The fame of the Edinburgh Brigade rapidly spread throughout the kingdom, and it gradually became regarded as a model to which all other organizations for the suppression of fires would ultimately be made to conform. As a response to constant inquiries from a distance, Mr. Braidwood, in 1829, forwarded to the Society of Arts, London, a description of his chain-ladder fire-escape. For this invaluable apparatus, which had already effected a considerable saving of life, the Society's Silver Medal was awarded, and, accompanying the award, the Council of the Society extended an invitation to the author to "give a complete account of his mode of drilling firemen, and combining the use of fire-escapes with the ordinary fire-engine service." Responding to this invitation, Mr. Braidwood in the following year published his work "On the Construction of Fire-Engines and Apparatus, the Training of Firemen, and the Method of Proceeding in Cases of Fire." From this work, which may still be regarded as an authority, extensive extracts have been made in the subsequent chapters of the present volume, and it need not, therefore, be further referred to here than to say that it formed a thoroughly original account of an original system, and that its illustrations, which were especially clear, were drawn by the author's own hand. This work attracted much attention from municipal bodies and insurance companies throughout the kingdom, and more than one official deputation visited Edinburgh to learn from Mr. Braidwood himself the details of a system which was already working such important results. In London, especially, three West India warehouses had been burnt in the year 1829, with a loss of 300,000_l._; and with the extending use of gas, the increasing frequency of fires, and the conspicuous inefficiency of the parish engines, and the want of unity of action among the insurance companies, it was felt that what had answered so well in Edinburgh would prove still more valuable in the metropolis. The general estimation in which Mr. Braidwood's services were then held may be considered as expressed in the following, among other contemporary reviews of his book:--