Firefighting Equipment

Hand-pumped fire engines were first produced in the seventeenth century and a highly efficient machine was eventually developed by Richard Newsham. From the 1860's manual engines began to be superseded by steam fire engines but many households kept small manual pumps; a variety of such devices were available. Large manual fire engines continued in use until the 1930's in the countryside and many stirrup pumps for firefighting were produced during the Second World War. This book shows both the development of the manual fire pump and also covers some of the other basic items of firefighting equipment.