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Core Text Student Materials
The Great Fire
by Jim Murphy
Dr. Jan et A llen ’s Plu gge d -in
to N onf ict io n
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The Great Fire
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Fire and Ice
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
(From Harper’s Magazine, December 1920)
from Bartleby.com
Snow image ©Shutterstock Images LLC/juliya; flame image ©Shutterstock Images LLC/Rzymu
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The Great Fire
The Intriguing Times
October 8, 1997
Page A1
WHO CAUSED THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE?
A POSSIBLE DEATHBED CONFESSION
By Anthony DeBartolo
CHICAGO - All we know for certain is the approximate time and
place: About 9 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 8, 1871, in or around a small shed
that bordered the alley behind 137 DeKoven St.
Everything else we’ve heard about the Chicago Fire’s origin—the
cow, the comet, and most recently, Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan—is
“interesting, but ultimately unprovable theory,” says Carl Smith, a
Northwestern University professor and expert on the Chicago Fire.
Ald. Edward M. Burke, though, seems so convinced Peg Leg did it
that last month he introduced a resolution in the City Council exonerating Catherine O’Leary and her bovine of all blame. Monday, the
Council’s Police and Fire Committee passed the resolution and sent it
to the full Council for consideration.
The resolution was based on research by amateur historian Dick
Bales, a Wheaton attorney. After comparing Peg Leg’s testimony
(Sullivan told an investigative hearing convened after the holocaust that
he was the first on the fire scene) with land records, Bales theorized
Sullivan, a neighbor of Mrs. O’Leary, lied about where he was standing
when he initially saw the blaze. That’s led some to conclude he was in
the barn actually causing the trouble.
But before officially censuring Peg Leg, we should at least consider
one other possible suspect: The only credible individual ever reputed to
have admitted, in effect, “I did it.” His name was Louis M. Cohn.
Although fire experts like Bales and Smith have never heard the name
—and, says Bales, “I’ve read absolutely everything”—gambling historians have. Because according to Cohn, the flames that left 300 people
dead and another 100,000 homeless and destroyed $192 million in
property were sparked by the hottest craps game this town will ever see.
Cohn’s claim first surfaced Sept. 28, 1944 when his $35,000 estate,
bequeathed in his name to Northwestern University’s Medill School of
Journalism, was ceremoniously handed over to Kenneth Olson, dean of
the school. The university’s news service issued a one-page press release
at the time.
In it, we learn that Cohn, a retired importer, “was regarded as an
authority in Chinese customs, political history and art” and “became
intimately acquainted with Chinese royalty.”
“A renowned traveler,” Cohn crossed the Pacific 42 times, the
Atlantic 29 times, and “boasted of having been in every country in the
world at least twice.”
A less flattering boast is dispatched in the last paragraph, which
begins: “Mr. Cohn had an interesting connection with the origin of the
Great Chicago Fire.”
“He steadfastly maintained that the traditional story of the cause of
the fire—Mrs. O’Leary’s cow that kicked over a lantern—was untrue.
He asserted that he and Mrs. O’Leary’s son, in the company of several
other boys, were shooting dice in the hayloft … by the light of a
lantern, when one of the boys accidently overturned the lantern, thus
setting the barn afire. Mr. Cohn never denied that when the other boys
fled, he stopped long enough to scoop up the money.”
According to his Cook County death certificate, Cohn would have
been 18 years old at the time of the fire. He was born March 10, 1853
in Breslau, Prussia (part of modern-day Germany), also the birthplace
of his unnamed father.
He died in 1942 a few weeks before his 89th birthday, succumbing
in Passavant Hospital after a lengthy bout with kidney cancer. He survived his wife, Bertha, by many years, had no children and was buried
in Rosehill Cemetery.
Mr. Solid Citizen
In his will, Cohn comes across as a solid, sensible, civic-minded citizen, despite an apparent aversion to organized religions. Among his
last requests: “The obsequies to be performed over my remains be simple yet dignified; that my remains be placed in a casket which shall be
unostentatious and moderate in cost; that the services at my funeral be
conducted by members of Chicago Lodge No. 4 the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, U.S.A. and that no religious services of any
character whatsoever be conducted …”
Continued
following
page.
