The internationalization of fire protection: In pursuit of municipal networks in Edwardian Birmingham

Urban History

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 288-307

  Ewen, Shane ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FIRE MANAGEMENT; LOCAL PARTICIPATION; POLICY DEVELOPMENT; URBAN HISTORY;

BIRMINGHAM [ENGLAND]; ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33746567832     PISSN: 09639268     EISSN: 14698706     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0963926805003007     Document Type: Article

References (137)

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11. Maver, 'A (north) British end-view', 191-3
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13. An exception is P. Dogliani, 'European municipalism in the first half of the twentieth century: The socialist network', Contemporary European History, 11 (2002), 587. On the IULA
14. see P.-Y. Saunier and R. Payre, 'L'internazionale municipalista: L'union Internationale des Villes (1913-1940)', Amministrare, 30 (2000), 217-42.
15. B. Keith-Lucas and P. G. Richards, A History of Local Government in the Twentieth Century (London, 1978), makes no reference to the international networking activities of the AMC. NALGO's early networking is alluded to in A. Spoor, White-collar Union: 60 Years of NALGO (London, 1967), 511. Yet NALGO, as a trade union, was chiefly concerned with the working conditions of its members and their rights to a guaranteed pension.
16. J. Moore and R. Rodger, 'Municipal knowledge and policy networks in British local government, 1832-1914', Jahrbuch für Europaïsche Verwaltungsgeschichte, 15 (2003), 48-51.
17. S. Ewen, 'Power and administration in two midland cities, c. 1870-1938' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leicester, 2003), ch. 4.
18. D.T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1998), 135-6.
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21. on the universality of urban problems: J.-A. Sánchez de Juan, 'Writing urban history for the twentieth-century city', Contemporary European History, 12 (2003), 573-84.
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24. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 120.
25. Ralph, 'The best governed city', 99.
26. In fact, contemporaries noted that Birmingham had much to learn from abroad in the field of public health: M. Niemi, 'Health, experts and the politics of knowledge: Britain and Sweden 1900-40' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leicester, 1999), 36.
27. A. Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain (New York, 1895)
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29. G. Parker, 'An object lesson in municipal government: Public affairs in Birmingham', Century, 53 (1896), 71-89
30. E. Griffith, The Modern Development of City Government in the United Kingdom and the United States (London, 1927)
31. H. Martin, 'The story of the Birmingham municipal bank', American City, Dec. 1929
32. H. Goetz, Birmingham: Verfassung, Verwaltung und Finanz einer Englischen Großstadt (Berlin and Charlottenburg, 1932).
33. A. Sutcliffe, 'The "midland metropolis": Birmingham 1890-1980', in G. Gordon (ed.), Regional Cities in the UK 1890-1980 (London, 1986), 25. Glasgow's claim to be 'the second city of the Empire is discussed in I. Maver, Glasgow (Edinburgh, 2000)
34. J. Belchem, Merseypride: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism (Liverpool, 2000), ch. 8, compares the 'grandes villes' of Liverpool, Lyon and Munich
35. H. Meller, European Cities 1890-1930s (Chichester, 2001), ch. 6, compares the housing experiences of the 'second cities' of Birmingham and Lyon; Waller, Town, City and Nation, 85-7, discusses inter-city rivalries.
36. Chamberlain's role in the municipalization of utilities is best discussed in A. Briggs, History of Birmingham, vol. II (Oxford, 1952)
37. E.P. Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth-Century Urban Government (London, 1973).
38. This was a permanent sub-committee established in 1874 under the responsibility of the watch committee.
39. Minutes of Evidence from the Report of the Select Committee on Fire Brigades, Parliamentary Papers (PP) 1899 (303), IX, 95.
40. R. Rodger, 'The "common good" and civic promotion: Edinburgh 1860-1914', in R. Colls and R. Rodger (eds.), Cities of Ideas: Civil Society and Urban Governance in Britain 1800-2000 (Aldershot, 2004), 144-77.
