Fire Brigade Medals

Metropolitan Fire Brigade Bravery Medal, 1st type (Samuel Ross), silver, with ribbon, edge bruise to reverse, good very fine £650-750

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Fire Brigade Medals.

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Third Class Fireman John Snow and Fourth Class Fireman Samuel Ross rescued two children from the top floor of Wellington Barracks by passing them down the fire-escape. Ross was so terribly burned that he died. (Ref: British Calendar of Heroes, p.333).

The 20 November 1890 Report of the Fire Brigade Committee reads, ‘The Chief Officer has made a report to us on the circumstances connected with the fire which occured early in the evening of the 12th November, in the Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk, and which unfortunately resulted in the death of two young children. The Westminster Station was the first to receive the call and an engine and fire escape were at once despatched to the scene of the fire, and, on the arrival of the engine it was found that a portion of married men’s quarters were well alight, and that a manual engine belonging to the barracks was at work. The fire was speedily extinguished by means of two standpipes and four steam fire engines. In the meantime Fireman John Snow, who was in charge of the fire-escape having been informed that a child was in one of the upper rooms of the building, immediately pitched his machine to a third floor window, and searched all the rooms in that part of the premises, but failed to find the child. He then got on the roof, found two children in a very exhausted condition. They were passed down by Snow to Samuel Ross to the yard below, and were removed to Westminster Hospital, where the elder one died on the 14th instant, and the younger one on the 19th instant. An inquest was held on the 19th instant, when the Coroner’s jury returned a verdict to the effect that the deceased met their deaths from burning and exposure, and expressed the opinion that there had been culpable and almost criminal negligence on the part of the responsible authorities, to whom strong representations had been made of the dangerous condition of the building in the event of fire’.