On This Day, 20 January 1917

Birmingham Mail

Saturday 20 January 1917

BIRMINGHAM FIRES AND A FALSE ALARM

Birmingham Brigade continue to have a busy time. They received no fewer than nine calls between 10.30 yesterday morning and 7.30 this morning.

After attending two small outbreaks at a grocer’s shop in Brixton Road, and a dwelling-house fire in Rea Street South, the brigade received a call at 5.20 last evening to “a big fire at the corner of Church Street and Barwick Street.” The men turned out from the Central Station with two machines, and upon arrival found that they had been hoaxed.

Enquiries at the General Post Office elicited the information that the hoax came through a telephone call-box near the corner of Steelhouse Lane and Corporation Street. The person perpetrating the hoax would have pay 2d. to get through to the fire station. It was light voice apparently that of a boy or a female.

At half-past six last evening a call was received to The Mint, in Icknield Street, where the roof of a store room was found to be on fire. Employees had partially extinguished the fire by means of a private jet and hand pumps sufficed to finish the work. Only slight damage was done.

Some floor boards which had taken fire at the National Provincial Bank in the Horse Fair engaged the efforts of the brigade shortly after eight o’clock. The next call was not received until 7.29 this morning. It was to a dwelling-house in Wheeler Street, where slight damage was done through a mantel-board taking fire.