Tag: David C.Pike

Competitions in London’s Fire Brigade.

Possibly the origins of London fire brigade competitions lay in the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB)? To be honest, I have no real way of knowing as reference to them is rather scarce! Probably the earliest competitions came with the London Insurance Companies and the various brigades racing to the scene of a fire and trying to get to the latest blaze first! Capt. Eyre Massey Shaw (the first Chief Officer of the MFB) was certainly aware of fire brigade competitions when, in 1881, he witnessed the New York brigade competition on his famous American tour. But they were, in fact, more horse races, with the teams of horse-drawn fire engines competing against each other. The idea would eventually come to London but not on Shaw’s watch. He just returned to London with the American idea of introducing firemen’s poles. They soon became a popular feature in all his London fire stations.

Up until 1889 men of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade were not permitted to take part in any national fire brigade competitions, partly because of the unfair advantage they had as the UK’s premier fire brigade. The idea of these professional MFB men sweeping the board, and collecting all the trophies, did not sit well with the competition organisers. After Shaw’s retirement in 1891 neither the disgraced MFB Chief Simmonds, or his much-revered replacement Capt. Wells (1896-1903) appeared to encourage their men into such competition ‘trivialities’.

But by the brigade’s change of name in 1904 (when it was formally named as the London Fire Brigade) the idea of the benefits of inter-station competitions grew both in momentum and popularity. They would involve both land and water races, with both professional skills and sporting prowess gaining impetus. In the space of a few short years’ competition became part of the LFB’s way of life for its firemen, and whilst the age of the horse-drawn engine was in decline the racing of the wheeled escape cart crews had entered the annual LFB calendar.

1912-Kingsland Road fire station. Their horses won the International Horse Show in their category.

Under the brigade’s sixth Chief Officer-Lieut-Commander Sampson Sladen, it is fair to say the idea of regular brigade competitions had become firmly established. By 1905 a new competition was initiated; the turnout competition. A cup was awarded to the winning team with the fastest response to the station alarm being sounded. The competition would continue until the late 1960s. The Brigade Regatta, a Thames River race, would become one of the longest running LFB competitions, morphing into the inter-divisional/brigade whaler race, and later still the inter-services Fishmongers Cup. It finally fell off competition shelf in the late 1990s when support by the Brigade for those entering competitions went into terminal decline. (By then, most of the former competitions had already been consigned to the brigade’s history book!)

In 1912 the annual escape competitions were initiated with the finals held at the Southwark headquarters and a cup awarded to the quickest station crew. The first winners being Southwark; who were able to raise their ladder and climb into the four-storey tower to extinguish an imaginary fire in 41 seconds! The pump competitions followed as did the LFB entering their teams of horses in the International Horse Show in London.

Despite the onset of the first World War in 1914 it did not diminish the williness of stations, or individuals, to take part in competition. Not least was the growth in sporting competitions, with road races, boxing matches and the annual athletics meeting taking place at one of London national stadiums, but most notably at the White City.

With the arrival of Arthur Dyer in 1918 as Chief Officer competitions moved up a gear. Dyer was a keen sportsman and highly competitive. He saw the merit in competitions and would eventually add a fireman’s technical quiz to the annual LFB calendar.

The London Fire Brigade regatta on the River Thames. It would lead to the inter-divisional Whaler races and Brigade finals
16th August 1919. London firemen watching the races at the London Fire Brigade Sports at Herne Hill, south London.
(Photo by A. R. Coster/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
1920 and the Brigade finals of the pump competition held at Southwark HQ.
1920 and firemen roll up their hose during the Brigade finals of the pump competition held at Southwark HQ.
1931-The finals of the pump-escape competition at the Southwark HQ. Firemen, using dummies, have to rescue casualties
from the third and fifth, by carry-down and lowering line, tower in the fastest time.
1935-The finals of the pump-escape competition at the Southwark HQ. Firemen, using dummies, have to rescue casualties from the third and fifth floors, by carry-down and a lowering line, in the fastest time.
1935. Station No 1-Southwark-winners of the Brigade pump-escape competition held at the London Fire Brigade Southwark HQ.

Up until 1937 all Brigade finals of the various skill competitions were held at the Southwark HQ in Southwark Bridge Road. But the HQ founded by Capt. Shaw in 1878 was considered passed its sell by date. The current Chief, Major Morris. MC. had secured agreement with the London County Council to build a new, bespoke, headquarters station on the Albert Embankment. SE1. Lambeth would be the home of all future pump and pump escape finals until the 1960s and 70s.

1935. The Brigade finals of the pump competition at the Southwark HQ.
1937. The Lambeth fire station crew, first winners of the pump-escape competition held at the new Brigade HQ. Albert Embankment. SE1.
1938 and the Brigade competition final held at the Lambeth HQ.

It took the Second World War, in particular the Blitz from September 1940 to May 1941 to suspend the LFB’s competitions. However, it was only a temporary lull and with the creation of National Fire Service in August 1941 various pump competitions continued to be held in the enlarged London Brigade, with finals held at the Regional Lambeth HQ. It was also a time that the Home Office introduced the first Manuals of Firemanship. In the years that followed a technical quiz competition, based on answers from the manuals, took on a national focus with regional finals and a UK national winner. (To my knowledge London has always been a runner-up, never a winner.)

Post war the LFB returned to local authority control (LCC) and the range of competitions both on land and the Thames returned to the Brigade’s regular annual calendar. In addition, the Brigade’s sports associations added competitions involving athletics meetings, swimming galas and the occasional inter-divisional boxing tournament. There were also Divisional football and rugby teams, each addingplayers to the respective Brigade team, whilst station volleyball reached international status. The LFB team playing continental fire brigades.

1951-52. Manchester Square fire station- pump competition Brigade final winning crew.
1952. The winning crew of the annual Brigade whaler race. The race started at the Lambeth river station pontoon and finished at
HMS President, moored on the Victoria Embankment.
1957. The London Fire Brigade’s Internation Volleyball team (in vests) playing the Paris fire brigade at the Lambeth HQ.

Tragically, on the 17th March 1961, the death of a Battersea fireman practising for the Brigade pump-escape competition at Brixton fire station (SW London) brought about an immediate hiatus to those particular competitions. He and a colleague fell from the escape ladder. Fireman Albert Hunt died at the scene and fireman Bob Maloney, also from Battersea, suffered serious injuries. These competitions were never reintroduced into the London Fire Brigade.  

It was as a teenage fireman, arriving at Lambeth in January 1967, I discovered that there was a lot more to station life than just cleaning, regular drills and waiting for the inevitable fire and other emergency calls. There was taking part in, and aiming to win, Brigade pump competitions. For some this was clearly a religious calling, especially the watch govnors’ whose whole life seemed to centre on this particular event. Lambeth’s Blue Watch govnor was one such animal. He would go to the most extraordinary lengths to give his team every possible advantage. Dedicated lengths of hose would be washed and ironed, by hand, so as to make them run out smoother and faster!

1967. A pump competition crew in the Lambeth drill yard.

Devoted competition men would rip their fire tunic linings out to make them lighter. Standpipes were modified to make them fit on the hydrant quicker. Even the hose coupling lugs were dismantled and oiled to make them rotate and release faster. Every minute part of the pump drill underwent scrutiny to achieve the maximum possible time advantage.

However, the actual competition was a relatively straightforward and simple affair, albeit physically demanding. A four-man pump crew had to start, sitting on their appliance (the pump), dismount and set into a hydrant; run out two lines of hose; knock down two targets with their jets of water; before making up all the gear and return it to a marked area on the drill ground, before re-mounting their appliance and drive it over a finish line in the fastest possible time.

It sounds easy but it was much more complicated due to the time penalties. The senior officers, acting as judges, would add seconds for any technical error that any member of the pump crew made. Drop a hose; penalty points. Miss a target; penalty points. Not under-running the hose correctly; penalty points. Then there was the burden placed on the pump operator. Too little pump pressure and you could miss the target; too much and there’s a danger of losing control of the branch. Months of arduous, and demanding, training could be in vain, all because of a momentary loss of concentration.

Underhand tactics were not unheard of either. Pump crew’s competition hose mysteriously going missing! Hose couplings were sabotaged so they would not connect properly. Strange furtive figures, lurking around the fire station back gates, could be seen spying on the opposition practising their competition drills. The individual, making notes, looking remarkably like the team trainer from a nearby fire station.

The Divisional watch related elimination rounds would start the competition season. These were followed by the Divisional finals where the fastest three crews ran off against each other. One winning team from each of the eleven Divisions progressed to the Brigade pump competition finals, held each autumn, in Lambeth’s yard at the Brigade Headquarters. Supporters filled the tiered balconies, cheering on their particular crew or Division. Competition was always keen. The team’s enthusiasm spurred on by the chanting of their supporters, chanting that would have done credit to any London local football derby.

As someone fresh from training school, and built like a racing snake, I was picked for the Red Watch team that year. Despite our best efforts and winners in the Red Watch run offs we never reached the Brigade finals. (Our chances not helped after our prized competition hose went missing!). We were well beaten by Lambeth’s Blue Watch. We fared no better the following year (1968) when a new Brigade record time was set by Edmonton’s Blue Watch, of one minute 47 seconds, from dismounting to passing over the finish line. A truly remarkable time. It was a record that was to remain unbeaten. Lambeth’s Blue Watch, with their bellowing govnor Alan Jackson, urging them on, gave an excellent account of these themselves being only 1.8 seconds behind the winners. (The Jackson brothers were both pump competition aficionados. His elder brother Peter led his Brixton crew to win the Brigade finals in the early 60s.)

Station Officer Peter Jackson (standing) with his Brixton pump competition Brigade winning crew in the early 1960s

 

When our govnor was not trying to encourage some of the watch to enter the pump competition, he was putting others in for the Brigade’s technical quiz competition. Another annual event and being the junior buck, it seemed I had an automatic pass into everything that others had to actually volunteer for!

1964. Burdett Road fire station winning technical quiz competition team (standing) with the Brigade senior officers who adjudicate and Mr Cunningham-Deputy Chief Officer (middle) who was the question master.

The technical quiz competition led to onto national UK finals. London’s winning team would represent the Brigade in the southern counties district, which covered some ten different surrounding fire brigades. All the questions were drawn from any of the Manuals of Firemanship, which ran to eleven books. Thousands of pages and tens of thousands of potential questions. If you learnt all the answers to the questions there was not one promotion examination you could not pass. Our Red Watch Lambeth team managed not to get kicked out in the first rounds but we got nowhere near the Brigade finals. This was won by an exceedingly knowledgeable Battersea team. Battersea later went on only to be narrowly defeated by Bournemouth Fire Brigade in the District finals.

In the late 1960s the Fire Brigade Union was not a fan of the pump competitions. By 1970 the Chief Officer, now Joe Milner, found himself increasingly embroiled in more and more matters involving industrial unrest across the Brigade. The pump competitions became a casualty of this and they were stopped in favour of one and two-man competitions. It was the final straw in the long running era of skill competitions and, by the time of the first national firemen’s strike in 1977, there was little appetite for competitions from those at fire stations.

In today’s London Fire Brigade, if there is enthusiasm for this style of competitive activity there appears little eagerness from those in the managerial driving seat to promote it. Competitions do exist on the national scene but the freedom to give time off, with pay, for those undertaking such activities belongs to a time long gone by. These are different times with different rules. For London’s modern firefighters these former competitions are now just an entry in its historic past.    

Just some old bloke on his soapbox!

I’m well passed my London Fire Brigade (LFB) sell-by date but it doesn’t mean you stop caring about those still serving in today’s LFB. There is much I don’t understand, the machinations of today’s modern politics, how to work my blooming computer when it plays up, or the injustice shown to so many of those firefighters who attended Grenfell in 2017. Those who went above and beyond the call of duty and it remains something this is firmly stuck in my craw!

What is another word for injustice? The common synonyms suggest grievance and wrong. Injustice applies to any act that involves unfairness to another. The scandal, and tragedy, of Grenfell (the deadliest fire in a residential building in Britain since the blitz) occurred in 2017-over FOUR years ago now. Yet not one act of bravery-acts that were highlighted by the Inquiry Chairperson-during Phase One has been recognised, either by the LFB or the Home Office via the Honours System.

However, it is OK to produce, and show, a stage play that the writer believes is a damning allegory of contemporary British society. Their project, Grenfell: Value Engineering-Scenes from the Inquiry looks at what happened in the fire on that fateful night of 14 June 2017 and, who was responsible for the deaths of 72 people. It will be a powerful story and what is being exposed by the Inquiry. Highlighting how companies and local authorities passed the buck … the incompetence, secrecy, cost-cutting, the consequences of government austerity policies, deregulation, the cosy and unaccountable networks of people who knew each other.

There has been, and will be more, finger pointing to the identify the failures and missed opportunities. It continues as you read this. This September (2021) speaking for one group, Mr Danny Friedman QC. said that the blaze saw the LFB face “the limits of its competence”. “The depth of its deficiencies exposed an organisation that could not cope with an emergency beyond the normal or standard fire,” he said. He warned that the country still has “a fire service that is incompetent to meet contemporary challenges.” He said that an “inescapable function” of the fire service was to compensate for errors in architecture and design and said neither “gross negligence of the contractors” or “the economics of successive governments” could serve as “full excuses” for the failures on the night.

Mr Martin Seaward QC. appearing for the Fire Brigades Union, and responding to direct criticisms levelled by the lawyers for the bereaved and survirors (plus Sir Martin Moore-Bick, the inquiry chair) defended the actions of the first firefighter to take command of the incident, Watch Mananger (Station Officer) Michael Dowden. He was criticised in the first-phase report for not ordering an evacuation when the fire tore up the outside of the building in the early stages of the blaze.He reminded the inquiry there are “still no national guidelines on evacuation” since a government steering group on this procedure has not yet reported its findings. He said. “If he had considered revoking stay put and moving to evacuation, he would have had to improvise to carry it out; improvise in the face of the formidable dangers arising, including a risk to life.”

Picture credit-Paul Wood

You might think the most important priority would be to learn from what went wrong and make sure the mistake was never repeated and lessons are learned.Yet the blame game, especially one directed towards the LFB and those there that horrendious night, continues as the highly paid QC’s and lawyers advocate for support/recommends for a particular cause, most notably the victims and families caught up in this unprecident UK fire. Those seeking real justice.

But the fact remains this totally sidelines those who tried their very best that night to save lives; those who put their own lives safety in danger; and those who went the extra miles for the sake of those in peril. London firefighters.

And whilst the LFB Honours and Awards procrastination goes on Avon and Somerset Police’s mounted team have been given bravery awards and commendations following their role in policing the Bristol riots this March (2021). The courage of police horses and their riders were recognised when they faced a “hostile situation” in which missiles were thrown at officers, police vans were attacked and set on fire and a police station targeted. “The courage and resilience they displayed was a credit to their characters, their training and to the outstanding bonds of loyalty and trust. Seeing our mounted section team recognised for their professionalism, bravery, dedication and commitment with such a prestigious award makes us immensely proud and we thank them, and all of their colleagues who experienced the terrible events in March, for their outstanding work in protecting the public and their colleagues. They are, beyond doubt, a hugely valuable asset to our service.” Said the Chief Constable.

In stark contrast, in 2018, the LFB heroes of the Grenfell Tower fire were snubbed for a second time both locally and in the Queen’s, birthday honours list. It may be years for these actions to be finally recognised. The official response being-officials feel unable to hand out awards to firefighters (and local volunteers) while there is scope for failings to emerge from several inquiries.

