6. Fire!
Magic lantern slides.
Great Britain? Second half of the nineteenth century?
In Victorian England, where the municipal firefighter was a local hero, pictures of rescues from burning buildings were a favorite subject. According to John A. Walker, images of firemen risking their lives to save small children were ubiquitous in the visual culture of that time. If you'd like to learn more about the nineteenth-century iconography of firefighting, please visit Walker's article on the subject.
We haven't been able to identify the title or the firm that issued
this particular set of slides because the original box is missing.
The slides
are slightly larger than the Primus slides shown in number 5, so it's
possible that they were manufactured for sale in America or the Continent,
not Great Britain.
