That's the point though. In spite of the logical and practical evaluation, there was evidence from multiple, trusted sources that said otherwise. And history is full of people doing dumb things and making bad decisions, so why not this one too?
Also, it's self-affirming - "Look at us! We've got problems, but at least we know well enough to fight fires when there is one, despite money problems"
Unless the fire service is paired with insurance covering the cost of a rebuild? But I don't think the original fire services offered that.
I suspect not, because property ownership in England used to be secret - ie. Even the government may not have known who owned land. And if you don't know who owns it, who must pay the bill?
The incentives are very clear, if nobody does it, no fire brigades will exist. (I can also imagine other reasons, e g. membership might have been required by some law or by association.) And in the end every fire which is extinguished is a fire which didn't spread.
Just some little aside, today there are people who do firefighting for free. What are the incentives for that?
Yeah it sounds to me from the article like the insurance was for the rebuild, and the firefighting was something the insurance company did to reduce their payouts.
So I imagine if you didn't have insurance, you still were at more risk than if you did, similar to now, because the fire dept isn't going to save everything every time.
The coverage is apparently to pay for damages. It's not fire insurance, it's property insurance, in case of fire.
Consider the following:
* The first Fire Brigade, in Rome, was established by someone who would insist on buying your building before extinguishing the fire [1]
* In the present day, you can live in an unincorporated area, decline fire protection offers from the county and from your insurer, and the fire brigade won't come out if you have a fire [2]
* The article provides 11 different sources for the apparently incorrect claim London's insurance fire brigades circa-1700 let uninsured buildings burn.
Personally I find it quite easy to understand why people might believe the incorrect claim.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_t... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. People at the time must have known that fires in cities were extremely dangerous because they could spread over a great area. It's logical that insurers would want to work together to prevent all fires, purely out of self-interest to protect their insured properties, and then sue the pants off negligent and/or uninsured property owners after each near-miss.
The paper in TFA says as much, but it's weird to me that people would uncritically accept the proposed narrative in the first place.