History of firefighting

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The history of organized firefighting began in ancient Rome while under the rule of Augustus.[1] Prior to that, there
is evidence of fire-fighting machinery in use in Ancient Egypt, including a water pump invented by Ctesibius of
Alexandria in the third century BC which was later improved upon in a design by Hero Of Alexandria in the first
century BC.[2]

Rome The first Roman fire brigade of which we have any substantial history was created by Marcus Licinius
Crassus. Marcus Licinius Crassus was born into a wealthy Roman family around the year 115 BC, and acquired an
enormous fortune through (in the words of Plutarch) "fire and rapine." One of his most lucrative schemes took
advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department. Crassus filled this void by creating his own brigade500
men strongwhich rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire
fighters did nothing while their employer bargained over the price of their services with the distressed property
owner. If Crassus could not negotiate a satisfactory price, his men simply let the structure burn to the ground, after
which he offered to purchase it for a fraction of its value. Emperor Nero took the basic idea from Crassus and then
built on it to form the Vigiles in AD 60 to combat fires using bucket brigades and pumps, as well as poles, hooks and
even ballistae to tear down buildings in advance of the flames. The Vigiles patrolled the streets of Rome to watch for
fires and served as a police force. The later brigades consisted of hundreds of men, all ready for action. When there
was a fire, the men would line up to the nearest water source and pass buckets hand in hand to the fire.
Rome suffered a number of serious fires, most notably the fire on 19 July AD 64 and eventually destroyed two thirds
of Rome.

Europe

A fire extinguisher pump from 1540

This picture published in 1808 shows firefighters tackling a fire inLondon using hand-pumped engines.

In Europe, firefighting was quite rudimentary until the 17th century. In 1254, a royal decree of King Saint Louis of
France created the so-called guet bourgeois ("burgess watch"), allowing the residents of Paris to establish their own
night watches, separate from the king's night watches, to prevent and stop crimes and fires. After the Hundred
Years' War, the population of Paris expanded again, and the city, much larger than any other city in Europe at the
time, was the scene of several great fires in the 16th century. As a consequence, KingCharles IX disbanded the
residents' night watches and left the king's watches as the only one responsible for checking crimes and fires.
London suffered great fires in 798, 982, 989, 1212 and above all in 1666 (Great Fire of London). The Great Fire of
1666 started in a baker's shop on Pudding Lane, consumed about two square miles (5 km) of the city, leaving tens
of thousands homeless. Prior to this fire, London had no organized fire protection system. Afterwards, insurance
companies formed private fire brigades to protect their clients property. Insurance brigades would only fight fires at
buildings the company insured. These buildings were identified by fire insurance marks. The key breakthrough in
firefighting arrived in the 17th century with the first fire engines. Manual pumps, rediscovered in Europe after 1500
(allegedly used in Augsburg in 1518 and in Nuremberg in 1657), were only force pumps and had a very short range
due to the lack of hoses. German inventor Hans Hautsch improved the manual pump by creating the first suction
and force pump and adding some flexible hoses to the pump. In 1672, Dutch artist,and inventor Jan Van der
Heyden's workshop developed the fire hose. Constructed of flexible leather and coupled every 50 feet (15 m)
with brass fittings. The length remains the standard to this day in mainland Europe whilst in the UK the standard
length is either 23m or 25m. The fire engine was further developed by the Dutch inventor, merchant and
manufacturer, John Lofting (16591742) who had worked with Jan Van der Heyden in Amsterdam. Lofting moved to
London in or about 1688, became an English citizen and patented (patent number 263/1690) the "Sucking Worm
Engine" in 1690. There was a glowing description of the firefighting ability of his device in The London Gazette of 17
March 1691, after the issue of the patent. The British Museum has a print showing Lofting's fire engine at work in
London, the engine being pumped by a team of men. In the print three fire plaques of early insurance companies
are shown, no doubt indicating that Lofting collaborated with them in firefighting. A later version of what is believed
to be one of his fire engines has been lovingly restored by a retired firefighter, and is on show in Marlow
Buckinghamshire where John Lofting moved in 1700. Patents only lasted for fourteen years and so the field was
open for his competitors after 1704.
Richard Newsham of Bray in Berkshire (just 8 miles from Lofting) produced a similar engine in 1725, patented it in
America and cornered the market there.
Pulled as a cart to the fire, these manual pumps were manned by teams of men and could deliver up to 160 gallons
per minute (12 L/s) at up to 120 feet (36 m).

United States

Victor Pierson, Paul Poincy.Volunteer Firemen's Parade, March 4th 1872, representing the gathering of theNew Orleans fire brigades
around the statue of Henry Clay.

The Chicago Fire Department used this White Motor Company truck from 1930 to 1941.

In 1631, Boston's governor John Winthrop outlawed wooden chimneys and thatched roofs.[3] In 1648, the New
Amsterdam governor Peter Stuyvesant appointed four men to act as fire wardens.[3] They were empowered to
inspect all chimneys and to fine any violators of the rules. The city burghers later appointed eight prominent citizens
to the "Rattle Watch" - these men volunteered to patrol the streets at night carrying large wooden rattles. [3] If a fire
was seen, the men spun the rattles, then directed the responding citizens to form bucket brigades. On January 27,
1678 the first fire engine company went into service with its captain (foreman) Thomas Atkins. [3] In 1736 Benjamin
Franklin established the Union Fire Company in Philadelphia.[3]
George Washington was a volunteer firefighter in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1774, as a member of the Friendship
Veterans Fire Engine Company, he bought a new fire engine and gave it to the town, which was its very first.
[4]
However the United States did not have government-run fire departments until around the time of the American
Civil War. Prior to this time, private fire brigades compete with one another to be the first to respond to a fire
because insurance companies paid brigades to save buildings.[citation needed] Underwriters also employed their
own Salvage Corps in some cities. The first known female firefighter Molly Williams took her place with the men on
the dragropes during the blizzard of 1818 and pulled the pumper to the fire through the deep snow.
On April 1 of 1853, Cincinnati OH became the first professional fire department by being made up of 100% full-time,
paid employees.
In 2010, 70 percent of firefighters in the United States were volunteer. Only 5% of calls were actual fires. 65% were
medical aid. 8% were false alarms.[5]

Modern development
The first fire brigades in the modern sense were created in France in the early 18th century. In 1699, a man with
bold commercial ideas, Franois du Mouriez du Prier (grandfather of French Revolution's general Charles Franois
Dumouriez), solicited an audience with King Louis XIV. Greatly interested in Jan Van der Heyden's invention, he
successfully demonstrated the new pumps and managed to convince the king to grant him the monopoly of making
and selling "fire-preventing portable pumps" throughout the kingdom of France. Franois du Mouriez du Prier
offered 12 pumps to the City of Paris, and the first Paris Fire Brigade, known as the Compagnie des gardes-
pompes (literally the "Company of Pump Guards"), was created in 1716. Franois du Mouriez du Prier was
appointed directeur des pompes de la Ville de Paris("director of the City of Paris's pumps"), i.e. chief of the Paris
Fire Brigade, and the position stayed in his family until 1760. In the following years, other fire brigades were created
in the large French cities. Around that time appeared the current French word pompier ("firefighter"), whose literal
meaning is "pumper." On March 11, 1733 the French government decided that the interventions of the fire brigades
would be free of charge. This was decided because people always waited until the last moment to call the fire
brigades to avoid paying the fee, and it was often too late to stop fires. From 1750 on, the French fire brigades
became para-military units and received uniforms. In 1756 the use of a protective helmet for firefighters was
recommended by King Louis XV, but it took many more years before the measure was actually enforced on the
ground.
In North America, Jamestown, Virginia was virtually destroyed in a fire in January, 1608. There were no full-time paid
firefighters in America until 1850. Even after the formation of paid fire companies in the United States, there were
disagreements and often fights over territory. New York City companies were famous for sending runners out to fires
with a large barrel to cover the hydrant closest to the fire in advance of the engines. [citation needed] Often fights would break
out between the runners and even the responding fire companies for the right to fight the fire and receive the
insurance money that would be paid to the company that fought it.[citation needed] Interestingly, during the 19th century and
early 20th century volunteer fire companies served not only as fire protection but as political machines. The most
famous volunteer firefighter politician is Boss Tweed, head of the notorious Tammany Hall political machine, who got
his start in politics as a member of the Americus Engine Company Number 6 ("The Big Six") in New York City.

Indian Home Guards fire fighting demonstration

The Sandgate Fire Brigade, Queensland, Australia, outside the Sandgate Fire-Brigade Station in 1923

Napoleon Bonaparte, drawing from the century-old experience of the gardes-pompes, is generally attributed as
creating the first "professional" firefighters, known as Sapeurs-Pompiers ("Sappers-Firefighters"), from the French
Army. Created under the Commandant of Engineers in 1810, the company was organized after a fire at the ballroom
in the Austrian Embassy in Paris which injured several dignitaries.
In the UK, the Great Fire of London in 1666 set in motion changes which laid the foundations for organised
firefighting in the future. In the wake of the Great Fire, the City Council established the first fire insurance company,
"The Fire Office", in 1667, which employed small teams of Thames watermen as firefighters and provided them with
uniforms and arm badges showing the company to which they belonged.
However, the first organised municipal fire brigade in the world was established inEdinburgh, Scotland, when the
Edinburgh Fire Engine Establishment was formed in 1824, led by James Braidwood. London followed in 1832 with
the London Fire Engine Establishment.
On April 1, 1853, the Cincinnati Fire Department became the first full-time paid professional fire department in the
United States, and the first in the world to use steam fire engines. [1][dead link]
The first horse-drawn steam engine for fighting fires was invented in 1829, but not accepted in structural firefighting
until 1860, and ignored for another two years afterwards. Internal combustion engine fire engines arrived in 1907,
built in the United States, leading to the decline and disappearance of steam engines by 1925.

Firefighting today
Further information: Firefighting
Today, fire and rescue remains a mix of full-time paid, paid-on-call, and volunteer responders. Many but not all urban
areas are served by large, Volunteer teams.

Bombay Explosion (1944)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bombay Explosion

Smoke billowing out of Harbour

Time 16:15 IST (10:45 UTC)

 Date 14 April 1944

Location Victoria Dock, Bombay, British India

18.952777N 72.844977ECoordinates:
Coordinates
18.952777N 72.844977E

Cause ship fire

Casualties

800+ dead

3,000 injured

The Bombay Explosion (or Bombay Docks Explosion) occurred on 14 April 1944, in the Victoria Dock of Bombay
(now Mumbai) when the freighter SS Fort Stikine carrying a mixed cargo of cotton bales, gold, and ammunition
including around 1,400 tons of explosives, caught fire and was destroyed in two giant blasts, scattering debris,
sinking surrounding ships and setting fire to the area killing around 800 people. [1][2]

The vessel, the voyage and cargo

SS Fort Stikine

The SS Fort Stikine was a 7,142 gross register ton freighter built in 1942 in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, under a
lend-lease agreement, and was named after Fort Stikine, a former outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company located at
what is nowWrangell, Alaska.[citation needed]
Sailing from Birkenhead on 24 February via Gibraltar, Port Said and Karachi, she arrived at Bombay on 12 April
1944. Her cargo included 1,395 tons of explosives including 238 tons of sensitive "A" explosives, torpedoes, mines,
shells, munitions,Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft, raw cotton bales, barrels of oil, timber, scrap iron and
approximately 890,000 of gold bullion in bars in 31 crates.[3] The 87,000 bales of cotton and lubricating oil were
loaded at Karachi and the ship's captain, Alexander James Naismith, recorded his protest about such a "mixture" of
cargo.[3] The transportation of cotton through sea route was inevitable for the merchants, as transporting cotton in rail
from Punjab and Sindh to Bombay was banned at that time.[4] Naismith, who lost his life in the explosion, also
described the cargo as "just about everything that will either burn or blow up". [3] The vessel had berthed and was still
awaiting unloading on 14 April, after 48 hours of berthing. [3]

