James Braidwood Statue
About this work
James Braidwood statue, Parliament Square. Appointed in 1824 at the age of twenty-four as Master of Fire Engines in Britain's first municipal fire brigade, Braidwood became a trail-blazer in establishing principles of fire-fighting that are still applied today. His training as a surveyor gave him exceptional knowledge of housing conditions and he recruited to the service expert tradesmen - slaters, carpenters, masons and plumbers - who could apply their various fields of expertise to fire-fighting. His many original ideas of practical organisation and methodology, published in 1830, were adopted across Britain. In 1833 Braidwood left Edinburgh to lead the London Fire Engine Establishment. He died on active service in 1861 when a wall collapsed during the great warehouse fire in Tooley Street near Tower Bridge. The statue stands around the corner from the site of the original main fire station in the High Street. 1419589
Description from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
