- Police/Fire - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- [Photograph; caption reads: The Janesville Fire Police formed
as a support group for the regular fire department during the
1850s.]
-
- Fire Police were always at the scene
- Twenty prominent Janesville citizens pinned on badges and
began carrying lanterns and sacks to
- fire scenes starting on March 17, 1855.
- Their goal was to protect private property during and after
a fire.
- This elite group, called Sack Company No. 1 for the gunnies
they carried, later became known as
- the "Janesville Fire Police."
- The "honorable" members of the group owed their
allegiance to the fire department, but were also
- sworn in as special police who could respond to any riots
or public disturbances.
- Before the company disbanded informally about 1919, it also
had the distinction of being what is
- believed to be the city's first ambulance service.
- Here's how the team worked:
- When a fire alarm sounded, these sack- and tarp-toting men
hurried to the scene to perform police
- and fire duty. They acted as fire insurance patrol and entered
a burning building whenever possible to gather valuables in their
sacks, haul out furniture and take it all to a safe place.
- They managed crowds. They helped put out fires. They guarded
burned-out buildings after the fire.
- And sometime after 1889, they began tending to the sick and
injured.
- The Sack Company was composed of merchants, physicians, druggists,
insurance salesmen,
- jewelers and newspapermen of this town.
- All paid an annual membership fee, and relied on a 2 percent
tax levy on fire insurance premiums
- for equipment purchases and maintenance.
- The members of the group were well respected, so much so,
that the chief engineer often was
- pulled out of the group in its early years to head firefighting
teams. Banquets and balls given by the group were viewed as the
most "swagger" events of the city's early days.
- The local company was reorganized as "Janesvile Fire
Police" on March 7, 1889, soon after a core
- of firefighters began to be paid for their services.
- The common council appointed a committee to buy a wagon,
horses and paraphernalia for a "first-
- class fire patrol." Money was no object. The fire police
got the best.
- Private alarms were installed in their homes, and $1,283
worth of purchases got the team the
- "finest equipment of any similar organization in the
country."
- The wagon fashioned by Empire Cross Spring Co., Janesville,
went into service May 30, 1889.
- "Fire Police" was painted in gold on the sides
of the Brewster green wagon box and a gold star flanked sides
of the driver's seat.
- Pulling it were a team of well-matched, iron grays. Ben BARRIAGE,
a man who resigned from
- fire fighter "call" duty, was hired to manage the
works and became the only paid person on the force.
- The wagon held two chemical extinguishers, 4,320 feet of
tarpaulins, 10 fire lanterns, rope, six
- extensions poles, 12 iron rods, an axe, crowbar, sledge,
scoop, four brooms and eight rubber coats and boots.
- The company tendered the wagon for ambulance use soon after
it went into service, and once
- stretchers were made to fit. Blankets, pillows and a satchel
of bandages and restoratives also were bought for the ill and
injured.
- An annual report from 1890 credited the men for putting out
nearly 50 percent of the city's 23 fires
- before they amounted to significant loss, and for taking
18 people to their homes or the hospital.
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