To the best of my knowledge the crews attending that night were not implicated in the failed policies and building practices that saw the tower clad in a flammable cladding. Their only role was to deal with the consequences. If there were failings in existing LFB practices and policies, again those on the engine had simply no part in drawing them up!

Not to recognise and honour the few remains a complete INJUSTICE. Those sitting on the awards, whoever they are, (awards that have been considered and agreed) should hang their heads in shame. As this tragic saga rolls on I don’t think I will be putting my soapbox away any time some.

The Hills Hotel fatal fire. London. 1971

Arthur Nicholls was born in North London in 1921. Educated at Tottenham Grammar School he joined the army in his late teens and during World War two served with the Army in China, Burma and then Italy. After the war he became a police constable in Palestine before returning to the UK and in 1948 joined the newly created Middlesex Fire Brigade. Serving at Wood Green, Tottenham and Edmonton this intelligent young man rose to the senior rank of Assistant Divisional Officer in Middlesex before it was absorbed into the new Greater London Council’s London Fire Brigade in 1965. His talents were quickly recognised and in 1967 he was promoted to Deputy Commander of London’s “A” Division, covering the West End of London, Chelsea, Kensington and Paddington. A year later he was promoted to be the Commander of that Division. He would eventually rise to principal rank, and in 1974 he became an Assistant Chief Fire Officer.

Arthur Nicholls. O.B.E. QFSM. -former Middlesex fire brigade and London Fire Brigade senior officer.

An accomplished writer, he was a frequent contributor to the former London Fireman magazine. His acclaimed account of the New Langham Hotel fire won him a prestigious writer’s award from a panel of national journalists. This is his account of that challenging, and tragically fatal, blaze.

     “At varying times before six o’clock of the evening of 10th May 1971, according to the distances that had to travel, a number of men left their homes in and around London. With a nod, a cheerio, an affectionate kiss or just a friendly pat on the arm, they took their leave of their families and set off on their journeys to the fire stations at which they would be on duty for the coming night.

Paddington Fire Station, Harrow Road, West London. A Divisional headquarters station.

     Arriving, they dressed in fire gear ready for the roll call. The usual exchange of banter, the voicing of complaints, “Not my turn. I was on the pump last night as well.” “Not my turn in the mess, what about Harry, he hasn’t done it for weeks”. “Me? Stand-by. Has he gone sick again? I ought to get some of his bloody pay!”

     After the roll call and allotted to their various appliances, the men check the equipment, test the BA sets. Replenish petrol/diesel, oil and water as necessary and stand ready for what the night has in store.

    The work programmes are arranged; drills, lectures, equipment maintenance, hydrant tests, visits to risks, each station according to the pressing need of the time. But already at some stations the programme is disrupted before it is even under way.

     The urgent ringing of the fire bells sends the men running to their appliances, which in turn roar out of the station in response to the urgent call for aid. On through the evening the calls mount. Time and time again at fire stations here and there all over Greater London appliance bay doors crash open and the big red fire engines sally forth carrying their black-helmeted crews. With warning horns, or engine bells sounding, they are cursed for their noise by all but those in trouble and anxious for their aid. The radio wave, carrying the message from the appliances reporting the situation they were meeting, were seldom stilled:

‘Stop for Commercial Street. Flat of five rooms. Half damaged by fire. Two hosereels, BA.’

‘Stop for Southwark Bridge Road. Unoccupied factory of four floors. 40 feet by 50 feet.  50% of third floor, 25% of top floor damaged by fire. 3 jets. BA.’

‘At Under Croft, Westcombe Park Road. Smell of smoke on second floor, Crews investigating.’

‘Stop for Chapell Farm Road. Sports pavilion of one floor. 20 by 60 feet. 25% damaged by fire. One jet.’

‘Priority….From Station Officer Vaughan at 23 Croydon Road. Persons reported.’

‘Stop Kingston by-pass. One car and one bus in collision. One person trapped, injured, released. Five persons injured. All removed to hospital by ambulance. Police in attendance.’

     The variety was unending. A small fire here, petrol spilled on roadway there, a false alarm caused by burning rubbish, fire and explosion in a cable tunnel etc. Then, soon after 10 p.m. in Commerce Road, Brentford, a fire in a paint manufacturers that was only to be quelled by the combined sweating and gut straining efforts of the crews of 25 pumps and two turntable ladders. While the fight to control this blaze is still at its height an urgent (priority) message comes for reinforcing pumps to help deal with a fire at Friern Barnet Hospital, in North West London.

The city quietens.

     Still the score of other incidents mounts, although the rate slows down as life in the capital city quietens and people turn to their beds to sleep. To sleep, they hope, in peace, until the morrow. For most, this is to be. For some, the night will hold its terror. For some, it will demand the ultimate – life itself.

    But first, the men at Croydon are called to a warehouse in Selsdon Road. Again the fire is of such proportion that they ask for more assistance pumps and once more the men of the LFB sweat and toil in blinding heat and choking smoke to combat the scourge of mankind.

    In London’s West End it was an average night. The men at the stations had only snippets of news about what was going on elsewhere. Some of their appliances had been involved at the Brentford fire, indeed some were still so engaged. But generally the pace was normal. The clock passed midnight and ticked on.

     At Paddington the fire station grew quiet, some men talked over a cup of tea, others reclined to rest. In a hotel annex, less than a mile from the station, staff and guests settled down for the night. Destiny would have it that these two separate groups of people would meet this night to play out a drama together. A real life drama of fire, death, destruction, pain, agony and courage, rarely to be met outside the realms of fiction. For those in the hotel, the drama began when fire flashed through the corridors and stairways of the hotel in minutes to mushroom through the upper floors. For the firemen it began at precisely 00:48 hours when the silence of the station was broken by the harsh sound and continuous ringing of the call bells. Automatic lights flashed on throughout the station and in the watchroom the teleprinter clacked out its cryptic message: “Fire. Hills Hotel, Kensington Gardens Square.

A red angry glow.

5th May 1971-The Hills hotel blaze. (New Langham)

     Away they went, these men, some young, some not so young. Ordinary men who are dad to their children, “son” to their parents, “uncle this” or “uncle that” to nephews and nieces. Who are “dear” to their wives or “mate” to the man next door. Away they went to Kensington Garden Square. Their journey was short. One hundred and twenty seconds in time as they sped along Bishops Bridge Road and on into Westbourne Grove. Over the tops of the tall buildings that they passed en route there could be seen a red, angry glow reflected against the night sky. Inside and outside the hotel the drama was already being enacted. Some of the residents, frightened but unharmed, had made their way out safely. These were the lucky ones. Others, not so lucky, had crawled along a wide ledge at fourth floor level into the window of an adjoining house. They suffered burns and shock but were safe. One man, trapped at a ground floor window, and prevented from escape by a deep basement area surrounded by heavy iron railings, was helped by passing policemen, who bridged the gap by pushing a wooden plank to him. A woman, caught on the upper floors, made her way via a metal fire escape at the rear of the third floor, which led her via intervening buildings to an adjoining house. Badly burned in making her escape, she fell and sustained other injuries en route.

     A young girl, clinging desperately to a window sill on the upper floors, driven by heat and smoke lost her grip and fell to be impaled on railings surrounding the property. At windows at the front of the hotel men and women stood crying desperately for help. A crowd, already gathered, called encouragingly. “Don’t jump, they are coming”, for in the distance could be heard that most delightful of all sounds to those in peril from fire, the urgent sound of two-tone horns as fire appliances speed on their way.

     Thus it was as the first appliances turned the corner. Flames spewed from the windows of the two upper floors at the front of the building, thick smoke spilled from the windows of the lower floors. A man and a woman called excitedly from the second floor, below them on the first floor another man and woman screamed their distress.

     The pump escape pulled in first. Its doors opened and men leapt out before it slowed to a halt. The escape ladder was slipped, turned and extended as only a well drilled crew, working as a team and reacting automatically, can do. The appliance itself then moved on to clear the area of operations. Its driver, acting on instructions, radioed the priority message. “Make pumps six-persons reported”. As background to his voice as he transmitted the message could be heard the cries of the crowd and of those in distress.

     Now the other appliances from Paddington, the ET and TL, halted at the scene. One man raced to the escape and began mounting it as the top of the ladder crashed to rest at the second floor window. He was closely followed by a second fireman. As the first man reached the top, the trapped woman was already on the ladder. He moved aside to let her pass and went on into the room where the man still waited and then helped him on to the ladder. Both people were assisted down to the ground by other crew members. While waiting until the ladder was clear of people, the attention of the fireman, still in the room from which the man and woman had been assisted, was drawn to an adjacent window. There he saw an elderly lady standing in the thick smoke. Clambering along the top of a narrow balustrade, which fronted the windows, he made his way into the room to comfort the woman.

     A crew from Kensington fire station, arriving with a pump, pitched its thirty foot extension ladder to them. Its head rested two feet short of the window of the room. With difficulty, and assisted by a fireman on the ladder, the lady was helped to it and down to safety; and none too soon for the heat and smoke was worsening rapidly, and fire was breaking through the door to the room. Meanwhile the escape ladder had been re-pitched to the first floor and the man and woman trapped there were brought to safety.

     By now a clearer picture of the fire situation was available. The hotel, taking up a corner site, was comprised of two and five floors. It was alight on all five floors. Flames were roaring from a doorway at the side of the building and had engulfed the two storey section and was licking from the windows at the side of the hotel. At the back, the windows of one half of the building showed red with the fire inside. Already the roof had collapsed, flame licked skywards, and myriads of sparks shot high and the whole scene reflected the angry red glow.

The raging fire…

     But more, much more, remained to be done. A survey had shown more people trapped on a top floor at the rear of the hotel. A TL, extended over a projecting flat roof, reached a window and a woman was helped on by others inside. But the TL was at its maximum safety limits. The woman was afraid and could not be left to make her own way down the ladder in the choking smoke and past the raging fire. Quickly the ladder was housed and a fireman this time raced up to the woman and led her down. Again the ladder was extended. This time a man was helped on to the ladder and again it was housed and the man helped down. But yet another cry for help was heard and, below the very window from which these two rescues were performed, in the thick smoke, another man could be seen at a window, calling, pleading for help. Once more the ladders were extended. Now the smoke was so thick that the operator of the TL could not see the head of the ladder he was controlling. Coolly, magnificently, he persisted, and although the projecting flat roof prevented a direct pitch to the window at which the man was trapped, a pitch to the flat roof was achieved.

     The fireman at the top the ladders jumped off on to the flat roof and then crawled to a parapet at the side from where he was a little above, but only two to three feet from the trapped man. Here he was joined by another fireman. Together they reached over towards the man. Struggling and holding his arms, they helped him on to the roof. By now the man was almost hysterical. “My wife is in that room”, he cried out frantically, time and time again. One fireman climbed the parapet to enter the room, but could not make it without help. The other fireman tried to calm the man, but recognising the difficulty got him to the ladder, assisted him down and ran back up to rejoin his colleague.

     Conditions on the flat roof were atrocious. Flame belched from windows overlooking it and the heat and smoke from the fire beneath them made the atmosphere scorched. Yet again they tried to enter the room. Helped by his team-mate, one of the firemen got over the parapet into the room. The heat and smoke made it impossible to move far into the room, but reaching down he felt a bare ankle of a woman and, pulling her towards him, managed to get her head near the window before having to get back out into the air for respite.

     Now they were joined by a BA fireman, summoned by the TL intercom, and they felt the cooling, refreshing water from a jet directed at them from ground level to protect them. Over the parapet and into the room went the BA man. Fire was actually curling round the door edges of the room, but though the heat was intense the BA man lifted the woman until her head and arms were out of the window. Then his two colleagues, reaching over the parapet, grasped her arms, swung her out over the drop beneath and pulled her on to the roof. She was unconscious and had to be lifted on to the back of one of the men who had already mounted the ladder to be carried down to safety. Subsequently, it is pleasing to note, she recovered completely.

     For this particular act there is only one sad note to record. One of those who had worked so hard on the roof to effect this rescue complained; “I was so glad they put the jet on us ’cos I’ve never been so hot outside a building before, but they wet my last four bloody fags!”

Hook ladders.

The London Fire Brigade hook ladder being used in training.

     While these rescues were going on yet another old lady had been seen sitting on a window sill, clinging desperately to a drainpipe at first floor level. Beneath her was a drop of some thirty five feet to a rear basement area which was enclosed by a one-foot wide, twenty feet high brick wall. Crews with hook ladders made their way to her. Negotiating adjoining premises, intervening roofs and a variety of minor hazards, they reached the top of the basement area wall. From here they pitched their hook ladders to the window and, mounting them, helped her on to the ladder. With two hook ladders pitched side by side so that a man on one could assist the other man with the woman, she was gradually helped down to the top of the wall. Then, it all proved too much for her and she collapsed.

     Now the real struggle. Somehow they got her off the wall, then precariously inched their way along the top to the rear. A distance of no more than ten feet, but every foot fraught with difficulty and no little danger. Hesitating none, they pitched a hook ladder. One of the men put the woman across his back and, assisted as much as possible by the others, carried her up the hook ladder to the roof. From there she was carried through adjoining premises to safety.

     The deeds, as must be, are described in isolation, but of course the general operations were now in full swing. Reinforcing appliances were arriving in their numbers and jets were increased. Escapes and extension ladders festooned the faces of the building and crews struggled upwards with heavy hose, moving into the windows to begin extinguishing the fire.

     In the main entrance crews attempted to use the stone staircase and narrowly escaped serious injury when, en-bloc from the ground to fourth floor, it collapsed with a resounding crash. But the staircase was replaced with scaling ladders built up gradually to each floor in turn and jets were taken in. From adjoining roofs jets of water were directed through the collapsed roof of the building involved into the holocaust beneath. A TL, in use as a water tower, added its power from the side street. At the front of the building one of the saddest tasks of all had been accomplished. After a prolonged struggle the unfortunate girl who had fallen on to the railings had been cut free. Showered with sparks and falling debris, the crew had stuck to their task and, aided by a medical team, hoped their effort would be rewarded with success. But now, with the girl en route to hospital, they joined in the general fire-fighting.

Smoke to steam.

     An hour or so had passed and then the flames were beaten. Here and there a little flicker, a glow. Smoke has turned to steam. Inside the building the men carefully pick their way, avoiding weakened sections of floors, bridging the gaps where collapse has occurred. Cold, wet and so bloody tired now that the adrenalin has drained from their systems they push on. Damping down a smoldering ember here, a burning mattress there, they seek and search for those who may have perished and, finding them, wrap the sad remains in sheets to carefully lower them to the street outside where ambulances wait to receive them.

     Crew by crew they are released from various tasks and given short respite at the canteen van parked in a nearby road, where a steaming cup of tea or Bovril, a biscuit and a quick smoke helps put the world back in shape. Then, back again into the now cold, dank, steamy atmosphere of the building, the depressing smell of charred wood tinged by the occasional whiff of acrid smoke in their nostrils. For ages, it seems they work on until a new, fresh crew of men come to them and say; “We’re relieving you”.

The morning after.

     Outside again, dawn is beginning to break. In the light the tall gaunt walls of the hotel look forbidding and the black scorch marks above the window openings bear witness to the rage of the fire that once tormented it.

     Still, elsewhere around London, all is not at peace. The calls still come in. F Division, in the East End of London, now take their share when a paper warehouse is involved in fire and a priority call for more assisting pumps comes over the air; and the night’s totals mount as the operators in the controls receive the calls and dispatch the necessary aid. But with all things there is an end. At nine o’clock in the morning a new watch reports for duty. The men who have worked throughout the night go home, unless they happen to be out on a call or with one of the many relief pumps still attending the scene of the night’s major fires. Even these will go home soon. They will walk indoors and the wife will say, ‘Have a cuppa?’ and then tell of Alfred’s cut knee.

