Title Cause for Alarm : the Volunteer Fire Department in the Nineteenth-Century City

Published Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource (244 pages) Series Princeton Legacy Library Princeton legacy library. Contents List of Tables, Figures, and Maps ; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Beginning at the Wake; Writing a Fireman's History; The Evolution of the Volunteer Fire Department; Synopsis: Fire-Man, Urban Citizen; Chapter One ; Paying Tribute; Invested in Firefighting; Investing in Protection; A Fragile Relationship; Chapter Two; Manly Boys and Chaste Fire Engines: The Culture of the Volunteer Fire Department ; Choosing a Fire Company; The Brotherhood of Firemen; Classless Masculinity; Gendered Fire Engines and Absent Women; Families versus Firemen; Chapter Three Fights/Fires: A Glance at Violent FiremenThe Firemen of Mob-Town; St. Louis Rowdyism; The Model Fire Department of the World -- Some Conclusions about Fire Department Violence; Chapter Four ; Smoke-Filled Rooms: Volunteer Firemen and Political Culture; Seventeen St. Louis Mayors; The Limitations of Political Mobilization, or What Do Seventeen Mayors Really Buy You; Chapter Five ; Insuring Protection: Fire Insurance and the Era of the Steam Engine; Insuring Protection; A Mighty Agent; Chapter Six ; Deluged and Disgraced; Conclusion; One Last Eulogy; Appendix Occupational Scale Used for Quantitative AnalysisNotes; Bibliography ; Index Summary Though central to the social, political, and cultural life of the nineteenth-century city, the urban volunteer fire department has nevertheless been largely ignored by historians. Redressing this neglect, Amy Greenberg reveals the meaning of this central institution by comparing the fire departments of Baltimore, St. Louis, and San Francisco from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Volunteer fire companies protected highly flammable cities from fire and provided many men with friendship, brotherhood, and a way to prove their civic virtue. While other scholars have claimed tha Notes Print version record Subject Volunteer fire departments -- Maryland -- Baltimore -- History -- 19th century Volunteer fire departments -- Missouri -- Saint Louis -- History -- 19th century Volunteer fire departments -- California -- San Francisco -- History -- 19th century HISTORY -- United States -- 19th Century. BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Infrastructure. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- General. Volunteer fire departments California -- San Francisco Maryland -- Baltimore Missouri -- Saint Louis Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9781400864928 1400864925

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