Matthew Pearl is the author of the novels The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens, The Technologists, and The Last Bookaneer (published in April 2015). His nonfiction pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Slate. He lives in the Boston area.
Editors: Charles Homans, Evan Ratliff
Designer: Gray Beltran
Producer: Megan Detrie
Fact Checker: Riley Blanton
Copy Editor: Sean Cooper
Illustration: Greg Coulton
Other images: The Bostonian Society, City of Boston Archives, The American Antiquarian Society, Library of Congress, Harvard Map Collection, Keno Auctions, Christie’s Auctions.
© 2014 Atavist Inc.
Endnotes
1.
Firemen originally objected to the use of hoses instead of buckets for similar reasons. “Set enginemen at a distance from the fire!” one Boston fire captain declared in the 1820s. “It will never be submitted to. Their desire is always to be in the hottest of the battle. The nearer the fire the higher the post of honor. Their struggle is, who shall get to it the first, and who keep the nearest. It would be more difficult to keep a Boston engine back, in order to play into its neighbor, than it would be to put out the fire.”
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2.
The offices of Boston’s newspapers were located in the center of the city, near where many fires raged, and the papers accordingly avoided publishing anything that could be construed as critical of the firemen. For instance, when a boy was run over by a fire engine on March 30, 1832, while helping to pull it—a violation of city regulations against engine crews using nonmembers—the Boston Evening Transcript published only a very brief story and omitted the number of the engine company.
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Matthew Pearl, Company Eight
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