     A little later home than normal will be the few casualties among the firemen of the night’s battles. They will have had their treatment at hospital and not been detained, but will be late enough for families to have been told so that undue worry will not arise. Soon, however, they will all be there. Back with the missus, the kids, the people next door and they’ll worry about the rent, about food prices, about the holiday. Then at varying times before six o’clock on the evening of the 11th May, 1971, according to the distance they have to travel………oh! and if they are lucky they can buy the evening newspaper and see a picture of a fireman lying injured on a stretcher. The caption read: “A policeman, having played his part is carried away”.

Paddington’s turntable ladder returns to the scene of the fatal hotel fire.

Footnotes:

  1. The ‘stop’ message:

“Hotel 2 and 5 floors and basement, 50 by 80 feet, all floors damaged by fire, roof off. 12 jets, Breathing Apparatus. 1 woman jumped before arrival, 1 person rescued by extension ladder from 1st floor, 2 persons by extension ladder from second floor. 2 persons by escape ladder from 3rd floor, I man and 1 woman via escape ladder from 1st floor, 2 men and 2 women rescued by TL from 3rd and 4th floors. I woman rescued by hook ladder from 3rd floor- burned-overcome. 7 bodies found. All persons accounted for.”

2. The Gallantry Awards;

The highest accolade for bravery in the London Fire Brigade then, and still is, is a Chief Officer’s (now Commissioner’s) Commendation. The Chief Officer, Joe Milner, issued ten Commendations following the serious and fatal fire at Hill’s Hotel, Kensington in May of 1971.

The commended men were; Temporary Station Officer David Ellis and Fireman Bernard Cannon of North Kensington fire station.

Temporary Sub Officer Colin Livett, Firemen Leslie Austin and Thomas Richards of Kensington fire station. Leading Firemen Ray Cleverdon and George Simpson, Temporary Leading Fireman Howard Winter and Firemen Ken Salmon and William Willis of Paddington fire station.

 Leading Fireman Simpson and Winter brought a man and woman down an escape ladder from the second floor. After climbing along a narrow balustrade Leading Fireman Salmon reached a trapped woman on an adjacent window ledge and brought her down to safety via an extension ladder.

 Leading Fireman Cleverdon brought down separately a man and woman from the window sill of the fourth floor. Then with Firemen Richards and Willis he rescued a man and wife from a third floor room in extremely punishing conditions. Having assisted the man down the ladder Fm Willis returned to the room wearing BA, where conditions were very bad, and managed to drag the overcome wife to the window. Fireman Richards carried the woman down the ladder to safety.

Temporary Station Officer Ellis & Temporary Sub Officer Livett and Firemen Cannon and Austin, using hook ladders together brought down a woman trapped on an upper window sill at the rear of the hotel and having collapsed had to be carried down.

 Fireman Salmon skillfully operated a turntable ladder, even beyond its limits of safety and made possible a number of rescues.

Leading Fireman Ray Cleverdon and Fireman William Willis, and Fireman Thomas Richards were subsequently all awarded the British Empire Medal for Gallantry.

The Chief Officer congratulated all the crews that attended the fire on their efforts.

3. Nine people died as a direct result of this fire. However, although the conditions were appalling, ten were brought out to safety by the Brigade.

4. The fire was started deliberately, an arson attack.

Eighty years on-the creation of the National Fire Service (NFS)in1941.

The National Fire Service (NFS) was created in the late summer of 1941. It was the amalgamation of the wartime national Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) and the UK local authority fire brigades (about 1,600 of them). The NFS took control on the 18th August 1941. The previous heavy enemy bombing raids on London and other provincial cities in the UK had shown that not only were the local fire-fighting resources insufficient at times of greatest need, but there was also poor co-ordination of equipment, and their available resources. Even words of command differed from one fire brigade to another which, in turn, frequently led to confusion and misunderstanding.

The cap badge of the National Fire Service (NFS).

It took just thirteen weeks to nationalize the fire service. Even the Treasury, notoriously resistant to allowing exchequer support for fire protection, agreed to fund all emergency costs as well as a quarter of each brigade’s peacetime costs. Although it was national in name, in practice the NFS was a regional structure. With Britain divided into Fire Forces, with each commanded by a Fire Force Commander; the Fire Forces was sub-divided into separate divisions and further divided into ‘Columns’ and, finally, ‘Companies’.

The Fire Force Commanders were responsible to Chief Regional Fire Officers, who exercised extensive powers over the deployment of manpower and equipment within their boundaries. With between 2 and 4 Fire Forces in each region, the best officers were stationed in those areas deemed of the highest importance. The-is meant many existing officers were relocated, demoted or even pensioned off. Additionally, the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) was fully incorporated into the NFS. This went some way to ending the animosity that had existed between the AFS and regular full-time firemen, and it abolished the police brigades. The only brigades that remained outside the NFS were the hundreds of works brigades that protected industrial premises and were funded by their parent companies.

Reginald Mills RBA FRSA, 1896-1950. He worked as a fireman artist with the London Auxiliary Fire Service during World War II.

Contained in the newly created London Region were five force areas (reduced to four in 1943) plus the newly created River Thames Formation that brought together the fire-float stations of the London Fire Brigade, Kent, Essex and Surrey. Some nineteen river fire stations made up the Thames Formation, who now covered an area of the river from Tilbury to Walton-on-Thames.

The name of the fire-floats was changed too as they became known as fireboats, which is exactly what they were. Fifteen new river stations had been added in the greater London area and the river firefighter’s strength had been increased to three hundred and eighty-six. With a fleet of thirty fire boats and forty adapted barges, each NFS pontoon was large enough to have two fire-boats and two or three barges moored there.

The River Headquarters crest of the NFS River Thames Formation, which covered the Greater London area of the Thames, and included some eighteen fireboats and assorted fire floats and other tenders. 1942

Following the enemy onslaught of the Blitz during 1942 and 1943 only 23 raids occurred over the London Region. All were light in character and the fire service was only called out on five of these occasions. It was during the long lulls that firemen and firewomen took part in the industrial production for the country’s war needs. A variety of tasks were undertaken, including assembling, finishing, sorting and testing operations which required little space and only simple tools.

During the longer lulls in firefighting activities, NFS firefighters took part in industrial production for the country’s war needs. They carried out various tasks, including assembling, finishing, sorting and testing operations which required little space and only simple tools. Date: 1943

Small workshops were set up at fire stations and millions of items were handled including wireless sets, radar equipment, engine parts, aircraft parts and much more. The firemen of the Thames River Formation used their skills in the creation of paddles for assault craft as well as the making and testing of a variety of mine detectors, castings and bomb saddles.

Major Jackson. DSO. Deputy Chief-Commanding London Region inspecting the NFS crews in London’s Regent Park during their obstacle course training and exercises in 1942.

Between the periods of intense and arduous activity there were frequent times when there were few fires, or none, to be extinguished. However, there was always the vital need for drills, training, cleaning and maintenance of NFS equipment and vehicles. Improvements were also made to the firemen’s accommodation, something that had often been provided in unsuitable or inadequate premises. Premises that had been hurriedly requisitioned as sub-station to meet the emergencies of war. Now, new garages were built, sheds erected and, in one or two cases, completely new fire stations built from scratch.

NFS firefighters drilling at the London Region fire headquarters at Lambeth. SE1.

In 1939 there were some twenty-five thousand auxiliaries serving in the London Fire Brigade alone. By the end of March 1942 there were over forty-two thousand on the whole-time establishment of the London Region (NFS). At its peak the London Region had some ten thousand fire service vehicles and appliances, including its extensive fleet of fireboats and barges.

NFS fireboat AFB2 on the River Thames with Tower Bridge in the distance. For the first time radio communications were placed on the NFS fireboats.

A flavour of those times can be obtained from the reminiscences of a London firemen who, in 1942, was posted to a sub-station in South-East London.

“The Grand Surrey Canal ran through our district. It joined the Thames at Surrey Docks Basin and the NFS had commandeered a house, behind a shop on Canal Bridge- Old Kent Road, as our Sub-Station. We had a fire-barge moored on the Canal outside with four trailer-pumps on board. The barge was one of a pair of “Monkey Boats”. Boats that once used to ply the Canals, carrying goods. and had a big Thornycroft marine engine.

NFS-Monkey barge on a London canal.

I used to do a duty there and got to know Bob, the Leading-Fireman who was in-charge, quite well. His other job was at Barclays Brewery in nearby Southwark. It was certainly something different from tearing along the road on my fire engine. One day, when I reported there for duty, I found that the Royal Navy had requisitioned the engine from the barge. I thought they must have been getting desperate, but with hindsight, I expect it was needed in the preparations for D-Day. Apparently, the orders were that the crew would tow the barge along the tow-path by hand when called out! However, Bob, who was ex-Navy himself, had an idea. He mounted one swivel hose-nozzle on the stern of the barge and one on the bow. Connecting them to one of the pumps, when the water was turned on at either nozzle a powerful jet of water was directed into the water, driving it forward or backward as required and Bob could steer the barge by using the swivel. It worked very well, and the crew never had to tow the barge by hand. It must have been the first ever jet-propelled fireboat.

We had plenty to do for a time in the “Little Blitz”. The Germans had dropped lots of containers loaded with incendiary bombs. These were known as “Molotov Breadbaskets,” don’t ask me why! Each one held hundreds of incendiaries. They were supposed to open and scatter them while dropping, but they didn’t always open properly, so the bombs came down in a small area, many still in the container, and didn’t go off. A lot of them that hit the ground properly didn’t go off either, as they were sabotaged by Hitler’s slave-labourers in the bomb factories at risk of death or worse to themselves if caught. Some of the detonators were wedged in off-centre, or otherwise wrongly assembled.

The little white-metal bombs were filled with magnesium powder, they were cone-shaped at the top to take a push-on fin, and had a heavy steel screw-in cap at the bottom containing the detonator, these magnesium bombs were wicked little things and burned with a very hot flame. I often came across a circular hole in a pavement-stone where one had landed upright, burnt its way right through the stone and fizzled out in the clay underneath.

One rather macabre incident is worthy of a mention. A large bomb had fallen close to the Borough tube station booking hall when it was crowded. There were many casualties. The lifts had crashed to the bottom of the shaft so the Civil Defence rescue crew had a nasty old job.

On the other side of the road, opposite the tube station, stood the premises of a large engineering company famous for making screws. Next to it was a large warehouse. The roof and upper floors of this building had collapsed, but the walls were still standing. A WVS mobile canteen was parked nearby, and we were enjoying a cup of tea with the rescue crew when a steel-helmeted special PC came hurrying up to the rescue crew’s squad-leader.

“There’s bodies under the rubble in there!” the PC cried, his face aghast, as he pointed to the warehouse.

“Hasn’t anyone checked it yet?”

The Rescue man’s face broke into a broad smile.

“Keep your hair on mate!” he said. “There’s no people in there, they all went home long before the bombs dropped. There’s plenty of dead meat though, what you saw in the rubble were sides of bacon, they were all hanging from hooks in the ceiling. It’s a bacon Warehouse.”

The poor old special didn’t know where to put his face. Still, he may have been a stranger to the district, and it was dark and dusty in there.

In the time prior to the outbreak of the War; then throughout the Blitz, and during the days of the NFS the London Region was led by three individuals. The first was Commander Aylmer Newton George Firebrace: London Chief Officer (1938-1939); then Major Frank Whitworth Jackson. DSO: Deputy Chief Commanding the London Region (1939-1943); and finally, Frederick William Delve [later Sir]: (NFS 1943-1948 & LFB 1948-1962).

Never in the history of London’s fire brigade, some one hundred and thirteen years (1833-1946), had the brigade or its leadership been confronted by such challenges, unparalleled fires or events of such magnitude as to be without precedent, even to the present day. The role and the work of the Brigade was very much in the public’s gaze, and particularly during the months of the Phoney War, not always favourably!

Of the three men that commanded London’s land and river firemen/firewomen two had a nautical background, and one was a decorated First World War hero. All three were outstanding characters in their own right and made a positive contribution to the country’s war effort in addition to making policy that enhanced the Brigade, including its river fire service. They were;

Almer Newton George FIREBRACE. A portrate at The Fire Service College.

Almer Newton George Firebrace was born on the 17th June 1886 in Southsea, Hampshire. His was a naval education, schooled at HMS Britannia. In 1902 he was commissioned into the Royal Navy as a Naval Cadet on board the battleship HMS Bulwark, flagship of the Mediterrean Fleet. By July 1905 he was confirmed in the rank of sub-lieutenant, and lieutenant in 1906 serving on the Invincible-class battlecruiser and HMS Indomitable. He saw active service during World War I and subsequently served on HMS Centurion-battleship, during the Battle of Jutland in 1916, as a gunnery officer. In 1917, he was promoted to Commander and ended the war as the Commander of the Chatham Dockyard gunnery school. In 1918, he was awarded the Bronze Medal by the Royal Humane Society, this medal is awarded to people who have put their own lives at great risk to save or attempt to save someone else.

He left the Royal Navy at thirty-three years of age at the end of August 1919. There were limited opportunities in the peacetime Royal Navy Firebrace applied to join the London Fire Brigade. He had originally applied for the post of Chief Officer but instead was appointed to the lower position of one of its principal officers. Starting as an Assistant Divisional Officer in 1920 he was a Divisional Officer (North) in 1933 and promoted to Deputy Chief in 1936. He became Chief Officer in June 1938.

In January 1939 Firebrace was seconded to the Home Office to oversee the plans to co-ordinate the London Region’s sixty-six fire brigades. On the outbreak of World War II he was appointed as the Regional Fire Officer for the London Region. However, this post was purely administrative and prevented him from operationally commanding the region’s fire brigades, that fell to his deputy Jackson and local Chief Officers.

Seconded to the Home Office in May 1941, the London Blitz had forcefully demonstrated that the localised system of fire brigades handicapped an otherwise efficient fire service and needed to be remedied. With the NFS created in 1941 Firebrace was appointed to the dual-hatted roles of Chief of the Fire Staff and Inspector-in-Chief of the Fire Services. He became the first (and only person) to head all firefighting in Great Britain. At its peak strength, he led approximately three hundred and seventy thousand personnel. This included some eighty thousand women, as he was a strong supporter of the employment of women.

Remaining at the Home Office Firebrace was knighted at Buckingham Palace by King George VI on the 13th February 1945. He was subsequently appointed Commander of the Order of St. Olav by the King of Norway in recognition of his services during the war. He retired on 28 February 1947, after which the National Fire Service had been returned to local authority control. He died, aged eighty-eight, on 8 June 1972.

Frank Whitford Jackson was born in 1887 in Strood, Kent. Little is known of his formative years but the Census records of 1911 shows him living with his father, who was an Assistant Superintendent of Shipbuilding and working for the War Department, in Shooters Hill Road, South London. At 24 the young Jackson was employed by the London County Council as a clerk. Following the start of the First World War in July 1914 he had volunteered to go to the ‘front’ and on the 7th October was enrolled into the Officers Training Corps of the Royal Army Service Corps. (The Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was the unit responsible for keeping the British Army supplied with all its provisions barring weaponry, military equipment and ammunition, which were under the remit of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps). It was the same day as a Cyril Clarke Boville Morris was promoted to Second Lieutenant. Both men would go on to command the London Fire Brigade.

