Thinking of early American urban firefighters (well, as late as the Civil War ones in Gangs of New York) depicted as rough-and-tumble young men who’d take the opportunity to lift goods from the households aflame
And thinking about how the underlying roughneck culture of period port cities would’ve been sailor culture, which had understandings around salvage that a crew who preserved goods from certain destruction was by right entitled to a portion of the wealth saved
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