Norwich Union’s Gloucester fire brigade — more than sixty years of service to the community
This is a photograph of Charles Edward Quilter of Gloucester. He is proudly wearing his uniform as captain of Norwich Union’s fire brigade.
Charles captained the Norwich Union firemen in Gloucester for 21 years as they fought fires in and around the city.
He was the last captain of the brigade; in 1912 it was finally disbanded after more than 60 years of service to the people of Gloucester. The photograph below was probably taken to mark the event. It appeared in local newspapers along with a description of the celebratory meal and concert which marked the handover of the responsibility for firefighting to the civic authorities. The meal was attended by the Norwich Union firemen and their colleagues in the Liverpool and London Globe’s brigade who had been working together to preserve life and property in Gloucester for decades.
Sadly, we don’t have a full list of names for the firemen. Newspaper accounts of the 1912 meal refer to F Griffiths (who was the engineer), S Griffiths, Hall, Cooper, Jordan, and Hawkes. It seems likely that the two Griffiths were related, as several of our fire brigades across the country included sets of brothers, or of fathers and sons. In London in the 1820s we find three brothers called Robbins in the Norwich Union brigade and in Bury St Edmunds in 1875 the entire body of firemen appear to have been made up of members of the Smith family.
The Hall family seems to have had a long association with the Gloucester brigade. As well as fireman Hall listed in 1912, I have found references to Mr Peter Hall who is variously described as engineer and foreman of the brigade between 1865 and 1891. In 1894 Mr Hall, a shoemaker by trade, was described as a veteran fireman who had been with the brigade for over 40 years. That year he was slightly injured when he missed his footing climbing up on to the engine after fighting a rick fire at Chaxhill. Despite this set back, he continued as a member of the brigade right up to his death in 1896 and was buried with full fireman’s honours.
I’m sure Peter Hall is in the photograph below which was taken in around 1892, perhaps he is the man on the far right with the splendid moustache. The photograph also includes Captain Quilter (in the bowler hat), and Mr Knight who was the deputy chief of the brigade. This may well have been the photograph taken to mark the 1892 annual dinner of the combined brigade after which, according to newspapers, the two fire engines paraded through the town and were then photographed separately. Speeches at the 1892 meeting referred to the death of fireman Vincent Kitchen, another long-time member of the Norwich Union brigade. The hardworking Mr Kitchen fitted in his firefighting duties around his day job as a plumber and a side-line running an early morning business supplying coffee to the working men of Gloucester.
Other recent losses to the brigade referred to at the annual dinner that year were fireman Beard of Norwich Union’s brigade and ‘young Kitchen’ who was the son of the engineer of the Liverpool and London Globe brigade and the grandson of Vincent Kitchen of the Norwich Union.
Another notable loss mentioned was Thomas Stroud Lane who had led the Norwich Union brigade for the previous 25 years. Thomas was only 46 when he died and had been a Norwich Union fireman at Gloucester since the age of 17.
The earliest newspaper reference I can find to him dates from October 1870 when he appeared as a witness to a complaint brought by the Liverpool and London Globe after a farmer refused to pay the costs of them attending a fire.
The summary given by the judge in the case is useful in dispelling the myth that insurance company brigades only went to fight fires linked to their own policyholders. ‘When information is given that a fire has broken out, a person in charge of an engine takes it as quickly as possible to the fire, and is paid for it by the insurance office, if the property is insured; if not insured, he is paid by the owner of the property.’ Mr Lane’s testimony also supported the common understanding that the brigades would attend all fires regardless of which company insured the property and even if it was not insured at all. He stated that, despite arriving late at the fire and without their engine, ‘our men assisted. It is customary to do so. We go to save property’.
The friendly working relationship between the brigades in Gloucester is contrary to tales of rivalry between the insurance offices and their firemen in other areas. The Smiths of Norwich Union’s Bury St Edmunds brigade came to physical blows with their rivals from the Suffolk Alliance in 1875. Contemporary newspaper reports describe a ‘fracas between firemen’ which included use of ‘filthy language’ and an unidentified member of the Smith family pushing the helmet of the rival company’s fireman over his eyes while he was adjusting his hose!
The cordial relationships in Gloucester may have been due to individuals moving from one brigade to another as Thomas Baldaro of Norwich Union did in 1865 when he transferred to the Liverpool and London Globe brigade. Firemen from different brigades, like Thomas Baldaro and Peter Hall, were also next-door neighbours; some, like the Kitchen’s, were members of the same family.
As early as 1868 the three insurance company brigades then operating in Gloucester were working closely enough to produce a joint report on their activities. The report for the year ending December 1867 recorded 15 fires attended by the brigades. These included calls to blazes at saw mills, mansions, coach builders, corn stores, and drapers; some of which required the engines to travel as far as 9 miles from their bases in the city. According to the report, the brigades discharged their duties with ‘great spirit’ and maintained their engines in a ‘high state of efficiency’. Over-all it concluded, ‘no provincial town in England of its size can boast of a better staff and fire extinguishing apparatus’.
A joint report of activities in 1870 recorded their attendance at 17 fires in shops, houses, farms, warehouses, ricks, a brewery, and the foundry. In total, property valued at £38,600 was involved in fires attended by the insurance company engines that year. It is clear from this, and from contemporary newspaper reports of fires, that the companies were doing an important job protecting property in Gloucester. Their efforts saved both homes and businesses and prevented consequences such as employees being put out of work, regardless of whether or not insurance was held.