Frank Jackson had a noteworthy war, rising to the rank of Major. He served in France throughout the war and was mention in dispatches on three occasions for his bravery and outstanding conduct in the field by Field Marshall Douglas Haig, who commanded the British Expeditionary Force from 1915 to the end of the war. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in January 1918. (The DSO was established in 1886 for rewarding individual instances of distinguished or meritorious service by officers in war, typically in actual combat.) Jackson remained in the Army until 1919.

In 1920 he applied to join the London Fire Brigade, entering as an officer. His contemporaries were the likes of Major Morris, who had been awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry during active operations against the enemy, and Cmdr. Firebrace R.N. By the early 1930s, and with Chief Officer Morris. MC now at the helm Jackson had risen to the rank of Assistant Divisional Officer. Firebrace was the Divisional Officer North, commanding all north of the River Thames. All three moved to the new Lambeth Brigade Headquarters in 1937, when the shadow of war was already discernible on the horizon. Firebrace became Chief Officer in 1938 and Jackson promoted to become his deputy. With Firebrace’s departure to the Home Officer the following year Jackson retained the rank of Deputy Chief but was responsible for commanding the London Fire Brigade and its massive influx of auxiliary firefighters and their equipment. Jackson was the Brigade’s Chief Officer all but in name.

It was under Jackson’s leadership that the London Fire Brigade prepared for and then fought the blitz. Command of the London Fire Brigade has rested with him, and to him was entrusted the responsibility of coping with the many and difficult situations created in the London area by the enemy’s attacks. Churchill also added to pressures upon Jackson when he gave him the unenviable responsibility to keep St Paul’s intact.

The London Fire Brigade successfully dealt with outbreaks of fire on a scale, and in such numbers, as have never previously been experienced. Particularly noteworthy was the manner in which, in spite of severe handicaps, the public Fire Services operated on the occasion of the enemy’s incendiary attacks on the City of London on the night of the 29th December, 1940.

It was to Major Jackson’s able and inspiring leadership that the success of the London Fire Brigade was in large measure due. His leadership of the service from 1939 to 1943 was widely considered distinguished.  His personal leadership through the Blitz resulted in him being rewarded by King George VI and made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE). (London Gazette. No 35074, 14th Feb 1941, pp. 869.) His citation read; “He has shown marked personal gallantry on a number of occasions, and in the fullest sense has shared the dangers of his officers and men.”

Then in January 1943 his was a sudden, and unexpected, departure from what now was the London Region of the National Fire Service, and in what were considered slightly ‘acrimonious’ circumstances, although what they actually were was never made public. He took on an administration role within the Home Office, directing his energies to fire prevention. In the same year, on the 12th June, his son, also named Frank Whitford, aged twenty and a Flying Officer pilot in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (196 Squadron) was killed in action over France.

Frank Whitford Jackson CBE. DSO died on the 15th June 1955, aged sixty-eight, at his home in Epsom, Surrey.

Frederick William Delve was born 28 October 1902. He commanded the London Region of the National Fire Service for four years prior to becoming the Chief Officer of the reformed London Fire Brigade in 1948, a position he held for a further fourteen years. He was an outstanding figure in the world of fire. His 92 years spanned the part of a century remarkable for its increase in fire hazards and in developing the essential services for dealing with them.

“Freddy” Delve was the son of a Brighton master tailor. His parents’ plans for his education were shattered in 1918 when an over-patriotic “flapper” on Brighton sea-front mistook the tall, blond teenager for an older man dodging military service, and pinned a white feather to his lapel. To his parents’ distress, he went and joined the Royal Navy on his 16th birthday. The war ended two weeks later.

Resigned to Royal Navy life, Delve became a wireless telegraphist. His ship was sent to the Black Sea to evacuate the British Military Missions as the Red Army overran the ports there and for the first time he became aware of the importance of good communications.

By1922 Delve left the Navy and joined the Brighton Fire Brigade. By 1929 he had passed a series of technical examinations with distinction, been commended for two particularly courageous rescues and promoted at the age of twenty-seven to Second Officer, the youngest in Britain. He moved to the prestigious Croydon Fire Brigade as its Chief Officer in 1934 and under his leadership they became the first in the country to install radio communications between all appliances and the Croydon HQ.

It was from Croydon that he led his brigade to the legendary Crystal Palace fire in 1936. There, he said, “for the first time I saw firemen turning their brass helmets back to front to protect their faces from the searing heat.” It was there too that he developed the skill which was to become vitally important during the Blitz, of relaying hose over long distances and, if necessary, uphill from the water sources to the fires.

Delve was one of a small group of young, dedicated, senior fire officers who had been pressing the Government to take seriously the threat of firebombing in any future war. It was not until after the air attack on civilians in Guernica during the Spanish Civil War that, in 1937, the Home Office set up a committee, on which Delve served, to advise on changes in the fire service in Britain which, at that time, comprised very many different brigades, most with equipment incompatible with neighbouring forces. The ensuing Fire Brigade Act of 1938 established the Auxiliary Fire Service and, for the first time, admitted women to the brigades.

In 1941 he became Deputy Inspector-in-Chief of Fire Services, under Firebrace, and when the enemy began their saturation raids on Britain’s cities he travelled to their aid with help, advice and, if necessary, support from neighbouring brigades or the armed services. He was awarded the CBE in 1942.

The heroism of the Blitz firefighters could not hide the deficiencies of their equipment and organisation and Delve was, again, among those who persuaded the Government to establish the National Fire Service in 1941. In January 1943 he was appointed Chief Officer of No 5 Region – the whole Greater London area including its seventy craft of the River Thames Formation which he delighted in equipping with radio-communication. It was to prove essential in their work protecting the fleet of support vessels which packed the Thames Estuary, laden with explosives and ammunition, awaiting D-Day.

When the RAF began their intensive campaign against enemy cities, Delve was among the fire chiefs who advised on how to achieve optimum results from fire bombing. Soon he found himself protecting London from the onslaught of V1 and V2 rockets.

After the war, when the NFS was disbanded, Delve remained in London as Chief Officer of the reformed London Fire Brigade. He became the first Chief Officer of the LFB to be knighted whilst still in office. He retired in 1962. He never ceased to grieve for his beloved wife, Ethel who died in 1980 after fifty-six years of happy marriage. ‘Freddy’ Delve died at the age of ninety-three on the 2nd October 1995.

The London Fire Brigade war memorial, erected to members of the Fire Services who lost their lives during the Second World War. Seen here at the conclusion of the dedication and unveiling ceremony, 10 April 1956, with additional flowers placed by relatives and friends.

During the war three hundred and twenty-seven men and women of the London regional Fire Service were killed in action and three thousand and eighty-seven were injured as a result of enemy action.

The pennent flag of the River Thames Formation (NFS) introduced in 1943

The last gallantry medals to be awarded to members of the NFS River Thames Formation followed an incident in the closing months of the War. It followed a river accident when the MV Erinna and SS Mount Othrys collided and caught fire on the River Thames at Holehaven, in Essex, on 7th January 1945. 

On the 8th January 1947, in a letter to Mr Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill said of the Nation Fire Service, “They are a grand lot, and their work must never be forgotten”.

From 1945 until March 1948 the National Fire Service was occupied in creating a peacetime service. On the 1st April 1948 the London Fire Brigade returned to local authority control, the London Country Council.

The London Fire Brigade cap badge after returning to local authority control following the disbandment of the NFS.

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Rescues in London’s NW2

MIKE HAD BEEN OPERATIONAL for exactly two years when he reported for the second night duty of that tour. At 20 years of age, he was not considered a big bloke, nor was he overly athletic. He weighed in at 11 stone 2 pounds and had a 32-inch waist line. On parade, that November evening, he was detailed to ride the pump-escape and designated as the station’s dutyman. This North London fire station, once in the former Middlesex Fire Brigade, still received its fire calls via telephone from the control room at Wembley. The Sub Officer rode in charge of the PE and Station Officer Vic rode the pump. With the normal appliance routines completed, and after a cup of tea, the guvnor left the Sub Officer to take the watch for evening drills. It was an uneventful evening. No fire calls– what firemen call ‘shouts’ – until that call.

Their left to right: Fireman Brian Hudson, Mick Wallmam and Leading Fireman Keith Wright. Taken at the rear of the Pump bay at Willesden Fire station

It was a bitterly cold night. Snow had already started to fall by the late evening. No one went to bed at the designated time, although, like all older fire stations, firemen had put down their army-style fold-away beds after supper anywhere they could find a space. The station had no dormitory and there was a definite pecking order on who had the best bed spaces. As the watch’s ‘junior buck’, the 20-year-old found himself at the bottom of the list. All had to sleep using the Brigade-issue blankets (horrible scratchy things) since the guvnor did not allow any personal sleeping bags on the station. It was one of his many foibles. Most of the watch slept in their overall trousers and a tee shirt. It ensured a quick response when the ‘bells went down’. But being the operator of the control room – or, as London stations call it, ‘watchroom’ – his bed space was secure in the station control room that night. As the station control room operator, it was his duty to answer any calls from the Wembley control room, write down the call details on a special form and actuate the dispatch lights which would inform the other firemen which fire engine(s) were going out.

The son of a London fireman, George Wallman, Mick Wallman joined the London Fire Brigade as a junior firemen in 1965. It was a career almost cut prematurely short after a serious injury on the improvised obstacle course at the Junior Firemens Collage, Swanley, Kent in1966.

At 2.24 a.m. his light sleep was shattered by the bells going down and the automatic house lights coming on all around the station. He leapt from his bed and was at the watchroom switchboard within a second. With pen in one hand and switchboard phone in the other, flicking switches, he listened intently to the control officer. He wrote down the address and the route card reference. The station’s pump-escape and pump were ordered to a fire at 168 Cricklewood Lane, NW2. Switching on the two-coloured appliance dispatch lights, red and green, in the appliance room, he let the crews know that both machines were being ordered. He heard the wooden appliance bay doors crash open as the two drivers waited impatiently on their appliances, revving the engines up. Handing an ordering slip first to the Sub Officer, together with a route card, he repeated the process with Station Officer Culwick before young Mike climbed into the rear of the PE.

As the drivers drove out of the station the cold night air hit them. There was a thick covering of snow all around. The call was to the far side of their stations ground, almost into West Hampstead’s patch. The drive took five to six minutes; because of the snow, the fire engine drivers were careful to maintain control of the machines. When they entered Crickelwood Lane, the PE was still in front, the pump a safe distance behind it. As the PE cleared a long and slow right hand bend it was the Sub Officer and the driver who first witnessed the unfolding drama in the near distance.

Then, in his short career, the young fireman saw a sight most firemen speak of yet many hope they will never see. It was a dire fire situation. People were screaming for their lives. They were trapped in the burning, three-storey, terraced building. It was a combined shop and dwellings. Its occupants were desperate to be rescued. Coming from the opposite direction, with different weather conditions, the supporting station’s fire engine had arrived at the incident seconds ahead of Willesden’s own two machines. Their crew had dismounted and were running to slip their 50-foot wheeled escape ladder before extending it to the top floor window. A window where people were shrieking for help. Acrid, thick, angry, smoke was forcing its way from the windows of the property. Fierce flames were shooting into the street from the lower levels.

Before his PE had stopped he had jumped to the ground. He knew his task was securing a supply of water so that an immediate attack on the fire could commence in concert with the attempts to save these people’s lives. Grabbing the hydrant equipment from its locker he ran to the nearest water hydrant which was just slightly to the left, and in front, of the property on fire.

The building involved was a café, its accommodation above. It was some 25 feet wide and went back about 70 feet deep. As he ran to connect a standpipe to the hydrant, about ten feet from it, the ground floor suddenly exploded into a ball of fire. It seemed the entire building was engulfed in searing flames. The fire in the ground floor café had flashed over. What had already been a serious incident escalated in those few seconds to a desperately dangerous one. Flames, like a plumber’s blowtorch, roared across the pavement. The resultant fireball rose up over the roof of the house. The flames were so fierce that they burned the side of the other fire engine that had, in all the urgency, been parked too close to the front of the building. The heat was so severe that it first scorched, and was now setting alight, the wooden wheeled escape ladder which had been pitched to the upper floors. The pump operator of the supporting fire engine had a miraculous escape; he barely avoided being severely burnt, as the resultant flash-over almost consumed him while he operated the side-mounted pump controls. The force of the explosion knocked our young fireman over. He dropped the hydrant equipment and was forced to back away because of the severity of the heat. Shielding his face with raised arms he looked up to where a moment ago people had been. Now there was nothing to be seen except a wall of flame.

Why he did what he did next he still has no idea. He had never witnessed anything like it before. He was given no instruction: gut instinct drove him to do what he did. He ran back towards his own station’s pump. Skidding on the snow, he stopped at the pump’s rear cab and, jumping up into the cab. he grabbed a Proto oxygen breathing apparatus set. The pump’s driver, senior fireman Brian Hudson, seeing the young fireman’s obvious intentions, screamed at him:

“No Mike!”

Brian had never shouted so intently. But the young fireman was not listening. Dispensing with all the starting-up and booking-in procedures required for the breathing apparatus he threw the set over his shoulders, stuffed the mouthpiece into his mouth and turned on the set’s main valve. In his haste he chose not to secure the set to his body nor fit the mouthpiece to his head harness. As he ran towards the burning escape ladder he put the BA goggles over his eyes and placed the nose clip on his nose. With a long push of the by-pass valve, which inflated the set’s breathing bag, he drew in through the mouthpiece the first breaths of pure oxygen.

Another fireman had already got a jet to work using the one-hundred-gallon water tank supply. The young fireman barked out his instructions, instructions that were muffled by his mouthpiece. He shouted for the man on the jet to extinguish the flames on the escape ladder and to try and hold back the fire. He climbed the escape ladder at speed. The fireman on the jet looked on in disbelief but complied with the shouted command as the fireman on the ladder rapidly rose higher.

The aftermath of the fatal fire, showing the position of the 50-foot wheeled escape ladder. The original ladder used was badly burned and scorched.

He felt the effects of the blistering heat as he ascended the burning ladder. He also felt the spray of cold water on his neck and hands as the fireman below sprayed him and tried his best to keep the flames at bay. Nearing the top of the ladder the flames enveloped his whole body but the fireman below relieved the situation by carefully directing his jet. He managed to keep the flames away from his mess-mate climbing the ladder above him.

He reached the top floor window sill. It was where he had last seen those pleading so desperately for help. The heat rising from below was intense. In fact, he thought he might not be able to endure it. But he was determined to get into that room. So, taking a leg lock on the ladder, he first used his axe and attempted to cut away the window frame and enter the room. He failed. Within the first couple of blows of his axe he knew he was not making any impression on the wooden frame. He had no choice but to get into the room using the restricted window opening. The head of the escape ladder had been extended into the narrow open window. The top of the ladder was taking up most of the available space closest to the window sill.

This was the very space where, only moments before, those inside the room had been shouting frantically for rescue. He managed to twist his body around on the top of the ladder and, somehow, entered through the window opening feet first. As he forced himself through the gap his fire helmet was knocked off his head and fell into the street below. He wriggled and forced himself through the restricted opening, his feet feeling for the floor. He felt the unconscious figures right under the window. He had no option but to stand on them in order to get into the room.

He realised, as he entered the room, that his time in there would be very limited. The temperature was intense. He was starting to cook. But then, why would he not? The room was like a ruddy oven! The floors below him were ablaze. Already, at the back of his mind, doubt was creeping in. How could anyone possibly survive in such conditions without breathing apparatus? The temperature was like nothing the young fireman had ever experienced. It sapped his strength. His fears were starting to grow: a fear that said if he did not leave the room right now, he might never get out at all – alive, that is. Suddenly he felt very alone. It was an overwhelming sense of duty that made him stay.

