A COMIC OPERA FIRE ENGINE.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14644, 19 April 1913, Page 8

A COMIC OPERA FIRE ENGINE.

HOW IT FAILED TO SAVE BLAZING VILLAGE.

(from a connr-srosDEKT.) LONDON, .March 8

At various London music-halls Alfred Lester, who was the original melancholy jockey in "Tho Arcadians." has been making audiences scream, ot late, with a quite original sketch called "Tho Village Fire Brigade." Needless to say, the brigade therein depicted—consisting of Lester and another man—is highly inefficient, but what makes audiences laugh hardest is the fire-engino around which most of tho action centres, an antediluvian contraption whose workings tho two members of tho brigade understand only dimly, and in tho inner parts ot which hens are kept.

It all has been taken as a gorgeousjoke—" frightfully exaggerated, ot course, dou't you know," for nobody believed that, even in tho most behincl-the-times of English villages such an apology for a fire-engine would be tolerated. Not until tho night before last, that is, when half of the Cambridgeshire town of Swavesey, went up in smoke because the only lire-engine tho place boasted was a practically useless old curiosity that was acquired in tho year 1827. Twenty-five houses were burnt to the ground, and seventy persons, out of tho eight hundred or so in the town, left homeless. Ono family lost the savings of a lifetime, there were several narrow escapes from death, and out of the contents of the whole of the cottages not twenty pounds' worth of goods was saved from destruction. To begin with, the vintagc-of-1827 fireengine was late in arriving on the scene, and when it got there it proved practically useless. Tho village, it seems, has no fire brigade, the engine being kept in a shed in charge of a gardener, who, when he receives the alarm, which must bo by word of month, relies on volunteers to turn out and do thc-ir best. The engine which bears on its side in faced gold letters the legend "Swavesey Subscription Engine, 1827," is worked by hand. Attached to it are three or four lengths of old leathern hose, through which sixteen stalwarts, with the schoolmaster at their head, tried to pump water, with indifferent success. Meanwhile tho battered old "manual" was a target for tho anathemas of the people, who blamed it as the author of their misfortunes, and little was done to check the "devouring element' , until the arrivnl of the fire brigade from St. ives, followed by a steamer and another "manual"' engine from Huntingdon.

Now it proves that not only was Swnvesoy's fire-engine purchased nearly a century ago, but that it was secondhand even then! J. C. weather, of tho famous British firm of fire-en-Kino builders, writes to the papers that he has boen looking back in their records and finds that the now famous Swavesev's nre-onpne. which originally was built for the British Fire Office, was sold to the Cambridgeshire townsbin, second-hnnd, on September lUth, 1827, for £101.