About two in the morning of October 7th, 1871, an alarm of fire reached the Holborn station. The call came from Gray's Inn Road; and Ford, who had charge of the fire-escape, was soon at the scene of action. He found a fire raging in the house of a chemist at No. 98 in the road, and the inmates were crying for help at the windows. Placing the escape against the building, he hurried to a window in one of the upper floors, and, assisted by a policeman, brought down five of the inhabitants in safety. Still there was one remaining, and frantic cries from a woman in a window above led him to rush up the escape once more. He had taken her from the building, and was conveying her down the escape, when a burst of flame belched out from the first floor and kindled the canvas "shoot" of the escape. In a second, both the fireman and the rescued woman were surrounded by fire. Unable to hold her any longer, he dropped her to the ground, where she alighted without suffering any serious injury. But the fireman became entangled in the wire netting of the machine, and it held him there in its cruel grasp, in spite of all his struggles, while the fierce fire roasted him alive. At length, by a desperate effort, he broke the netting, apparently by straining the rungs of the ladder; but he himself fell to the ground so heavily, that his helmet was quite doubled up, and its brasswork hurt his head severely. His clothes were burning as he lay on the pavement; but, happily, they were soon extinguished, and he was removed, suffering great agony, to the Royal Free Hospital in the Gray's Inn Road. He lingered until eight o'clock on the evening of the same day, when he died. He was only about thirty years of age, and had been four years in the brigade, where he bore a good character. A subscription was raised for his widow and two children, and his funeral was an imposing and solemn ceremony. The coffin was borne on a fire-engine drawn by four horses to Abney Park Cemetery, and was followed by detachments of firemen and of police. It is a peculiarly sad feature of this case that, after saving so many lives, he should himself have succumbed, and that the very machine intended to save life should have been the cause of his death. At the inquest the jury added to their verdict the remark that, had the canvas been non-inflammable (means having been discovered to render fabrics non-inflammable), and had the machine been covered with wire gauze instead of the netting, Ford's life might have been saved. Considerable improvements have been made in fire-escapes since then, and machines of various patterns are in use in the brigade; but, speaking generally, it may be said that the shoot, when used, is made of copper netting, which is, of course, non-inflammable.