety. The development of OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) had been initiated in 1974. (The Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) requires all employers to provide information and training to their employees about the hazardous chemicals to which they may be exposed at the time of their initial assignment and whenever a new hazard is introduced into their work area.)

Firemen at the scene of the NYPRO disaster, FLIXBOROUGH, June 1974.

Then in 1975 a train carrying a cargo of 16 tons of vinyl chloride overturned on the main London to Sheffield railway line. For 12 hours local firemen worked to save the load intact. After they succeeded the Chesterfield FB Chief Officer stated “the town was just a foot away from disaster.”

As a result of such instances, and the involvement of the London Fire Brigade, the Hazchem (hazardous chemicals) Code was subsequently introduced in 1975, on a voluntary basis. This identification scheme enabled emergency services to know how to proceed when faced with buildings, vehicles or storage areas containing hazardous chemicals. It was used that year in new regulations for the rear marking of vehicles. Its aim was always to assist the emergency services in the first few minutes of dealing with a hazardous goods distribution incident. (The Hazchem system was incorporated into UK law in 1981 with the first road tanker regulations.)

In an article published in the Sunday Times on 29^th February 1976 Deputy Assistant Chief Officer Clisby, of the London Fire Brigade (LFB), when commenting on Hazchem hazards stated; “Some tankers are literally a Flixborough on wheels.”

However, the system which evolved into Hazchem was not a London idea. Its birth had its origins in the Middlesex brigade prior to 1965 but with the amalgamation, on the creation of the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1965, it was filed under ‘pending’ and did not see the light of day for almost a decade.

Cap badge of the Middlesex Fire and Ambulance Brigade, pre 1965.

In London, Charles Clisby, had for some time been a campaigner and a vociferious advocate for a ‘hazard’ warning scheme for ‘his’ firemen. A northerner by birth, Clisby had first served in the army before joining the then Biringham and Coventry Brigade before transferring to the Middlesex Fire and Ambulance Service. He was transferred into the London Fire Brigade (LFB) in 1965 with the creation of the Greater London Council (GLC). In the GLC-LFB Clisby was first an Assistant Divisional Officer, based at Wembley, before being promoted to Divisional Officer and based at Shoreditch, the ‘C’ Divisional headquarters which covered the City of London within its divisional area.

Divisional Officer Charles Clisby (white helmet) leading the rescue attempts of temporary Leading Fireman Michael Lee, who was killed at a fire in Goswell Road, Shoreditch in 1969.

In 1972 the LFB Chief Officer, Joe Milner, had won approval from the GLC’s Fire Brigade Committee of his re-organisation of the Brigades operational management. It covered all aspects of operational efficiency and that included scientific information. Milner established three headquarter branches; Operations, a Mobile Group and a Technical, Planning and Development Branch. Clisby was transferred, and promoted, into the latter branch. In the ‘in-house’ press release he was described ‘as a man who will probably make his presence felt.’

Under Milner’s re-organised headquarters, a dedicated ‘Operations Room’ was established and among its various functions was the duty to relay information to crews who were having to deal with ever more chemical incidents (or incidents where chemicals became involved). It was estimated by the GLC that over 3 million chemical carrying journeys were being made across the GLC every year in the early 1970s. The Ops Room chemical information system, which pre-dated Hazchem, was reliant on Chemical Information cards, and which in those early days contained some 3,000 different listed chemicals. The aim was to eventually list some 10,000 different chemical substances, Requests for information resulted in first action measures being passed back to the incident. Additionally, the GLC Scientific was contactable for more detail guidance as well as various manufactures and even the Guy’s Hospital poison unit. As comprehensive as it was it remained labour intensive and first response measures were reliant on messages being sent and received, then acted upon. Hazchem it wasn’t.

The enhanced ‘Hazchem’ code is credited to have been developed by three London officers and championed by their then Divisional Officer, Charles Clisby, in the early 70’s. It was later that Clisby, with the support of the Brigade, who pushed for the Home Office to adopt the system as a nationwide means of marking bulk loads of hazardous chemicals for transportation in 1975.

