We had a similar fuse box in the house where I grew up, except that it had 4 pullouts, 2 above the four fuses and 2 below.
It was a large farmhouse and the plug fuses were roughly divided by a quarter of the house. For example, pull out fuse 1 and lose the power to both floors on the NE quadrant of the house. And one of the fuses also protected all the farm buildings as well as it's portion of the house.
The pull outs controlled the mains, range, dryer, and hot water.
We did have a ground rod, and I'm pretty sure the water pipe was not grounded. I remember getting quite a shock in the bathtub when the well pump developed a short.
(Everything was wired with 2 wire romex, with no ground.)
[This message has been edited by kale (edited 05-15-2003).]
