Photo 247/3(10)

Genre: Urban Topographical Photography

View looking along the roadway towards a flimsy wooden tower used for firewatching. For a sketch by Colesworthy Grant of a similar fire tower, see his 'Anglo-Indian domestic life' (Calcutta, 2nd edition, 1862), p. 10: 'Fires, however, we certainly have in this our city, and to an extent of devastation truly shocking. The huts of the natives, built chiefly of mats, straw, dry leaves and wooden posts, are yearly, in some quarter, subjected to this visitation; and as it always takes place at the time of the year when straw is in excellent order for fuel, and a high wind acting as a powerful auxiliary, whole villages are frequently destroyed in a few hours...So frequent, at one period of the year, are fires amongst the native huts, that lofty stages, or look-out posts, may be seen erected at various stations in and about Calcutta, and men are employed by the police for no other purpose than to sit in a little kennel-like platform at the top - there, with that 'timorous accent and dire yell' suited to such occasions, to sound an alarm when requisite. We cannot as yet boast of horses to our engines, which, with a tremendous hullabuloo, are dragged through the streets by a dozen or twenty water-carriers and police functionaries, headed by a European constable...' (pp. 10-11). For a view of the effects of one of these fires, see Photo 247/3(39).