Incident
Aftermath of the Bombay Explosion on 14 April 1944

People running for their lives after the Bombay Explosion on 14 April 1944

In the mid-afternoon around 14:00, the crew were alerted to a fire onboard burning somewhere in the No. 2 hold.
The crew, dockside fire teams and fireboats were unable to extinguish the conflagration, despite pumping over 900
tons of water into the ship, nor were they able to find the source due to the dense smoke. The water was boiling all
over the ship, due to heat generated by the fire.[5]
At 15:50 the order to abandon ship was given, and sixteen minutes later there was a great explosion, cutting the
ship in two and breaking windows over 12 km (7.5 mi) away. The two explosions were powerful enough to be
recorded by seismographs at the Colaba Observatoryin the city. Sensors recorded that the earth trembled at Shimla,
[6]
a city located at a distance of over 1700 km. The shower of burning material set fire to slums in the area. Around
two square miles were set ablaze in an 800 m (870 yd) arc around the ship. Eleven neighbouring vessels had been
sunk or were sinking, and the emergency personnel at the site suffered heavy losses. Attempts to fight the fire were
dealt a further blow when a second explosion from the ship swept the area at 16:34. Burning cotton bales fell from
the sky on docked ships, on the dock yard, and on slum areas outside the harbour. The sound of explosions was
heard as far as 50 mi (80 km) away.[7] Some of the most developed and economically important parts of Bombay
were wiped out because of the blast and resulting fire. [7]
News
The details of the explosions and losses were first reported to the outside world by Radio Saigon, a Japanese-
controlled radio which gave a detailed report of the incident on 15 April 1944. [8] British-Indian wartime censorship
permitted news reporters to send the reports only in the second week of May 1944. [8] Time Magazine published the
story as late as 22 May 1944 and still it was news to the outside world. [8] A movie depicting the explosions and
aftermath, made by Indian cinematographer Sudhish Ghatak, was confiscated by military officers [3] although parts of
it were shown to the public as a newsreel at a later date. [3]
Loss

The Memorial erected outside Mumbai Fire Brigade Headquarters

The total number of lives lost in the explosion is estimated at more than 800, although some estimates put the figure
around 1,300.[9] More than 500 civilians lost their lives, many of them residing in adjoining slum areas, but as it was
wartime, information about the full extent of the damage was partially censored. [3] The results of the explosion are
summarised as follows:

231 people killed were attached to various dock services including fire brigade and dock employees. [5]

Of the above figure, 66 firemen were killed[10]

More than 500 civilians were killed[5]

Some estimates put total deaths up to 1300[9]

More than 2500 were injured, including civilians[5]

13 ships were lost[5] and some other ships heavily or partially damaged

Out of above, three Royal Indian Navy ships lost[11]

31 wooden crates, each containing four gold bars, each gold bar weighing 2 stones (actually 800 Troy
ounces).[5] (almost all since recovered)

More than 50,000 tonnes of shipping destroyed and another 50,000 tonnes of shipping damaged [5]

Loss of more than 50,000 tonnes of food grains, including rice, gave rise to blackmarketing of food grains
afterwards.[3]

Salvage
As part of the salvage operation, a British officer was seconded to the Indian government, to establish the pumping
operation. This was Sub-Lieutenant Ken Jackson, RNVR, who along with Chief Petty Officer Brazier arrived in
Bombay on 7 May 1944. Over a period of three months many ships were salvaged. The de-watering operation took
three months to complete, after which Jackson and Brazier returned to their base in Colombo. Jackson remained in
the Far East for another two years, conducting further salvage work. For their efforts with the pumping operation,
both men were rewarded: Brazier was awarded the MBE, and Jackson received an accelerated promotion. An
Australian minesweeper, HMAS Gawler, landed working parties on 21 June 1944, to assist in the restoration of the
port.[11]

Aftermath

Aftermath of the explosion at the harbour

A piece of propeller that landed in St. Xaviers High School, about 3 mi (4.8 km) from the docks.

It took three days to bring the fire under control, and later, 8,000 men toiled for seven months to remove around
500,000 tons of debris and bring the docks back into action. The official death toll was 740, including 476 military
personnel, with around 1,800 people injured; unofficial tallies run much higher. The occupants of the slums were
largely unregistered. In total, twenty-seven other vessels were sunk or damaged in both Victoria dock and the
neighbouring Prince's Dock.[citation needed]
The inquiry into the explosion identified the cotton bales as probably being the seat of the fire. It was critical of
several errors: storing the cotton below the munitions, not displaying the red flag required to indicate a dangerous
cargo on board, delaying unloading the explosives, not using steam injectors to contain the fire and a delay in
alerting the local fire brigade.[12]
Many families lost all their belongings and were left with just the clothes on their back. Thousands became destitute.
It was estimated that about 6,000 firms were affected and 50,000 lost their jobs. [3] The government took full
responsibility for the disaster and monetary compensation was paid to citizens who made a claim for loss or damage
to property. During normal dredging operations carried out periodically to maintain the depth of the docking bays,
many intact gold bars have been found over time some as late as February 2011 and they have since been
returned to the British government. A live shell weighing 45 kilograms (99 lb) was also found in October 2011.
[13]
Mumbai Fire Brigade's headquarters at Byculla has a memorial built in the memory of the numerous fire fighters
who died. Fire Safety Week is observed all over Maharashtra from 14 to 21 April in memory of the 66 firemen[10]who
died in this explosion.
Halifax Explosion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the disaster. For other uses, see Halifax Explosion (disambiguation).

Halifax Explosion

A view of the pyrocumulus cloud, most likely taken from the present

day location of the dock at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography

(BIO) looking from Bedford Basin southeast toward The Narrows,

approximately 15-20 seconds after the explosion.[1]

Location Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Date December 6, 1917

9:04:35 (AST)

Deaths 2,000 (approximate) (1,950 known)

Non-fatal injuries 9,000 (approximate)

Part of a series on the

History of
Halifax, Nova Scotia
 History

(17491842)
Town of Halifax
City of Halifax (18421996)
Halifax (amalgamated) (1996present)

Events

1749
Citadel Hill built
Dartmouth Massacre 1751
Headquarters established for Royal Navy's 1758
North American Station
Sambro Lighthouse built 1759
Burying the Hatchet ceremony 1761
Naval battle off Halifax 1782
Prince Edward arrives 1794
Halifax Impressment Riot 1805
Capture of USS Chesapeake 1813
Cornwallis Street Baptist Churchestablished 1832
Halifax School for the Deaf established 1856
Halifax Volunteer Battalion established 1860
CSS Tallahassee Escape 1861
Mic-Mac hockey stick sold commercially 1863
Departing Halifax for Northwest Rebellion 1885
Local Council of Women established 1894
Departing Halifax for the Boer War 1899
Dingle Tower created 1912
Halifax Explosion 1917
Halifax VE-Day Riot 1945
Bedford Magazine Explosion 1945
Second Amalgamation 1996
Hurricane Juan 2003
Africville Apology 2010

The Halifax Explosion occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the morning of December 6, 1917. SS Mont-
Blanc, a French cargo ship fully loaded with wartime explosives, was involved in a collision with the Norwegian
vessel SS Imo[2] in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbourto Bedford Basin. Approximately
twenty minutes later, a fire on board the French ship ignited her explosive cargo, causing a cataclysmic explosion
that devastated the Richmond District of Halifax. Approximately 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, and
collapsed buildings, and it is estimated that nearly 9,000 others were injured. [3] The blast was the largest man-made
explosionprior to the development of nuclear weapons,[4] with an equivalent force of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT.[5] In
a meeting of the Royal Society of Canada in May 1918, Dalhousie University's Professor Howard L. Bronson
estimated the blast at some 2400 metric tons of high explosive. [6]
Mont-Blanc was under orders from the French government to carry her highly explosive cargo overseas
to Bordeaux, France. At roughly 8:45 am, she collided at slow speed (1 to 1.5 miles per hour or 1.6 to 2.4 kilometres
per hour) with the 'in-ballast' (without cargo) Imo, chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to pick up a
cargo of relief supplies in New York. The resultantfire aboard the French ship quickly grew out of control. Without
adequate and accessible firefighting equipment, the captain, pilot, officers and men were forced to abandon her
within a few minutes following the accident. Approximately 20 minutes later (at 9:04:35 am), Mont-Blanc exploded
with tremendous force.[7] Nearly all structures within a half-mile (800 m) radius, including the entire community of
Richmond, were completely obliterated. Apressure wave of air snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings,
grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-Blanc for kilometres. Hardly a window in the city proper
survived the concussion. Across the harbour, in Dartmouth, there was also widespread damage.[3] A tsunamicreated
by the blast wiped out the physical community of Mi'kmaq First Nations people that had lived in the Tuft's Cove area
for generations. There were a number of casualties including five children who drowned when the tsunami came
ashore at Nevin's Cove.[8]

Wartime Halifax
Further information: History of the Halifax Regional Municipality, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and History of Nova Scotia

Looking north from a grain elevator towards Acadia Sugar Refinery, circa 1900, showing the area later devastated by the 1917
explosion

Halifax Harbour is one of the deepest ice-free natural harbours in the world. [9] The community ofDartmouth lies on
the east shore of the harbour, while Halifax is on the west shore. Halifax and Dartmouth thrived during times of war.
The harbour was one of the Royal Navy's most important bases in North America, a centre for wartime trade and a
home to privateers that harried the British Empire's enemies during the American Revolution, Napoleonic Wars and
the War of 1812.[10] The termination of the Reciprocity Treaty following theAmerican Civil War resulted in
new tariffs on American goods and plunged Halifax into economic decline. [11] After the British garrison left the city in
1905, the Canadian Militia, long a significant presence in Halifax, assumed full responsibility for the port. [12] With the
British sailors and soldiers gone, the Canadian Department of Militia and Defence received tons of equipment,
empty barracks, parade grounds and a lifeless dockyard as its legacy. The city itself fell into an economic decline.
[13]
After 1906, the Canadian Government took over the Halifax Dockyard from the British Royal Navy. It was
renamed Her Majesty's Canadian (HMC) Dockyard and later became the command centre of the Royal Canadian
Navy upon its founding in 1910.
However, just before the First World War, the Canadian Government belatedly realized the city's importance as
more than a mere transit point and began to make a determined, costly effort to develop the harbour and waterfront
facilities. The outbreak of the war brought Halifax back to prominence. As the just-created Royal Canadian Navy had
virtually no seaworthy ships of its own, it was left to the Royal Navy to keep the Atlantic sea lanes open by using
Halifax as its North American base.[14] In 1915, management of the harbour fell under the control of the Royal
Canadian Navy under the supervision of Captain-in-Charge of the Halifax Dockyard and Senior Naval Officer,
Captain Superintendent Edward Harrington Martin, a retired Royal Navy officer and co-commandant of the Royal
Naval College of Canada (RNCC).[15]
By 1917, the population of Halifax/Dartmouth had grown to 65,000 people. [16] Convoys carried soldiers, men, animals
and supplies to the European theatre. By 1917, the two main points of departure were on the East Coast at Sydney
(HMCSLandsdowne) in Cape Breton and Halifax.[17] As well, hospital ships returned the wounded.
It was the success of German U-boat attacks on ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean that led the Allies to institute
a convoysystem to reduce losses transporting goods and soldiers to Europe. Merchant ships gathered at Bedford
Basin on the northwestern end of the Harbour, which was protected by two sets of anti-submarine nets and guarded
by patrol ships of theRoyal Canadian Navy. The convoys departed under the protection of British Royal
Navy cruisers and destroyers.[18] A large army garrison protected the city with forts, gun batteries, and anti-submarine
nets. These factors drove a major military,industrial and residential expansion of the city.[19] while the weight of goods
passing through the harbour increased nearly ninefold.[20] All neutral ships such as SS Imo, bound for ports in North
America, were required to report to Halifax for inspection.
Disaster

