If Sidney Boulter was expecting a quiet start to his term as Oxford’s chief fire officer, he was quickly disappointed.
Within hours of taking charge on January 1, 1962, alarm bells were ringing and he and his firefighters were in action.
He later recalled: “I took up the appointment at midnight and within an hour, we had a call to a big fire in the city centre. That set the pattern for the rest of the day. I shall never forget those first 24 hours. I wondered what had hit me.”
He didn’t elaborate on his first big challenge but it may have been the aftermath of a house fire from which a couple made a dramatic escape (a Memory Lane story to come).
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Mr Boulter was born in Gravesend, Kent, and spent his early life in the Merchant Navy, sailing to many parts of the world, first as a cadet officer and later as quartermaster.
It was by chance that he joined the fire service. During a period of inactivity at sea in 1937, he met a friend on the Embankment in London.
He later recalled: “He suggested I should join the London Fire Brigade and I decided it might not be a bad idea. I’ve never looked back. It was paid £1 10s for a 96-hour week.”
Chief fire officer Sidney Boulter
As we reported last week, he had a distinguished wartime career, earning the George Medal for risking his life to save bomb victims on two occasions in the capital.
After leaving London, he served in South Wales, at Newport and Cardiff, before being appointed deputy chief of the Worcester city and county brigade.
When Victor Fenn retired as Oxford’s chief fire officer at the end of 1961, Mr Boulter took charge of the city’s two fire stations – in George Street and The Slade – and more than 100 full and part-time staff.
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He led the city brigade until he retired in 1974 and despite the wartime dangers, never had any regrets of being in the fire service.
He said: “I can think of few places in which I’d rather live or work than Oxford. I have always believed that once a man has worked as a fireman, he never really wants to do anything else.
“Our lives are so varied because we never know what each day will bring and Oxford has variations all of its own.
A fireman's axe presented to Sidney Boulter
“Apart from the car factory where there have been a few serious blazes, there are all our old colleges to protect. I have received letters from abroad after we have dealt with a fire at one of these internationally-known old buildings.”
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He went into retirement with plenty of reminders of his career – colleagues presented him with his fireman’s axe mounted on a shield, two chrome sprinkler heads converted into an ashtray and a brass hosepipe nozzle made into a flower vase. Mr Boulter, who died in 2008, also received a Medal of Honour from the Burgomaster of Leiden, Oxford’s Dutch twin city, when he retired for encouraging links between the cities’ two brigades.
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