Fighting Fires

James Braidwood's career as a fire-fighter spanned thirty-seven years and was born and extinguished in the horrors of fires: Edinburgh's 'great fire' of November 1824 and London's Tooley Street fire of June 1861. Although he is regarded by fire-fighters as the 'father' of the British fire service, little is known of Braidwood or the history of his profession. Fighting Fires: Creating the British Fire Service, 1800-1978 examines the role played by fire-fighters like Braidwood, Captain Eyre Massey Shaw and Alfred Robert Tozer in creating a professional ethos for paid fire-fighters during the nineteenth century: an ethos which emphasized saving lives as well as property from fire. Ewen then traces the methods used by professional fire-fighters to redefine their occupation to incorporate fire prevention during the twentieth century. As the first full-length academic history of the British fire service, Fighting Fires is based on a wealth of original archival material. Ewen argues that the fire service was, for the most part, created by its fire-fighters, becoming part of the fabric of local government by the turn of the twentieth century. Ever since, the service's history has been fraught with infighting between fire-fighters and their employers, erupting in 1977 with the first national strike. Ewen assesses these professional tensions in their long-term context, tracing the incremental growth of a British fire service into one of the country's most important, though neglected, emergency services.