He bent down to the two figures at his feet. He found a limb and started to lift. The first body felt very heavy as he attempted to lift it towards window sill. The seconds were turning into minutes. Each time he seemed to get the unconscious casualty up onto the sill, the body slipped back down to the floor. He could not keep it in the right position as the exposed skin had become greasy from the heat and smoke. He changed his grip in order to lift it higher, but the dead weight proved too much. Once again it fell to the floor. He grasped the ladder in a last determined attempt to give himself more purchase when he felt another fireman’s hand grab his own.

He took the offered hand and directed it towards the casualty he was trying to lift. Now as he lifted the other fireman knew what he was trying to do and pulled from the outside. The fireman at the top of the ladder was joined by Brain Hudson wearing his breathing apparatus set. They took terrible punishment from the heat and smoke pouring out from the windows below. However, between them they were able to get the first unconscious person out through the window and onto the shoulders of one Brian Hudson, who started to descend the ladder. Others on the ladder were assisting, preventing the fireman performing the rescue from falling. The difficult process of getting the first casualty down the ladder prevented others, wearing breathing apparatus, from getting up and joining in the search and rescues.

With the first, unfortunate, soul hurriedly cleared from the base of the ladder a fireman, wearing BA, raced up the ladder to try and enter the room. However, inside the room the second casualty was already being lifted and passed out through the window opening. The top of the ladder was like a log-jam. Those wanting to get in had no alternative but to accept the next casualty and start another difficult descent. Below, meanwhile, a breathing apparatus crew from his own station were getting increasingly anxious. They were desperate to get into the room to help their young colleague, knowing what he was doing required an entire crew. However, they were unable to help him because of the casualties being brought out of the window and down the escape ladder. The firemen working on the escape ladder were shielded by covering jets of water. Whilst this prevented the actual flames from getting to them, they still had to contend with the severe heat and smoke which continued to envelope them in powerful waves.

Back inside the top floor room small pockets of fire had broken out. Mike could see the glow of the flames through the smoke. He sensed that this was the only room in the building not to have flashed over. He realised that the fire was still raging beneath him. He could hear the flames consuming anything that burned. He had visions of the floor giving way beneath his feet, pitching him into the inferno below. It was then he found a third unconscious soul, a child. Those in the room craving rescue had been breathing in the hot gases mixed with the smoke. It clearly must have burnt their throats as their laboured breathing and the guttural sounds made for a sickening noise. Carefully lifting the child, he carried he body back to the window where he placed it on the shoulders of a waiting fireman.

He thought he could not take much more of this punishment. It was time for him to get out. He had already rescued three people and was feeling exhausted. His decision to leave the room changed when he thought he could hear more strangulated breathing sounds coming from within the room. He knew he could not leave now, so continued to search. On hands and knees, he crawled through the debris covering the floor. He felt the worrying rising temperature coming off the floor. The smoke was now so thick that he could not see a hand in front of his face.

On the far side of the room, he found two more unconscious people. Both were large individuals and he was running on empty. He did not have the strength to move them unaided. Crawling back to the window he removed his mouthpiece and shouted down,

“Two more are still in here.”

Although he could see nothing below but the smoke, he heard the huge gasp and cry of awe from below. It came from the large crowd who had gathered to watch. They had cheered each time a rescue was performed by the firemen. Returning to the bodies he thought;

 “I really do need some bloody help in here.”

“I really do need some bloody help in here.”

Sub.0 ‘Taff ‘Evans led a crew up the collapsing 1st floor staircase working a jet into the back bedroom without wearing BA. He and his crew took terrible punishment during the rescue and (in the opinion of Mick Wallman) all were deserving of a Commendation, but his rescues overshadowed theirs.

Although the crowd could see the rescues they could not appreciate that this public display of professionalism was no mean feat of strength or skill by the firemen, whether in the room or on the escape ladder. To them, standing in the safety of the street, it all looked very exciting. But to lift a dead weight, pass it through a restricted space, then onto the shoulders of a fireman, who was struggling to stay balanced on the 50-foot ladder whilst manoeuvring an unconscious person onto their shoulders, tested these men to their limit. The firemen directly below their colleague, as he carried the casualty, assisted as much as they could. But all were taking huge punishment from the smoke and heat from a fire still burning beneath them.

With the fourth rescue taking place on the ladder the pair inside returned to the fifth person. However, when they returned to the window there was no fireman waiting to receive the casualty. They were recovering people faster than they could be carried down the ladder. There was no alternative: they had to carry the person down themselves. So, exhausted, the young fireman climbed out of the window and stood at the top of the ladder. His colleague lifted the casualty and assisted in getting it across his shoulders. It was only with great difficulty that the two achieved the task. With the ladder still occupied by the fireman carrying down the fourth person, no one could ascend the ladder to assist in helping him carry the fifth person down.

As Mike started to carry this heavy burden down the ladder every step down tested his resolve. He started to feel light-headed. Then he felt the reassuring hands of a fireman beneath as he guided his feet onto each rung of the ladder. He had only descended 10 feet or so when his exhaustion made its presence known. He knew he was going to fall off the ladder, together with the body he was carrying. His strength had given out. There was nothing left in reserve, he was totally spent.

Spitting out the BA set’s mouthpiece he shouted to the fireman below to grab the casualty. He hoped he might fall from the ladder without taking anyone with him. But the fireman below was having none of it. He shot up the ladder and, with huge force, used his arms to envelope him and the body onto the ladder. The slight respite from the weight he carried allowed Mike to recover slightly. The pair now shared the body’s weight and after some very difficult manoeuvring they continued to carry the limp form to the bottom of the ladder where it was swiftly removed by others.

After the briefest of respites, he re-joined other BA firemen searching the top floor. It was the home station’s Leading Fireman (Keith Wright) who told him that he had been ordered by the Officer in Charge of the fire to leave the room and return outside to ground floor level. In the desperate search for still more bodies, he ignored this order, believing there were still some areas of the room not searched. All three now began a last frantic search of the remainder of the room. It was during this search he realised he was becoming a danger to himself and the others. He could no longer think properly and had not an ounce of strength left. He was very close to passing out.

Again, the aftermath showing the head of the escape in the room and little room there was to get in let alone get the casualties out!

As he started his descent the firemen already on the ladder had to descend to allow him off. It was as he was stepping off the ladder he collapsed. Willing hands caught him and carried him across the spaghetti of hose to a clear area of pavement where he was laid down to recover whilst an ambulance crew checked him over and administered oxygen. As the breathing apparatus set was being taken off of him Station Officer Culwick came over to him to ask how he was. This wise and accomplished Willesden Station Officer said:

 “For you, young man, this job is over.”

Placed on a stretcher he was carried to the waiting ambulance. He passed numerous fire engines and other ambulances at the scene. So much help had arrived that he was not aware of. Concerned firemen looked his way and gave him a smile and the thumbs-up sign. No further people were found in that room. In the ambulance an attendant started to remove shards of glass from the young fireman’s hands, which were bleeding freely from the cuts from glass that had shattered in the initial explosion. His hands were also blistered from the heat. Alongside him, on the other side of the ambulance, was a man lying on another stretcher. His face was burnt and his hair badly singed. The man sat up and asked;

“Are you the fireman who entered the fire first?” He replied that he was.

The man, clearly in some pain, asked to shake the fireman’s hand and with a strange calmness muttered softly:

“I think you are very brave.”

The man had managed to rescue himself by jumping out of a first-floor window, 15 feet above the ground floor. Another man had rescued himself by climbing down a drainpipe. It later transpired that the young fireman had been in the top floor room for 27 minutes, mostly on his own, searching for and rescuing five people.

He was taken to hospital suffering from heat and smoke exhaustion to be checked over by the duty Accident and Emergency doctor. However, scant attention was paid to the young ‘exhausted’ fireman in the busy A&E Department that fraught morning, as the medical staff fought desperately to save the lives of some of the people who had just been rescued. Two hours later he was released; collected by a senior officer, he was delivered back to Willesden fire station.

As he sheepishly entered the mess room, he was greeted by big smiles from all the watch. He informed Station Officer Culwick that he had been discharged and was fit to continue his duties. Not a man to be overcome with emotion, the guvnor told the returnee he should get back onto the machine he had been detailed to ride at roll call – and with that, he was back in the ‘box’. Nothing more was said of the incident. They all just sat and drank tea, looking at each other, smiling through their blackened faces. They were filthy, smelt of fire debris, smoke and grime. Their work overalls were soaking and soiled. Zilch was said as to what had just happened only a few hours before. It was beyond anything any of them had ever experienced before. Nobody knew where to begin or what to say. After washing, and a change of clothes, they drifted slowly back to their beds where most just lay on top of their blankets, unable to sleep.

Returning to his bed in the station control room, his mind was a whirl of thoughts and emotions. He could not sleep either. Each time he closed his eyes a vivid memory of the fire flashed across his mind and he was forced to open them again. (In fact, these flashbacks went on for many weeks afterwards before he was able to return to a good sleep pattern, free of harrowing images.) In the next hour Willesden’s station bells summoned both machines to another incident. During the search of the premises, where a fire was reported, the security guard complained that the crews stank of fire and smoke. One of the firemen replied:

“We had a bit of a fire earlier mate.”

The others just looked at him and smiled. It was something of an understatement. That was the last call of their shift. They all left the station that morning for their two rota leave days.

Parade on their next first day duty was normal. At 9 a.m. the firemen were detailed as to their riding positions for that day. After the appliances and equipment were checked, and other normal procedures carried out, the young fireman was ordered to report to the station office. As he knocked and entered the office he was immediately ordered to stand to attention. He stood in front of an unexpected array of officers, both his own and the off-going watch officers. His guvnor set about giving him the biggest bollocking of his short career. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that he had broken nearly every rule in BA procedures and had endangered himself in the process. With a ferocity that was making some of the others standing there quake, the Station Officer continued that if he ever caught him doing anything like that again he would be charged under the Fire Service’s discipline code and would likely be sacked. By the time the Station Officer had finished this verbal assault the 20-year-old fireman was visibly wilting under this quite unexpected onslaught.

The Station Officer then stood up from his chair and moved swiftly from behind his desk. His stern face suddenly broke into the widest of smiles as he came towards the pale-faced young fireman. He offered his hand, then, changing his mind, he moved closer and enveloped him in a huge friendly hug. He looked at his ‘junior buck’ and said:

“In all my considerable years your actions were the single most heroic act he had ever seen. I am very proud to have you as a crew member on my watch.”

He ended by saying he was going submitting a report and was going to recommend him, and others, for bravery awards. The other officers then came over to him. Each shook his hand as they warmly congratulated him. As he left the station office he was in a daze. Privately, he wondered why there was such a fuss about what he done. He felt sure plenty of others would have done the same.

The word was also now out on the ‘wire’. Word that this watch had had a ‘fair’ old job and did ‘some’ rescues. Those on Willesden’s other watches bitterly regretted missing the sort of job that was only seen very rarely in the fire brigade. On ‘shouts’, firemen he had never met before would ask to shake his hand and say that they had heard of what he had done. He was very humbled to be treated in this way, especially by those he knew were far more experienced firemen (and officers) than himself.

It was later in that tour the watch held its own debrief on that fire. It was the guvnor’s way that after a proper ‘job’ they would sit down and learn from each other. They listened to each man to get an understanding of the whole job. It was only then that the young fireman discovered that simultaneously to his rescues the Sub Officer had led a crew into the front door of the building, only to find an inferno raging. With a jet of water, he had led the crew, none of whom was wearing breathing apparatus. They fought their way up a collapsing staircase whilst attempting to extinguish the fire as they went. Moving into the first-floor accommodation, at the rear of the building and after a search, they had rescued two more people whilst taking a huge amount of physical punishment in the process.

It transpired that nine people were in the building at the start of the fire. They were in various letting rooms on the first and mezzanine floors and in the family accommodation on the second floor. In addition to the two people who had rescued themselves, one of whom had spoken to the young fireman in the ambulance, seven people were rescued by the brigade. Three of them died later in hospital, two from the top floor and one from the first floor.

Epilogue.

Years later, and after his promotion to Leading Fireman and now on another fire station, our hero was informed that the police wished to interview him again about the Northwood fire. During the interview, where he had to make a formal police statement, the incident in the ambulance seemed of special importance to the police. He asked the detective Inspector about its significance. He was informed that the man who accompanied him in that ambulance had set fire to the café in Northwood and many other places over the subsequent years. He was responsible for the deaths of eight people in total. Finally caught, he confessed to his many arson attacks. The man was due to appear at the Old Bailey. He was subsequently found unfit to plead and was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure in Broadmoor Hospital, a prison for the criminally insane.

Fireman Michael Wallman and Fireman Brian Hudson (Willesden), Fireman Alan Fosbrook (West Hampstead) and Fireman Alan Cox (Hendon) were each awarded a Chief Officer’s Commendation for their actions when five people were rescued from a fire at Cricklewood Lane, North West London in November 1969. Three of the five people survived. Fireman Michael Wallman was subsequently awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) for Gallantry.

London fireman Michael J. Wallman, with his fiancee (later wife) Clare, after the presentation of the British Empire Medal for Gallantry at Buckenham Palace.

(Based on the recollections of those who attended the incident.)

Peccadillos…

I had been sitting in the front of a fire engine, ringing that bell, for ten years now. I did occasionally use the b-bar’s, especially when some twat refused to give way, but with drivers like George Perrin, Peter Jansen, ‘Bunny’ Halford (RIP), and Rob Rance, all on Brixton’s White watch, their colourful use of a string of expletives were normally far more effective than any two-tone horns!

BRIXTON fire station-London’s busiest fire station in the early 1980s.

I had enjoyed a career a-kin to winning the lottery, not that the lottery was around back then of course. But I was blessed with working on watches that always came together as a winning team. The early years had little to do with me because I was just a player, not the captain. My first ‘old school’ Sub Officer-Dick Richardson (and renown sage) once told me;

“Learn from those that set good examples Pikey and ignore those that don’t.”

I was more than happy to ignore the skates, the p-takers and the occasional bullies and concentrate on those who took a pride in their craft. That does not mean they were all angels, especially when you consider their individual peccadillos, but their score sheet always fell in favour of them being good firemen, positive role models, than anything to the contrary.

Left to right; The late John ‘Bunny’ Halford; me; Tony Bryant and George Perrin.

I had enormous pride in my Brixton watch in the early 80s. We worked hard and could play harder. I was not untouched by the odd peccadillo, having a strong tendency to see the Brigade in shades of ‘grey’ rather than just plain ‘black and white’. 95% of the time, and with some luck thrown in, we dealt with what was thrown at us with a fair degree of professional flair and style. Occasionally, when the Gods where against us, things took a wrong turn. On the very rare occasion we simply got things wrong. It was like missing a decisive penalty in football match. That was always a bit of a wake-up call, so when in the space of just twenty-four hours we went from ‘premier’ league to amateur status there was some licking of our wounds!

That first particular night duty was a Sunday. After parade, and with the regular appliance checks completed, my crews stood down free from normal work routines. Wally Dolezal was both the mess manager and an accomplished cook. Brixton’s ‘dinner parties’ were quite an event. Wally was a bit of a ‘cause-célèbre’ with his regular, special, three course mess evening meals. We even occasionally invited our two watch ADOs along as paying guests. Both Bert Dixey and Dave Aldrich loved these special evenings as once again they enjoyed the cut and thrust of mess-table banter whilst enjoying a glass of Chateau plonk along with their meal. Peccadillos, they both had them, but they were firemen’s officers too. However, on that particular Sunday it was just the watch. Our supper cut short by the station bells ringing and dinner plates hastily shoved into the hotplate before we all ran towards the pole house.