SS Imo after the explosion

The Norwegian ship, SS Imo, had sailed from Rotterdam, Netherlandsen route to New York to take on relief supplies
for Belgium. She arrived in Halifax on 3 December for neutral inspection and spent two days in Bedford Basin
awaiting refuelling supplies. Though given clearance to leave the port on 5 December, Imo's departure was delayed
as her 50 tons of coal did not arrive until late that afternoon. The loading of fuel was not completed until after
the anti-submarine nets had been raised for the night. Therefore, the vessel could not weigh anchor until the next
morning.[21] The French cargo ship SS Mont-Blanc arrived from New York late on 5 December. According to her
freight manifest,[22] the vessel was fully loaded with the explosives TNT and picric acid, the high-octane fuel benzole,
and guncotton. She intended to join a slow convoy gathering in Bedford Basin readying to depart for Europe, but
was likewise too late to venture up the harbour before the nets were raised. [21] Ships carrying dangerous cargo were
not allowed into the harbour before the war, but the risks posed by German submarines had resulted in a relaxing of
regulations.[23]
Collision and fire
Navigating from the inner harbour into Bedford Basin required passage through a strait called the Narrows. Article
18 of the "International Rules of the Road, Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea" (1910) dictated that ships
were expected to keep to the starboard (right) side of the channel as they passed oncoming traffic. In other words,
vessels were required to pass port to port. Imo was granted clearance to leave the basin by signals from the guard
ship HMCS Acadia at approximately 7:30 am on the morning of December 6,[24] with Pilot William Hayes
aboard. Imo entered the Narrows well above the speed limit of seven knots set by the Admiralty in the harbour's
Public Traffic Regulations which had been promulgated by Captain Superintendent E. H. Martin. [25] Imo met an
American tramp steamer, SS Clara, being piloted up the wrong (western) side of the harbour by Edward Renner.
However, the pilots knew each other well and agreed by megaphone to pass starboard to starboard. Soon
afterwards, though, Imo was forced to head even further towards the Dartmouth shore after she passed
the tugboat, Stella Maris, which was travelling up the harbour to Bedford Basin near mid-channel. Horatio Brannen,
the captain of the Stella Maris saw Imo coming at excessive speed and ordered his ship closer to the western shore
to avoid an accident.[26]
The evening before, 45-year-old Francis Mackey, an experienced harbour pilot of 24 years' experience,
boarded Mont-Blanc. However, the anti-submarine nets had already gone up and although the ship had been given
clearance, it was still necessary to wait until dawn before proceeding up the harbour. So, Mackey spent the night on
board as a guest of the captain. At first light, the ship made her way past George's Island and then headed up
towards Bedford Basin.[27] As he went, Mackey kept his eye on the ferry traffic between Halifax and Dartmouth and
other small boats in the area.[28] He first spotted Imo as she rounded the bend above Pier 9 but became concerned
as her path appeared to be heading towards his ship's starboard side, as if to cut him off his own course. Mackey
gave a short blast of his ship's signal whistle to indicate that his vessel had the right of way, but was met with two
short blasts from the Imo, indicating that the approaching vessel would not yield its position. [29] Captain Le Mdec
and Pilot Mackey could see no discernible reason why Imo remained on the wrong side of the channel. The captain
ordered Mont-Blanc to halt its engines and angle slightly to starboard, and closer to the Dartmouth side of the
Narrows. He let out another single blast of his whistle, hoping the other vessel would likewise move to starboard, but
was again met with a double-blast in negation.[30]
Sailors on nearby ships heard the series of signals between the two and, realizing that a collision was imminent,
gathered to watch as the Imo bore down on the Mont-Blanc.[31] Though both ships had cut their engines by this point,
their momentum carried them right on top of each other at slow speed. Unable to ground his ship for fear of a shock
that would set off his explosive cargo, Mackey ordered the Mont-Blanc to steer hard to port (starboard helm) and
crossed the Norwegian ship's bows in a last-second bid to avoid a collision. The two ships were almost parallel to
each other, when Imo suddenly sent out three signal blasts, indicating they were reversing their engines. The
combination of being in ballast and the transverse thrust of her right-hand propellor caused the ship's head to swing
into Mont-Blanc. Imo's prow pushed nearly nine feet (2.5 m) into the French vessel's No. 1 hold on her starboard
side.[32]
The collision occurred at 8:45 am.[33] And while the damage to the Mont Blanc was not severe it toppled barrels that
broke open and flooded the deck with benzol, a high octane fuel, that quickly flowed into the hold. As Imo's engines
kicked in, she quickly disengaged; an action which created sparks inside the Mont-Blanc's hull. These ignited the
vapours from the benzol. A fire started at the water line and travelled quickly up the side of the ship as the benzol
spewed out from crushed drums onMont-Blanc's decks. The fire quickly became uncontrollable. Consumed by thick
black smoke, and fearing she would explode almost immediately, the captain ordered the crew to abandon ship. [34] A
growing number of Halifax citizens gathered on the street or stood at the windows of their homes or businesses to
watch the spectacular fire.[35] The frantic crew of theMont-Blanc shouted from their two lifeboats to some of the other
vessels that Mont-Blanc was about to explode, but they could not be heard above the noise and confusion. [36] The
personnel aboard Mont-Blanc left the burning ship when it was only 40 yards (35 m) from the Halifax shore. As the
lifeboats made their way across the harbour to the Dartmouth shore, the abandoned ship continued to drift on the
slack tide and beached herself at Pier 6 near the foot of Richmond street. [37]
Explosion

A view across the devastation of Halifax two days after the explosion, looking toward the Dartmouth side of the harbour. The Imocan be
seen aground on the far side of the harbour.

At 9:04:35 am, the out-of-control fire aboard Mont-Blanc finally set off her highly explosive cargo. The ship was
completely blown apart, and the remains of her hull were launched nearly 1,000 feet (about 300 m) into the air.
[38]
The blast travelled at more than 1,000 metres per second. Temperatures of 5,000 C and pressures of thousands
of atmospheres accompanied the moment of detonation at the centre of the explosion. [39] White-hot shards of iron
rained down upon Halifax and Dartmouth.[40] The Mont-Blanc's forward 90 mm gun, its barrel melted away, landed
approximately 5.6 kilometres (3.5 mi) north of the explosion site near Albro Lake in Dartmouth, while part of her
anchor, weighing half a ton, landed 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) south at Armdale.[41]
A resulting cloud of white smoke rose to over 3,600 metres (11,800 ft).[42] The shock wave from the blast travelled
through the earth at nearly 23 times thespeed of sound and was felt as far away as Cape Breton and Prince Edward
Island.[43] An area over 160 hectares (400 acres) was completely destroyed by the explosion, [41] while the harbour
floor was momentarily exposed by the volume of water that vaporized. A tsunami was formed by water surging in to
fill the void,[44]which rose up as high as 18 metres (60 ft) above the harbour's high-water mark on the Halifax side.
[45]
Imo was carried onto the shore at Dartmouth by the tsunami.[46]
Over 1,600 people were killed instantly while 9,000 were injured.[47] Every building within a 2.6 kilometres (1.6 mi)
radius, over 12,000 total, was destroyed or badly damaged. [44] Hundreds of people who had been watching the fire
from their homes were blinded when the blast wave shattered the windows in front of them. [48] Stoves and lamps
overturned by the force of the blast sparked fires throughout Halifax, [49] particularly in the North End where entire city
blocks were caught up in the inferno, trapping residents inside their houses. Firefighter Billy Wells, who was thrown
away from the explosion and had his clothes torn from his body, described the devastation survivors faced: "The
sight was awful, with people hanging out of windows dead. Some with their heads missing, and some thrown onto
the overhead telegraph wires." He was the only member of the eight-man crew of the fire engine "Patricia" to
survive.[50]
Large brick and stone factories near Pier 6, such as the Acadia Sugar Refinery and the Hillis & Sons Foundry,
disappeared into unrecognizable heaps of rubble, killing most of their workers. The Nova Scotia cotton mill located
1.5 km (0.93 mile) from the blast was destroyed by fire and the collapse of its concrete floors. [51]
The blast destroyed the machine shop at the Halifax Graving Dock, killing dozens of shipyard workers, and sank the
graving dock's steam tug, the Sambro. More workers and crew were killed aboard the SS Hovland, under repair in
the graving dock, although the Hovland and dock were later repaired.
The Royal Naval College of Canada building was badly damaged, and several cadets and instructors maimed. [52]
The disaster had damaged buildings and shattered windows as far away as Sackville and Windsor Junction, about
16 kilometres (10 mi) away. Buildings shook and items fell from shelves as far away as Truro and New Glasgow,
both over 100 kilometres (62 mi) away. The explosion was felt and heard in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island,
roughly 215 kilometres (130 mi) north, and as far away as North Cape Breton, 360 kilometres (220 mi) east. Robert
Borden, Canada's prime minister at the time, was in Charlottetown at the time of explosion and he also heard it
along with many of his officials. He arrived and toured Halifax two days later to oversee and organize the recovery
and rescue efforts.

View from the waterfront looking west from the ruins of the Sugar Refinery across the obliterated Richmond District several days after
the explosion. The remains of Pier 6, site of the explosion, are on the extreme right.
The Halifax Explosion was one of a series of massive ammunition explosions which followed the large-scale
manufacture, transport and use of high explosives in the 20th century and resulted in large, artificial, non-nuclear
explosions. An extensive comparison of 130 major explosions by Halifax historian Jay White in 1994 concluded that,
"Halifax Harbour remains unchallenged in overall magnitude as long as five criteria are considered together: number
of casualties, force of blast, radius of devastation, quantity of explosive material, and total value of property
destroyed."[53]

Rescue efforts
First rescue efforts came from surviving neighbours and co-workers who pulled and dug out victims from buildings.
The initial informal response was soon joined by surviving policemen, firefighters and military personnel who began
to arrive, as did anyone with a working vehicle. Cars, trucks and delivery wagons of all kinds were enlisted to collect
wounded.[54] A flood of victims soon began to arrive at the city's hospitals and soon grew to overwhelming numbers. [55]
British Royal Navy cruisers in port sent some of the first organized rescue parties ashore. The
cruiser HMS Highflyer and thearmed merchant cruisers HMS Changuinola, HMS Knight
Templar and HMS Calgarian sent boats ashore with rescue parties and medical personnel and soon began to take
wounded aboard.[49] An American coast guard cutter, USCG Morrill, in port for coal, also sent a rescue party ashore.
Out at sea, the American cruiser USS Tacoma and armed merchant cruiser USSVon Steuben (formerly
SS Kronprinz Wilhelm) were passing Halifax over 80 kilometres (50 mi) away, en route to the United
States. Tacoma was rocked by the blast wave severely enough that her crew went to general quarters. Spotting the
large and rising column of smoke, Tacoma altered course and arrived to assist rescue at 2 pm. Von Steuben arrived
a half hour later.[56] The American steamship Old Colony, docked in Halifax for repairs, suffered little damage and
was quickly converted to serve as a hospital ship, staffed by doctors and orderlies from the British and American
navy vessels in the harbour.[57]
Dazed survivors immediately feared that the explosion was the result of a bomb dropped from a German plane.
[56]
Troops at gun batteries and barracks immediately turned out in case the city was under attack but within an hour
switched from defence to rescue roles as the cause and location of the explosion were determined. All available
troops were called in from harbour fortifications and barracks to the north end to rescue survivors and provide
transport to the city's hospitals, including the two army hospitals in the city. [58]
Surviving railway workers in the railyards at the heart of the disaster carried out rescue work pulling people from the
harbour and from under debris. The overnight train from Saint John, New Brunswick was just approaching the city
when hit by the blast but was only slightly damaged. It continued into Richmond until the track was blocked by
wreckage. Passengers and soldiers aboard used the emergency tools from the train to dig people out of houses and
bandaged them with sheets from the sleeping cars. The train was loaded with injured and left the city at 1:30 with a
doctor aboard, to evacuate the wounded to Truro.[59]
Adding to the chaos were fears that a second explosion was imminent. The rumour developed when a cloud of
steam shot out of ventilators at the ammunition magazine at Wellington Barracks as naval and personnel
extinguished a fire by the magazine. The fire was quickly put out, but the cloud of steam, seen from blocks away,
quickly led to rumours of a second explosion.[60] Uniformed officers ordered everyone away from the area. As the
rumour spread across the city, many families fled their homes. The confusion delayed efforts by over two hours until
fears were dispelled by about noon.[61] However, many rescuers ignored the order and naval rescue parties
continued working uninterrupted from the harbour.[62]
Led by Lieutenant Governor MacCallum Grant, leading citizens formed the Halifax Relief Committee, around noon.
The committee organized members in charge of organizing medical relief for both Halifax and Dartmouth,
transportation, supplying food and shelter, amongst other tasks.[61]
Rescue trains were dispatched from across Atlantic Canada, as well as the northeastern United States. The first
left Truroaround 10 am carrying medical personnel and supplies, arrived in Halifax by noon and returned to Truro
with wounded and homeless by 3 pm. The track had become impassable at Rockingham, on the western edge of
Bedford Basin. To reach the wounded, rescue personnel had to walk through parts of the devastated city until they
reached a point where the military had begun to clear the streets.[63] By nightfall, a dozen trains had reached Halifax
from the Nova Scotian towns of Truro,Kentville, Amherst and Stellarton and from the New Brunswick towns
of Sackville, Moncton and Saint John.[64]
Relief efforts were hampered the following day by a blizzard that blanketed Halifax with 16 inches (41 cm) of heavy
snow. Trains en route from other parts of Canada and from the United States were stalled in snowdrifts, while
telegraph lines that had been hastily repaired following the explosion were again knocked down. Halifax was
isolated by the storm, and rescue committees were forced to suspend the search for survivors, though the storm
aided efforts to put out fires throughout the city.[65]

