History & Policy

Due to illness, Ewen Shane talk was given by Professor Simon Szreter. Shane Ewen is Reader in Urban History at Leeds Beckett University. He is Co-Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, ‘Forged by Fire: Burns Injury and Identity in Britain, c.1800-2000’. He has written extensively about the history of Britain’s fire and rescue service. This policy paper is based on a presentation given at the Home Office in January 2018. Wednesday 17 October: 5:00pm - 7:00pm History, Faculty of, Room 6, West Road, CB3 9EF The Grenfell Tower fire is generally agreed to have been the worst tragedy of unnecessary loss of life in Britain since the Aberfan disaster of 1966. In Victorian Britain a number of such disasters struck in various sectors of industry and society as the rapidly changing and largely unregulated profit-oriented economy threw up all manner of hazards from cheap lodging houses to unsafe modes of transport to toxic rivers. The Victorian response to such tragedies was to set-u