“Fire at Tulse Hill, junction of Brixton Water Lane,” was the only information on the ordering slip as both machines turned right out of the station and headed up towards Coldharbour Lane. Our suppers would not be seen again for many hours as additional calls to a warehouse alight were received and Clapham’s pair were sent on additionally. If it’s possible to have a text book fire, where everything fell into place at the right time, and the crews responded without hesitation and demonstrated the art of firemanship (firefightingship never sounded right!) this was it.

The warehouse, I subsequently discovered, was owned by Forte (the hotel chain). It stood on a site that was, on two sides, surrounded by residential property. Although a single-storey structure its pitched roof was about fifty feet high with twenty feet high exterior brick walls. Around forty feet wide and sixty feet deep it was set back from Tulse Hill. The force behind the plume of smoke being driven out through the roof vents, and the deep red glow that could be seen through the barred and reinforced glazing, indicated a serious fire. The warehouse was extremely well secured. Well, it was Brixton! Strong security padlocks were fitted to the double corrugated metal front doors and prevented any speedy access into the building.

The late ‘Bunny’ Halford and the interior of the Forte warehouse fire. Tulse Hill.

I knew this location including the position of the surrounding hydrants. I did not need any prompt from a crew member shouting out the hydrant’s position from the hydrant location book. (We had had a previous serious fire directly across the road whilst I was at West Norwood.) But now, even if we made a quick entry into the building (something which was extremely doubtful), three or four BA crews would be needed to attack the blaze. As the PL pulled past the incident, and the pump stopped before it, I told my driver to “Make pumps eight”.

The ‘boys’ did good. Twinning the supply from the double hydrant on the nearby corner, hose lines flew from the lockers and jets were made ready. The PL crew tried to force an entry, via the front entrance, whilst I made a quick reconnaissance of the building. Through the frosted wired glazing fire could be seen rapidly involving a large proportion of the interior. Within a minute of our arrival three jets were charged and ready. One was already being directed to cool the side of the warehouse but the PL crew still had not been able to force their way in.

That legend that is Pete Gwilliam was Clapham’s Sub Officer in charge then. Reporting to me I ordered him to take his two crews into the next street, behind the warehouse, and to make an attack on the back via the private houses’ back gardens. Ensuring our EVAC’s (radios) were working (often they didn’t!) I told him to let me know what the situation was when he got there.

‘Gwilly’-Acting Station Peter Gwilliam (with two bands on his helmet) at Dockhead fire station some years after the Brixton fire.

With the sound of more two-tone horns moving closer, Lambeth’s and West Norwood’s appliances were deployed to cover the Brixton Water Lane side of the fire. As the B divisional BA control van arrived Sub Officer Mike Harvey (bless his memory) established his control point and was preparing for the arrival of the Brigade’s major control unit.

Making them ‘eight’ gets you eight fire engines but other supporting crews as well. I wanted the two ET crews, plus the hose laying lorry. Soon senior officers would arrive and take over control. I would become just another ‘make weight’ but for now I was in charge. Peckham and Forest Hill’s crews made up the balance of the make-up. With the exception of Forest Hill, I knew all the B division crews and had a good rapport with them all. The legacy of the 77 strike provided a strong bond and, despite my own peccadillos, I had some reasonable street-cred on the fireground.

Giving a clear brief of what I wanted, and communicating via the EVAC’s radios, we waged a formidable attack on the blaze. A blaze that had broken through part of the roof and had blown out some of the side windows. As the front doors gave up the struggle and succumbed to the combined physical assault by a combination of large axes and sledgehammers, we finally had access into the building. In my head I had a good understanding where all my crews were deployed and was satisfied that I had sufficient water supplies available to feed the six jets in use. Hopefully, the ET crews would back up my and Peckham’s BA crews and the plan was to enter and put fire out from the inside not pour water in on it from the outside!

Sub Officer Mick Harvey was picking my brains to draw up the fireground map, a map that would be duplicated on the Brigade Control unit when it arrived. Mick had already sent his leading fireman to collect the appliance nominal roll boards and place them in the holders on the BA van. They made for a good team.

The late Roger Vaughan was then a B Divisional temporary Divisional Officer. Slightly built, slim, articulate and an intelligent man ‘Rog’was a bloody good fireman. He had transferred those skills into officer rank. ‘Rog’ was also a friend and he too had the odd peccadillo-normally in the form of a shapely female. (But what do they say about ‘people living in glass house should not throw stones’-so I won’t). Roger had beaten the duty ADO to the scene. Having booked in with the BA van he found me at the front of the warehouse, monitoring the fire situation and ‘encouraging’ the BA crews getting stuck in.

Although the blaze looked dramatic, flames seventy to eighty feet reaching up into the night sky, it was going nowhere other than out. After I briefed him on what I had done Roger took over command. Roger was now in charge. I didn’t know it then but Roger thought further assistance was necessary and made pumps ten and had to hand over command to the duty ACO when he arrived.

With the Brigade control unit in control, its crew monitoring and recording fireground activity, I was free to re-join my crews. The initial BA crews had made good progress and had subdued the main body of fire. Hot, sweaty there were satisfied nods, and smiles, as they started to exit the warehouse and were replaced by fresh BA wearers. After another hour the “fire surrounded” was sent. The stop message followed a little while after.

With the blaze under control, I was left in charge of the four pumps tasked with continuing to damp down and turn over the considerable debris, quenching hot spots, and ripping down false partitions whilst searching for any remaining signs of fire. With the details gathered for the fire report, and a senior fire prevention officer tasked to investigate the cause of the blaze, our pump crew made its way back to Brixton in the early hours of Monday having handed over to the two pump relief crews. Arriving back at the station the only other charred remains to contend with was the congealed and dried-up dinners!

                                                        ***

The following night shift (Monday) who would guess that things could be so utterly different? The call came in after supper and we were able to eat in peace for a change. Brixton’s ground was mainly B risk and the PL and pump were called to a disused chapel alight, Brixton Hill. The former chapel was a well-known “squat”, used by vagrants or other local “street” people. But what might have been a good little ‘bread and butter’ jet job turned into a nightmare! Following the same route as the previous night we stopped short of Tulse Hill in Effra Road.

Effra Road synagogue-as it was in its heyday, By the 1980s it was forlorn and unoccupied.

It started when the PL driver parked on top of the nearest hydrant. As the two drivers ran up and down Effra Road looking for a hydrant first the three-hundred gallons of water in the pump’s water tank, and then the three-hundred gallons in the PL’s, tank ran out. The blaze inside the semi-derelict building had regained a strong foothold in the ramshackle interior of the once house of worship. Years of discarded rubbish seemed to fill the place. Then with a hydrant finally located, and five lengths of hose bringing the water to the pump and my stop message overdue, a drunken vagrant came staggering out from the undergrowth looking for his pal! Seeing the blaze in the building, or rather the considerable smoke coming out of it, (which now had a jet and a hose reel directed onto the fire) he started to shout for his pal saying;

“He’s in the building, he’s in the building.”

With considerable irritation I interrogated the poor soul rather harshly. But he held his inebriated ground insisting that his pal was definitely in the building. I was stuffed! With a rapid search to undertake and keeping the fire under control I had no choice but to send a priority message, “Make pumps- four persons reported.”

We were too shorthanded to search the building for the drunk’s pal and fight the fire at the same time. With the fire not contained Clapham, once again, supported us. A thorough search was made but no one was found. However, that did not stop that night’s duty Divisional Officer-John Norris-from telling me that my future looked very uncertain when he arrived because of the delayed “persons reported” message. (John and I had joined the LFB together as junior firemen in 1965.) As firemen our previous friendship never grew and he clearly enjoyed commenting on my lack of officership. However, there was no defence to offer so I did not try. I was duly bollocked and he left.

As the crew was making up the gear a bag of rubbish, laying against a wall, was kicked away revealing a hydrant tablet! Seeing it I found the hydrant cover under the front wheel of the PL. The atmosphere, when we returned to the station was strained, to say the least, as we had a frank exchange of views…Silence reigned as we took to our beds and I reflected on the uncharacteristic under-performance of us all.

My mood was not improved any when at about 5a.m. we got another shout. As I read the teleprinter ordering I did a double-take. It was to the very same premises as the previous evening’s debacle. This time the fire had managed to get a considerable foothold and I, reluctantly, had to “make ‘em four” again.

Now every member of the crew knew exactly where the hydrant was located and there was no delay in getting a couple of jets to work and my crew, in BA, got stuck in. Making pumps four at the same location, in the space of a shift, always raises the alarm bells with senior management and none more so than my own Divisional Commander Brian Butler.

Had we put the first one out properly or not? I thought we had but there was no denying the evidence before my eyes. The bloody building was alight yet again. This was the very question that a gleeful looking DO Norris put to me as he returned for the second time. But until I could get back into the building to investigate, I could not reassure him otherwise.

I was not the only one having these doubts as my crews looked equally crestfallen as we started to turn over the debris. Small pockets of fire can continue to smoulder, for considerable periods, under debris and re-ignite whatever surrounds it. I know I made a thorough search, and examination, before leaving the night before but I was feeling more and more uncomfortable thinking how could I have missed the signs?

Out of sheer bloody mindedness I made my crews work longer than was necessary as I was still miffed about that damn hydrant. Whilst the seats of the second fire were concentrated in different areas this did not discount the possibility that we allowed the fire to spread or had left a “bull’s-eye” to re-ignite.

Before the Divisional Officer departed, he warned me; “You haven’t heard the last of this Station Officer Pike.” My own self-doubt was brought to an end by the arrival of a local police patrol car. I had requested their attendance “to assist in fire investigation”. In truth more to cover my ‘arse’ than for any hard evidence that I had discovered. When the police constable came over, he said, “No need to investigate. A guy was seen running away from this fire and he was subsequently picked up on Brixton Hill. He has already put his hands up to starting the blaze and the one last night too”.

Feeling relieved, no one was more pleased than me that that particular night duty was over. As for Bill Butler, I never heard a word. Come to that not from John Norris either…he got posted out of the Division after that. It seems we all have some peccadillos!

Another Brixton ‘shout’. Bread and butter stuff back then

Sewers.

How I loved a sewer visit. It is not everyone’s cup of tea I know, in fact it was rather like our hook ladders; a love or hate it thing; only here instead of going up you’re going down and normally wearing a ‘Proto’ oxygen breathing apparatus (BA) set.

It’s the late 1960s and I’m on Lambeth’s Red Watch. With four year’s operational experience under my belt I considered putting in for an emergency tender (ET) course. It was something I didn’t wanted to rush into as I felt it was necessary to get some decent BA jobs under your belt before making such a move. Historically, London Fire Brigade ET crews were generally held in very high esteem and were expected to ‘deliver the goods’ at any difficult BA job or at special operations requiring BA. That was in addition to their wider specialist rescue role. This ‘gaining experience’ view was not always shared by other watches at Lambeth. Some equally young firemen (I was only 22) put in for their ET course as soon as they had passed out in Proto BA. They argued that they would gain the necessary experience by riding the ET. This was not a view held by the Red Watch’s ET men, the very firemen I would ride along-side if sucessful on the examable course.

By the late 1960s the ET crews were seen by many senior officers as “Leete’s commandos.” In the 1950s the Brigade only had two; one at Lambeth and the other at Clerkenwell. These crews would have to combat their individual fears of hot confined humid spaces, face the risk of a sudden unexpected explosion of flammable gases or liquids whilst still working as an elite crew. They supported, and contributed, to the combined efforts that gave fire-ground crews their unique synergy.

Lambeth’s emergency tender crew showing its array of equipmen in the mid 1950s.

Occasionally it was their skill that could make the difference between life and death in the rescue of a trapped BA fireman. In such situations it required every ounce of the ET crews’ combined expertise. It was not the place for a mere novice, a view of those that rode Lambeth’s ET on Red’s. So, it was with their blessing that I put in for the next possible course nomination. The course came through almost immediately, supported by my guvnor’s endorsement, but not before our monthly salary slips changed from pounds, shillings and pence (£. s. d) to pounds and pence on Monday 15th February 1971.

I attended the Southwark Training School for my three week ET course. Southwark was then the centre of all the Brigade’s ET training. It serviced the seven Greater London ET stations’ qualification needs. The course incorporated intensive BA training and covered the rigorous and demanding roles expected of its crews, this included visits to specialist installations and premises. One of these visits was to the London’s sewer system. Later on in my my career taking crews on a sewer visit became a bit of a party piece when I was stationed at Southwark, West Norward and Brixton fire stations.

Southwark, the London Fire Brigade’s home for the training of its emergency tender crews, as here in the 1920s.

We were taken to Southwark’s Cornwell Road, adjacent to the South Bank, where we were greeted by the ‘Ganger’ of one of the then GLC’s sewer crews. We were soon introduced to their subterranean world. The sweaty brickwork of the tunnel closed in on us no sooner than we squeezed down through the open manhole cover opening and descended the vertical metal ladder, a ladder that took us thirty feet below London’s streets. The hot and humid smell of detergent contrasted with the cold flowing water around our feet. This first visit was without any BA, a familiarisation of this strange, and at times, amazing place the sewer men spent their working day. With each step the dull turgid screen of mist parted to allow us through. Shafts of light from our torches picked out the glistening highlights of geometrical lines of brickwork, creating their own claustrophobic son-et-lumiere with each step we made. Distorted shadows transformed us into phantoms wandering in an aquatic underground maze.

We were wading along the tunnels in single file. Cold greyish water flowed eastwards and at knee height pushed against the backs of our waders, urging us on. We could not walk upright, the egg-shaped tunnel was only five foot high. Cramped, we moved at a stoop, the shadows mirroring our movements on the brickwork. After a while the Ganger, at the head of the file, turned around.

Typical flushers in a London sewer.

“Keep in your place,” he said, “and if you get lost, then don’t start doing anything clever like trying to find us. Just stay where you are, we’ll find you.”

The Ganger was the head of a team of five flushers. They spent their working hours cleaning the bowels of London. He had on heavy waders that came up to his waist. Beneath them he wore thick thigh length woollen socks like leg warmers. Above the waders and the leg warmers he was garbed in a blue jacket, kept in place by a belt and the all-important safety harness. Although the tunnel we were trudging through was egg-shaped, the sewer bed was flat covered by a layer of sediment that felt like sand and grit; our boots sank into it with every step.

“That’s what we call muck down here,” the Ganger said. “It’s full of little pockets of gas, waiting to overpower the unsuspecting sewer worker. That’s why if you ever get called to get us out of one of these tunnels only ever come down in your breathing apparatus, otherwise we will all be in the shit, literally.”

From that simple inconspicuous manhole cover we had entered just one of the very many miles of sewers running through the metropolis. Twisting and turning, beneath the roadways, fifteen hundred miles of neo-gothic sewers run below London streets, some much smaller than the ones we were in that day. Others were almost like caverns; storm relief sewers that direct away millions of gallons of rain water, thus protecting the capital from potential flood damage, during torrential rainfall.

On our second visit we were wearing Proto breathing apparatus sets. A different manhole this time and located near the Elephant and Castle. After a forty foot descent we entered a tunnel no taller than four foot tall. Our backs started to ache within the first 100 feet. The bottom of our breathing bags dragging through the sewer water. As we negotiated this subterranean waterway we were conscious that a rain cloud bursting some miles away might quickly fill these tunnels with torrents of water. Easily sweeping away the unwary worker. The only protection against this possibility was the ‘Top-man’, and his two-way radio, who gave regular weather forecast updates. Which for those working below could mean the difference between life and death.

