An early 1900s look at New York's horse-drawn fire department
3 stars
This was an interesting quick read. An early 20th century book written by the secretary of the New York fire department. Its not particularly well written but then again Alfred Downes isn't' a professional author. It was mostly just a bunch of random stories about the day in the lives of New York Firemen. There were a lot of photos in the book, which I believe is unusual for the time period, and perhaps expensive to reproduce. There were various chapters where the stories were sort of related, but by the end of most chapters I would look at the chapter title and think, well this story doesn't fit that, I guess that's where there is a new chapter.
I most appreciated the stories about the, at the time, new equipment, like steam fire engines, and the telegraph driven fire alarm system. I finally learned where the term "five …
This was an interesting quick read. An early 20th century book written by the secretary of the New York fire department. Its not particularly well written but then again Alfred Downes isn't' a professional author. It was mostly just a bunch of random stories about the day in the lives of New York Firemen. There were a lot of photos in the book, which I believe is unusual for the time period, and perhaps expensive to reproduce. There were various chapters where the stories were sort of related, but by the end of most chapters I would look at the chapter title and think, well this story doesn't fit that, I guess that's where there is a new chapter.
I most appreciated the stories about the, at the time, new equipment, like steam fire engines, and the telegraph driven fire alarm system. I finally learned where the term "five alarm chili" comes from. The alarm and gong system is activated by someone pulling the fire alarm and it alerts the nearest fire house, and the firemen turn it off at the building once enough firefighters are there. The longer it goes without getting turned off it sends the signal to further fire houses and sounds them again at the original, with the 5 alarm being the worst.
I also liked the stories about the horses and dogs. Apparently back in the day the job of the dogs was to run in front of the horse drawn engines and get people to get out of the way. I'm surprised by how open they said the fire houses were, with folks just wondering in their on the regular. The kids particular loved some horses. I was surprised by, but shouldn't have been, that there were three separate stories about animals named [N-word], one horse, one dog, and one cat.
I feel like this book may have been primarily a fund raiser for the department. I say that as toward the end much was made about the "buffs" which are apparently people who are such big fans of the fire department that they run after the engines when they go by and try to help out the firemen at the fire, which I can't imagine IRL could be anything other than annoying at best or dangerous at worst. Downess also made a big deal about how all of the medals and awards, though given officially by the mayor, are not paid for by taxes but through private donations and then "instructions" on how one sets up an endowment to fund for the metals an individual or group wants to name after themselves and award annually