The origins of the American municipal fire department: nineteenth-century change from an international perspective

This chapter explores the municipalization of American firefighting in a comparative context and explains the almost simultaneous international fall of the urban volunteer fire company responsibility for fire protection in both America and Europe lay with the municipality. Even in highly centralized countries like France, individual city governments independently provided urban city services, and the trend in both Europe and America was towards municipalization in the late nineteenth century. As urban citizens first began to consider paying firemen to fight fires, rather than employing volunteers, the image of the rowdy, violent volunteer was used to justify the expense of municipal forces. Fire insurance, the steam engine and professionalism were the real replacements of the volunteer forces. Originating in the sixteenth-century Low Countries and Germany, these organizations flourished after the great fire of London in 1666 and by the eighteenth century commercial fire insurance had spread throughout Britain. The steam engine also required specialized and expensive knowledge.