London firemen on their ET course at Southwark-wearing the Proto oxygen breathing apparatus set and navigating the ‘Rat-run’ in Southwark’s BA chamber.

We practised the rescue techniques necessary to lift, carry and raise an Injured/unconscious sewer worker. Later in the comfort of the classroom we supplemented our practical experience by learning of the health and biological hazards such rescues can expose the rescuer too. These include Weil’s disease, spread by rats’ urine, the virus of which can get into the body through cuts and scratches and end up in the brain and in most cases leading to an unpleasant death. Hepatitis is more common but is not the only organic peril since other bacteria will cause a range of potentially life-threatening conditions. It is therefore vital that the washing and decontamination procedures are rigorously followed, after the crews return to street level. Just as potentially lethal are the reaction of different chemicals mixing in the sewer system possibly producing a cocktail of toxic gases. Hence the importance of the sewer safety lamp which has been designed to warn of its presence.

The ET course was very “hands on”. We lifted, pulled, cut, spread with the full range of rescue equipment the ETs’ carried. We also visited various lift installations and learnt how to recognise the differences between electrical, mechanical and hydraulic systems. How to shut them down and hand-wind the lifts; how to open or remove lift doors and release the “dead” brakes so that we would be able to move a lift either up or down. These explorations covered the London Underground system too; we learnt the lifting points on varied rolling stock, how to isolate the electrical power supply to the tracks. We went beneath escalators; we entered cold store refrigeration plants (where the hairs in our nostrils froze solid within seconds). We performed drills wearing the full protective clothing only the ETs carried, and which will be the fireman’s only protection when dealing with serious leakages of toxic gases and refrigerants such as ammonia.

The sewer pipe in Southwark’s BA chamber-there was a small round sewer pipe too!

At the end of all this intensive course participants, Sub Officers, Leading Firemen and Firemen were extensively examined by the Training School ET senior officers. Every aspect of the course was covered. Attendance alone was no guarantee to gain a pass on this demanding course. A genuine camaraderie was established between us all. It helped ensure that the high standards expected were met. Finally, armed with our new skills and knowledge, we returned to our respective stations to put it all into practice, or so we hoped.

In the end I did actually attend two sewer incidents whilst riding the ET. One was in Brixton Road and the other in North London. Brixton Road was a sewer collapse and the lads from Brixton, under the command of their Irish born Station Officer, Declan Butler, did an exceptional job of extracting the injured sewer workers, whilst we just helped.

North London was a long way to travell from Lambeth and by the time we arrived it was done and dusted. Another good job done the local station crews. But the local sewer gangs around South London were always willing to give us a visit, although there were a few on the various White Watch crews I took along who did not share my enthusiasm for seeing what lay under their feet!

The only two London firemen to perish in a sewer incident. They had entered wearing ‘smoke-hoods’ and were asphyxiated. Their deaths brought about the change to self-contained ‘Proto’ breathing apparatus.

Today’s London firefighters, wearing the breathing apparatus that they would wear when committed to any sewer incident.

The Colonial Wharf fire. Wapping.

London’s river frontage has been the setting of many major blazes over the years. In fact it was a Southwark riverside warehouse fire in 1861, along Tooley Street, which would give birth of London’s first municipal fire brigade a few years later. That fire, like so many, took the lives of two brave souls trying to the fight the flames. The Blitz, during the Second World War, saw complete riparian streets ablaze as a result of enemy bombing. But in the main, and certainly in peacetime, London’s firefighters normally restricted such fires to the building of origin. Sometimes fate worked against their gallant struggles, despite their best efforts and unwavering exertions, to contain the blaze. One such blaze occurred on 25th September 1935. By any standard it was a spectacular fire. It was one that caught the public’s imagination and one that is worthy of recalling.

The fire at Colonial Wharf, Wapping on 25 September 1935. In the foreground is a French ship, the Gatinais of Rouen, and on the dock crane roof can be seen firemen in action with others directing their jets from the River Thames. Date: 1935

On the afternoon of the 25th the fire-float Beta III, one the London Fire Brigade’s four fire-floats, was moored at her station at Cherry Garden Pier in Rotherhithe. The pier was located in the once thriving ‘Port of London’. It remains there today, downstream of Tower Bridge on the Thames’ Bermondsey south bank. On the opposite northern riverbank once lay a range of imposing modernised wharves and warehouses included the Colonial Wharf. At the time of the fire this nine-storey warehouse was full of crude rubber and other highly combustible products. The warehouse would burn for four days. During that time a number of violent explosions occurred. Sixty pumps, twenty special appliances and three fire-floats (later renamed fireboats) of the London County Council’s London Fire Brigade and some 600 of its firefighters fought this mammoth blaze.

The Massey Shaw fire-float which became operational in July 1935. The Colonial Wharf fire was her first major test.

The fire had been discovered by an employee working on the fifth floor of the warehouse. The first alarm call was given by exchange telephone direct to the Whitechapel Fire Station at 3.28pm. A second call was given by a passer-by on the south of the river at 3.35pm to the firemen crewing the Beta III at the Cherry Garden Floating ‘D’ Station. As fire engines from Whitechapel, Shadwell headed to the scene the Beta III cast off and crossed the Thames. Five minutes later the officer in change sent a ‘home call’ message. Other local stations were swiftly dispatched to the rapidly developing Wapping High Street blaze.

Those first fire crews found the nine storey warehouse alight on the sixth floor, although no actual fire was visible from Wapping High Street where they had parked their fire engines. Owing to the height of the building (some one hundred feet tall), the narrow internal staircases and the meandering means of approach the crews’ experienced great difficulty in finding the seat of the fire quickly, or even an entrance door to the floor involved. The fire was eventually reached from the fifth floor of an adjoining warehouse on the west side. It was a tortious route via an iron doorway, just inside of which was a small cat-ladder leading up through a trapdoor (about 18” by 2’) to the floor where the fire was showing.

At 3.48, twenty minutes after the first call was made, a ‘district call’ was made. This brought in all the fire engines of the district. Fire engine’s from the now forgotten City of London’s fire stations of Red Cross Street, Whitefriars, Bishop’s Gate and Cannon Street rushed towards the great pall of thick black smoke rising from the eastern side of Tower Bridge. The new Massey Shaw fire-float was summoned as were additional turntable ladders. The Chief Officer, Major Morris MC. getting intelligence about the fire left his Southwark Headquarters in his staff car and headed the short distance towards the incident.

Major Cyril Clarke Borille Morris. MC. Chief Officer of the LFB from 1933 to 1938. Date: 1930s

The fifth floor had been packed, almost to the ceiling, with two-hundredweight (one hundred kilogramme) bales of crude rubber and which were now well alight. The whole floor was soon engulfed in fire. The firemen had to abandon their positions owing to the extreme heat and dense, choking, black smoke. Even more turntable ladders were ordered and the fire was attacked by jets from the top of five turntable ladders positioned in Wapping High Street. At 4.41 Major Morris sent a ‘Brigade call’ message. Sixty pumps would now attended the fire. On the land side ‘radial’ branches, that could throw a vast column of water into the building, were used in Wapping High Street. On the riverside firemen climbed onto a crane fixed to the warehouse and used its vantage point to direct their jets at the blaze. Their position was precarious to say the least. On the river firemen climbed on to barges and directed large jets of water at this enormous building fire.

Three of the brigade’s four fire floats were brought into action. The twin funnelled Beta had been the first to arrive. With its large capacity firefighting monitor, fitted near her prow, she was projecting a powerful column of water of many hundreds of gallons per minute to the height of the Colonial Wharf.The Massey Shaw, which was moored at Blackfriars, had passed under Southwark, London and Tower Bridge before arriving at the burning wharf. Now the combined efforts of the two fire-floats were throwing five thousand gallons per minute of Thames river water into the inferno. The fire-float Delta, that had steamed down from her station at Battersea Bridge was feeding jets through lines of hose carried onto the shore and barges.

The Massey Shaw fire-float, one of three attanding the blaze, directing it monitor at the fire and delivering 3,000 gpm (13,500 litres)

Although street hydrants were used to some extent the brigade pumps mainly obtained their water from the nearby Hermitage Basin and Wapping Basin, and the Port of London Authority officials took special steps to ensure the locks were kept filled with water.

The fire burned with incredible ferocity. It spread rapidly to the adjoining warehouse on the eastern side, a warehouse also stocked with crude rubber. Spreading upwards to the top floor the fire burned through the roof, on which was mounted a large crane. As the roof fell in the crane, from which fireman earlier had been tackling the fire, came crashing down. It fell onto the barges moored in the river below. Large parts of the walls of both warehouses collapsed causing three of the barges to sink, although one was subsequently re-floated.

Firemen used any vantage point to get an advantage on the blaze. Here they climb up a dock side crane.

The fire was surrounded by 9.45pm that day. However, it still burned fiercely throughout the night. It remained a serious threat to the surrounding warehouses on both sides. Early the next morning the front wall of the building partially collapsed. It fell into Wapping High Street. Shortly after 7.00am there was a violent explosion in Colonial Wharf which brought down its side wall and severely damaged the roof of the adjoining warehouse on the down-river side. It was only a barrage of jets that prevented the fire from securing a hold on that warehouse too. The fire continued to burn all day. As it spread downwards into the building it again threatened to involve the adjoining warehouse. But it was the monitor of the ‘Massey Shaw’, which was capable of throwing vast quantities of water, onto that side of the fire that prevented fire spread. Further violent explosions occurred later that day. Explosions so forceful that they blew two hundredweight bales of rubber out into the surrounding streets.

A new difficulty was now also handicapping the brigade. In Wapping High Street the drains could not cope with the amount of water and molten rubber which had spread over the street. By the Thursday night sewer-men, trying to keep the drains clear, were up to their knees in a viscous, oily flood. Several hundred lengths of the Brigade’s hose were submerged in this sticky, treacly, liquid.

Part of the wharf has collapsed overnight

By early Friday morning the body of flame had finally diminished. By 8.26am the fire was in hand. Nevertheless, the rubber continued to burn, and one explosion blew a heavy iron door out into Wapping High Street and flames several feet long shot out across the road. The fire was still not completely under control until Sunday, 29th September. The Brigade finally left their duty at 6.00pm on Tuesday, 1st October.

Fireman with his hands covered tar from the fire.
Welcome relief with a cuppa fire the Brigade’s canteen van.

‘The Times’newspaper covered the fire thus:

“Colonial Wharf at Wapping, Sept. 26.

Twenty-four hours after the outbreak of fire at the Colonial Wharf, Wapping, firemen are still at work, seeking to subdue the flames which, though under control, continue to burn fiercely through the lower floors, with occasional explosions. The walls are gradually collapsing, and the stream is flowing with liquid rubber from the burnt stores. The river floats continue their attack on the burning building, and firemen are perched precariously on cranes on adjacent wharfs. Fire engines from all parts of London and the suburbs were arriving during the day, bringing men to relieve those who had been on continuous duty for long hours, and a few of whom had suffered minor injuries. It is expected that it will be days before the fire is extinguished. It spread to an adjoining warehouse today, but was controlled. The district is covered with soot, and the schools and tenements are uninhabitable.”

The Massey Shaw fire-float tackles theColonial Wharf, Wapping High Street, on the 27 September 1935. The nine-storey warehouse was full of crude rubber and burned for four days, during which time a number of explosions took place. Sixty pumps, 20 special appliances and three fireboats, manned in all by 600 firemen and fire officers fought the huge blaze: which they successfully prevented the fire from spreading to the surrounding warehouses. Date: 1935

The Eldoraro’s ice cream factory fire-Stamford Street-Waterloo: 24th April 1968.

The Stamford Street blaze in April 1968.

I mentioned recently how most, if not all, London firemen can always recall their ‘FIRST’. Most notably it is their first ‘fatal’, an event that’s embedded in their psyche. Others have other notable first’s too, like slipping and pitching the 50 foot wheeled escape ladder for a rescue or, for a very few, using a hook ladder in anger. I know I do, although it was a few years before the hook ladder incident came along. This happens to be another of those firsts, my first proper ‘Proto’ breathing apparatus fire.

Did I make a difference to the efforts of others that day? I doubt it very much. However, did this fire make an impact on me? Yes, all the difference in the world. Until that day I had used the title London fireman. After Stamford Street I started to believe I might actually become one.

I had first arrived at Lambeth fire station in January 1967 aged 18 and 4 days old. Posted to the Red Watch, and having got my probation under my belt, I was sent on my Proto breathing apparatus exactly twelve months later. I passed out BA qualified in February 1968.

The ‘Proto’ one hour oxygen breathing apparatus set, the dominant set used across the London Fire Brigade.

I loved my job as a London fireman but kicking my ‘single’ heels between shifts was a bit tedious so I found myself a regular part-time delivery job with a wine company in the shadow of Buckingham House, Westminster. I delivered wine around Victoria, Pimlico and Chelsea between my two night duties and on my first leave day. That particular Wednesday I had parked on Millbank, by the Thames, for a lunchtime sandwich. I watched as three of Lambeth’s five fire engines, the pump-escape, pump and turntable ladder turned right out of the station, on the other side of the river, and headed eastward on a shout. Continuing passed Lambeth Brigade they all headed down Lambeth Palace Road in the direction of the GLC’s County Hall. Looking down river I could see a column of thick smoke rising skyward behind the bend in the river; the tell-tale signs of a ‘job’. As I ate my sandwich the column grew higher and even thicker.

Frustrated at not knowing what was happening, or where, I returned to my wine deliveries. By the early afternoon the distinctive taint of smoke, which only comes from a serious fire, wafted in the air.  Lambeth must have a working job on its hands so I rushed to finish my deliveries. Leaving the shop early and trotted back from Victoria Street to Lambeth fire station eager to learn more. I reached the station about 4.30 p.m. and saw a stand-by pump at the station. So, whatever had happened was still happening.

The Greater London crest-the cap and helmet badge of the London Fire Brigade.

Changed into my overalls I went down to the watchroom to read the teleprinter messages. Multiple calls had been received at 1.02 p.m. to the Eldorado’s (Lyon’s Maid) ice cream factory in Stamford Street, SE1. (It was later established that most of the factory employees were in the first floor canteen when the fire was first discovered.) An employee, walking from the canteen across the main storage area towards the staircase, saw fire among a stack of corrugated cardboard cartons. Raising the alarm, the canteen was quickly evacuated and a few of the employees attempted to tackle the fire with extinguishers. However, the speed and intensity at which the fire was developing trapped two of the men in the canteen. With dense smoke rapidly filling the first floor it prevented them from reaching the staircase, their regular escape route. The pair ran to the outside windows, now their only possible escape, or so they had hoped.

The station teleprinter installed in London fire stations. It was the means by which, nearly all, orderings were received at a fire station.

Eldorado’s in Stamford Street was on B23’s Southwark’s ground. Their pair, plus Lambeth’s three machines, supported by Cannon Street, made up the augmented attendance. When Southwark arrived smoke was already pouring from the windows along the whole of the first floor and a man was seen shouting for help. The first message back from Station Officer Arthur Money was ‘Make pumps four persons reported’.

The pump-escape of Southwark fire station (B23) one of the first fire engines on the scene.

