It is said that every disaster is an opportunity. And so it was with the devastating fire that swept through London in September 1666, bringing with it the realisation that an official, well-equipped firefighting organisation was needed to tackle any future incidents more quickly and efficiently.

The fire started in Pudding Lane during the evening of 2 September at a bakery shop owned by Thomas Farynor, the king’s baker. By 1am the shop was engulfed in flames, which quickly spread to adjacent properties and into neighbouring streets. The timber and thatch buildings, unusually dry after a long, hot summer, didn’t stand a chance. As the fire continued on its destructive path, it reached warehouses along the Thames, many of which contained highly-flammable goods such as oil and tallow.

Meanwhile, Farynor had managed to escape from his bakery, along with his wife, daughter and one of the servants, but their maid was not so lucky and she became the Great Fire’s first victim.

With only very primitive firefighting equipment to hand – mainly wooden buckets and rather ineffectual water squirts – it took five days to bring the fire under control. By that time the flames had destroyed over 13,000 houses, nearly 100 churches and several prominent public buildings such as the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall and the original St Paul’s. The widespread fear and panic that gripped London can be readily imagined.

Incredibly, only six lives were lost in the fire, but many more died in the months that followed, mainly due to being temporarily re-housed in cramped, insanitary conditions.

Diarist Samuel Pepys was alerted to the fire by his maid, Jane, and the next day he wrote: “By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down tonight by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street by London Bridge.”

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, London was in crisis. Disease was rife, due to the inadequate temporary shelters, many people faced financial ruin and the debtors’ prisons became chronically overcrowded.

Conspiracy theories abounded as people sought to find the cause of the fire, with the finger of suspicion being pointed at the Catholics, the French and the Dutch. By 1667, though, a parliamentary committee investigating the fire admitted to drawing a blank: “Yet nothing hath been found to argue it to have been other than the hand of God upon us, a great wind, and the season so dry.”

The most important task facing London was to ensure that similar disasters in the future could be prevented. Soon after the Great Fire, the first firefighters began to emerge – the forerunners of today’s London Fire Brigade. These in turn inspired the formation of similar firefighting forces in the rest of the country.

The man who set the wheels in motion was former builder Dr Nicholas Barbon, who established his own fire insurance company, Phoenix, and pioneered a scheme whereby people could pay premiums to the company to protect themselves against future fire damage. Soon other companies were springing up throughout the capital, all of them financing their own firefighting teams. Insured buildings would display brightly-coloured metal fire marks to distinguish between the different companies. Some of these fire marks can still be seen on old buildings today.

It was a promising scheme, but before long there was bitter rivalry between the insurance companies and it was not unusual for a firefighting team to stand by and watch a building burn if it wasn’t insured by their company. On top of that, early firefighting hoses and pumps were inadequate for larger fires.

The turning point came in 1721 when Richard Newsham, a London button maker, developed a “new water engine for the quenching and extinguishing of fires” to replace the old manual pumps. This revolutionary design was able to produce a continuous jet of water with considerable force – the largest of Newsham’s pumps could throw 160 gallons per minute up to 65m in the air. Newsham became known as the ‘Father of Fire Engines’ and his invention continued to evolve long after his death in 1743.

London’s first municipal fire brigade
During the early 19th century Edinburgh led the way in establishing efficient firefighting units with the formation of Britain’s first municipal fire brigade. London followed suit in 1833, poaching Edinburgh’s Chief Fire Officer, James Braidwood, and amalgamating the independent firefighting companies to form the London Fire Engine Establishment (LFEE).

Soon afterwards, Braidwood introduced a uniform for the firefighters, consisting of grey jackets and trousers with knee-high boots and black leather helmets. He was also the first to recruit firefighters from the Royal Navy because, he reasoned, “seamen are taught to obey orders, and the night and day watches and the uncertainty of occupation are more similar to their former habits than to those of other men of the same rank in life”. This custom persisted until well into the 19th century, and the Brigade still uses nautical terms to this day.

Braidwood became a popular figure in London, and there was widespread mourning when, in 1861, he died while attending a dockside fire in Tooley Street. Queen Victoria later commented: “The messenger and police inspector to whom we had sent to enquire returned to say that the loss of property was fearful… and that poor Mr Braidwood of the Fire Brigade had been killed. It made me very sad.”

Braidwood’s replacement was Captain Eyre Massey Shaw, a former Army officer who had also served as Chief Constable of Belfast in charge of both the police and the fire brigade. Shaw was another popular and highly influential man, who presided over the LFEE’s transformation into the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1866. The new brigade was a publicly-financed body under the control of the Metropolitan Board of Works.

From 1878 until his retirement in 1891, Shaw lived at the building in Southwark Bridge Road that until recently housed the London Fire Brigade Museum. One of his first actions was to establish a fire training school, which remained at this site until May 2015. He also introduced a new uniform of navy blue tunics and trousers with either silver or brass buttons and helmets depending on rank.

His most significant act, though, was to introduce steam pumps, which could produce up to 300 gallons of water per minute, thereby greatly increasing the brigade’s efficiency and its ability to tackle even the largest fires. He also installed fire alarms throughout London, increased the number of stations in the capital and in 1879 introduced a telegraph system at fire stations to improve response times.

Shaw’s other great contribution was to improve safety at London’s theatres and music halls. A keen theatre-goer himself, he introduced the fire safety curtain, which separates the auditorium from the stage area during the interval, and insisted on good water supplies, proper hydrants and plentiful exits. His name was famously immortalised in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Iolanthe, and he was in the audience for the premiere at the Savoy Theatre in November 1882 to her the Fairy Queen singing:

“Oh Captain Shaw!
Type of true love kept under!
Could thy Brigade
With cold cascade
Quench my great love, I wonder!

“”

A few days later, when a fire at the nearby Alhambra Theatre caused extensive damage, a special matinee of Iolanthe was mounted at the Savoy to raise money for those affected by the fire.

The fire brigade in the 20th century
In 1904 the Metropolitan Fire Brigade was renamed the London Fire Brigade. The next few years saw the introduction of extending ladders and the first fire engine powered by a motor engine. By 1921 all of the horse-drawn engines had been replaced by motorised appliances.

The Fire Brigade played a key role in the Second World War as it was called upon to cope with fires and explosions during the Blitz. An Auxiliary Fire Service was established in 1938 to assist the regular firefighters, and makeshift fire stations were set up in schools, garages and factories. A fire boat service was also set up, and the Brigade’s most famous fire boat, the Massey Shaw, was involved in the evacuation of Dunkirk.

By the end of the war, the London Fire Brigade had attended over 50,000 calls, with 327 firefighters losing their lives. This was probably the most concentrated effort in the history of the Brigade and the fire fighters were revered for their immense bravery, becoming known as “the heroes with grimy faces”.

Winston Churchill said they were “a grand lot and their work must never be forgotten”.

For a short while after the war, fire brigades were run by individual boroughs, but in 1948 the London Fire Brigade resumed operation under the direction of Sir Frederick Delve who, among many other new initiatives, introduced the 999 central control system.

Since then, the Brigade has continued to evolve, introducing more advanced equipment as well as increased safety practices and monitoring. The uniform has undergone several modifications over the last 40 years, the most recent being the personal protective equipment (PPE), introduced in 2010. Women firefighters were first accepted into the brigade in 1982.