41. Hietala, Services and Urbanization, 361-81.
42. J. S. Nettlefold, Birmingham Municipal Affairs: A Message to the Citizens (Birmingham, 1908), i.
43. Ibid., 1-10.
44. Ibid., 13.
45. J.S. Nettlefold, Practical Housing (Letchworth, 1908)
46. W. Phillips, 'The "German example" and the professionalization of American and British city planning at the turn of the century', Planning Perspectives, 11 (1996), 167-83.
47. Saunier, 'Taking up the bet', 520
48. Moore and Rodger, 'Municipal knowledge', 43-53.
49. M.J. Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1799-1914 (Cambridge, 2001), 274.
50. Much of this section draws on Ewen 'Power and administration', ch. 1.
51. G. Blackstone, A History of the British Fire Service (London, 1957), 100-26. London was protected by the London Fire Engine Establishment (a conglomerate of insurance interests) until the publicly owned Metropolitan fire brigade was formed in 1865 following the Tooley Street disaster in 1861.
52. Birmingham City Archives (hereafter BCA) (unreferenced) Watch Committee Minutes (hereafter WC Mins), 29 Jul. 1873, 447. The tension between public and private control is explored in R.J. Morris, 'The state, the elite and the market: The "visible hand" in the British industrial city system', in H. Diederiks et al. (eds.), Economic Policy in Europe since the Late Middle Ages (Leicester, 1992), 177-99.
53. O.M. Westall, The Provincial Insurance Company 1903-38: Family, Markets and Competitive Growth (Manchester, 1992), 48-9.
54. S. Ewen, 'Central government and the modernization of the British fire service, 1900-38', Twentieth Century British History, 14 (2003), 326-7.
55. See reports in the Birmingham Mail, 27-30 Aug. 1878.
56. BCA (unreferenced) WC Mins, 1 Nov. 1878; 6 Dec. 1878; 31 Jan. 1879.
57. Tozer's father was a fireman in the London Fire Engine Establishment (1833-62), where he worked under the tutelage of James Braidwood, the doyen of modern fire-fighting, and chief officer of Manchester fire brigade (1862-92); his grandfather was a fire engineer for the Hand-in-Hand Insurance Company in London: Fire Service College Library (hereafter FSCL) Tozer Collection FSC/8, unpublished manuscript.
58. Fire & Water, Mar. 1884, 1; Sep. 1893, 105; Nov. 1901, 136-8.
59. The Tozers are discussed in more detail in Ewen, 'Power and administration', ch. 4.
60. FSCL FSC/20, Le Sapuer-Pompier, 15 Mar. 1912.
61. Fire, Nov. 1938, 148.
62. See H. Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society (London, 1989), for the growth of professionalism.
63. A. Guillerme, 'Matériaux et techniques urbaines contre la puissance du feu', in S. Yerasimos and F. Friès, La ville en feu (Paris, 1993), 18
64. M. Hietala, 'Fear of fires: Impact of fires on towns in Finland at the beginning of the 19th century', in G. Massard-Guilbaud, H. Platt and D. Schott (eds.), Cities and Catastrophes: Coping with Emergency in European History (Frankfurt, 2002), 157-60
65. M. Dagenais and P.-Y. Saunier, 'Tales of the periphery: An outline survey of municipal employees and services in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries', in Dagenais, Maver and Saunier (eds.), Municipal Services, 16
66. Ewen, 'Power and administration', ch. 7.
67. National Fire Brigades Union Annual Report(London, 1911), 6.
68. Conseil Municipal de la Ville Du Le Havre, Voyage en Angleterre d'une délégation de l'administration municipale et de deux officiers de Sapeurs-Pompiers, 28 Jun. 1893. Thanks to the British Fire Services Association for providing access to this material.