As Southwark’s crews attempted to rescue the man, via an extension ladder, they found the window opening too small for the trapped man to climb through. The smoke in the building was already dense and choking and the man was in fear of his life, so the crews set to work with hand tools to cut their way in order to save him. Lambeth’s turntable ladder crew, with fireman Les Davidson driving, saw another man shouting for help at a first floor window. For quickly, and decisively, siting the mechanical ladder and rescuing the man Les and the officer in charge of the TL (Ken Bland) were later formally congratulated for their actions. It was not the first time a 100 foot turntable ladder had been used to rescue a person from the first floor, but it was unusual.

Southwark’s govnor, Arthur Money, was then the brigade’s longest serving Station Officer. A man with a wealth of operational experience he was also highly respected. He was no stranger to major fires. On arrival he estimated he had a building of one, two and seven floors about one hundred and fifty feet by one hundred and twenty feet. The whole of the first floor smoked-logged and rescues were being carried out, simultaneously, on the front and side of the building. He made pumps eight, BA required, and gave instructions for BA crews to enter the first and second floors to carry out a search, as it seemed likely that other employees might well be trapped in the building. Lambeth and Clerkenwell’s emergency tenders were now headed to the scene with their specialist BA crews.

A few minutes later the first senior fire officer arrived from Clapham. He ordered three more BA pumps to the incident. (That is what they did back then.) With the arrival of ever more BA pumps, ladders were pitched to the upper windows on the Stamford Street frontage and BA crews entered the building with hose lines. These crews had great difficulty in penetrating the fire area. The build-up of heat was severe because of;

(i) of the combustible nature of the storage;

(ii) the area involved and low ceilings;

(iii) and the lack of direct ventilation.

Even those firemen working on the external iron staircase were subjected to extremely punishing conditions. The smoke was hot, dense, black and extremely difficult to work in. It soon became obvious that this was going to be a prolonged and difficult BA job. One that necessitated continious relays of Proto BA crews. Crews who would have to gradually force their jets, foot by foot, into the building until the seat of the fire was located.

Among the first reinforcing engines to arrive was Barbican’s pump. In its crew was fireman Christopher Thompson, who was riding BA that day. He had originally been posted to the Redcross Street station but had been transferred to the new Barbican station after the Redcross Street and Whitefriars stations’ were closed down. Until that day fireman Thomson’s major claim to fame was being the first dutyman at his new station and starting the station’s watchroom log book.

Within minutes of their arrival Barbican’s three-man BA crew, led by their Station Officer, were committed to the burning factory and, along with all the other crews inside, struggled to come to terms with the excessive leves of heat and the arduous workload of hauling in heavy charged lengths of hose. They would recharge their set’s twice at this incident and it was whilst taking a breather, and sitting on the kerbside by the Brigade’s control unit, that Thompson was joined by a senior officer. Norman Rose was a B Division Divisional Officer. He had a reputation as a tough, no-nonsense, fire officer who did not take prisoners! Thompson was surprised how affable his unexpected companion seemed to be, but he was grateful of a breather too.

Rose’s breather was short lived as he was tasked by an even more senior officer to brief the press and television crew eager for a news item to place in the evening editions and possibly on the BBC news broadcast. Bemused, fireman Thompson watched as Norman Rose reached down into the gutter and filling both hands with dirt and street grime before slowly wiping it down his face. He looked like a coal-miner. Rising, he winked at the young fireman before saying, “It’s what they expect me to look like.”

When Mr Lloyd, the Southern Command Assistant Chief Officer, took charge more BA pumps were requested. More followed as Mr Mummery, the Deputy Chief Officer, finally took command. By 2.30 p.m. he ordered the BA incident box, together with one hundred extra oxygen cylinders. Even the BA Instructors, from the nearby Southwark Training School, turned out to assist with the servicing of the firemens Proto sets.

Firemen recharging their breathing apparatus sets at Lyons Maid Ltd in Stamford Street, Southwark.
(Picture credit-London Fire Brigade)

For the next few hours relays of BA men slowly, and painfully, worked their way further into the building, Even when hugging the floor some men’s ears were blistered as the effects of the excessive heat took its toll. Many, upon exiting, were told to recharge their sets and return to the fray. More appliances were summoned to relieve the original exhausted crews. As more arrived it enabled the crews, who had been hard at work, a brief respite and time to recharge their sets.

Lambeth’s PE and pump returned to the station at the change of watch (6.00 p.m.) with exhausted crews. Lambeth’s Brigade Control (M2FH) ordered our pump to exchange crews and (with a Red Watch crew) return to the scene. ‘Under manning'( fire engine crews riding at minimum levels) was still the norm in ‘68’ and I was one of three on our pump. With our BA donned we carried on where others had left off. Their herculean efforts had moved the jets forward and we now used them. Committed twice that evening I experienced, at first hand, the extreme heat and draining conditions that the other crews had endured all afternoon. It was a lot bloody different from my recent BA course at Croydon’s BA Chamber or the regular Divisional BA drills at Southwark’s ‘rat-run’. Neither, was it anything like just putting a BA set on for 10 or 15 minutes at a normal house or maisonette fire! It was the difference between a sprint an a marathon.

When Mr Mummery (the Deputy Chief) sent the ‘stop’ message later that evening fifty pumping appliances, four emergency tenders, two turntable ladders, plus Lambeth’s canteen van had attended the fire in anger before the first ‘normal’ relief pumps were requested.

We worked on into the late evening and, when eventually relieved, returned the following morning on the 6 a.m. We were back to on our second night duty. It was whilst damping down we saw the full intensity of the fire. Large swathes of concrete had spalled off beams, exposing the steel reinforcements. Huge sections of the lower surface of the floor had spalled off completely. Plus hundreds of thousands of lolly sticks were destroyed, the major fuel of this extraordinary blaze and my first proper BA job. It would not be the last.

Note: Stamford Street is a street on the boundry between Lambeth and Southwark, just south of the River Thames. It runs between Waterloo Road to the west and Blackfriars Road to the east.

DCP.

A short history of London’s fireboats

‘A fireboat was designed to be a floating pump that would never run out of water.’

London’s river has always carried people, both for business and for pleasure. Whilst the nature of its riverside has change beyond recognition since the latter part of the twentieth and now into the twenty first century, its popularity as an attraction has not diminished.

A Metropolitan Fire Brigade fire float and tug heading to a riverside blaze. The fire float was a steam fire engine mounted in a barge that could either supply water to the land via hoses or direct water onto a blaze from jets on the barge. The fire tug transported the fire float to the scene of the fire. Circa 1890s

The earliest fire-floats.

The name fireboat is a relatively new term. For most of their history they were called ‘fire-floats’. The Insurance Companies, that provided London’s fire brigades prior to 1833, had introduced the first fire-floats. In truth they were manual fire engines carried on large rowing boats. London saw the arrival of the first fire-float as early as 1765. It was built for the Sun Fire Insurance Company. It was followed by other fire-floats as more insurance companies added a floating engine to their firefighting capabilities.

Upper image; the manual fire pump in a rowing boat. Lower; Illustrated London News item

Victorian technical developments.

With the creation of the London Fire Engine Establishment in 1833, under Superintendent James Braidwood, the fire-floats were transferred to the new fire brigade. The largest two floating engines required between 60 and 80 men to operate their manual pumps. By 1852 the larger of the two was adapted to work by steam, an experiment that proved successful at the time, with a floating steam driven fire engine put into service at a cost of £3,000.

The Beaver fire tug and fire-float barge with Metropolitan Fire Brigade crew.

The purpose of the fire-floats was a simple one. It was able to direct jets of water at a riverside blaze where land firemen were unable to do so. In addition, they also supplemented water supplies to firemen working from either moored craft or on the river foreshore. London’s two oar-propelled craft were located by South Bridge (the larger Upper float) and the Lower float was berthed off King’s Stairs, Rotherhithe, both on the south side of the river.

Braidwood died at the Tooley Street fire in 1861, a fire so severe it scorched the fire-float moored mid-stream fighting the blaze. However, on the river little changed as the steam self-propelled fire-floats were not deemed successful. From 1890 until 1900 the MFB fire-floats consisted of steam fire engines (less wheels) fitted into rafts and towed by fire-tugs.

The previously used rafts, towed by tugs, were replaced by London’s first self propelled fire-floats. These steam driven, shallow draught, craft were based on the Royal Navy gunboats and proved highly effective compared to what they replaced. 1904.

It was the new Chief Officer (another Captain-but a former Royal Navy captain), Capt. Wells who introduced a vessel having both pumping and propelling machinery in one hull. It was a new age in London’s fire-floats. Built to Well’s design, commissioned in 1900, Alpha II was the first of four-vessels brought into service between 1900 and 1912. The other craft being Beta II, Gamma II and Delta II.

The Beta II fire-float.
The Delta fire-float. 1912.

Early 20th century developments (pre-1937).

In 1925 Beta III was placed into service and in 1935 she was joined by the Massey Shaw. Then, pre-WWII, the Brigade had three ‘floating stations; Cherry Gardens-Rotherhithe, Blackfriars-Victoria Embankment, and Battersea, at Battersea Bridge.

The London Fire Brigade maintained a small fleet of fire-floats to meet the needs of dealing with ship and riverside related fires in the Port of London and along the London County Council’s administrative length of the Thames. Beta III is underway, heading towards Tower Bridge. Late 1920s

Lambeth river station.

1937. The new London Fire Brigade headquarters and the Lambeth river fire station with Gamma II berthed alongside.

With the opening of the new Lambeth headquarters in 1937 Battersea shut, its boat transferred to the new Lambeth river station, and the Charing Cross river repair depot was closed. All fire-float repairs, and maintenance, were undertaken by the marine engineers at the new Lambeth HQ workshops. In 1938 Lambeth river station received the new high-speed fire-float, the Braidwood.

Lambeth river fire station. Date: 1937

WWII expansion.

The London Regional River Service and the fireboat attached to the River fire station at Battersea Bridge. Date: late 1940

By the outbreak of the Second World War, in September 1939, the London Fire Brigade had been increased with some 23,000 auxiliary firefighters, many joining its river service and crewing the Home Office boats and converted fire-barges. In 1938 twenty auxiliary fire-floats were ordered and in 1939 ten more were placed into service.In addition, the Brigade had four Thames barges, each barge carried four 1000-gallon (4,500 litre) Dennis fire pumps. The barges could move in all directions, manoeuvred by jets of water from two of the pumps.

One of the Thames barges with their four major fire pumps, moored at the Lambeth river station. 1940.

Massey Shaw/Dunkirk-1940.

The crew of the Massey Shaw returning after their Dunkirk crossings. 1940.

In May 1940 the ‘Massey Shaw’ was despatched to enemy France to assist in the historic evacuation from the Dunkirk beaches.  Its crew comprised both volunteer regulars and auxiliaries and with a naval officer in command. Massey Shaw joined the fleet of ‘Little ships’ and made a number of crossing from Ramsgate to Dunkirk. The fire-float not only saved many from the beaches but rescued 39 severely injured soldiers from a French ship, that had hit a mine in the English Channel and sank.

The Massey Shaw at work in 1935 at a major Thames warehouse blaze.

Massey Shaw would receive two singular honours. She was the only civilian small ship to be mentioned by Vice-Admiral Ramsey in his despatches and following their actions three members of the Shaw’s crew were awarded national gallantry honours.

National Fire Service. 1941-1948

The River Headquarters crest of the NFS River Thames Formation, which covered the Greater London area of the Thames, and included some eighteen fireboats and assorted fire floats and other tenders. 1942

In August 1941 the fire service across the United Kingdom was nationalised and the NFS was created. This was when the name ‘fire-float’ was changed to ‘fireboat’. Both Gamma and Delta saw service during WWII in the newly created Thames River Formation. The formation comprised some seventy craft and they were the first to be equipped with radio communications. Members of the Thames Formation were among the last to be awarded national gallantry awards after two vessels collided and caught fire on 7th January 1945. One British Empire Medal and nine King’s Commendations for Brave Conduct were present to the crews in respect of their actions that day.

A NFS fireboat (AFB2) on the Thames, in the Pool of London, showing its radio communications mast. 1941/2.

On the 1st April 1948 the London Fire Brigade reverted to local authority control (London County Council) as did its fireboats.

The cap badge of the re-formed London Fire Brigade in 1948.

Post WWII fireboats.

The James Braidwood, now as a reserve fireboat, moored at the Lambeth pontoon.

It would be almost 20 years before London had a new fireboat. The ‘Firebrace’ arrived at Lambeth in 1961, replacing the aging Braidwood and joining the Massey Shaw as the capital’s two fireboats. In the years that followed there was a significant change in the nature of the risks on and alongside the River Thames. The Brigade reviewed its fireboat provision. With the Massey Shaw already decommissioned the Firebrace followed suit in the mid-1970s. Two craft, of an identical design, were purchased, the Fire Hawk and the Fire Swift. At just under 14 metres in length the boats carried light pumps to supply its small monitor mounted to the prow. With the ‘Hawk’ covering the upper Thames and the ‘Swift’, stationed at Greenwich pier, down-river. Subsequently the downriver station was closed. The Brigade’s only remaining fireboat station remained at Lambeth.

1950s. The Massey Shaw.
The arrival of London’s newest fireboat, Firebrace, at Lambeth river station in 1961.
The Fire Hawk, one of a matching pair, based at Lambeth with Fire Swift was based at Greenwich.

In April 1985 London Phoenix was placed into operational service. The Phoenix was built as a catamaran. At 18 metres long and seven metres wide, her twin diesel marine engines developed six hundred and twenty horse power. A water salvo could be discharged from her four deck monitors fed by her two fire pumps, capable of pumping nine thousand litres per minute. With her vivid colours, and a top speed of 12 knots, she stood out amongst the myriad of Thames craft. The Fire Hark was retained at the reserve fireboat.

Picture credit-Paul Wood.
The dory of the London Phoenix- Picture credit-Alan Dearing.

Lambeth’s river fire station retains a unique feature amongst the one hundred plus fire stations that comprised the London Fire Brigade. It has no fire station ground. The fireboat covers the length of London’s River Thames whilst riparian fire station’s area (north and south) extends to the mid-point of the Thames. The fireboat simply maintains its primary function of being a floating pump and acting in support of the land-based crews and, when required, acting as a rescue craft.

The Fire Dart berthed at the modernised Lambeth river station, London’s only river fire station. Picture credit-Paul Wood.

Lambeth’s fireboat pontoon is a far cry from its predecessor that was opened, together with the new headquarters building in 1937. Then it comprised of two simple huts on a pontoon and where the river ‘firemen’ would spend their day shifts, returning to the land station to eat their meals and to sleep in the large dormitory on the fire stations’ first floor.

In the intervening years the two huts were replaced by two slightly larger prefabricated single storey buildings. But by the early 1980s both the pontoon and its buildings were in urgent need of replacement. Today’s river firefighters have their own self-contained, purpose built, standalone fire station.

The Fire Dart attending a fire on the Woolwich ferry.

In 1999 the Brigade took delivery of its current generation of fireboats, the Fire Dart and the Fire Swift. These craft, designed to attend a wide range of emergencies along the river and riverside properties. are also capable of responding to other lifesaving tasks on the river. With one of the fireboats on immediate standby, the second is held in reserve and used for training.

The Fire dart crew engaged in the rescue of a person from Southwark Bridge. 2015.

The Brigade has commissioned its new generation fireboat. When it comes into service London’s story of its fireboat continues.

The Massey Shaw today is a heritage fireboat and moored in West India Dock. It is maintained by the Massey Shaw Education Trust, a registered charity. https://masseyshaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/logo.png
All profits from the book go the Massey Shaw Education Trust.