Fires of Early Days; First Fire Fighting Company Organized December 7, 1736

The City of Philadelphia had not been laid out one year until it was visited by a fire, the sufferers being some recently arrived Germans and for whose relief a subscription was made.

From this time until 1696 no public precautions seem to have been taken against fire. In the latter year the Provincial Assembly passed a law for preventing accidents that might happen by fire in the towns of Philadelphia and New Castle, by which persons were forbidden to fire their chimneys to cleanse them, or suffer them to be so foul as to take fire, under a penalty of forty shillings, and each house owner was required to provide and keep ready a swab twelve or fourteen feet long, and a bucket or pail, under a penalty of ten shillings.

No person should presume to smoke tobacco in the streets, either by day or night, under a penalty of twelve pence. All such fines were to be used to buy leather buckets and other instruments or engines against fires for the public use.

859An act was passed in 1700, applying to Philadelphia, Bristol, Germantown, Darby and Chester, which provided for two leather buckets, and forbade more than six pounds of powder to be kept in any house or shop, unless forty perches distant from any dwelling house, under the penalty of ten pounds. A year later the magistrates were directed to procure “six or eight good hooks for tearing down houses on fire.”

As the city grew, fires became more frequent, through faulty constructed chimneys and the general use of wood for fuel. Mayor Samuel Preston in 1711 recommended the purchase of buckets, hooks and an engine. In December, 1718, the City Council purchased of Abraham Bickley a fire engine he had imported from England for £50. This fire engine was then in Bethlehem. It was the first fire engine purchased by the city of Philadelphia.

The first “great fire” took place between 10 and 11 o’clock on the night of April 24, 1730. The fire started in a store along the wharf and burned several stores under one roof, two cooper shops and an immense quantity of staves on King Street, and two new tenement houses, all owned by Mr. Fishbourne; a new house of Mr. Plumstead’s; John Dickinson’s fine new house, and Captain Anthony’s house. Several other buildings were damaged and much property fell prey to thieves.

This disastrous fire made the whole population realize that new fire-fighting apparatus was needed. The City Council at once ordered three fire engines and 400 leather buckets to be purchased in England and provided twenty ladders and twenty-five hooks and axes.

A year elapsed, however, before two of the engines and 250 buckets were received, and Mayor Hassel directed one to be stationed in the yard of the Friends’ Meeting House, Second and Market Streets, and the other on the lot of Francis Jones, corner Second and Walnut Streets.

The old Bickley engine was stationed in the yard of the Baptist Church, on Second near Arch Street. As late as 1771 only six fire engines comprised the entire force of the city.

A third engine was built in Philadelphia by Anthony Nichols, in 1733, and other buckets were manufactured there. This is the first fire engine ever built in Pennsylvania.

At a fire in January, 1733, this engine threw a stream higher than any other engine had been able to do, but Nichols was not given another order because his price was too high, he had “used wood instead of brass and they feared it would not last long.”

In December, 1733, there appeared in Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette an article on fires and their origin, and the mode of putting them out. Another article suggested that public pumps should be built, and gave a plan for the organization of a club or society for putting out fires, after the manner of one in Boston.

Franklin was the author of both articles, and they caused such interest that a project of forming such a company was soon undertaken. 860Thirty joined the association, and every member was obliged to keep in order and fit for service a certain number of buckets. They were to meet monthly and discuss topics which might be useful in their conduct at fires.

The advantages of the association were so apparent they became so numerous as to include quite all the inhabitants who were men of property.

Out of this movement started by Benjamin Franklin was organized the Union Fire Company, December 7, 1736, this being the first fire company in Philadelphia. Among the early members were Franklin, Isaac Paschal, Philip Syng, William Rawle and Samuel Powell.

The second company was the Fellowship Fire Company, organized March 1, 1738; the third the Hand-in-Hand, organized March 1, 1742; the fourth the Heart-in-Hand, organized February 22, 1743; the fifth the Friendship, organized July 30, 1747; the sixth the Britannia, organized in 1750.

Richard Mason in 1768 manufactured engines which were operated by levers at the ends instead of the side of the engine. These were successful, and he continued to produce his engines until 1801.

Patrick Lyon, about 1794, became the greatest fire-engine builder, when he invented an engine which would throw more water and with greater force than the others. He built fire engines as late as 1824. The “Reliance” and “Old Diligent,” built by him, performed useful service until the introduction of steam fire engines in 1855.

The first truly great fire in Philadelphia occurred July 9, 1850, when 367 houses were destroyed on Delaware Avenue, near Vine Street.

On November 12, 1851, three lives were lost in a fire which destroyed Bruner’s cotton factory.

The borough of Somerset was almost totally destroyed in 1833, and again on May 9, 1872. In the latter conflagration 117 buildings were destroyed.

On April 10, 1845, the city of Pittsburgh was visited by its first great fire, which burned over a space of fifty-six acres of the business and residential section.

December 15, 1850, the greater portion of the borough of Carbondale was wiped out.

Chambersburg suffered first in Stuart’s rebel raid, October 10, 1862, and again when General McCausland destroyed the beautiful Franklin County seat, July 30, 1864.

Selinsgrove was visited by a terrible fire February 22, 1872, and another fire almost wiped out the town October 30, 1874.

Mifflintown suffered by a great fire in 1871, again on August 23, 1873, and the borough of Milton was almost destroyed May 14, 1880, when 644 houses and business blocks were burned from noon until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

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