AN ENGLISH FIRE DEPARTMENT.

AN ENGLISH FIRE DEPARTMENT.

在大西洋这边的消防员,report of J. Lacey Savage, chief officer of the Manchester Fire Brigade must appear rather amusing. In first-class, or for that matter in any pretentious fire department of this country the hand engine has become extinct, except as a relic. The modern steamer or direct supply hydrants are the principal agents now used for furnishing water for fire extinguishment. The chemical engine is also a valuable adjunct to the equipment of our departments. Thus this would appear strange reading in the report of a chief engineer of even a small city in the United States. The three hand-worked engines, six tenders, one hose wagon, twenty-four life escapes and hose carts combined, one eighty-foot escape, and two forty-foot extension ladders, are all thoroughly trustworthy. The life escapes are available at all times, both by day and night, with a man in charge.

Yet in a city like Manchester, in every other respect one of the most up-to-date and go-ahead cities in Europe, with a population of about one quarter of a million, special aid has to be procured to man the breaks at fires! YVe are told that the strength of the brigade is eighty-eight men and three water works officials “who render very important assistance in regulating the supply and pressure of water." But there were 943 assistants employed, which, no doubt, means the men who worked the hand engines. YVe are not caviling at the methods employed or the manner of conducting a fire department in England; but to ns the use of hand engines in a large city looks more than rather antiquated. Yet, when we consider that only seventeen years ago, Superintendent Tozer, then at the head of the fire brigade of Manchester, most vigorously opposed the introduction of steam fire engines and blamed them for spoiling the firemen as steamships had spoiled the British sailor, we can hardly wonder if such a survival of the unfittest still rules in England’s cotton metropolis. But, considering that the city is one of the wealthiest in the world, that such vast interests are constantly at stake, and that Mr. Tozen’s prejudices did not succeed in keeping out steam fire engines, themarvel is that the hand engines are not done away with altogether and more steam fire engines added to the eight already in use.