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LOOKING TO 2022
LOOKING TO
2022 DFB Historian Las Fallon highlights important anniversaries in Dublin firefighting history taking place next year
A block of buildings including The Gresham Hotel burning during the Civil War. ©National Library of Ireland
A motor and augmented crew on Gardiner Street waiting for the ceasefire in order to fight the fires in O`Connell Street at the start of the Civil War. ©Las Fallon Collection As I write this in November 2021, the country is still in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a time that has brought such sadness to so many doors, it may seem insignificant that we have lost two years of very important anniversaries for this country.
Hopefully we can begin to plan for next year and the final emergence from this cloud, and it is to that end that I am looking ahead to some possible events and anniversaries which have significance for the DFB in the year ahead.
INSURANCE COMPANIES
While we are all aware of the significance of 1922 and the start of our Civil War, there is actually another anniversary which is worth remembering. In 1722, the first insurance company fire service was set up in Dublin when the Royal Exchange Assurance (REA) established an agency here to sell fire insurance and to provide a fire service for its customers.
Three firemen ‘effecting an entry’ at Fowler Hall, the Orange Order headquarters in Dublin that had been occupied and burned by Republican troops. ©National Library of Ireland
Prior to that, the citizens of Dublin relied on a mixture of the original city fire service set up in 1711 (and whose 300th anniversary inexplicably went unmarked in 2011) and the parish pumps of each of the Church of Ireland parishes in the city. Neither service used trained firefighters and their contribution to the safety of the city was patchy to say the least.
The coming of the insurance brigades with their trained ‘fire engine establishments’ contributed much to the safety of the city. Initially reserved for the sole use of the companies’ customers, over time they began to fight any fire they were called to. On the establishment of the Dublin Fire Brigade in 1862, some of the insurance company brigades remained in service, working beside the city crews for a number of years.
EXHIBITION
I hope to mount an exhibition on the role of the insurance company fire brigades in Dublin in the 18th and 19th centuries during 2022. As those who know me will know, I have been a collector of early fire service material for many years and have a particular interest in the insurance fire brigades. As things stand, I hope to mount this exhibition working from my own material, showing items such as firemarks, uniforms, helmets and equipment of the various insurance fire brigades, along with information panels and illustrations showing their work and influence on the development of the fire service in Dublin.
A helmet thought to be from the Sun insurance company’s Dublin office. ©Las Fallon Collection A Royal Exchange fireman’s jacket and equipment. ©Las Fallon Collection
Three 18th Century leather fire buckets including a Royal Exchange one dated 1720. ©Las Fallon Collection
A poster of a Sun Assurance fireman with an insurance fire engine in the background. ©Las Fallon Collection
This will hopefully be set up in conjunction with Dublin City Council, in a suitable venue. I would hope to publish a guide to any exhibition with photos and background, and may be talking to the Sports and Social Club about that aspect of the anniversary.
CIVIL WAR
The other big anniversary next year is of course the start of the Civil War, and in DFB terms the events around the attack on the Four Courts that started the war and the fighting in the following days leading to the fall of Dublin to the pro-Treaty forces.
It is a subject I looked at in my first book, ‘Dublin Fire Brigade and the Irish Revolution’ in 2012, but so much new material has become available since then that it is a subject that would repay another look.
From the DFB perspective, it was the heaviest fighting and destruction in the city since the 1916 Rising. On another front, many DFB members played a part, from those who went absent from the Brigade in order to report back to their IRA and ICA units to fight for the Republic, to those who were heavily engaged in that fighting but would join the DFB in later years. I am aware of a number of stories which have so far been untold and of more information now available on others which I have looked at in the past.
There are other stories too from the Revolutionary period and ongoing research has highlighted some that I had not come across in the past. These include the story of the daughter of a fireman who hid guns for a local IRA unit in the hose stores of her father’s station, or the future wife of another fireman who smuggled guns and explosives around the city and later served as a first aider in the Block (the Republican stronghold) in O`Connell Street during the heaviest fighting there and whose family have very kindly made a wealth of material available to me.
The Brigade also took part in many of the public events of the day, including Michael Collins’ funeral, and I have unearthed some previously unseen photos of them at that event.
POWER SHIFT
Following on from the Civil War, the new Government soon began to suspend local authorities in what historian Diarmuid Ferriter has called a show of ‘utter contempt’ at government level for local democracy in the new state. The local authorities had, by pledging their support to Dáil Eireann rather than the British authorities in the 1919-1921 period,
helped both to undermine British authority in Ireland and to support the ‘shadow state’ being established under the Dáil.
Some see the actions towards local authorities in 1923 by the Civil War victors as ensuring that the local authorities could not challenge their supremacy in the same way. In Dublin’s case, the Corporation was suspended for seven years and the city run by a commissioner. When power was restored to elected representatives in 1930, it was clearly laid out that the real power lay with a new figure, the City Manager, rather than the Lord Mayor, as was previously the case.
Over those years in the 1920s and early 1930s, the repercussions of this shift in power were felt in Dublin Fire Brigade as much as in any other part of the Corporation. I hope to tell these stories in a new book being written for Kilmainham Tales who have previously published two of my three solo books. With the kind permission of the DFB Sports and Social Club and the publishers of this magazine, I will also be revisiting past articles for Firecall and bringing them up to date for the new book.
I also hope to tell the story of items from my own collection built up over the years, both photographs and artefacts. The whole book is planned as an anthology and hopefully a resource for future historians of the DFB. In the meantime, I will also (if editors Adam Hyland and Dan Fynes will have me!) continue to contribute articles to this magazine. That’s the plan at least – now to make it happen!
A Sun Assurance fireman’s arm badge identifying the fire insurance company. ©Las Fallon Collection
