[AnotherLady]

Под катом статья из ODNB о шотландском пожарнике 19 века, сохраняю преимущественно для себя. Впечатляющий был товарищ - заведовать пожарной охраной Эдинбурга он начал в 24 года и вполне справился с задачей, создав ее с нуля - а потом реформировал пожарную охрану Лондона.

Braidwood, James (1800-1861), fire officer, was born at Edinburgh on 3 September 1800, the ninth of ten children of Francis Braidwood (b. 1752), a cabinet-maker who became a successful builder, and his wife, Janet Mitchell. His grandfather, William Braidwood, a strict sabbatarian, was one of the 'Bowhead saints'; his uncle, also named William Braidwood, was a prominent insurance company manager in Edinburgh. After attending Edinburgh high school (1808-13) he trained as a surveyor, working for a while in his father's business. In October 1824, when the Edinburgh Fire Engine Establishment was founded by the city's police commissioners, he was appointed the first master of fire engines. In the following month (15-16 November 1824) the great fire of Edinburgh broke out in the High Street, burning down the steeple of the Tron Church. Braidwood could do little to prevent the fire's advance, but in its aftermath imposed his authority on the new brigade. Dividing the city into districts, he drilled his men weekly at 4 o'clock in the morning, insisted on physical fitness and discipline, and soon developed an efficient force. A measure of his success was a marked reduction in the proportion of fires which resulted in total losses to property. He described his pioneering firefighting methods in On the construction of fire engines and apparatus, the training of firemen, and the method of proceeding in cases of fire (1830). He preferred to recruit firemen from the building trade, on the grounds of their familiarity with structures and, in the case of slaters, fearlessness on rooftops. He believed it to be essential that water should be directed at the root of the flames, regarding the practice of directing hoses from the safety of the street as generally ineffective, and was credited with establishing the distinctive principle of British firefighting that, under the command of their officers, firemen should enter burning buildings to reach the source of the fire. During the commotion of a fire he gave orders to his men through coded signals using a high-pitched bosun's pipe. His own coolness and daring were conspicuous during a fire in an ironmonger's shop; covered in a wet blanket, he entered the cellar and removed two kegs of gunpowder stored there. For his invention of a chain ladder to enable people trapped in burning buildings to escape, the Society of Arts awarded him its silver medal in 1830.

Such was Braidwood's reputation that in the summer of 1832, when the insurance companies agreed to co-operate in running the London Fire Engine Establishment, he was appointed superintendent in overall command of the new joint force. He welded the previously competing units into a single brigade, which came into being on 1 January 1833. During the fire of 16 October 1834 his men were unable to save the Houses of Parliament (16 October 1834) which, being uninsured public buildings, were not strictly the force's responsibility; but, by some accounts, they were instrumental in saving Westminster Hall. The 120 full-time firemen still represented a comparatively small force, but they succeeding in dealing with major fires which broke out in London during the 1850s, and were called upon to deal with the Windsor Castle fire in March 1853. His paper on fires delivered to the Royal Society of Arts in 1856 showed some modifications in his practice since his earlier treatise; he came to prefer recruiting former seamen to the fire service, citing their discipline, experience of 24-hour watches, and willingness to live in the confined quarters of a fire station. He was noted as kind to his men, who held him in great affection. He was on call all night through a speaking tube beside his bed at his Watling Street headquarters, where the gaslight in his bedroom was always illuminated so that he could respond quickly to an emergency.

Braidwood, who became an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1833, applied his knowledge of building structures to encourage fire prevention. In his evidence (17 June 1843) to the royal commission on the state of large towns and populous districts, he advocated air-tight floors in all buildings and brick dividing-walls in domestic buildings. Acting as an unofficial adviser on fire prevention to the government and other bodies, he pressed for building regulations to take fire risks into account. He made many practical improvements to fire engines and fire escapes, and in 1844 was awarded the Association of Civil Engineers' Telford silver medal in recognition of his paper on securing large supplies of water to extinguish fires.

On 14 November 1838 Braidwood married Mary Ann Jane (1807-1871), widow of J. B. Jackson and daughter of Samuel Sibery, an American. They had three sons and three daughters; his wife also had four children from her first marriage. He also supported two of his own unmarried sisters. He was a man of deep piety, belonging to John Cumming's Church of Scotland congregation at Crown Court, Covent Garden. He took part in the charitable work of organizing ragged schools.

Braidwood died in the course of his duties on 22 June 1861 at Tooley Street, London, the scene of an enormous fire which broke out in six-storey riverside warehouses packed with inflammable materials. Investigating the blaze on its first night (it raged for two weeks, setting the Thames ablaze with molten tallow), he was crushed and buried when the wall of a warehouse collapsed; the iron fire-resisting doors, which Braidwood had recommended to be installed in all such warehouses, had been left open. His body was recovered two days later and was buried at Abney Park cemetery on 29 June. Queen Victoria sent her condolences to his widow, and his funeral procession, the longest since that for the duke of Wellington, stretched for a mile and a half.

One of the last of the insurance company fire chiefs, Braidwood was the most celebrated firefighter of his time. A popular hero, he was commemorated in poetry and memorabilia. Yet he was a quiet, unassuming man, who avoided the pomp and paraphernalia of continental fire brigades. Although acknowledged as the leading authority in his field, he always gave serious consideration to advice from any quarter. His greatest achievement was to apply order and science to the practice of tackling fires. His collected papers, published posthumously as Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction (1866), embodied principles which were still regarded as tenets of good fire brigade organization a century later (Blackstone, 105). A plaque was erected to his memory in Tooley Street, near the spot where he met his death, and there are memorial inscriptions at Crown Court Church and St Mary Aldermary.

M. C. Curthoys

Sources B. Henham, True hero: the life and times of James Braidwood father of the British fire service (2000) + 'Memoir', J. Braidwood, Fire prevention and fire extinction (1866) + GM, 3rd ser., 11 (1861), 212 + G. V. Blackstone, A history of the British fire service (1957) + P. G. M. Dickson, The Sun Insurance office, 1710-1860 (1960) + C. Knight, ed., The English cyclopaedia: biography, 6 vols. (1856-8) + S. Maunder, The biographical treasury, new edn, rev. W. L. R. Cates (1870) + d. cert. + J. A. Walker, 'The people's hero: Millais's The rescue and the image of the fireman in nineteenth-century art and media', Apollo (Dec 2004), 56-62
Likenesses figure, Staffordshire china, c.1850, repro. in Blackstone, History of the British fire service, 193 · Jeens, engraving, repro. in Braidwood, Fire prevention and fire extinction, frontispiece · engraving, repro. in Blackstone, History of the British fire service, 193 · photograph, London Fire Brigade [see illus.]
Wealth at death £5000: probate, 27 July 1861, CGPLA Eng. & Wales



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© Oxford University Press, 2004.