The causes of the fires in 1870 are also listed and include sparks from engines, problems with gas installations, unattended candles, and children with matches. There seems to be little change in the causes of fires over the period. Tramps smoking or small boys with matches were key culprits for fires in hay ricks, while careless servants or drunken men were often to blame for house fires.
A drunken man smoking was the cause of a fire in Bull Lane in 1874 which ‘blazed and crackled in a most alarming manner, sending up columns of dense smoke high above the surrounding houses’. The hoses of the Gloucester brigades worked together to tackle the blaze which was in the yard of the Fleece Hotel. The Liverpool and London Globe brigade played the fire from Westgate Street while the Norwich Union and Phoenix brigades attacked it from Bull Lane. They succeeded in saving the billiard room but the skittle alley was lost to the flames.
In 1856 the Norwich Union firemen worked with the men of the Phoenix brigade to fight a fire at the offices of the Gloucester Chronicle in Southgate Street adjoining the Bell Hotel. The Norwich Union men got their hose in through one of the windows of the composing room and directed it at the flames on the floor while the men from the Phoenix entered the house through the front passage and played their hose on the ceiling of the counting house.
In 1856 the Norwich Union engine was a relatively modern machine having only been purchased six years previously. The makers, Shand and Mason of Blackfriars, were (coincidentally) represented in Gloucester by William Reay Causton who was also agent for Norwich Union. In 1851 Mr Causton proudly advertised that Shand and Mason had won a prize at the Great Exhibition for a fire engine based on the model they had built for Norwich Union the previous year. In 1852 he displayed the Norwich Union brigade and their Shand Mason fire engine at Ross on Wye where the citizens were considering setting up a brigade of their own. According to contemporary newspapers, the locals were impressed by the fine, powerful engine and by the bright and imposing uniforms of the firemen ‘on which the name of the office they serve was very conspicuous.’ This was probably a reference to the prominent buttons and arm badges on the uniforms which, as you can see on the example below, included the company name.
The distinctive bright red of the Norwich Union uniform is evident on the ample frame of London brigade foreman Robbins, whose portrait appears earlier in this blog, and on this watercolour of fireman John Lang from the Exeter brigade in 1865.
To accommodate the new fire engine, an engine house was built for Norwich Union at 12 Westgate Street near the Fleece Inn. The premises also housed the company’s Gloucester offices and became the home of Mr Causton and subsequent Norwich Union Gloucester agents. The building was under construction by September 1850 and was probably designed by Howell and Brooks who were the first officially appointed surveyors to Norwich Union. The firm later presented the company with this architects’ drawing of the office.
The imposing gates of the Norwich Union building were mentioned in a newspaper article in 1866 when the office, and the fire engine, provided one unfortunate lady with unexpected temporary livestock cover. According to the article, a woman was returning with her child from a visit to a surgeon when an ox which was being driven through the city went for her. Seeing the gates to the engine station open, she took refuge in there and hid behind the engine. The ox followed her in and got jammed between the corner of the engine and one of the gates. In his fury he even managed to get his head under a corner of the engine and tilt it against the far wall before he was manoeuvred back out and the lady was rescued.
As well as surviving this unexpected bovine encounter the engine also played an active part in fighting many major fires in Gloucester in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1856 alone, under the command of Thomas Baldero, it tackled large fires on the island, at the city asylum, and at the Greyhound Inn on Eastgate Street. The brigade helped at a large blaze at the Quay flour mill in 1873 and the ‘great Gloucester Wagon Works fire’ of 1878. In 1875 the Norwich Union engine joined eight others to fight a fire at the docks in which the Alexandra Warehouse was destroyed causing £20,000 worth of damage. The Norwich Union brigade and those of the Phoenix, Liverpool and London Globe, the Midland Railway, Eassie and Co., and the Wagon Works, tacked the flames from four in the morning till noon the next day. According to newspaper reports: ‘the pipes of the Norwich and the Liverpool and London Globe companies were connected so as to supply one hose, and the Norwich men rushed with it up the staircase of the warehouse to get as near as possible to the origin of the fire’. Sadly, the water pressure was insufficient, and the men soon found that the floor below them was ablaze. They had to sever the hose and leave it, (and several of their buckets), behind as they retreated from the flames dodging the molten zinc and loose bricks which were falling from above.
The Norwich Union firemen and their engine were a part of the fabric of the local community. They were the first port of call in an emergency and played a central role on more pleasant occasions, such as the parade for the grand launch of the Gloucester lifeboat in 1867. The engine had paraded through the city before this photograph was taken of it outside the New Inn at Tuffley to mark the annual outing of the firemen in 1905.
By this date hand pump engines, like the one at Gloucester, had been superseded by steam and Norwich Union’s Worcester fire brigade had even acquired a motorised engine.
Looking at the two engines it is clear that the Gloucester brigade was working with outdated equipment. It became increasingly evident that the City needed its own municipal brigade with a modern engine. When the insurance company brigades disbanded they gave their engines and equipment to the city but these were very shortly joined by a motor engine which was purchased from John Morris and Sons of Salford in June 1912. Mr Quilter, captain of the old Norwich Union brigade, was one of those invited to watch private trials of the new engine. The machine climbed a local hill at 6 miles and hour and sent a jet of water up to a height of 160 feet!
In 1853 William Causton of Norwich Union wrote a letter to the Gloucester Chronicle in which he said: ‘placed here for the more especial protection of the property of those who have honoured the office with their support, the Norwich Union Engine HAS NEVER BEEN REFUSED WHEN NECESSITY CALLED FOR ITS AID’. Although well-past its prime by the time the brigade was disbanded, the Norwich Union Gloucester engine had lived up to this ideal and provided an essential service to the people of Gloucester for over six decades.