Article continued
onon
thethe
following
page.
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The Intriguing Times
October 8, 1997
WHO CAUSED THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE?
Continued from previous page.
As the endowment indicates, Cohn died a relatively wealthy man.
Court documents tell us he left behind $2,618.30 in cash; $4,753.91
in personal property, and considerable equity in a seven-unit Hyde
Park apartment building. He also owned several thousand shares of
worthless stock, primarily in speculative gold mines.
While Cohn requested perpetual scholarships be established in his
name, his will cited the University of Chicago and/or Northwestern
University as possible beneficiaries. No single school or specific area of
study was selected.
His estate’s executors—Judge Michael Feinburg, Arthur Berg and
Morris Neufeld, close friends of Cohn’s and also beneficiaries of his will
—chose Medill. Administered as a need-based subsidy for Illinois journalism students, the Louis M. Cohn Scholarship fund is still continuing to bestow grants. So far in 1997, it has doled out about $12,000 in
interest income, according to university sources.
In 1942, the day after Cohn’s will was admitted to probate, the
Tribune briefly acknowledged its scholarship provision. Two days later,
the Sun-Times reported that the estate went to Medill, ending its twoparagraph story with this kicker: Cohn “claimed to have been present
in the barn of Mrs. O’Leary on the night of the Chicago Fire.” The
Tribune, which essentially founded Medill 23 years earlier, made no
mention of the gift or the fire.
A gambling story
Cohn’s alleged involvement in the disaster was not publicly acknowledged again until gambling historian Alan Wykes’ 1964 book, The
Complete Illustrated Guide to Gambling. In a chapter headed “Seven
Come Eleven,” Wykes reports Cohn’s $35,000 gift to Northwestern,
adding that the estate was handed over “together with the full story of
the ‘truth’ about the Chicago Fire.” Wykes explains that Cohn’s alleged
admission is unverified, “but, true or not,” he writes, “it has taken its
place in the colorful history of craps.”
In his retelling of Cohn’s claim, Wykes also significantly expands
upon it. “In his will,” the author writes, “Cohn added a postscript to
his story in the form of a deadpan comment that could have been made
only by a man with the unswerving single-mindedness of the dedicated gambler: ‘When I knocked over the lantern, I was winning.’ “
Attempts to reach Wykes through his London-based publisher,
Aldus Books, Ltd., and New York’s Doubleday and Co., which handled
the American edition, were unsuccessful.
According to a contemporary university spokesperson, no additional records regarding Cohn’s bequest can be found. Dean Olson, who
might have shed some light, died in 1967.
Cohn’s recorded nine-page will, signed five months before his death,
contains no reference to the fire. There is, however, reason to question
the document’s authenticity.
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Page A2
It seems Cohn didn’t properly sign or date what was represented as
the will’s last page. Instead, he signed all nine pages in their margins,
but didn’t affix his signature to the bottom of the final page to confirm
that the preceding pages contained all he had to say.
After briefly questioning the will’s witnesses, the probate judge in the
case, Judge John F. O’Connell, seemed satisfied by the will’s legitimacy. In retrospect, perhaps he shouldn’t have been.
It is entirely possible that out of civic concerns, ethnic pride or a
sense of benevolent protectiveness, Cohn’s friends thought it best to
keep his reputed admission, true or not, as private as possible.
What is certain is the plausibility of Cohn’s alleged tale. It takes place
at a time when Chicago was not only the heartland’s seaport to the
world, but the most prominent gambling center this side of New
Orleans. Games of chance flourished, especially among the immigrant
working class.
One can, without a huge leap of imagination, place a youthful Cohn
near the scene of the crime. Chicago’s 1870 census registered 32 Cohn
households. The male heads of three of them reported Prussia as their
birthplace. All lived within walking distance of the O’Learys. One, a
cigarmaker who resided with another male and three females at 343
1/2 Park Ave., was even named Louis.
As for Cohn’s claim that he was gambling with Mrs. O’Leary’s son,
one immediately thinks of James, the youngest of her two boys. Based
upon church records, the lad would have been almost 9 years old.
