History of Fire Brigades
Although people have fought fires since there have been valuable things to burn, the first instance of organized professionals combating structural fires occurred in Ancient Egypt. Likewise, fire fighters of the Roman Republic existed solely as privately organized and funded groups that operated more similarly to a business than a public service; however, during the Principate period Augustus revolutionized firefighting by calling for the creation of a fire guard that was trained, paid, and equipped by the state- the first truly public and professional firefighting service. Known as the Vigiles, they were organised into cohorts and also served as a night watch and city police force.
Today, fire and rescue remains a mix of paid, call, and volunteer responders, with some Fire and Rescue Services in the UK employing a combination of retained firefighters (who carry pagers to remain on-call while at home or at work) and a small number of unpaid volunteer firefighters- a practice common with other services.
Read more about this topic: Firefighter
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“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
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“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
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“The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)