69. Birmingham Post, 14 Aug. 1905.
70. L.E. Frost and E.L. Jones, 'The fire gap and the greater durability of nineteenth century cities', Planning Perspectives, 4 (1989), 333-47
71. G. Massard-GuilbaCd, 'Introduction: The urban catastrophe: challenge to the social, economic, and cultural order of the city', in Massard-Guilard, Platt and Schott (eds.), Cities and Catastrophes, 18-19.
72. Although recent research suggests that the insurance industry did not experience significant growth until the sustained industrialization of the late eighteenth century: R. Pearson, Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700-1850 (Aldershot, 2004).
73. B.M. Doyle, 'The changing functions of urban government: Councillors, officials and pressure groups', in M.J. Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. III (Cambridge, 2000), 288-95.
74. Pearson calculates that by 1850 56.2% of all British property was insured against fire: Pearson, Insuring the Industrial Revolution, 32
75. A.S. Greenberg, 'The origins of the American municipal fire department: nineteenth-century change from an international perspective', in Dagenais, Maver and Saunier (eds.), Municipal Services, 52-3
76. C. Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, vol. I (Cambridge, 1985), 124-41
77. J. Butt, 'Life assurance in war and depression: The Standard Life Assurance Company and its environment, 1914-39', in O.M. Westall (ed.), The Historian and the Business of Insurance (Manchester, 1984), 161.
78. Compare, for example, figures on the annual value of property at risk in Manchester between 1869 and 1876, which was more than double the value of insured property and stock: Return of Miscellaneous Statistics for the United Kingdom, PP 1872 (669), LXIV, 148.
79. A.S. Greenberg, Cause for Alarm: The Volunteer Fire Department in the Nineteenth-Century City (Princeton, 1998), ch. 5
80. M. Tebeau, Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800-1950 (Baltimore and London, 2003), ch. 2.
81. Greenberg, Cause for Alarm, 134-5.
82. J. Kenlon, Fires and Fire-Fighters: A History of Modern Fire-Fighting (London and New York, 1914)
83. J. Tarr, T. Finholt and D. Goodman, 'The city and the telegraph: Urban telecommunications in the pre-telephone era', Journal of Urban History, 14 (1987), 38-80
84. P.-Y. Saunier, 'Les voyages municipaux américains en Europe 1900-1940: Une piste d'histoire transnationale', Jahrbuch für Europaïsche Verwaltungsgeschichte, 15 (2003), 267-88
85. Tebeau, Eating Smoke, 220-1.
86. BCA MS1303/222, Birmingham Fire Brigade Press Cuttings (hereafter Cuttings), People's Friend, 17 Feb. 1902
87. Manchester Guardian, 6 Nov. 1902
88. BCA MS1303/223, Cuttings, Surveyor, 18 Mar. 1904, 374-7
89. Municipal Journal, 27 May 1904.
90. BCA MS1303/222, Cuttings, L'illustration européenne, 16 Jun. 1901.
91. BCA MS1303/220, Cuttings, Birmingham Mail, 31 Dec. 1903
92. Birmingham Post, 1 Jan. 1904
93. Municipal Journal, 8 Jan. 1904
94. Engineering, 9 Jan. 1904.
95. BCA (unreferenced) Fire Brigade Sub-Committee Minutes (hereafter FBSC Mins), 25 Mar. 1902
96. E.O. Sachs and E. Woodrow, Modern Opera Houses and Theatres, vol. III (London, 1898), 87-119.
97. Engineering, 18 Jun. 1897, 811.
98. Westall, The Provincial, 46-51
99. Builder, 23 Dec. 1899, 577-80.
100. Transactions of the Birmingham Insurance Institute, 2 (1894)
101. Birmingham Faces and Places, 1 (1888), 71-5.
102. Fire & Water, May 1896, 37; Jun. 1912, 59.
103. Ibid., Dec. 1902, 156; Feb. 1906, 185.
104. London's annual expenditure, at approximately £170,000, was unique in terms of the heavy burden and was cushioned by an annual government contribution of £100,000. From 1901 to 1910 Birmingham spent more than three times as much per head of population on fire protection than between 1881 and 1890. For comparative figures see Fire & Water, May 1898, 35
105. Home Office, Return Relative to Fire Brigades and Fires in England and Wales, for the Year 1903, PP 1906 (2914), XCVIII.