Human loss and destruction

Explosion aftermath: Halifax's Exhibition Building. The final body from the explosion was found here in 1919.

While the exact number killed by the disaster is unknown, a common estimate is 2,000. The Halifax Explosion
Remembrance Book, an official database compiled in 2002 by the Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management
identified 1,950 victims.[66] As many as 1,600 people died immediately in the blast, the tsunami, and collapse of
buildings. The last body, a caretaker killed at the Exhibition Grounds, was not recovered until the summer of 1919.
[67]
An additional 9,000 were injured, 6,000 of them seriously; 1,630 homes were destroyed in the explosion and fires,
with 12,000 more houses damaged. This disaster left roughly 6,000 people homeless and without shelter and
25,000 without adequate housing. The city's industrial sector was in large part gone, with many workers among the
casualties and the dockyard heavily damaged.
The explosion was responsible for the vast majority of Canada's World War I-related civilian deaths and injuries, and
killed more Nova Scotia residents than were killed in combat. Detailed estimates showed that among those killed,
600 were under the age of 15, 166 were labourers, 134 were soldiers and sailors, 125 were craftsmen, and 39 were
workers for the railway.

Explosion aftermath: The St. Joseph's Convent, located on the southeast corner of Gttingen and Kaye streets.

Many of the wounds inflicted by the blast were permanently debilitating, with many people partially blinded by flying
glass or by the flash of the explosion. Thousands of people had stopped to watch the ship burning in the harbour,
with many people watching from inside buildings, leaving them directly in the path of flying glass from shattered
windows. Roughly 600 people suffered eye injuries, and 38 of those lost their sight permanently. The large number
of eye injuries led to better understanding on the part of physicians, and with the recently formed Canadian National
Institute for the Blind, they managed to greatly improve the treatment of damaged eyes. The significant advances in
eye care as a result of this disaster are often compared to the huge increase in burn care knowledge after
the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston. Halifax became internationally known as a centre for care for the blind,
accounting for a large proportion of patients.
According to estimates, roughly $35 million Canadian dollars in damages resulted (in 1917 dollars; adjusted for
inflation, this is about $545 million Canadian dollars today).

Communities affected
While the city of Halifax's North End neighbourhood of Richmond suffered the most damage from the explosion,
several neighbouring communities and settlements were also affected by the blast.
Dartmouth
The Dartmouth side of the harbour was not as densely populated as Halifax and was separated from the blast by
the width of the harbour, but still suffered heavy damage. Estimates are that almost 100 people died on the
Dartmouth side. Windows were shattered and many buildings were damaged or destroyed, including the Oland
Brewery and parts of the Starr Manufacturing Company.[68] Nova Scotia Hospital was the only hospital on the
Dartmouth side of the harbour and many of the victims were treated there.
Mi'kmaq settlement
There were small enclaves of Mi'kmaq in and around the coves of Bedford Basin (Elsipuktuk, "the big cove") on the
Dartmouth (Punamuekati, "tomcod ground") shore. Directly opposite to Pier 9 on the Halifax (Ekjipuktuk, "the great
bay") side, sat a community in Tuft's Cove (Maskawiekati, "birchbark place")[69] also known as Turtle Grove. The
settlement, known to have dated back to the 18th century, was slated to be relocated on 6 November
as reservations were established through Indian reserve status lobbying. Fewer than 20 families resided in this
community and the move had not yet occurred before the time of the collision. The fire aboard Mont-Blanc drew the
attention of many onlookers on both sides of the harbour. The settlement was completely obliterated by the tsunami.
There is little information on the effects of the disaster on these Mi'kmaw First Nations people with the exception of
the stories preserved within the Oral Tradition. A few of the casualties are listed in the Halifax Explosion
Remembrance Book at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. [70] Records show that 9 bodies were recovered, and the
settlement was abandoned in the wake of the disaster.
Africville
The black community of Africville, on the southern shores of the Bedford Basin, adjacent to the Halifax Peninsula,
was spared the direct force of the blast by the shadow effect of the raised ground to the south. However Africville's
small and frail homes were heavily damaged by the explosion and were described by a relief doctor as ruined but
still standing.[71] Families recorded the deaths of five residents.[72] Although one person is known to have been
compensated for the destruction of his home,[73] Africville received little of the $21,000,000 in donated relief funds
and none of the progressive reconstruction invested into other parts of the city after the explosion. [74]
The Halifax Poor House
The Halifax Poor House at the corner of South and Robie in the South End of Halifax was damaged by the
explosion, but the windows were boarded up by the engineer, Mr Grant, helped by the tenants, by that evening. The
coal furnace was relighted and there were still a number of gas lights available. It rapidly became an emergency
hospital with seven doctors and three nurses. It was stated that the Poor House "rendered great service to the
people of Halifax."[75]

Heroism and rescue efforts

Many individuals, groups and organizations contributed to the rescue and relief in the days, months, and years
following the disaster. Specific acts of heroism and bravery by individuals are detailed below.
Vince Coleman
Main article: Vince Coleman (train dispatcher)
The death toll could have been worse if not for the self-sacrifice of an Intercolonial Railway dispatcher, Patrick
Vincent (Vince) Coleman, operating at the Richmond Railway Yards about a quarter-mile away from Pier 6 where
the explosion occurred. He and his co-worker, William Lovett, learned of the dangerous cargo aboard the
burning Mont-Blanc from a sailor and began to flee. Coleman remembered, however, that an incoming passenger
train from Saint John, New Brunswick was due to arrive at the rail yard within minutes. Coleman sent his Morse
code message and left with Lovett. For unknown reasons, he returned to his post alone and continued to send out
urgent telegraph messages to stop the train. Several variations of the message have been reported, among them
this from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic:
Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last
message. Good-bye boys.[76]
Coleman's message may well have been responsible for bringing all incoming trains around Halifax to a halt. It was
heard by other stations all along the Intercolonial Railway, helping railway officials to respond immediately.
[77]
Passenger Train No. 10, the overnight train from Saint John, New Brunswick, is believed to have heeded the
warning and stopped a safe distance from the blast at Rockingham, saving the lives of about 300 railway
passengers.[76] The rescued train was later used to carry injured and homeless survivors to Truro, Nova Scotia.
Coleman was killed at his post as the explosion ripped through the city. He is honoured as a hero and fixture
in Canadian history, notably being featured in a well-intentioned but historically inaccurate "Heritage Minute" one-
minute movie[78] and a display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
Tug Stella Maris
Main article: Stella Maris (ship)
Towing two scows at the time of the collision, the tug Stella Maris responded immediately to the fire, anchoring the
barges and steaming back towards Pier 6. The tug's captain, Horatio H. Brannen, and his crew realized they were
not equipped to fight the fire with their one small hose and quickly backed off from the burning Mont Blanc. They
were then approached by a whaler from HMS Highflyer. Acting Commander Tom Triggs asked for a tow part-way
over to Imo in order to ascertain the stricken ship's status. Captain Horatio Brannen obliged. After this was
accomplished, Stella Maris was approximately 200 yards (about 180 m) away from and facing Mont Blanc. At this
juncture, they were hailed by a steam pinnace belonging to HMCS Niobe that emerged from the vicinity of Pier 6
with eight volunteers aboard. Warrant Boatswain Albert Mattison requested a hawser to secure a line to the French
ship's stern so as to pull it away from the pier to prevent setting it on fire. The five-inch (127-millimetre) hawser
initially produced was deemed too small and orders for a ten-inch (254-millimetre) hawser came down. It was in the
midst of retrieving the larger rope that the explosion occurred. The blast killed all save one aboard the whaler,
everyone aboard the pinnace and 19 of the 24 men aboard Stella Maris. She ended up on the Richmond shore,
severely damaged. The captain's son, First Mate Walter Brannen, who had been thrown into the hold by the blast,
the second mate, William Nickerson and three others survived.[79]
Firefighters
See also: Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency
Firefighters were among the first to respond to the disaster, rushing to Mont-Blanc to attempt to extinguish the blaze
before the explosion even occurred. They also played an instrumental role in regaining control of the devastated city
after the blast, with members arriving to assist from across Halifax, and by the end of the day from as far away
as Springhill (180 kilometres or 110 miles), Amherst, Nova Scotia (200 kilometres or 120 miles), and Moncton, New
Brunswick (260 kilometres or 160 miles), on relief trains.
Halifax's Fire Department at the time comprised 8 fire stations, 122 members (36 of whom were fully employed),
13apparatus (1 of which was motorized), and roughly 30 horses. West Street's Station 2 was the first to arrive at pier
6 with the crew of the American LaFrance-built Patricia, the first motorized fire engine in Canada.
They were responding to Box 83, the dockyard alarm at the corner of Roome Street and Campbell Road (now
Barrington Street), as Mont-Blanc drifted toward its resting place at Pier 6. Although the dockyard alarms were
routine for the department, today was different, as North End general storekeeper Constant Upham could see the
serious nature of the fire from his home and called surrounding fire stations to advise them. Upham's store was on
Campbell Road, directly in view of the burning ship, and as one of the few buildings at the time with a telephone, he
placed his call sometime after 8:45 that morning. Despite this warning, none of the firemen knew that the ship
carried munitions. It was believed however, that the vessel's crew was still on board, as West Street's Station 2,
Brunswick Street's Station 1, Gttingen Street, and Quinpool Road's Station 5 responded to Upham's call.
Fire Chief Edward P. Condon and Deputy Chief William P. Brunt were next on the scene, arriving from Brunswick
Street in the department's 1911 McLaughlin Roadster. The heat was so overwhelming, no one could look at the
inferno. Chief Condon pulled the Box 83 alarm again. In the final moments before the explosion, hoses were being
unrolled as the fire spread to the docks. Retired Hoseman John Spruin Sr. was on his way from Brunswick Street in
a horse-drawn pumper, and Hoseman John H. E. Duggan was travelling from Isleville Street's Station 7 with another
horse-drawn firefighting wagon.
None of the firemen knew the danger that they faced as 9:04 arrived and brought the explosion that obliterated the
dockyard fire site. Fire Chief Edward Condon and Deputy Chief William Brunt were killed immediately along with
the Patricia's crew members: Captain William T. Broderick, Captain G. Michael Maltus, Hoseman Walter Hennessey,
and Hoseman Frank Killeen. Teamsters John Spruin and John Duggan were both struck and killed by shrapnel en
route to the fire. Their horses were also killed instantly in the blast. Patricia hoseman Frank D. Leahy died on
December 31, 1917, from his injuries. Nine members of the Halifax Fire Department lost their lives performing their
duty that day.
The only surviving member at the scene was Patricia driver Billy (William) Wells, who was opening a hydrant at the
time of the blast. He recounts the event for the Mail Star, October 6, 1967,
That's when it happened The first thing I remember after the explosion was standing quite a distance from the fire
engine The force of the explosion had blown off all my clothes as well as the muscles from my right arm
It is explained that Billy was standing again as the tsunami came over him. He managed to remain on land.
After the wave had receded I didn't see anything of the other firemen so made my way to the old magazine on
Campbell Road The sight was awful with people hanging out of windows dead. Some with their heads off, and
some thrown onto the overhead telegraph wires I was taken to Camp Hill Hospital and lay on the floor for two
days waiting for a bed. The doctors and nurses certainly gave me great service
Notably, firefighter Albert Brunt also survived the blast, by chance, as he slipped while attempting to jump onto
the Patriciaas it rounded a corner on its way to the docks.
Efforts to subdue the blazes were hampered when firefighters arriving from nearby communities had difficulty
connecting their hoses to the differently sized connections of Halifax's hydrants, a problem which inspired
standardized hose fittings after the war.[80] A new pumper was purchased by the city and arrived just a few days after
the explosion. The Patricia was later restored by the American LaFrance company for $6,000, who donated $1,500
to a fund for the families of the firemen. The families of firemen killed in the blast received $1,000 from the city
(close to $15,000 in 2007 dollars), with the exception of one, who received $500. [citation needed]
On the 75th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, December 6, 1992, the Halifax Fire Department erected a
monument at the current Station 4, at the corner of Lady Hammond Road and Robie Street, in honour of the fallen
members who died fighting the fire on Mont-Blanc.

