Captain Manby & the Conflagration of the Palace of Westminster
As flames consumed the Houses of Parliament in 1834, one of the watching spectators, explains Kenneth Walthew, was Captain William George Manby who had done 'more than any man in England to combat the horrendous loss of life and property caused by fire'.
On the night of Thursday, October 16th, 1834, fire almost completely destroyed the ancient Palace of Westminster, which had been the seat of Parliament since 1547. By dawn the following day, little was left of the House of Lords, the Commons and the Speaker's House, save blackened walls and piles of charred and smouldering rubble. Only Westminster Hall survived virtually unscathed, as it had done in a previous fire in 1512.
The cause of the fire was never satisfactorily determined, nor was it ever explained why it had been allowed to gain so fierce a hold before it was detected. The reason, however, why, once it was established, the fire could not be extinguished or controlled, was only too evident. The fire fighting services, as they then existed, were totally inadequate to deal with a conflagration of this size and intensity.
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