The Hazchem system faced stiff competition from the European ADR Kemmler code, based system and requirements to include ever more detailed information, UN Numbers, Hazard Class, Tremcard number and proper shipping names. (Most of these are very familiar in this country now.)

The Hazchem concept was (and remains) remarkably simple and effective in providing an immediate emergency response statement to enable the risk from the hazardous substance to be managed at least in the first instance by the emergency services but especially the fire service.

Clisby remained resolute in defending, and promoting, the Hazchem scheme across the fire service and the chemical industry. In January 1976 Deputy Assistant Chief Officer Clisby was presented with a Commendation by the Association of Industrial Editors at the Communicator of the Year awards for his outstanding work on Hazchem. Such was the nature of Clisby’s appreciation of the team effort in moving the scheme forward that he requested that the Brigade’s Deputy Chief represent the award in the presence of his team, and who had made possible his success in achieving the introduction of the Hazchem scheme.

Deputy Assistant Chief Officer Charles Clisby being given his Commendation by the Brigade’s Deputy Chief, Don Burrell, in the presence of his Hazchem team.

The Hazchem Code signage provides vital information to the Fire Brigade, or other emergency services, on the immediate actions to take when dealing with that hazard in an emergency. The fire and police services use the specific characters and numbers to determine which actions may be necessary, during the first few minutes of an incident involving dangerous goods. These Emergency Action Codes (EACs), also known as Hazchem codes, are a three-character code that must be displayed on all GB registered road and rail vehicles that carry dangerous goods on domestic journeys within the UK.

Joe Milner resigned as the Chief Officer in 1976. He was replaced by Peter Darby, who would later become the Chief Inspector of Fire Services (UK). This was a time of industrial unrest across the UK and the fire service was no exception. In the days immediately before the first national firemen’s strike in November 1977 Peter Darby summoned all his principal officer to the Lambeth headquarters for a planning meeting. Charles Clisby, now holding the rank of a temporary Assistant Chief Officer, had been a long-standing member of the Fire Brigade Union (FBU). He believed in the values of the Union as much as he believed in the importance of Hazchem for the safety and protection of ‘his’ firemen. He, together with another Union principal officer, DACO Jim Curren, were ordered from the Chief’s meeting, effectively placing them on the outside of the HQ loop 4 days before the national strike started on the 7^th November.

For Charles Clisby it was a heart-breaking moment. He was despondent. The service he had given most of his adult life to, and contributed so much through the successful introduction of the Hazchem scheme had, through Peter Darby, shunned and rejected him because of his FBU support. It was an action that he never recovered from. In December 1977 Charles Clisby had a heart attack and was medically discharged from the Brigade. In the 1978 New Year’s Honour list Charles Clisby was awarded the Queen’s Fire Service Medal for distinguished service.

He died, at his Wiltshire home, on the 11^th June 1978. However, the FBU never forgot Charles Clisby nor did London’s firemen and its junior officers. His legacy remains through his poetry and, to this day, the widespread use of Hazchem by the UK’s first responders.

The funeral of the late Charles Clisby. QFSM. at St Barnabus Church, Easterton, Wiltshire with an honour guade and pall-bearer party of former London Fire Brigade friends and colleagues. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

Disaster on the Albert Embankment. Wednesday 30th January 1918.

It remains the London Fire Brigade’s worst peace-time disaster.

At about 3.44 a.m. that a call was received by ‘stranger, to a private house alight on the Albert Embankment near Lambeth Bridge. The motor-escape and pump from No.94 station Vauxhall, located near Vauxhall Bridge, together with 10 men and the motor-pump from No.87 station Kennington, which stood in Renfrew Road off Kennington Lane, with 6 men responded.

Firemen at theVauxhall fire station-located on the Albert Embankment.