Survival stories
Eric Davidson
Main article: Eric Davidson (survivor)
Eric Davidson was two and a half at the time of the explosion. He was playing with his toy train on the sill of the
living room window, when he, his mother and sister saw the smoke of the fire in the harbour. When the blast
occurred, the window shattered in front of Eric's face, blinding him completely. Despite his disability from an early
age, Davidson went on to be a mechanic for the City of Halifax until his retirement in 1980.
Ashpan Annie
Main article: Ashpan Annie
Anne M. Welsh (ne Liggins) was 23 months old at the time of the explosion. Her house on north Barrington Street
was ripped apart by the force of the blast, killing her mother Anne, brother Edwin and her father. Annie was blown
under the stove by the explosion, landing in the container of ash underneath the appliance. The still-warm ashes
kept Annie protected against exposure to the December weather amidst the destruction, until she was discovered
26 hours later by a soldier named Private Henneberry. Her grandmother and aunt retrieved her from the Pine Hill
Convalescent Hospital, where she had been cared for after being recovered from the wreckage.
Bill Owen
Bill Owen was born May 16, 1917. He was six months old during the explosion and (as of July 2011 news article)
remained living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He said he may be the last survivor of the explosion. [81]
Marie Esther Ramsey (ne Mahoney)
Marie Esther Ramsey (ne Mahoney) was born on Easter Saturday, April 7, 1917, daughter of Stella May Ferguson
and James Dennis Mahoney. She was eight months old when the Great Halifax explosion occurred. She was saved
from serious injury by her grandmother who, upon hearing the explosion, threw the blankets over Marie in her crib
and shielded her from the breaking glass when the shockwave hit their home on Maynard Street. Marie also
survived the second Halifax explosion. Marie died at 96 years old in March 2014 in Gatineau (Aylmer), Quebec. She
may very well have been the oldest survivor of the Great Halifax explosion.

Collection and identification of the dead

A mortuary committee was quickly formed at Halifax City Hall on the morning of the disaster chaired by Alderman R.
B. Coldwell. The Chebucto Road School in West End, Halifax was chosen as a central morgue because it was a
large building with only slight damage on the edge of the devastated area. A company of the Royal Canadian
Engineers repaired and converted the basement of the school to serve as a morgue and classrooms to serve as
offices for the Halifax coroner. Trucks and wagons soon began to arrive with bodies. [82] The coroner Arthur S.
Barnstead took over from Coldwell as the morgue went into operation and implemented a system to carefully
number and describe bodies,[83] which was based on the system developed by his father John Henry Barnstead to
identify Titanic victims in 1912.[84]

Blame
Many people in Halifax at first believed the explosion to be a German attack. Even later, during rescue efforts, that
fear still existed. Blackout laws were rigidly applied, hampering some efforts. [citation needed]
The Halifax Herald was noteworthy in continuing to propagate this belief for some time, for example reporting that
Germans had mocked victims of the Explosion.[85] While John Johansen, the Norwegian helmsman of the Imo, was
being treated for serious injuries sustained during the explosion, it was reported to the military police that he had
been behaving suspiciously. Johansen was arrested on suspicions of being a German spy [86] when a search turned
up a letter on his person, supposedly written in German. Later it turned out that the letter was actually written in
Norwegian.[85] Major General Thomas Benson, the commander of MD6, in a letter to Charles J. Burchell, "Imo"
counsel, stated that Johansen had been mistaken for another man and was hereby exonerated (Imo vs. Mont Blanc,
Appeal Book, Vol. II, p. 5). Immediately following the explosion, most of the German survivors in Halifax had been
rounded up and imprisoned.[87][88] Eventually the fear dissipated as the real cause of the explosion became known,
although the suspicion that Johansen had something to do with the explosion persisted for some time. [89]
The decision of the Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry placed blame for the collision between the two ships (and thus
the explosion) squarely on the shoulders of Captain Aim Le Mdec and Pilot Francis Mackey of the French vessel
as well as the port's CXO, Acting Commander F. Evan Wyatt (see "Investigation" section). However, the
scapegoating of these three individuals can be viewed from an historical perspective as a convenient political
manoeuvre to assuage public anger and fear. The actual objective of the government was to take over the Halifax
Pilotage, which it eventually did by invoking theWar Measures Act in March 1918. It is also important to remember
that Jurisdiction issues prevented an accounting from British authorities in New York for sending the ship to Halifax
with full knowledge of her cargo. Because of the continued sinking of ships by German U-Boats, the desperate
French government had been forced to use older, inadequately maintained ships to carry highly explosive cargoes.
Therefore, as no witnesses from the Royal Navy, the British Admiralty or owners of the French vessel could be
called to the inquiry as witnesses, the facts surrounding the contributions by countless unnamed persons to the
sequence of events leading up to the Halifax disaster remain obfuscated to this day. [90]

Investigation
A judicial inquiry known as the Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry was formed to investigate the causes of the collision.
Proceedings began at the Halifax Court House on 13 December 1917. The inquiry's report of 4 February 1918
blamedMont-Blanc's captain, Aim Le Mdec, the ship's pilot, Francis Mackey, and Commander F. Evan Wyatt,
the Royal Canadian Navy's chief examining officer in charge of the harbour, gates and anti-submarine defences, for
causing the collision. Soon after the fifteen-minute decision had been read, the pilot and captain were arrested.
Wyatt was arrested the following morning. All three men were charged with manslaughter and criminal negligence at
a preliminary hearing heard by Stipendiary Magistrate, Richard A. McLeod and bound over for trial. However,
a Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice,Benjamin Russell found there was no evidence to support these charges.
Mackey was discharged on a writ of habeas corpus and the charges dropped (15 March 1918). As the captain and
pilot had been arrested on the same warrant, the charges against Le Mdec were also dismissed. This left only
Wyatt to face a grand jury hearing. On 17 April 1918, a jury acquitted him in a trial that lasted less than a day.
Justice Arthur Drysdale, the judge at the inquiry, oversaw the first civil litigation trial. His decision (27 April 1918)
found Mont-Blanc entirely at fault. Subsequent appeals to the Supreme Court of Canada (19 May 1919), and
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, England (22 March 1920), determined Mont-
Blanc and Imo were equally to blame for navigational errors which led to the collision. [91]
Captain Le Mdec returned to France to resume his career with the French Lines. Commander Wyatt, his reputation
and career ruined, left Halifax for the Boston area with his wife, Dorothy, and continued for several more years
working as a merchant mariner. Francis Mackey, on the other hand, remained in Halifax. Although he had voluntarily
turned in his pilot's licence after being arrested, its return was denied by C. C. Ballantyne, the minister of marine and
fisheries, even after the charges were dropped. Mackey spent his life savings and four years fighting for
reinstatement. His licence was finally returned by the newly elected minister, The Hon. Ernest LaPointe on
Valentine's Day, 1922. Francis Mackey and his family were forced to endure the stigma of his being the pilot
of Mont-Blanc even after his death on 31 December 1961.[92]

Reconstruction
The North End Halifax neighbourhood of Richmond bore the brunt of the explosion. In 1917, Richmond was
considered a working-class neighbourhood and had few paved roads and irregular garbage pick-up. [93] After the
explosion, the Halifax Relief Commission approached the reconstruction of Richmond as an opportunity to improve
and modernize the citys North End.[94] English town planner, Thomas Adams, and Montreal architect, George Ross
were recruited to design a new housing plan[95] for Richmond. Adams, inspired by the Victorian Garden City
Movement, aimed to provide public access to green spaces and to create a low-rise, low-density and multifunctional
urban neighbourhood.[96] The planners designed 324 large homes that each faced a tree-lined, paved boulevard.
Ross and Adams specified that the homes be built with a new and innovative fireproof material, blocks of
compressed cement called Hydro-stone.[94] The two planners designed the construction of over 300 new homes
using Hydro-stone for the hundreds of North End residents who had been rendered homeless after the explosion.
Once finished, the Hydrostone neighbourhood consisted of homes, businesses and parks, which helped create a
new sense of community in the North End of Halifax. Adams and Ross were revolutionary in their enlightened
approach to the reconstruction of the working-class, poor neighbourhood. The construction of this new and cutting-
edge urban neighbourhood was criticized by many upper-class Haligonians who thought the Hydrostone was too
extravagant for its working-class residents.[94] Nevertheless, the Hydrostone remains a unique neighbourhood and
continues to serve as a valuable example of a modern urban-planning concept.
Legacy

The Halifax Explosion Memorial Sculpturein 1985

For many years afterward, the Halifax Explosion was the standard by which all large blasts were measured. For
instance, in its report on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Time wrote that the explosive power of the Little
Boy bomb was seven times that of the Halifax Explosion. [4]

Mont Blanc Anchor Site

The Halifax North Memorial Library was built in 1966 to commemorate the victims of the explosion. The library
entrance featured the first monument built to mark the explosion, the Halifax Explosion Memorial Sculpture, created
by artist Jordi Bonet. However, the sculpture was dismantled by the Halifax Regional Municipality in 2004 and some
parts have been scattered and lost.[97] The Halifax Explosion Memorial Bells were built in 1985, relocating
memorial carillon bells from a nearby church to a large concrete sculpture on Fort Needham Hill, facing the "ground
zero" area of the explosion, to serve as a memorial to the lives lost or changed forever by the Halifax Explosion.
[98]
The Bell Tower is the location of an annual civic ceremony at 9:00 am every December 6. A memorial at the
Halifax Fire Station on Lady Hammond Road honours the firefighters killed in their response to the explosion.
Fragments of Mont-Blanc have been mounted as neighbourhood monuments to the explosion at Albro Lake Drive in
Dartmouth, Regatta Point in Armdale, and the Convoy Place Park in the North End of Halifax. Simple monuments
mark the mass graves of explosion victims at the Fairview Lawn Cemetery and the Bayers Road Cemetery. A
Memorial Book listing the names of all the known victims was created in 2001. Copies of the book are displayed at
the Halifax North Memorial Library and at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which has a large permanent exhibit
about the Halifax Explosion.