James grew up to be “Big Jim” O’Leary, a notorious gambler and
pioneer off-track betting operator. In his DuPage County OTB parlor,
he took bets on races run at five tracks. His Long Beach, Indiana-based
OTB, meanwhile, had barbed wire, armed guards, vicious canines and
secret tunnels.
O’Leary’s largest city operation, a sportsbook and casino at 4183-85
S. Halsted St., was near the Stock Yards’ main gate. As his 1925
Tribune obituary noted, the “gambling resort was the best known place
of its kind in Chicago.”
After 126 years, with the trail ice cold and all witnesses long gone,
we’ll surely never know the truth about the Great Fire’s origins. But
those now convinced Peg Leg was involved should at least reconsider
what he was doing in the barn.
The odds may be that he was losing to Cohn.
© 1997 Hyde Park Media
Used with permission.
http://www.hydeparkmedia.com/cohn.html
Image ©Shutterstock Images LLC/Nathan DeMarse
©2009 by Recorded Books, LLC
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The Great Fire
CHICAGO
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
Chicago Poems 1916
HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse. and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of
Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
from Bartleby.com
Image ©Shutterstock Images LLC/Stephen Finn
©2009 by Recorded Books, LLC
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Old Mother Leary
(or “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” or “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”)
Original version; written by: Unknown, copyright unknown
Late one night
When we were all in bed
Old Mother Leary
Left a lantern in the shed
And when the cow kicked it over,
She winked her eye and said,
“There’ll be a hot time
In the old town, tonight.”
Spoken:
“FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!”
[Expanded version, most familiar in Chicago:]
5 nights ago,
when we were all in bed
Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed
and when the cow kicked it over,
she winked her eye and said
it’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!
FIRE FIRE FIRE!
4 nights ago,
when we were all in bed
Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed
and when the cow kicked it over,
she winked her eye and said
it’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!
FIRE FIRE FIRE!
3 nights ago,
when we were all in bed
Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed
and when the cow kicked it over,
she winked her eye and said
it’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!
FIRE FIRE FIRE!
2 nights ago,
when we were all in bed
Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed
and when the cow kicked it over,
she winked her eye and said
it’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!
FIRE FIRE FIRE
1 night ago,
when we were all in bed
Old Mrs. Leary left the lantern in the shed
and when the cow kicked it over,
she winked her eye and said
it’ll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight!
FIRE FIRE FIRE!
Note -- other “rounds” can be concluded with:
* Water, Water, Water!
* Jump, Lady, Jump!
* Save My Child, Save My Child!
Listen to the tune at: http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/leary.htm
NIEHS Kids’ Pages are supported by the NIEHS Office of Communications and Public Liaison,
PO Box 12233, NH-10, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709. Telephone: (919) 541-3345.
This page was last modified and reviewed for accessibility by the NIEHS Office of Management on 01/22/2008 14:22:32.
Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
Office of Inspector General, DHHS
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The Great Fire
Did the Cow Do It?
A New Look at the Cause of the Great Chicago Fire
by Richard F. Bales
The Exoneration of Mrs. O’Leary
Even as the fire raged, Mrs. O’Leary and her bovine companion were being blamed for causing the fire that
destroyed the heart of Chicago. This theory appears to
have had its origin in the October 9 issue of the Chicago
Evening Journal, which reported that “the fire broke out
on the corner of DeKoven and Twelfth streets, at
about 9 o’clock on Sunday evening, being
caused by a cow kicking over a lamp
in a stable in which a woman
was milking.”
Mrs. O’Leary steadfastly
denied causing the fire.
Both she and her husband
stated at the inquiry
investigation that they
were in bed at the time
the fire broke out.
Nonetheless, the story of
the cow and the lantern
spread with the intensity of
the fire itself. Countless books
and articles have been written
since 1871, with many of them placing blame for the Great Chicago Fire on
the weary shoulders of Mrs. Catherine O’Leary.
