Abstract
How unique has been the British experience of fire protection and the gradual professionalization of the service? To what extent was North American fire protection similarly interwoven with the changing fortunes of local government? In this conclusion I will contextualize the British experience within the wider literature on the history of fire services in North American cities. There are comparative studies of municipalization available, some of which have provided an analytical framework for this study.1 In addition, there is a burgeoning literature on the professionalization of firefighting in North America that has examined the changing working practices of firemen in the broader context of social and cultural history. The way in which firemen construct and protect their collective identity within prevailing gender relations has also attracted growing historical interest.2
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Notes
A. G. Anderson (1979) ‘The development of municipal fire departments in the United States’, Journal of Libertarian Studies, III, 331–59;
A. S. Greenberg (2004) ‘The origins of the American municipal fire department: Nineteenth century change from an international perspective’ in Dagenais, Maver and Saunier (eds) Municipal Services, pp. 47–65; Ewen, ‘Managing police constables and firefighters’, pp. 60–2.
For a flavour of this literature, see Greenberg, Cause for Alarm; Tebeau, Eating Smoke; M. Hindle Hazen and R. M. Hazen (1992) Keepers of the Flame: The Role of Fire in American Culture 1775–1925 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press);
C. Chetkovitch (1997) Red Heat: Gender and Race in the Urban Fire Service (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press).
J. Kenlon (1914) Fires and Fire-Fighters: A History of Modern Fire-Fighting with a Review of Its Development from Earliest Times (London: William Heinemann), pp. 237–38. On Swedish drill, see Bourke, Dismembering the Male, p. 180.
G. L. Mosse (1996), The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 137.
F. Sheehan (1996) ‘A fire service for the millennium’, The Journal of the Fire Service College, III, no. 2, 103–7.
R. Seifert and T. Sibley (2005) United They Stood: The Story of the UK Firefighters’ Dispute 2002–2004 (London: Lawrence & Wishart), pp. 40–2.
Home Office Fire Prevention Division (1980) Future Fire Policy: A Consultative Document (London: HMSO);
Fire Brigades Union (1980) Fire Safety — a Public Issue (London: Fire Brigades Union);
J. Creighton (1985) Fire-Fighting in Action: The Modern British Fire Service (Poole: Blandford Press), pp. 30–1, 39;
R. C. Bentley (1996) ‘Events since 1957’ in G. V. Blackstone (ed.), A History of the British Fire Service, 2nd edn (Borehamwood: Fire Protection Association), pp. 485–7.
The Independent Review of the Fire Service (2003) The Future of the Fire Service: Reducing Risk, Saving Lives (London: HMSO), p. i.
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© 2010 Shane Ewen
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Ewen, S. (2010). Conclusion: The British Fire Service in Comparative Context. In: Fighting Fires. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230248403_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230248403_10
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