The Halifax Explosion Memorial Bell Tower

The canonical novel Barometer Rising (1941) by the Canadian writer Hugh MacLennan is set in Halifax at the time
of the explosion and includes a carefully researched description of its impact on the city. Following in MacLennan's
footsteps, journalist Robert MacNeil penned Burden of Desire (1992) and used the explosion as a metaphor for the
societal and cultural changes of the day. MacLennan and MacNeil exploit the romance genre to fictionalize the
explosion, similar to the first attempt by Lieutenant-Colonel Frank McKelvey Bell, a medical officer who penned a
short novella on the Halifax explosion shortly after the catastrophic event. His romance was A Romance of the
Halifax Disaster (1918), a melodramatic piece that follows the love affair of a young woman and an injured soldier.
There is also a young adult fictional story in the Dear Canada series, named No Safe Harbour, whose narrator tries
to find the other members of her family after the blast.
More recently, the novel Black Snow (2009) by Halifax journalist Jon Tattrie followed an explosion victim's search for
his wife in the ruined city,[99] and A Wedding in December (2005) by Anita Shreve has a story-within-the-story set in
Halifax at the time of the explosion. The explosion is also referred to in some detail in John Irving's novel Until I Find
You (2005) as well asAmi McKay's The Birth House (2006) in which protagonist Dora Rare travels to Halifax to offer
her midwifery skills to mothers who go into labour after the explosion. In the 2009 novel, Inherent Vice by Thomas
Pynchon, the shadowy schooner Golden Fang is revealed as a reoutfitted Preserved, a vessel said to have survived
the explosion. In 2011, Halifax writer Jennie Marsland published her historical romance Shattered, which is set
before the explosion and in its aftermath. An award-winning play entitled "Shatter" [100] by Trina Davies is set in the
explosion and explores the racial profiling of German-speaking citizens after the event.
Keith Ross Leckie scripted a miniseries entitled Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion (2003), which took the title but
has no relationship to Janet Kitz's acclaimed non-fiction book Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to
Recovery(1989). The miniseries follows soldier Charlie Collins through a romantic affair and his recovery
from posttraumatic stress disorder. The movie exploited computer technology in order to achieve impressive special
effects on a budget. However, the film was panned by critics and criticized by historians for distortions and
inaccuracies. Aspects criticized were the representation of German spies in the city and countless other distortions
of historical fact. Jim Lotz's The Sixth of December(1981) also toys with the fictional idea that Halifax was home to a
network of enemy spies during the war.
In 1918, Halifax sent a Christmas tree to the City of Boston in thanks and remembrance for the help that the
Boston Red Cross and the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee provided immediately after the disaster. [101] That
gift was revived in 1971 by the Lunenburg County Christmas Tree Producers Association, who began an annual
donation of a large tree to promote Christmas tree exports as well as acknowledge Boston's support after the
explosion. The gift was later taken over by the Nova Scotia Government to continue the goodwill gesture as well as
to promote trade and tourism.[102] The tree is Boston's official Christmas tree and is lit on Boston Common throughout
the holiday season. Knowing its symbolic importance to both cities, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural
Resources has specific guidelines for selecting the tree.[103]

Great Fire of London

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the 1666 fire of London. For other "Great Fires", see List of historic fires. For other notable fires
in London, see Early fires of London and Second Great Fire of London. For the novel by Peter Ackroyd, see The
Great Fire of London (novel).
Detail of the Great Fire of London by an unknown painter, depicting the fire as it would have appeared on the evening of Tuesday,
4 September 1666 from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf. The Tower of London is on the right and London Bridgeon the left, with St.
Paul's Cathedral in the distance, surrounded by the tallest flames.

The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of
London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. [1] The fire gutted the medieval City of
London inside the old Roman city wall. It threatened, but did not reach, the aristocratic district
of Westminster, Charles II's Palace of Whitehall, and most of the suburban slums.[2] It consumed 13,200 houses, 87
parish churches, St. Paul's Cathedral and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated to have
destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the City's 80,000 inhabitants. [3] The death toll is unknown but traditionally thought
to have been small, as only six verified deaths were recorded. This reasoning has recently been challenged on the
grounds that the deaths of poor and middle-class people were not recorded, while the heat of the fire may have
cremated many victims leaving no recognisable remains.
The Great Fire started at the bakery of Thomas Farriner (or Farynor) on Pudding Lane, shortly after midnight on
Sunday, 2 September, and spread rapidly west across the City of London. The use of the
major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of demolition, was critically delayed
owing to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth. By the time large-scale
demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm which
defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke
down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fears of the homeless focused on the French and
Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War; these substantial immigrant groups became
victims of lynchings and street violence. On Tuesday, the fire spread over most of the City, destroying St. Paul's
Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II's court at Whitehall, while coordinated firefighting efforts
were simultaneously mobilising. The battle to quench the fire is considered to have been won by two factors: the
strong east winds died down, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks to
halt further spread eastward.
The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Evacuation from London and
resettlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the
dispossessed refugees. Despite numerous radical proposals, London was reconstructed on essentially the same
street plan used before the fire.[4]

London in the 1660s

Central London in 1666, with the burnt area shown in pink.

By the 1660s, London was by far the largest city in Britain, estimated at half a million inhabitants. Comparing
London to theBaroque magnificence of Paris, John Evelyn called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion
of Houses," and expressed alarm about the fire hazard posed by the wood and about the congestion. [5] By
"inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl. A
Roman settlement for four centuries, London had become progressively more overcrowded inside its defensivecity
wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into squalid extramural slums such as Shoreditch, Holborn,
andSouthwark and had reached far enough to include the independent City of Westminster.[6]
By the late 17th century, the City properthe area bounded by the City wall and the River Thameswas only a part
of London, covering some 700.0 acres (2.833 km2; 1.0938 sq mi),[7] and home to about 80,000 people, or one sixth
of London's inhabitants. The City was surrounded by a ring of inner suburbs, where most Londoners lived. The City
was then as now the commercial heart of the capital, and was the largest market and busiest port in England,
dominated by the trading and manufacturing classes.[8] The aristocracy shunned the City and lived either in the
countryside beyond the slum suburbs, or in the exclusive Westminster district (the modern West End), the site
of Charles II's court at Whitehall. Wealthy people preferred to live at a convenient distance from the traffic-clogged,
polluted, unhealthy City, especially after it was hit by a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the Plague Year of
1665.
The relationship between the City and the Crown was very tense. During the Civil War, 16421651, the City of
London had been a stronghold of Republicanism, and the wealthy and economically dynamic capital still had the
potential to be a threat to Charles II, as had been demonstrated by several Republican uprisings in London in the
early 1660s. The City magistrates were of the generation that had fought in the Civil War, and could remember how
Charles I's grab for absolute power had led to that national trauma.[9] They were determined to thwart any similar
tendencies of his son, and when the Great Fire threatened the City, they refused the offers Charles made of soldiers
and other resources. Even in such an emergency, the idea of having the unpopular Royal troops ordered into the
City was political dynamite. By the time Charles took over command from the ineffectual Lord Mayor, the fire was
already out of control.[10]
Panorama of the City of London in 1616 by Claes Visscher. Note the tenement housing on London Bridge (far right), a notorious death-
trap in case of fire, although much would be destroyed in an earlier fire in 1632.

Fire hazards in the City

Charles II.

The City was essentially medieval in its street plan, an overcrowded warren of narrow, winding, cobbled alleys. It
had experienced several major fires before 1666, the most recent in 1632. Building with wood and roofing
with thatch had been prohibited for centuries, but these cheap materials continued to be used. [11] The only major
stone-built area was the wealthy centre of the City, where the mansions of the merchants and brokers stood on
spacious lots, surrounded by an inner ring of overcrowded poorer parishes whose every inch of building space was
used to accommodate the rapidly growing population. These parishes contained workplaces, many of which were
fire hazardsfoundries, smithies, glazierswhich were theoretically illegal in the City, but tolerated in practice. The
human habitations intermingled with these sources of heat, sparks, and pollution were crowded to bursting point and
their construction increased the fire risk: the typical six- or seven-storey timbered London tenement houses had
"jetties" (projecting upper floors): they had a narrow footprint at ground level, but would maximise their use of land
by "encroaching", as a contemporary observer put it, on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper
storeys. The fire hazard posed when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys was well perceived"as it
does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer [12]but "the covetousness of
the citizens and connivancy [that is, the corruption] of Magistrates" worked in favour of jetties. In 1661, Charles II
issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local
government. Charles' next, sharper, message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of the streets
and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings. It too had little
impact.
The river front was important in the development of the Great Fire. The Thames offered water for firefighting and the
chance of escape by boat, but the poorer districts along the riverfront had stores and cellars of combustibles which
increased the fire risk. All along the wharves, the rickety wooden tenements and tar paper shacks of the poor were
shoehorned amongst "old paper buildings and the most combustible matter of Tarr, Pitch, Hemp, Rosen,
and Flax which was all layd up thereabouts."[13] London was also full of black powder, especially along the river front.
Much of it was left in the homes of private citizens from the days of the English Civil War, as the former members
of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army still retained their muskets and the powder with which to load them. Five to
six hundred tons of powder were stored in the Tower of London at the north end of Tower Bridge.[14] The ship
chandlers along the wharves also held large stocks, stored in wooden barrels.
17th century firefighting

"Firehooks" used to fight a fire at Tiverton in Devon, England, 1612.

Advertisement for a comparatively small and manoeuvrable seventeenth-century fire engine on wheels: "These Engins, (which are the
best) to quinch great Fires; are made by John Keeling in Black Fryers(after many years' Experience)."

Fires were common in the crowded wood-built city with its open fireplaces, candles, ovens, and stores of
combustibles. There was no police or fire department to call, but London's local militia, known as theTrained Bands,
was at least in principle available for general emergencies, and watching for fire was one of the jobs of the watch, a
thousand watchmen or "bellmen" who patrolled the streets at night. [15]Self-reliant community procedures for dealing
with fires were in place, and were usually effective. Public-spirited citizens would be alerted to a dangerous house
fire by muffled peals on the church bells, and would congregate hastily to fight the fire. The methods available for
this relied on demolition and water. By law, the tower of every parish church had to hold equipment for these efforts:
long ladders, leather buckets, axes, and "firehooks" for pulling down buildings (see illustration right). [16]Sometimes
taller buildings were levelled to the ground quickly and effectively by means of controlled gunpowder explosions.
This drastic method of creating firebreaks was increasingly used towards the end of the Great Fire, and modern
historians believe it was what finally won the struggle.[17]

