The Salvage Man

From McGlennon's Song Annual 1902:

The salvage man
Written by Herbert Darnley and Dan Leno. Composed by Herbert Darnley. Sung by Dan Leno. Reprinted by permission of the "News of the World" where copies of the song may be obtained.

Although our town from fire is free,
An idea once occurr'd to me
I'd join a kind of fire brigade;
I'd heard there's money to be made.
We are not the regular fire brigade,
But fine good boys who have a trade;
A noble, gallant, little band,
Together we will fall or stand.


PATTER: Well that's foolish to say will fall or stand, because we do more falling than anything else, I just fell off the engine – well, I say engine; of course it's not a regular engine, is more of an engin-ette – well it's really a wagonette. But it looks splendid, for –

When the bell begins to ring
We all go tearing about;
It takes us just an hour and a half
To get the engine out:
But off we go, to answer duty's call,
When we get to the fire, the fire's gone out
Or there isn't a fire at all.

A Fireman often sits to dine
With wife and beefsteak pudding fine -
The fire-bell rings, what does he do?
He leaves his wife and pudding too!
It's no use telling the risks we ran,
And what we've done since we began,
I don't wish now to make a fuss,
But I'm certain you'll hear more of us.

PATTER: Certain to. We shall get locked up. And we have run some risks. We have 15 false alarms in one week. You know, it was my idea, this fire business. You see, there's four boys and myself; we've been out of work six years on account of them pulling down the house were used to hold the corner of. When I said to the boys, "I'll go and see the superintendent of the real fire brigade." I went to a headquarters, and I explained. I said we thought we could be of some use to him. I said "There's only one fire brigade – that's yours – and of course if a fire broke out at each end of the village he couldn't squirt from one end to the other. And" I further said to him, "if you had a little fire you didn't want to attend to we could pop round and keep them going till you came up." He was a very nice gentleman. He never answered me, so I waited on the landing for about three hours and no one came to me so I thought "silence gives consent." I told the boys that everything was settled – all we had to do was sign an agreement and all swear whatever we got we keep. So we went to the little pub, I drew up an agreement and started swearing from 11 o'clock till they turned us out. Then I told the boys that we didn't want to bother so much about the fire but the salvage. I said we could go around while the fire was on and people were busy and find the salvage; or we could go before the fire and look round so that we should know where to lay our hands on things if fire did break out. We could go in the middle of the night and look for salvage. Butterworth turned round and said "Let us be burglars." You see Butterworth's a fool. We wouldn't have him in the crowd only the engine-ette belongs to him. It's through Butterworth that I'm here now. I should be at a fire. You see this is the first day I've sat on the back of the engine without holding. Butterworth was at the front. I'd lent him the helmet. We only have one helmet. Well, I turned round to ask if you got the bottled Bass. Now that was an idea of mine. I thought it would go handy; we could squirt the water and drink the Bass at the same time. Butterworth gave the horse a whip and jerked me off; I fell on my face in the mud. It was done on purpose to get rid of me. They are jealous. It shows how clever they are, they gone off and they have got the address of the fire and if they got there they can do anything I've got the nose of the hose and you can't squirt water artistically without the nose. - 

When the bell begins to ring
We all go tearing about
It takes us just an hour and a half
To get the engine out
But off we go, to answer duty's call
When we get to the fire, the fire's gone out
Or there isn't a fire at all.