106. The author acknowledges Pierre-Yves Saunier for this concept.
107. Fire & Water, Sep. 1892, 102; Apr. 1904, 25-7; May 1905, 34; Mar. 1907, 12.
108. Liverpool was protected by a police brigade, which was abolished in 1941 with the nationalization of the fire service.
109. City of Birmingham, Report of the Deputation Appointed to Attend the International Congress of Fire Brigades, and Exhibition of Fire Preventing and Life-Saving Appliances at Berlin; and also to Inspect the Fire Brigades at Antwerp and Brussels Respectively (Birmingham, 1902), 9-10. Tozer's death in 1906 heralded a change in Birmingham's attitude towards motor traction, his son welcoming the new technology. Liverpool, however, purchased a self-propelled steam engine on the chief constable's return.
110. Ibid., 5, 14.
111. Ibid., 3, 12. However, the brigade relied on horse-drawn and manual escape ladders until 1909, again owing to Tozer's indifference to technological innovations.
112. Ibid., 13, 15.
113. Liverpool, Newcastle and Leicester were early advocates of motorized traction, purchasing petrol-driven engines in 1903-04.
114. These were devoted to building construction, electrical safeguards, oils and spontaneous combustion, fire surveys, losses and insurance.
115. E.O. Sachs (ed.), A Record of the International Fire Exhibition, Earl's Court, London, 1903 (London, 1903), 25.
116. P. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World's Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester, 1988), ch. 5.
117. Dogliani, 'European municipalism', 573-96
118. Hietala, Services and Urbanization, 366
119. E.P. Hennock, British Social Reform and German Precedents: The Case of Social Insurance 1880-1914 (Oxford, 1987), 28-36.
120. A. Sutcliffe, 'In search of the urban variable', in D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History (London, 1983), 263
121. H. Jansen, The Construction of an Urban Past: Narrative and System in Urban History (Oxford, 2001).
122. Hietala, Services and Urbanization, 23-5.
123. Sachs (ed.), International Fire Exhibition, 92-3
124. O. Gaspari, 'Cities against states? Hopes, dreams and shortcomings of the European municipal movement, 1900-1960', Contemporary European History, 11 (2002), 601-4.
125. Sachs (ed.), International Fire Exhibition, 93.
126. BCA MS1303/222, Cuttings, Birmingham Mail, 1 Jul. 1903. The relationship between elected councillors and officials is discussed in the context of the alleged growth in party politics in S. Ewen, '"Policing" party politics in the Midlands, c. 1900-38', in B.M. Doyle (ed.), Urban Life and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Regional Perspectives (Manchester, forthcoming).
127. BCA MS1303/222, Cuttings, Birmingham Despatch, 5 Jun. 1903.
128. National Fire Brigades Union, Manual for the Use of Fire Brigades (London, 1912).
129. FSCL TH9111.R, British Fire Prevention Committee Annual Report 1905, 9-10
130. Engineering, 23 Sep. 1904, 411-12; 12 May 1905, 615; 2 Jun. 1905, 698-9.
131. Engineering, 11 Aug. 1905, 171-4; 1 Sep. 1905, 271-4; 22 Sep. 1905, 369-72; 20 Oct. 1905, 509-12; 3 Nov. 1905, 579-81.
132. Ewen, 'Central government', 334-6.
133. A. Sutcliffe and R. Smith, History of Birmingham, vol. III: 1939-1970 (Oxford, 1974), 400.
134. These were the National Fire Brigades Association (formerly Union), the Professional Fire Brigades Association and the Institute of Fire Engineers. See Ewen, 'Power and administration', ch. 4.
135. Birmingham Gazette, 30 Apr. 1906
136. Birmingham Post, 10 May 1906.
137. Dogliani, 'European municipalism', 584.