Before the War of Rebellion, New York City was protected by volunteer fire departments. Each fire station had an Engineer and one or more Assistant Engineers who functioned as the fire company leader. The Engineer would have a speaking trumpet to shout commands during a fire incident.

The city-wide Chief Engineer is elected by the fire companies and appointed Assistant Chief Engineers in coordinating the volunteer companies. The mayor appointed the fire commission board-of-directors. The Chief Engineer reports to the aldermen that make up the Common Council of New York.

1854 Annual Report to the Common Council

The report from Chief Engineer Alfred Carson to the Common Council stated that there were 2,800 volunteers operating out of:

• 48 fire companies (pumpers)
• 57 hose companies
• 14 Hook and Ladder companies
• 04 hydrant companies (comprised of disabled or elderly members)

Carson: “If all of the companies were full, there would be 4,515 volunteers.”

1857 Button and Blake hand pumper

Firefighting is labor intensive. Volunteers pulled the hose wagons and hand-cranked fire pumpers from the fire station to the emergency. The largest fire pumper would need 20-30 firefighters at a time to operate the levers to generate water pressure

Steam-powered, horse-drawn fire pumpers were introduced to the fire service prior to 1854.

Almost all of the fire pumpers serving New York City were operated by hand, with teams of men raising and lowering large levers to generated pressure for the fire pumper to work. Manhattan, Engine Company 8, was evaluating a steam-powered pump.

Each fire company was autonomous, and competition to get first water on the fire was fierce. “Plug thugs” would run to the fire hydrants to make sure his company could get water in the event another company arrived earlier. Often rival fire companies would be brawling in front of a burning building to see who would get the first hoseline to squirt water into the building.

ROWDIES

The 1854 annual report also noted that the street fights occurred “ … between companies running out of their districts, especially on Saturday nights and Sundays.” Chief Carson called for an ordinance prohibiting “minors and aliens” from fire company membership and would limit membership of 60 men to a fire company.

The annual report also addressed the concept of replacing volunteers with paid firefighters, as was done in Cincinnati the year before:

Rowdies still attack the firemen, and the latter occasionally have collisions with each other.

I trust that when these cases are reported, you will act with promptitude and severity in the punishment of these offenders against the well-being of the Department. If instant and severe examples are made of them it would not only promote the morals and efficiency of the Department, but the public tranquility.

And companies should be held responsible for the villainy of those whom they permit to run with their apparatus, and to congregate around and within their houses. It is unjust that so many well-disposed firemen should be degraded by an association with insubordinate members, who should not be permitted to remain in the Department to demoralize it and drive out and keep worthy men from its ranks.

This is the “reorganization” that the Department requires, and not a paid system, which it would oppose almost to a man.

next week: Cincinnati Sets The Example

References:

Carson, Alfred (1854, September 18) “Fire Department: Report of Chief Engineer” (annual report) The New York Times.

Costello, Augustine E. (1887) Our Firemen: A History of New York Fire Departments, Volunteer and Paid, from 1609 to 1887. New York: A. E. Costello. 350 pages, 650 engravings.
(1997 reprint published by Knickerbocker Press. ISBN 1577150139, abridged version published in 2002: Birth of the Bravest)

Hashagen, Paul (2000). New York City Fire Department History. In J. Kimmerly (Ed.), Fire Department City of New York (pp. 17 – 230). Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Company.

Kernan, J. Frank. (1885) Reminiscences of the Old Fire Laddies and Volunteer Fire Departments of New York and Brooklyn. Together with complete history of the paid departments of both cities.  New York: M. Crane.  Accessed through Google Books on 8/01/2010 at http://tiny.cc/d767s

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Mike worked on a project about Reconstruction after the Civil War
This is one in a series of articles about the Metropolitan Fire Department established in Manhattan in 1865.

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward