Early Days in Richmond Hill: A History of the Community to 1930 : electronic edition. : Fire Brigades and Fence Viewers

Chapter 8 Fire Brigades and Fence Viewers

Table of Contents

	Title Page
	Author's Preface
1	The Road through Richmond Hill
2	First Peoples on the Land
3	The European Settlers Arrive
4	From Miles' Hill to Richmond Hill: The Birth of a Community
5	Tories and Reformers
6	Stagecoach Lines and Railway Tracks
7	The Neighbours at Mid-Century
8	Fire Brigades and Fence Viewers
	Living with Divided Loyalties
	A Time and a Place for Swimming
	Community Spirit
	The First Village Council
	"Wants of the Village"
	"A Local View of 1874"
	Who Was Who in the 1873 Municipal Elections
	The Richmond Hill Fire Brigade
	Fighting Fires with Hand Pumpers
	The Trench Carriage Works
	Miss Aiken Then Sang "The Woodland Tree"
	Life in the Newly Incorporated Village
9	Picture Post Card Village of the 1880s and 1890s
10	Rails through Richmond Hill
11	The Flowering of Richmond Hill
12	The Village Transformed
	Epilogue
	Appendices
	Table of Illustrations
	Index

Fighting Fires with Hand Pumpers

The first fire engine was a hand pumper that accommodated five or six men on each side, pumping with long handles. It was "quite a nice little squirt gun." Later, a larger hand pumper took fifteen to sixteen men per side, and could send out two sprays, or if only one, a spray as high as the Methodist [United] Church spire. Water was supplied from wooden cisterns placed along the street in line with the ditches and filled from surface water.

Richmond Hill Women's Institute,"Tweedsmuir History"(Richmond Hill:1957),unpaginated

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