Failures in fighting the fire

London Bridge, the only physical connection between the City and the south side of the river Thames, was itself
covered with houses and had been noted as a deathtrap in the fire of 1632. By dawn on Sunday these houses were
burning, and Samuel Pepys, observing the conflagration from the Tower of London, recorded great concern for
friends living on the bridge.[18] There were fears that the flames would cross London Bridge to threaten
the borough of Southwark on the south bank, but this danger was averted by an open space between buildings on
the bridge which acted as a firebreak.[19] The 18 foot (5.5 m) high Roman wall enclosing the City put the fleeing
homeless at risk of being shut into the inferno. Once the river front was on fire and the escape route by boat cut off,
the only exits were the eight gates in the wall. During the first couple of days, few people had any notion of fleeing
the burning City altogether: they would remove what they could carry of their belongings to the nearest "safe house",
in many cases the parish church, or the precincts of St. Paul's Cathedral, only to have to move again hours later.
Some moved their belongings and themselves "four and five times" in a single day. [20] The perception of a need to
get beyond the walls only took root late on the Monday, and then there were near-panic scenes at the narrow gates
as distraught refugees tried to get out with their bundles, carts, horses, and wagons.
The crucial factor which frustrated firefighting efforts was the narrowness of the streets. Even under normal
circumstances, the mix of carts, wagons, and pedestrians in the undersized alleys was subject to frequent traffic
jams and gridlock. During the fire, the passages were additionally blocked by refugees camping in them amongst
their rescued belongings, or escaping outwards, away from the centre of destruction, as demolition teams and fire
engine crews struggled in vain to move in towards it.
Demolishing the houses downwind of a dangerous fire by means of firehooks or explosives was often an effective
way of containing the destruction. This time, however, demolition was fatally delayed for hours by the Lord
Mayor's lack of leadership and failure to give the necessary orders.[21] By the time orders came directly from the King
to "spare no houses", the fire had devoured many more houses, and the demolition workers could no longer get
through the crowded streets.
The use of water to extinguish the fire was also frustrated. In principle, water was available from a system
of elm pipes which supplied 30,000 houses via a high water tower at Cornhill, filled from the river at high tide, and
also via a reservoir of Hertfordshire spring water in Islington.[22] It was often possible to open a pipe near a burning
building and connect it to a hose to play on a fire, or fill buckets. Further, Pudding Lane was close to the river.
Theoretically, all the lanes from the river up to the bakery and adjoining buildings should have been manned with
double rows of firefighters passing full buckets up to the fire and empty buckets back down to the river. This did not
happen, or at least was no longer happening by the time Pepys viewed the fire from the river at mid-morning on the
Sunday. Pepys comments in his diary that nobody was trying to put it out, but instead they fled from it in fear,
hurrying "to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire." The flames crept towards the river front with little
interference from the overwhelmed community and soon torched the flammable warehouses along the wharves.
The resulting conflagration not only cut off the firefighters from the immediate water supply from the river, but also
set alight the water wheels under London Bridge which pumped water to the Cornhill water tower; the direct access
to the river and the supply of piped water failed together.
London possessed advanced fire-fighting technology in the form of fire engines, which had been used in earlier
large-scale fires. However, unlike the useful firehooks, these large pumps had rarely proved flexible or functional
enough to make much difference. Only some of them had wheels, others were mounted on wheelless sleds. [23] They
had to be brought a long way, tended to arrive too late, and, with spouts but no delivery hoses, had limited reach.
[24]
On this occasion an unknown number of fire engines were either wheeled or dragged through the streets, some
from across the City. The piped water that they were designed to use had already failed, but parts of the river bank
could still be reached. As gangs of men tried desperately to manoeuvre the engines right up to the river to fill their
reservoirs, several of the engines toppled into the Thames. The heat from the flames was by then too great for the
remaining engines to get within a useful distance; they could not even get into Pudding Lane.

Development of the fire

The personal experiences of many Londoners during the fire are glimpsed in letters and memoirs. The two most
famous diarists of the Restoration, Samuel Pepys (16331703) and John Evelyn (16201706), recorded the events
and their own reactions day by day, and made great efforts to keep themselves informed of what was happening all
over the City and beyond. For example, they both travelled out to the Moorfields park area north of the City on the
Wednesdaythe fourth dayto view the mighty encampment of distressed refugees there, which shocked them.
Their diaries are the most important sources for all modern retellings of the disaster. The most recent books on the
fire, by Tinniswood (2003) and Hanson (2001), also rely on the brief memoirs of William Taswell (165182), who was
a fourteen-year-old schoolboy atWestminster School in 1666.
Sunday

Approximate damage by the evening of Sunday, 2 September.[25]

"It made me weep to see it." Samuel Pepys(16331703) painted byJohn Hayls in 1666, the year of the Great Fire.

After two rainy summers in 1664 and 1665, London had lain under an exceptional drought since November 1665,
and the wooden buildings were tinder-dry after the long hot summer of 1666. A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner's
bakery in Pudding Lane a little after midnight on Sunday 2 September. The family was trapped upstairs, but
managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except for a maidservant who was too frightened
to try, and became the first victim.[26] The neighbours tried to help douse the fire; after an hour theparish
constables arrived and judged that the adjoining houses had better be demolished to prevent further spread. The
householders protested, and the Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth, who alone had the authority to override their
wishes, was summoned.
When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the paper
warehouses and flammable stores on the river front. The more experienced firemen were clamouring for demolition,
but Bloodworth refused, on the argument that most premises were rented and the owners could not be found.
Bloodworth is generally thought to have been appointed to the office of Lord Mayor as a yes man, rather than for
any of the needful capabilities for the job. He panicked when faced with a sudden emergency. [27] Pressed, he made
the often-quoted remark "Pish! A woman could piss it out", and left. After the City had been destroyed, Samuel
Pepys, looking back on the events, wrote in his diary on 7 September 1666: "People do all the world over cry out of
the simplicity [the stupidity] of my Lord Mayor in general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all
upon him."
On Sunday morning, Pepys, who was a senior official in the Navy Office, ascended the Tower of London to view the
fire from a turret, and recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned
down several churches and, he estimated, 300 houses and reached the river front. The houses on London Bridge
were burning. Taking a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range, Pepys describes a
"lamentable" fire, "everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them
into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then
running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another." Pepys continued westward on
the river to the court at Whitehall, "where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all,
and word was carried in to the King. So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of Yorke what I saw, and that
unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much
troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him, and command him to spare no houses,
but to pull down before the fire every way." Charles' brother James, Duke of York, offered the use of the Royal Life
Guards to help fight the fire.[28]
A mile west of Pudding Lane, by Westminster Stairs, young William Taswell, a schoolboy who had bolted from the
early morning service in Westminster Abbey, saw some refugees arrive in hired lighter boats, unclothed and covered
only with blankets.[29] The services of the lightermen had suddenly become extremely expensive, and only the
luckiest refugees secured a place in a boat.
The fire spread quickly in the high wind. By mid-morning on Sunday, people abandoned attempts at extinguishing
the fire and fled; the moving human mass and their bundles and carts made the lanes impassable for firemen and
carriages. Pepys took a coach back into the city from Whitehall, but only reached St Paul's Cathedral before he had
to get out and walk. Handcarts with goods and pedestrians were still on the move, away from the fire, heavily
weighed down. The parish churches not directly threatened were filling up with furniture and valuables, which would
soon have to be moved further afield. Pepys found Bloodworth trying to coordinate the fire fighting efforts and near
to collapse, "like a fainting woman", crying out plaintively in response to the King's message that he was pulling
down houses. "But the fire overtakes us faster then [sic] we can do it." Holding on to his civic dignity, he refused
James's offer of soldiers and then went home to bed. [30]King Charles II sailed down from Whitehall in the Royal barge
to inspect the scene. He found that houses were still not being pulled down, in spite of Bloodworth's assurances to
Pepys, and daringly overrode the authority of Bloodworth to order wholesale demolitions west of the fire zone. [31] The
delay rendered these measures largely futile, as the fire was already out of control.
By Sunday afternoon, 18 hours after the alarm was raised in Pudding Lane, the fire had become a
raging firestorm that created its own weather. A tremendous uprush of hot air above the flames was driven by
the chimney effect wherever constrictions such as jettied buildings narrowed the air current and left a vacuum at
ground level. The resulting strong inward winds did not tend to put the fire out, as might be thought: [32] instead, they
supplied fresh oxygen to the flames, and the turbulence created by the uprush made the wind veer erratically both
north and south of the main, easterly, direction of the gale which was still blowing.
In the early evening, with his wife and some friends, Pepys went again on the river "and to the fire up and down, it
still encreasing". They ordered the boatman to go "so near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames,
with one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops". When the "firedrops" became
unbearable, the party went on to an alehouse on the South Bank and stayed there till darkness came and they could
see the fire on London Bridge and across the river, "as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the
bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it". Pepys described this
arch of fire as "a bow with God's arrow in it with a shining point".
Monday

The London Gazette for 3 10 September, facsimile front page with an account of the Great Fire. Click on the image to enlarge and
read.
By dawn on Monday, 3 September, the fire was principally expanding north and west, the turbulence of the fire
storm pushing the flames both further south and further north than the day before. [33] The spread to the south was in
the main halted by the river, but had torched the houses on London Bridge, and was threatening to cross the bridge
and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. Southwark was preserved by a pre-existent
firebreak on the bridge, a long gap between the buildings which had saved the south side of the Thames in the fire
of 1632 and now did so again;[34] flying embers started a fire in Southwark but it was quickly stopped. The fire's
spread to the north reached the financial heart of the City. The houses of the bankers in Lombard Street began to
burn on Monday afternoon, prompting a rush to get their stacks of gold coins, so crucial to the wealth of the city and
the nation, to safety before they melted away. Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which
seemed to seize Londoners on this second day, and the lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts
which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchangecombined bourse and shopping centre
and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside. The Royal Exchange caught fire in the late afternoon, and
was a smoking shell within a few hours. John Evelyn, courtier and diarist, wrote:

The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what
despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and
lamentation, running about like distracted creatures without at all attempting to save even their goods, such a
strange consternation there was upon them.[35]
Evelyn lived four miles (6 km) outside the City, in Deptford, and so did not see the early stages of the disaster. On
Monday, joining many other upper-class people, he went by coach to Southwark to see the view that Pepys had
seen the day before, of the burning City across the river. The conflagration was much larger now: "the whole City in
dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames-street, and upwards towards
Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed".[36] In the evening, Evelyn reported that the river was
covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods. He observed a great exodus of carts and
pedestrians through the bottleneck City gates, making for the open fields to the north and east, "which for many
miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could
get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle!" [36]

Approximate damage by the evening of Monday, 3 September.

John Evelyn (16201706) in 1651.

Suspicion soon arose in the threatened city that the fire was no accident. The swirling winds carried sparks and
burning flakes long distances to lodge on thatched roofs and in wooden gutters, causing seemingly unrelated house
fires to break out far from their source and giving rise to rumours that fresh fires were being set on purpose.
Foreigners were immediately suspects because of the current Second Anglo-Dutch War. As fear and suspicion
hardened into certainty on the Monday, reports circulated of imminent invasion, and of foreign undercover agents
seen casting "fireballs" into houses, or caught with hand grenades or matches. [37] There was a wave of street
violence.[38]William Taswell saw a mob loot the shop of a French painter and level it to the ground, and watched in
horror as a blacksmith walked up to a Frenchman in the street and hit him over the head with an iron bar.
The fears of terrorism received an extra boost from the disruption of communications and news as facilities were
devoured by the fire. The General Letter Office in Threadneedle Street, through which post for the entire country
passed, burned down early on Monday morning. TheLondon Gazette just managed to put out its Monday issue
before the printer's premises went up in flames (this issue contained mainly society gossip, with a small note about
a fire that had broken out on Sunday morning and "which continues still with great violence"). The whole nation
depended on these communications, and the void they left filled up with rumours. There were also religious alarms
of renewed Gunpowder Plots. As suspicions rose to panic and collective paranoia on the Monday, both the Trained
Bands and the Coldstream Guards focused less on fire fighting and more on rounding up foreigners, Catholics, and
any odd-looking people, and arresting them or rescuing them from mobs, or both together.
The inhabitants, especially the upper class, were growing desperate to remove their belongings from the City. This
provided a source of income for the able-bodied poor, who hired out as porters (sometimes simply making off with
the goods), and especially for the owners of carts and boats. Hiring a cart had cost a couple of shillings on the
Saturday before the fire; on the Monday it rose to as much as 40, a fortune (equivalent to over 4000 in 2005).
[39]
Seemingly every cart and boat owner within reach of London made their way towards the City to share in these
opportunities, the carts jostling at the narrow gates with the panicked inhabitants trying to get out. The chaos at the
gates was such that the magistrates ordered the gates shut on Monday afternoon, in the hope of turning the
inhabitants' attention from safeguarding their own possessions to the fighting of the fire: "that, no hopes of saving
any things left, they might have more desperately endeavoured the quenching of the fire." [40] This headlong and
unsuccessful measure was rescinded the next day.
Even as order in the streets broke down, especially at the gates, and the fire raged unchecked, Monday marked the
beginning of organised action. Bloodworth, who as Lord Mayor was responsible for coordinating the fire-fighting,
had apparently left the City; his name is not mentioned in any contemporary accounts of the Monday's events. [41] In
this state of emergency, Charles again overrode the City authorities and put his brother James, Duke of York, in
charge of operations. James set up command posts round the perimeter of the fire, press-ganging any men of the
lower classes found in the streets into teams of well-paid and well-fed firemen. Three courtiers were put in charge of
each post, with authority from Charles himself to order demolitions. This visible gesture of solidarity from the Crown
was intended to cut through the citizens' misgivings about being held financially responsible for pulling down
houses. James and his life guards rode up and down the streets all Monday, rescuing foreigners from the mob and
attempting to keep order. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of the people with his continual and indefatigable
pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire," wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September. [42]
On the Monday evening, hopes were dashed that the massive stone walls of Baynard's Castle, Blackfriars, the
western counterpart of the Tower of London, would stay the course of the flames. This historic royal palace was
completely consumed, burning all night.[43]
A contemporary account said that, that day or later, King Charles in person worked manually to help to throw water
on flames and to help to demolish buildings to make a firebreak.
Tuesday
Tuesday, 4 September, was the day of greatest destruction.[44] The Duke of York's command post at Temple Bar,
whereStrand meets Fleet Street, was supposed to stop the fire's westward advance towards the Palace of
Whitehall. Making a stand with his firemen from the Fleet Bridge and down to the Thames, he hoped that the River
Fleet would form a natural firebreak. However, early on Tuesday morning, the flames jumped over the Fleet, driven
by the unabated easterly gale, and outflanked them, forcing them to run for it. There was consternation at the palace
as the fire continued implacably westward: "Oh, the confusion there was then at that court!" wrote Evelyn.
Ludgate in flames, with St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance (square tower without the spire) now catching flames. Oil painting by
anonymous artist, ca. 1670.

