Why London firefighters 200 years ago would let some houses burn on purpose

In our modern lives we take the Fire Service for granted for the most part. If anyone sees a fire, they know that there is a dedicated team of firefighters with all the firefighting technology they could possibly need is just one 999 call away.

This wasn’t always the case though, even in a big city like London. In fact, just a few centuries ago firefighters might be on the scene watching your house burning and make a decision to do nothing to stop it, and the reason comes down to just one thing – money.

Around the time of the fire of London in 1666 there was nothing to prevent fires, buildings were all wooden, and there were no insurance companies, so the people of London had to bear the cost of all the damage which ran to about £1.5 billion in today’s money. This changed in 1680 when the first insurance company was set up, to avoid this happening again.

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By 1690 one in 10 houses in London had been insured and by 1700, insurance companies had started thinking it might be a good idea to try and prevent houses burning down in the first place so they didn’t have to pay out so much.

It’s from this that the very first firefighter crews were founded, but unlike the firefighters of today like the London Fire Brigade who offer an indiscriminate public service, fire crews back then were owned by individual insurance companies, and they were only obligated to put out fires on houses that were insured by their company.

The way they did this was through ‘fire marks’ or fire insurance plaques, a metal seal first used in 1710, that was attached to the outside of buildings identifying which company insured them and letting fire crews know whether or not they needed to bother saving it.

This meant that some crews would let a house or building burn if it was not under their protection or if they needed to prioritise a fire elsewhere. Although, there were also sometimes agreements between crews that they would put out fires on other insurance companies’ behalf if they got there first and would then be reimbursed for the trouble.

By 1833 insurers realised that it would make much more sense to unify all the fire crews and the London Fire Engine Establishment was created, ending any further possibility that a private fire crew would let your house burn. The system is a far cry from the heroic one we know and rely on today.

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