In my cupboard at The Dabbler this week, you will be able to discover the causes of thousands of mid-nineteenth-century fires in an unnamed bailiwick served by “the Brigade”. Prometheus was never so busy a bee, nor so inventive. Salutary warnings are implicit in this list, and I recommend you keep a watchful eye on your monkey, your monkey’s nuts, your cargo of lime, your sewing, your rats and your ants.
It would be interesting to be able to infer or extrapolate from that fascinating document a corollary index from the Arsonists’ Brigade, showing events that accidentally extinguished a fire that was already raging. Such mishaps as ‘smoking under bed’, or ‘horse overturning clothes-monkey’, would doubtless feature prominently.