Working to a plan at last, James's firefighters had also created a large firebreak to the north of the conflagration. It
contained the fire until late afternoon, when the flames leapt across and began to destroy the wide, affluent luxury
shopping street of Cheapside.
Everybody had thought St. Paul's Cathedral a safe refuge, with its thick stone walls and natural firebreak in the form
of a wide, empty surrounding plaza. It had been crammed full of rescued goods and its crypt filled with the tightly
packed stocks of the printers and booksellers in adjoining Paternoster Row. However an enormous stroke of bad
luck meant that the building was covered in wooden scaffolding, undergoing piecemeal restoration by a then
relatively unknownChristopher Wren. The scaffolding caught fire on Tuesday night. Leaving school, young William
Taswell stood on Westminster Stairs a mile away and watched as the flames crept round the cathedral and the
burning scaffolding ignited the timbered roof beams. Within half an hour, the lead roof was melting, and the books
and papers in the crypt caught with a roar. "The stones of Paul's flew like grenados, the melting lead running down
the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to
tread on them", reported Evelyn in his diary. The cathedral was quickly a ruin.
During the day, the flames began to move eastward from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane, straight against the
prevailing east wind towards Pepys's home on Seething Lane and the Tower of London with its gunpowder stores.
After waiting all day for requested help from James's official firemen, who were busy in the west, the garrison at the
Tower took matters into their own hands and created firebreaks by blowing up houses in the vicinity on a large scale,
halting the advance of the fire.
Wednesday

Approximate damage by the evening of Tuesday, 4 September. The fire did not spread significantly on Wednesday, 5 September.
James, Duke of York, later James II.

The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, and the firebreaks created by the garrison finally began to take effect on
Wednesday 5 September.[45]Stopping the fire caused much fire and demolition damage in the lawyers' area called
the Temple. Pepys walked all over the smouldering city, getting his feet hot, and climbed the steeple of Barking
Church, from which he viewed the destroyed City, "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw." There were
many separate fires still burning themselves out, but the Great Fire was over. Pepys visited Moorfields, a large
public park immediately north of the City, and saw a great encampment of homeless refugees, "poor wretches
carrying their good there, and every body keeping his goods together by themselves", and noted that the price of
bread in the environs of the park had doubled. Evelyn also went out to Moorfields, which was turning into the main
point of assembly for the homeless, and was horrified at the numbers of distressed people filling it, some under
tents, others in makeshift shacks: "Many [were] without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board... reduced to
extremest misery and poverty."[46] Evelyn was impressed by the pride of these distressed Londoners, "tho' ready to
perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one pennie for relief."
Fears of foreign arsonist and of a French and Dutch invasion were as high as ever among the traumatised fire
victims, and on Wednesday night there was an outbreak of general panic in the encampments at Parliament Hill,
Moorfields and Islington. A light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch
immigrants, widely rumoured to have started the fire, had risen and were marching towards Moorfields to finish what
the fire had begun: to cut the men's throats, rape the women, and steal their few possessions. Surging into the
streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners they happened to encounter, and were, according to Evelyn, only
"with infinite pains and great difficulty"[47]appeased and pushed back into the fields by the Trained Bands, troops of
Life Guards, and members of the court. The mood was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London
rebellion against the monarchy. Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence;
Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and safe markets set up round
the perimeter. These markets were for buying and selling;[48] there was no question of distributing emergency aid.

Deaths and destruction

James Shirley
The LONDONERS Lamentation, a broadside ballad published in 1666 giving an account of the fire, and of the limits of its destruction.
Click on the image to enlarge and read.

Only a few deaths from the fire are officially recorded, and deaths are traditionally believed to have been few. Porter
gives the figure as eight[49] and Tinniswood as "in single figures", although he adds that some deaths must have gone
unrecorded and that, besides direct deaths from burning and smoke inhalation, refugees also perished in the
impromptu camps.[50] Hanson takes issue with the idea that there were only a few deaths, enumerating known
deaths from hunger and exposureamong survivors of the holocaust, "huddled in shacks or living among the ruins
that had once been their homes" in the cold winter that followed, including, for instance, the dramatist James
Shirley and his wife. Hanson also maintains that "it stretches credulity to believe that the only papists or foreigners
being beaten to death or lynched were the ones rescued by the Duke of York", that official figures say very little
about the fate of the undocumented poor, and that the heat at the heart of the firestorms, far hotter than an ordinary
house fire, was enough to consume bodies fully, or leave only a few skull fragments. The fire, fed not merely by
wood, fabrics, and thatch, but also by the oil, pitch, coal, tallow, fats, sugar, alcohol, turpentine, and gunpowder
stored in the riverside district, melted the imported steel lying along the wharves (melting pointbetween 1,250 C
(2,300 F) and 1,480 C (2,700 F)) and the great iron chains and locks on the City gates (melting point between
1,100 C (2,000 F) and 1,650 C (3000 F)). Nor would anonymous bone fragments have been of much interest to
the hungry people sifting through the tens of thousands of tons of rubble and debris after the fire, looking for
valuables, or to the workmen clearing away the rubble later during the rebuilding. Appealing to common sense and
"the experience of every other major urban fire down the centuries", Hanson emphasises that the fire attacked the
rotting tenements of the poor with furious speed, surely trapping at the very least "the old, the very young, the halt
and the lame" and burying the dust and ashes of their bones under the rubble of cellars; making for a death toll not
of four or eight, but of "several hundred and quite possibly several thousand." [51]
The material destruction has been computed at 13,500 houses; 87 parish churches; 44 Company Halls; the Royal
Exchange; the Custom House; St. Paul's Cathedral; the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons; the General Letter
Office; and the three western city gates, Ludgate, Newgate, and Aldersgate.[52] The monetary value of the loss, first
estimated at 100,000,000 in the currency of the time, was later reduced to an uncertain 10,000,000 [53] (over
1 billion in 2005 pounds).[54] Evelyn believed that he saw as many as "200,000 people of all ranks and stations
dispersed, and lying along their heaps of what they could save" in the fields towards Islington and Highgate.[53]

Aftermath
John Evelyn's plan, never carried out, for rebuilding a radically different City of London.

An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for the fire is the acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded
French watchmaker,Robert Hubert, who claimed he was an agent of the Pope and had started the Great Fire in
Westminster.[55] He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert
was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead, and hanged at Tyburn on 28 September 1666.
After his death, it became apparent that he had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started. [56] These
allegations that Catholics had started the fire were exploited as powerful political propaganda by opponents of pro-
Catholic Charles II's court, mostly during the Popish Plot and the exclusion crisis later in his reign.[57]
Abroad in the Netherlands the Great Fire of London was seen as a divine retribution for Holmes's Bonfire, the
burning by the English of a Dutch town during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. [58]

Wren's rejected plan for the rebuilding of London

In the chaos and unrest after the fire, Charles II feared another London rebellion. He encouraged the homeless to
move away from London and settle elsewhere, immediately issuing a proclamation that "all Cities and Towns
whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of
their manual trades." A special Fire Court was set up to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and
decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. The Court was in session from February 1667 to September
1672. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day, and without the Fire Court, lengthy legal wrangles
would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover.
Encouraged by Charles, radical rebuilding schemes for the gutted City poured in. If it had been rebuilt under some
of these plans, London would have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence (see Evelyn's plan on the right). The
Crown and the City authorities attempted to establish "to whom all the houses and ground did in truth belong" to
negotiate with their owners about compensation for the large-scale remodelling that these plans entailed, but that
unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses
had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left the
capital; for one thing, with the shortage of labour following the fire, it was impossible to secure workmen for the
purpose. Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke, Valentine Knight and Richard
Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans.
With the complexities of ownership unresolved, none of the grand Baroque schemes for a City of piazzas and
avenues could be realised; there was nobody to negotiate with, and no means of calculating how much
compensation should be paid. Instead, much of the old street plan was recreated in the new City, with improvements
in hygiene and fire safety: wider streets, open and accessible wharves along the length of the Thames, with no
houses obstructing access to the river, and, most importantly, buildings constructed of brick and stone, not wood.
New public buildings were created on their predecessors' sites; perhaps the most famous is St. Paul's
Cathedral and its smaller cousins, Christopher Wren's 50 new churches.
 Sir Christopher Wren

The Monument to the Great Fire of Londondesigned by Sir Christopher Wren

On Charles' initiative, a Monument to the Great Fire of London, designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke,
was erected near Pudding Lane. Standing 61 metres (200 ft) tall and known simply as "The Monument", it is a
familiar London landmark which has given its name to a tube station. In 1668 accusations against the Catholics
were added to the inscription on the Monument which read, in part:

Here by permission of heaven, hell broke loose upon this Protestant city.....the most dreadful Burning of this City;
begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the Popish faction...Popish frenzy which wrought such
horrors, is not yet quenched...
Aside from the four years of James II's rule from 1685 to 1689, the inscription remained in place until 1830 and the
passage of theCatholic Emancipation Act.[59]
Another monument, the Golden Boy of Pye Corner in Smithfield, marks the spot where the fire stopped. According
to the inscription, the fact that the fire started at Pudding Lane and stopped at Pye Corner was an indication that the
Fire was evidence of God's wrath on the City of London for the sin of gluttony.
The Great Plague epidemic of 1665 is believed to have killed a sixth of London's inhabitants, or 80,000 people,
[60]
and it is sometimes suggested, as plague epidemics did not recur in London after the fire, [61] that the fire saved
lives in the long run by burning down so much unsanitary housing with their rats and their fleas which transmitted
the plague. Historians disagree as to whether the fire played a part in preventing subsequent major outbreaks.
The Museum of London website claims that there was a connection,[62] while historian Roy Porter points out that the
fire left the most insalubrious parts of London, the slum suburbs, untouched. [63]
Following the Fire, the thoroughfares of Queen Street and King Street were newly laid out, cutting across more
ancient thoroughfares in the City, creating a new route up from the Thames to the Guildhall; they were the only
notable new streets following the fire's destruction of much of the City. [64]