THE "FIRE-PROOF" PANTECHNICON.
PTO estimate has yet been formed of the losses in the great fire 1:11 which destroyed the Pantechnicon, nor is it at all probable that an accurate one will speedily be published. The proprietors, it is stated, very properly look on themselves as bankers, and refuse to injure the credit of individuals by stating the amount of their losses, while the insurance offices can give but partial in- formation. The proprietors only insured the building, as its contents changed from day to day and were often unknown to them, the rich having a trick deliciously characteristic of mil- lionaires, of putting valuables among their furniture so as to avoid the higher charge made for special security ; while the depositors seem, as a rule, to have pronounced insurance needless and inventories very troublesome. There may be a law-suit or two yet which will give, doubtless, much new light upon the law of bailments, but of anything like a trustworthy calculation of loss there seems little or no chance. The building was supposed to be fire-proof, which it was not, as the event showed, and could not be with so much iron in it, and even if it had not been, goods would still have been deposited there. It had become a habit of Belgravia and Tyburnia when the rich inhabitants of those regions went out of town, to pack valuables and furniture in crates and send them to the Pantechnicon, and habits pursued for forty years by the rich and indolent can seldom be interrupted. Any warning as to the danger of fire would have been met by the remark that " We shall run the risk ; the things may be burnt here too, and watching them is a bore," and they would have been sent as usual. The loss, however, must be very great indeed, even though it does not include the plate ; for, after all, plate in England is usually of silver, and it takes a huge lamp of silver to run up to the value of a good picture, whether ancient or modern. A portrait by Millais costs, for instance, 4,000 ounces in weight of rough silver, and that would make much more plate than the majority of houses own. Of course the value could be immensely increased by art, but it is in the enormous value of destructible and even fragile things, and of things which can be spoiled by water, that the pecuniary risk of fire in London consists — a lace warehouse, for example, being of all conceivable places the one where most damage might be done by an hour of burning—and it is this which the proprietors of any store-house ought to try to meet, and the way to do it is the most difficult of problems. We do not believe in engines in such cases, though, of course, they have their use, for water may be as injurious as fire, and in some instances even more so, and it does not conquer quick enough. The twenty engines employed at the Pantechnicon saved the neigh- bourhood, and with it a good many insurance offices—the great London proprietors, as a rule, scarcely distribute their insurances enough--but they did not save either the building or its contents, and the landlord of the House of Commons was much more indebted to the wind than to Captain Shaw. No extinguishing vapour seems as yet to have acquired much general favour, and we con- fess to the gravest disbelief in any manner of tanks, hydrants, or other mechanism for storing or distributing water on the spot. Suppose a fire got a real hold on the British Museum, would any rush of water put it out, except one that would do nearly as much damage, though not perhaps so much irreparable damage, as the fire itself ? For such places already built, and absolutely invaluable, there is, we imagine, no system of defence at all, except excessive watchfulness, and the watchfulness of anybody not a sentry, through a series of years, is a very limited quantity. Why should a fire break out to-day instead of yesterday, says the watchman, as he makes himself comfortable for his snooze? Indeed watchmen are of but moderate use when gas is laid on in a house, as the escape is always in some half-invisible place, requiring to be visited with a light, and then causing an explosion that sets everything on fire. We should say, reasoning only a priori, that the chance of the British Museum escaping fire for a century was extremely limited, and that its controllers will do well to remember that as fire tends always to spring upwards, the safest place for irreplaceable thine is downstairs.
With new buildings the case is different, and we doubt, on the whole, if the modern world is altogether in the right. The notion that iron, except in very solid masses, is fireproof is palpable non- sense, for the iron must get red-hot and spread the fire, and so is the confidence in stone. Stone staircases are better than wood; but very few varieties of stone will bear intense heat, and if a great fire caught West London, we suspect the stone employed by builders for staircases would perish, under the heat caused by the fierce draft through the skylights, quite as quickly as wood. Stone buildings perished as quickly as wooden buildings in the Chicago fire ; and if ever the buildings round St. Paul's should be burnt, we shall see how very little marble can do to resist the calcining action of great heat. St. Peter's, to use a rough illustration, would burn in about a thirtieth part of the time it would take to burn one of the lesser pyramids, and that for the simple reason that up to a point good brickwork—not insolvent builders' brickwork, but brickwork such as railways secure at dangerous points—is strengthened rather than injured by the fire. Trinity Church, Chicago, a building of red brick only, stood the fire out bravely, though the flames licked its walls, and felt none the worse for a scorching to which it had been acclimatised. No place in the world, perhaps, is so little troubled by fire as the European side of Calcutta, and no place probably is so badly protected by mechanical devices. But there is no stone, no wood flooring, no tall building—and fire does not love tile floors, mere brickwork, and watchfulness made incessant by everybody living on the same floor. It is on brick, brick solidly built, brick in thick masses, that we repose our confidence, which increases with every reduction in the height of the building at stake. Sparks fly upwards here as well as in Judea, and the lighter the roof the less is the danger of that " tumbling in " which usually destroys all hope. We cannot see why wood, or iron, or stone should be used at all, why every room should not be vaulted, and every compartment separated by a wall five feet thick, which would stand intact even if its core were merely packed Earth, long after stone had disappeared. The walls of Pompeii are standing now, though Vesuvius did its hardest. A still better protection would be to build the vaults underground, for flame goes upwards, and nobody ever beard of a burnt-out wine-vault, but that, we suppose, the damp and want of ventila- tion would be as injurious as fire ; but there need not, in heavy brick buildings, be want either of light, or air, or warmth, all of which could be secured by care, and secured, too, in such a way that any draught through the building or from one compartment to another should be effectually prevented. Sur- rounded by brick the stronger for burning, and unfed with supplies of air, a fire would have no fair chance, but would be, as it were, locked up as it is in a furnace, which nobody would dream of build- ing of anything but thick brick. Perfect impunity from fire cannot, we fear, be attained, at least until we can build houses of iridium or warehouses of the diamond ; but still the interior of the pyramid of Cheops does strike one as a tolerably safe place, even for lace or pictures.
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