The LFB then operated on three levels of ‘make-ups’, a home call; a district call and a Brigade call. At 3.55 a.m., a “home call” message was sent to the superintendent station (No 80- Clapham) with a message stating that “a building of three floors about 40 x 40 ft. used as Pepper Mills alight, one hydrant in use.” In response the motor pump from No.3 station Westminster, in Greycoat Place with 6 men was ordered and Superintendent J Barrows-Hall attended with No.80s motor car, Sub Officer Cornfield and a driver.

The Kennington fire station-Renfrew Road. The second station to attend the call on the Albert Embankment.

Clapham – the Superintendent station of the local district.

On Superintendent’s Barrows-Hall arrival he found the upper floors of a building, which was used as cattle food manufacturers, well alight and that part of roof and upper floor had fallen in. With the fire practically extinguished he sent the ‘stop’ message and returned one motor pump’s crew. By 5.34 a.m., owing to a considerable amount of turning over to be done, a further message was dispatched stating that the remaining appliances would be detained for a time. A short while later he sent another message asking for a Sub-Officer and four men to be sent on (as relief) with a view to the initial appliances and himself returning home.

At around 5.45 a.m. Barrows-Hall was on the ground floor when he heard a cracking noise. He immediately cleared everyone out of the building. However, owing to the fog and the still present smoke, the front of the building was hardly discernible. A jet from a hydrant was still being used up the wheeled escape ladder. He went to the front of the building with the firemen with a view of making up and removing the escape ladder when suddenly he heard Sub-Officer Cornford call out, “Look out Sir” before he saw the front of building collapsing.

The London Fire Brigade funeral procession makes it way to the Kennington church.

The wall extended some 45 ft. along the road fronting the river, up to the corner of Broad Street (later Black Prince Road). Barrows-Hall, in his statement, “Called out, drop everything and run”. On the escape were four of the victims. These and three others were buried beneath a mass of debris. The escape was reduced to matchwood.

A survivor sent a message to the effect that the building had collapsed and that several firemen were buried and ambulances were required. Injured, Barrows-Hall gave instructions for the debris to be searched for the bodies. Divisional Officer ‘South’, Messrs. S.G. Gamble, who later became the Deputy Chief Officer, attended and oversaw the recovery operations. On hearing of the nature of the Superintendents injuries ordered him home. He was later examined by the District Medical Officer placed on the sick list. His nature of illness was recorded as “Injury to Legs”.

Those who perished were:-

No.100. Sub-Officer William.E. Cornford. No.80 Clapham.

No.616. Fireman Edward.J. Fairbrother. No.87 Kennington.

No.718. Fireman William.E. Nash. No.87 Kennington.

No.944. Fireman John.W.C. Johnson. No.94 Vauxhall.

No.1087. Fireman Arthur.A. Page. No.94 Vauxhall.

No.1174.Temp.Fireman James.E. Fay. No.87 Kennington.

No.151. Sub-Officer Walter.W. Hall. No.94 Vauxhall.*

(*Who subsequently died from his injuries.)

Those injured were:-

Superintendent J.Barrows-Hall. “E” District HQ. Clapham.

Station-Officer E.Partner. No.87. Kennington.

At the subsequent funeral procession and service, held at St Mark’s Church, Kennington conducted by the Bishop of Southwark, the following week the procession was led by the Band of the London Volunteer Rifles together with a detachment of men from that regiment. The flag draped coffins, carried on motor pumps, and were led by the Chief Fire Officer and Divisional Officer’s North and South. Messrs Dyer (appointed Chief Officer later that year) and Gamble. Attending the service was Lord Crewe, Chairman of the London County Council, representatives of Government and Civic dignitaries and Lieutenant-Colonel C.J. Fox of the London Salvage Corps. There was an outpouring of public support as the procession later proceeded to the Highgate Cemetery were the burials took place in the ‘Firemen’s Corner.’

Footnotes:

The building stood on the exact site that later became the Headquarters on the London Fire Brigade after the HQ was moved from the former Metropolitan Fire Brigade HQ in Southwark Bridge Road. The fire occurred in a cattle food manufactures owned by J.H. Branton and Company, which stored spices and ingredients in the production of cattle feed.

