BROMLEY BOROUGH LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY President: His Worship the Mayor

BROMLEY BOROUGH LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY President: His Worship the Mayor JUNE 1993 programme year has finished with the June meeting and we will not meet again until September. There will however be plenty of events going on in the district and we hope you will be able to attend some of them. SUBSCRIPTIONS & MEMBERSHIP We were able to report in the April newsletter that subs were coming in fairly well - since then they have been nearly at a standstill and 83 members are still outstanding. If you are one of the guilty ones please send in to Sheila Pritchard without delay. We extend a very hearty welcome to three new members Miss A. Levey Orpington Mr S. Mitchell Beckenham Mr Scawan Shirley THE FIRE CHIEF - MR EYRE MASSEY SHAW At our May meeting Dr. Ron Cox gave us a most interesting talk on the life story of Eyre Massey Shaw the first and most famous Chief of the London Fire Brigade. Saturday 22nd June 1861 was a scorching hot day in London. Shortly before 4.30 p.m. a passerby saw wisps of smoke coming from a warehouse in Tooley Street, Southwark. The local turn cock was sent for and by the time the first fire engines had arrived he had got the water turned on. That fire, in spite of its ordinary beginnings, was to change the entire organisation of fire fighting in London and indeed eventually throughout the United Kingdom. When the fire was finally put out, five weeks later, the fire chief was dead, eight huge warehouses had been totally destroyed, loses amounting to about £2,000,000 in 1861 values had been incurred, and the body which for the past 28 years had provided London's fire service, was well on the way to deciding it could do so no longer. That body was the London Fire Engine Establishment which was a consortium which had been formed by ten insurance companies in 1833. It had 19 stations and 80 paid men. The stations were mainly in and around the City of London and none of them were west of Hyde Park or east of Holborn, so that the new and ever increasing London suburbs were completely uncovered by this establishment. All the time in London in Victorian times the nature and extent of the work was becoming more complex and greater. London's population was increasing, buildings were ever getting taller and larger, gas lighting, the phosphorus friction match, parafin oil lamps, women's fashions, the uncontrolled spread of housing close to warehouses and factories, all these were making fires more common and fire-fighting more difficult and for the London Fire Engine Establishment the Tooley Street fire was the last straw. Immediately after it the Establishment left the government in no doubt that it could no longer run a good public fire brigade. In the meantime the Establishment had appointed a successor to the dead fire chief. He was Page 1 Captain Eyre Massey Shaw. He was only 33 years of age and his total experience as a fireman was 15J months, and that had been in Belfast where he had run a Fred Karno outfit of seven appliances and 22 trained men. His age and lack of experience mattered little to the Fire Engine Establishmnent because it was going to close down anyway, but in any event there had only been one other applicant for the post. And yet, so rapidly did Shaw make his mark that when the Metropolitan Board of Works took over the brigade four years later he was offered the Chief's job without even having to apply for it. The Shaw family were of Scottish descent but great grandfather Shaw was a merchant in Dublin, and grandfather Shaw became collector of the port of Cork. He married the daughter of a merchant in Cork and they went to live in Monkstown Castle just across Cork Bay. Capt. Shaw's father was also a merchant in Cork and a County magistrate. Capt. Shaw himself was born in 1828. He entered Trinity College, Dublin at the age of 15 years and his class marks from the 1840's still survive today. He registered as a divinity student but records show that he never attended a lecture. He eventually ran away to sea and probably crossed the Atlantic several times as a crew member on a sailing ship engaged in the Quebec to Cork timber trade. His family later intervened and got him a commission in an Irish Militia Unit, in the North Cork Rifles where he stayed for 6 years. During the Indian Mutiny he came with his unit to Sheerness in June 1858 for dockyard and garrison duty and later on to Aldershot. In February 1860 the regiment was back in Ireland and shortly after his 32nd birthday Shaw resigned his commission. He had married a Portugese girl in 1855 and they eventually had six children but Shaw did not get on with any of them. His mother in law was a very rich woman and gave them much financial support. Shaw was adventurous, and had great physical stamina. He was over 6 ft tall, fair haired and very handsome. He had a goatee beard, was muscular and military looking and had a commanding presence. He was brave and extremely conscientious but he was impatient and not a good delegator. He was very arrogant and yet in the 1871 census he described himself simply as a 'fireman'. He was proud to be a fireman but the Brigade did not love him. They respected him and feared him. Although he was modest enough to call himself a fireman he moved easily among princes and dukes. He visited King Leopold of the Belgians and at least twice stayed at Sandringham. He was a thoughtful technician and a self taught one at that. There was no training organisation as such in any fire service and virtually no literature on the subject. He remedied both these deficiencies and in the 1870’s became a most prolific writer on fire matters. His most important book and certainly his most important technical work was in connection with fires in theatres. This book called 'Fires in Theatres' was published in 1876 and reprinted in 1889. It was a subject of great concern because of the introduction of gas lighting with its naked flames in close proximity to inflammable scenery and costumes. The vogue was for very large theatres and this caused very heavy fatal casualties - St. Petersburg 1836, 800 killed, Carlswood 1847, 631 killed, a Chinese theatre in 1845, 1,670 killed. It was luck which prevented these tragedies in London and most theartre fires there had occurred after the audiences had gone home. But after the Vienna fire the Home Secretary requested the Metropolitan Board of Works to report on all the theatres in their area, showing their present condition as regards security from fire and what precautions would be necessary to prevent loss of life in the event of a fire. This gave Capt. Shaw the most massive task in the whole of his 30 years fire servivce in Page 2 London and the resultant papers are most fascinating. He reported on the physical structure of every single theartre in London. Capt. Shaw found that the majority of the theatres had no separation between the stage and auditorium; there was indiscriminate storage of props and rubbish; swinging and unguarded gas fittings; below ground theatres with fresh air supplied only by fans which could equally well introduce smoke and fumes; an absence of gangways in the gallery so that patrons had to climb over the seats to escape; gallery staircases very narrow; and escape doors broken. Shaw's report made a great impression on London and in the next 17 years there were only 5 major theatre fires in the capital. When you next visit the theatre and witness the safety curtain being lowered between the acts spare a thought for Capt. Eyre Massey Shaw whose far sighted imagination so improved the fire fighting methods in this country. NATIONAL TRUST PROPERTIES NEAR BROMLEY On June 1st for our last meeting of the season we were entertained by a most interesting display of slides of various National Trust properties close to Bromley, given by Miss Kathleen Dibley. The nearest was Hawkswood and Pettswood, the 340 acres of woodland and farmland. We learnt how the oak and birch trees were devastated during the great gales. The area had been bought by private individuals in 1927 and given to the Trust thirty years later. Toy's Hill had also been severely damaged by the gale and a little way up from there we saw Emmetts Gardens, the highest gardens in Kent. Quebec House at Westerham, the Tudor house where General Wolfe spent his childhood. There is lovely furniture to see there and the old stables are purely Tudor. Our next viewing was of Chartwell. Parts are very old, other parts Edwardian. It was offered to the Trust in 1927 but turned down. It was later bought by Sir Winston Churchill and left to the nation on his death complete with its contents. 9,000 new trees were planted at Chartwell after the hurricane. The largest house in England is close by at Sevenoaks. Knole was first referred to in 1291 and in 1566 Queen Elizabeth gave Knole to her cousin Thomas Sackville whose fmily have owned it since that time. We saw slides of the Great Hall and Long Gallery as well as the grounds. Ightham Mote is in the process of extensive restoration work.

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