Cause for Alarm : The Volunteer Fire Department in the Nineteenth-Century City

This text aims to reveal the meaning of the volunteer fire department in the 19th century, comparing the fire departments of Baltimore, St Louis and San Francisco from the late 18th to the mid-19th century.

Volunteer fire companies protected highly flammable cities from fire and provided men with friendship and a way to prove their civic virtue.

The text examines how the mix of social groups - merchants and working men, immigrants and native-born - all found a common identity as firemen.

It offers a vision of urban culture, defined not by class, but by gender.

The volunteer firefighting units united men in a shared masculine celebration of strength and bravery, though changing social norms eventually demonized the firemen's vision of masculinity.

The book also assesses the legitimacy of accusations of violence and political corruption against firemen in each city, and the place of the municipalization of firefighting in the context of urban social change, new ideals of citizenship, the spread of fire insurance and firefighting technologies.