There have been many questionable firefighting activities in the past, with Victorian fire fighting grenades being one of the most unique.
Fire in the 1800s
Understandably, fire was a leading fear in the 1800s and early 1900s, due to the materials and infrastructure of houses and buildings. Additionally, oil lamps, open fireplaces and non-fire resistant bedding, made a recipe for fire-spreading disaster.
Existing firefighting methods included leather buckets filled with water and transferred by hand, and wheeled systems with a hand-operated pump to push water through a hose. Both of which were inefficient;a solution was needed for the average homeowner, should they need to protect themselves if a fire broke out.
Victorian Firefighting Grenades
This saw the introduction of firefighting grenades – glass ‘bomb’ fire extinguishers that people would throw into flames to extinguish a fire. Made of thin glass to shatter easily, the six to eight inch tall grenades were thrown at the base of flames, with the heat melting the alloy plug, releasing a spring tension, bursting the bulb to spread an extinguishing fluid to smother the flame. In the late 1870s, they contained saltwater – preventing the water from freezing in the winter – and ammonium chloride which produced fumes to suppress the fire.
These grenades came with a spring tension wall bracket to allow them to be mounted to the wall for easy access, and in larger homes were suspended from ceilings using brackets, with fires causing the wax components to melt or glass to break, distributing contents like a modern day sprinkler.
Whilst some firefighting grenades were plain, round glass, others came in teardrop shapes and a variety of designs and coloured glass, making them ornamental in design which was a great addition to any Victorian home.
Later Additions
Although the early designs featured saltwater, in the early 1900s the fire extinguisher grenades contained carbon tetrachloride. Although a liquid, the substance becomes a gas at 76°C, meaning upon the glass breaking, the contents would produce high density fumes to sink and suppress a fire.
However, there was one major issue with this substance – when mixed with water, it reacts to create phosgene gas – a lethal chemical that was also used as a weapon in World War One.
Other brands, like the Larkin Company, filled the grenades with powder rather than liquid.
The Demise of Fire Fighting Grenades
However, the glass extinguisher grenades often failed and were only useful when a fire was just breaking out, making them impractical in the case of large fires. Additionally, in 1954 the American National Fire Protection Association stated that the hand grenade extinguisher was no longer approved to use, due to carbon tetrachloride producing the toxic gas phosgene, as well as the risk of injury from broken glass.
Although these firefighting grenades are no longer of use, they paved the way for modern solutions, allowing us now to feel confident in the systems and equipment that we use all over the globe today.