Although the men’s names were recorded on the Roll Of Honour in the Headquarters main entrance Memorial Hall, there was never a plaque erecting on the building to record the men’s names and the greatest loss of a life by London firefighters at one incident in peacetime. In a tragic coincidence an eighth fireman (Henry Berbidge Summers) died the same day in a fire station related accident.

Demise of the London Fire Brigade Junior Firemen scheme.

Its 1968 and the end of London’s ‘junior fire-bucket’ scheme.

In March 1968 the Conservative controlled Greater London Council (GLC) cancelled the scheduled April intake of Junior Firemen because, as a result a review of its financial commitments, it had decided that an immediate increase in the numbers of junior firemen under training could not be justified. Two months later the Council decided to close the Junior Firemen’s Residential College at Swanley, and in June, they decided to end the junior firemen training scheme and not even attempt to continue it on a non-residential basis.

In taking this action London has shown just how quickly a fire authority can block or indeed reverse progress in order to effect, in the short term, a financial saving. This retrograde decision was opposed in the Council chamber by the Labour opposition and before the (Fire Brigade) Union.

The new Swanley Junior Firemen College and new arrivals in 1966. (Photo credit-London Fire Brigade.)

The FBU’s General Secretary led a deputation from the London Brigade Committee and put an excellent and hard-hitting case to the Fire Brigade Committee against the closure of the Swanley college. It was only at this stage that that the Union learned, that in addition to the financial considerations, it was being claimed that the educational standard of junior firemen entry was so disappointingly low, that even after training there was little, if any, difference between junior firemen standards, and because of recent improvements, that of young recruit firemen.

1966. The formal opening of the Swanley Junior Firemen College by the then Home Secretary-the Rt Hon Roy Jenkins.

The background and short-sighted nature of the GLC’s decision to close Swanley College and now to abandon completely junior firemen entry can be gauged by the following brief facts.

College costs £200,000

Although London started its junior firemen scheme in 1964 the Swanley College has only been operating since early 1966. The initial costs of the college and adapted for junior firemen training was in the region of £200,000. It can accommodate 150 boys and since it opened between 70 and 90 boys have been under training at any one time. To date about 140 ex junior firemen are serving operationally and some 45 are still under training.

Apart from the general acceptance in the service that junior firemen entry was essential it seems logical to state that as the college has only been operating for two years it is far too early to draw conclusions as to its value.

Even the College building was a make-shift training facility for the junior firemen learing their operational craft.
(Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

If there is any weight in the claim that junior firemen entrants were not of a sufficiently high educational standard, how much consideration was given to the fact that a new educational curriculum was introduced in the autumn of 1967. This curriculum was aimed at bringing junior firemen up to graduate of Fire Engineer level at the age of 18 and was already, according to instructional staff, showing results.

The chapel of the former Parkwood (Westminster Hospital) convalesence home was adapted to provide a gym for the junior firemen’s fitness training. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

The London Fire Brigade is at least 500 men under strength in the first six months of this year (1968). Recruitment into the Brigade was almost completely cancelled out by normal wastage through retirement, etc. It follows that if there have been no junior firemen scheme, the manpower deficiency would have been much greater and one is entitled to ask if London is serious about its manpower problem when it closes this avenue of recruitment.

Parents Day at Swanley College, when friends and family were allowed to see the College and facilities. Here the Junior Firemen are inspected by a principal officer of the Brigade. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

Group photograph of the College principal, Major Anderson, instructional uniformed staff and the residential junior firemen under training. The last such photograph before the the Greater London Council abolished the Junior Firemen scheme. (Picture credit-London Fire Brigade.)

In this connection would it not have been reasonable to weigh the saving of well over half a million pounds per year, which arises because of the manpower shortages against the cost of running junior firemen training at Swanley.

Note: Article credit- the FBU Firefighter issued in 1968.

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