Fires and Firemen | Page 9

sometimes exercised to deceive the officers of the insurance company as to the value of the insured stock. In one instance, when the Brigade had succeeded in extinguishing the fire, he discovered a string stretched across one of the rooms in the basement of the house, on which ringlets of shavings dipped in turpentine were tied at regular intervals. On extending his investigations he ascertained that a vast pile of what he thought were pounds of moist sugar, consisted of parcels of brown paper, and that the loaves of white sugar were made of plaster of Paris. Ten to one but the "artful dodge" which some scoundrel flatters himself is peculiarly his own, has been put in practice by hundreds of others before him. For this reason, fires that are wilful generally betray themselves to the practiced eye of the Brigade. When an event of the kind is "going to happen" at home, a common circumstance is to find that the fond parent has treated the whole of his family to the theatre.
There is another class of incendiary fires which arise from a species of monomania in boys and girls. Not many years ago, the men of the Brigade were occupied for hours in putting out no less than half a dozen fires which broke out one after another in a house in West Smithfield, and it was at last discovered that they were occasioned by a youth who went about with lucifers and slily ignited every thing that would burn. He was caught in the act of firing a curtain in the very room in which a fireman was occupied in putting out a blaze. A still more extraordinary case took place in the year 1848, at Torluck House, in the Isle of Mull. On Sunday, the 11th of November, the curtains of a bed were ignited, as was supposed, by lightning; a window-blind followed; and immediately afterwards the curtains of five rooms broke out one after another into a flame, even the towels hanging up in the kitchen were burnt. The next day a bed took fire, and it being thought advisable to carry the bed-linen into the coach-house for safety, it caught fire three or four times during the process of removal. In a few days the phenomenon was renewed. The furniture, books, and every thing else of an inflammable nature, were, with much labor, taken from the mansion, and again some body-linen burst into a flame on the way. Even after these precautions had been taken, and persons had been set to watch in every part of the house, the mysterious fires continued to haunt it until the 22d of February, 1849. It was suspected from the first that they were the act of an incendiary, and upon a rigid examination of the household before the Fiscal-General and the Sheriff the mischief was traced to the daughter of the housekeeper, a young girl who was on a visit to her mother. She had effected her purpose, which was perfectly motiveless, by concealing combustibles in different parts of the house.
The most ludicrous conflagration that perhaps ever occurred was that at Mr. Phillips's workshop, when the whole of his stock of instruments for extinguishing flame were at one fell swoop destroyed. "'Tis rare to see the engineer hoist with his own petard," says the poet; and certainly it was a most laughable _contre-temps_ to see the fire-engines arrive at the manufactory just in time to witness the fire-annihilators annihilated by the fire. A similar mishap occurred to these unfortunate implements at Paris. In juxtaposition with this case we are tempted to put another, in which the attempt at extinction was followed by exactly the opposite effects. A tradesman was about to light his gas, when, finding the cock stiff, he took a candle to see what was the matter; whilst attempting to turn it the screw came out, and with it a jet of gas, which was instantly fired by the candle. The blaze igniting the shop, a passer-by seized a wooden pail and threw its contents upon the flames, which flared up immediately with tenfold power. It is scarcely necessary to state that the water was whiskey, and that the country was Old Ireland.
Spontaneous combustion is at present very little understood, though chemists have of late turned their attention to the subject. It forms, however, no inconsiderable item in the list of causes of fires. There can be no question that many of those that occur at railway-stations, and buildings, are due to the fermentation which arises among oiled rags. Over-heating of waste, which includes shoddy, sawdust, cotton, &c., is a fearful source of conflagrations. The cause of most fires which have arisen from spontaneous combustion is lost in the consequence. Cases now and then occur where