How Britain rose to bygone emergencies
Before Britain had ambulance brigades, it relied on volunteers for first aid. David Behrens looks at the roots of the 999 service.
THE REASSURANCE of knowing that in the event of an emergency an ambulance is only a 999 call away, is a luxury Britain has not always taken for granted.
As these rarely-seen pictures from the archive illustrate, there was a time when the provision of first aid was left to volunteers.
It was the police, firefighters and even taxi drivers who provided the earliest ambulance services, operating fleets of three-wheeled stretchers known as “litters”, to take patients to the nearest hospital or doctor’s surgery. With canopies to keep the rain out, they looked more like babies’ prams than medical apparatus.
It was not until shortly before the turn of the last century that a full-time ambulance service was established in London, with just six horse-drawn units to serve the entire city. The first motorised ambulance appeared in 1904 and could carry a single stretcher at up to 15mph – but it was another eight years before the horses were finally retired. The 999 service was not introduced until 1937, and then only in certain areas.
Elsewhere in Britain, 142 services – some of them still run by local fire services – operated before the National Health Service amalgamated them into 53 dedicated ambulance brigades.
The country had also seen the creation of auxiliary services, especially during the Second World War, with women as young as 16 recruited as drivers.
At the same time, the St John Ambulance Association, whose roots date back to 1877, was administering first aid by uniformed medics at public events. In some parts of the country, it was the only service on call. The organisation also trained young people from 10 to 17 in first aid skills – its most famous post-war recruit being the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, who was made commandant-in-chief of the St John Ambulance Brigade Cadets.