FIRE-PROOF SAFES AND REPOSITORIES (ante), receptacles for things of value, so constructed as to protect them from fire, even though the building in which they are should be utterly destroyed. Such a safe may be described as an iron strong-box, lined with some fire-resisting medium. It is claimed that the idea of such a struc ture originated in this country with Mr. James Conner, type-founder, of New York, somewhere about 1832, and that he carried it into effect by placing a safe lined with plaster of Paris in his office. His invention was not patented, however, neither was its value tested by fire, and it was thrown aside after a few years. In 1843, a Mr. Fitz gerald took out a patent for the same or a similar invention. Nine years before this, however, William Marr patented in England a method for constructing a fire-proof safe. In the space between the inner and outer walls of his structure, Marr placed sheets of mica pasted upon paper, and then packed the space full of either burnt clay and powdered charcoal, or powdered marble. Since 1843, both in this country and in England, the invention, in one form or another, has come into general use, and differ ent inventors have busied themselves with improvements. Charles Chubb, of London, used baked wood-ashes for filling; Thomas Milner, of Liverpool, inclosed one, two, or more inner cases, with spaces between for some absorbent material, in which were placed vessels, pipes, or tubes filled with an alkaline solution, or any other matter evolving steam or moisture, to be discharged into the surrounding absorbent materials on exposure to heat or fire; other English inventors filled the inner spaces with ground alum, finely sifted, and finely pulverized gypsum, mixed together, heated to liquefac tion, and forming when cool a brittle substance, which was comminuted into a fine powder; later still, another English inventor used powdered alum and sawdust for filling. The material upon which we must chiefly depend for making a safe fire proof is water, so placed that it may be liberated as steam, since nothing can burn in a safe when its filling furnishes steam at 212° P. It is also important that the supply of steam may be continued through a protracted fire—that the material may retain its water until required by heat—and that in ordinary use the safe may be free from damp ness. Safes have been built to contain pipes or cans full of water, to be set free on the melting of some easily fused metal. Substances which contain water in their chemical composition are more serviceable, alum being a notable example. Among mate
rials used for filling safes are soap-stone, alum alone or with plaster, clay, or paper pulp, gypsum with copperas, or asbestos, tiles, raw cotton, sawdust and whiting, hydraulic cement, etc. Herring's safe is filled with double sulphate of lime, the residue of soda-water manufacture. It is dry and changeless at common temperature, but gives off carbonic acid at 1000° F., the temperature of red-hot iron. Plaster of Paris and alum are also used for the water which they contain, and the filling, when heated, furnishes a compound of carbonic acid and steam.
in the law of Scotland, is the equivalent term for arson (q.v.) in England. If any part of a tenement, however small, has been set fire to willfully, this crime has been committed. It is quite indifferent where the fire has commenced, and the offense is frequently perpetrated by setting fire to furniture, or to other objects either within or without a house; but it is not regarded as completed, and is punished as a separate crime, of which we shall speak afterwards, unless the fire has communicated itself to some part of a building. If the fire originated in carelessness, however gross, it is not willful fire-raising, but a minor offense, punishable with fine and imprisonment. But if the intention was to injure the proprietor of a tenement by burning, not his house, but an object in its neighborhood—e. g., a haystack—and the fire was accidentally com municated to the house, the offense is the same as if the fire had been applied to the house directly. The infliction of capital punishment for the offense of fire-raising is now in desuetude. When a man burns his own house without endangering the life of any one, he has not committed the crime of fire-raising, but he may be punished crim inally, if the act was done for the purpose of defrauding the insurers. Till recently, it was the rule in Scotland, that where fire was the result of inevitable accident, it freed a carrier or innkeeper from responsibility for any goods that wore destroyed in his custody, unless where fraud or collusion be shown; but the law in this respect has been altered by the mercantile law amendment act, 19 and 20 Vict. c. 60, which provides, s. 17, that after the passing of the act (1856), " All carriers for hire, of goods within Scot land, shall be liable to make good to the owner of such goods all losses arising from accidental fire while such goods were in the possession or custody of such carriers"— thus equalizing the law of Scotland with that of England.