But those writers who maintain that she started the fire but
then later lied about it during the inquiry fail to take into
account the fact that under ordinary circumstances the blaze
initially could have been extinguished relatively easily and
quickly. Unfortunately, because of an unlikely series of
events, an ordinary barn fire was transformed into what Fire
Marshal Robert A. Williams called a “hurricane of fire and
cinders.” These seven factors were:
1. The firemen were exhausted from fighting a fire the
night before at the Lull & Holmes planing mill, located on
Canal Street on the city’s West Side. The fire had started at
about 11:00 on Saturday evening and firemen fought the
fire all night and through Sunday afternoon. Many of them
had not eaten and had virtually no sleep before being called
out to the O’Leary barn.
2. As a result of this Saturday night fire, the firemen’s
equipment, including the fire hose, was not in the best of
condition. Furthermore, the hose that was available was in
short supply.
3. Mathias Schafer was the fire department watchman
stationed in the cupola in the courthouse tower. His job
was to scan the city for fires; upon sighting one, he would,
via a voice tube, give the location of the fire to a telegraph
operator in the third floor central fire alarm telegraph
office. The operator would then strike the
appropriate fire alarm box, which
would ring the courthouse bell
and bells in the various fire
department company houses
located throughout the
city. On the evening of
October 8 Schafer
noticed a light in the
southwest. He called
down to William J.
Brown, the night operator, and told him to
strike box 342, which was
located on the corner of
Canalport Avenue and
Halsted Street, about one mile
southwest of the O’Leary barn.
Immediately thereafter, as Schafer
examined the growing blaze from his location
in the courthouse tower, he realized that he had made a
mistake. He called back down to Brown and asked him to
strike box 319, which was located at Johnson and Twelfth
streets, closer to the fire, but still seven and one-half blocks
away. Brown, though, refused to do so, stating that he
“could not alter it now.” He believed that since box 342
was in the line of the fire, the approaching firemen would
see the flames anyway, and he did not want to confuse the
firemen by striking a different alarm box. As a result,
engine companies that would otherwise have immediately
answered the alarm were delayed. Many of the firemen
later maintained that had the alarm been given correctly,
the fire could have been extinguished relatively quickly.
-- page 1 -©2009 by Recorded Books, LLC
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4. Brown may have seen the fire as much as one-half
hour before Schafer called down to him. Brown, however,
inexplicably failed to sound the alarm, choosing instead to
wait for Schafer to confirm the fire’s existence. This also
caused a delay in the fire department’s arrival at the scene
of the fire.
5. William Lee lived two houses east of the O’Leary home
at 133 DeKoven Street, a house owned by Walter Forbes.
Upon seeing the fire, Lee ran southeast approximately three
and a half blocks to Bruno Goll’s drug store, located at the
northwest corner of Canal and Twelfth Streets. Fire alarm
box number 296 was located at the store. Lee later claimed
that not only did Goll refuse to turn in an alarm, he also
prevented Lee from doing so. Goll, on the
other hand, stated in an affidavit that
upon the requests of two men he
turned in not one but two
Wasn’t me.
alarms. This may or may not
have been the case; regardless, neither alarm registered at the central office
in the courthouse. As a
result, the firemen were
delayed in arriving at
the O’Leary barn.
6. Fire alarm box number 295 was located only
about two and a half blocks
northwest of the O’Leary
barn, at the corner of Des
Plaines Street and Taylor Street.
Thus, this alarm box was even closer to
the fire than the alarm at Goll’s drug store.
Despite its close proximity, the O’Learys and their neighbors apparently did not attempt to turn in an alarm at this
location. Consequently, firemen were delayed again in
responding to the fire.
7. Chicago Engine No. 5 was one of the first engines to
appear at the scene of the fire, having responded to the call
for box 342. Shortly after arriving at the fire, however, the
engine broke down. Even though it was repaired minutes
later, albeit temporarily, the damage was done. In that short
interim, the fire crossed Taylor Street, and as the flames
traveled northeast, many believed that the fire was already
out of control.
One fireman stated that at first the blaze “was a nasty fire,
but not a particularly bad one, and with the help of two
more engines we could have knocked it cold.” Thus, when
fire broke out in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn, there would have
been no reason for her to think that this fire would be of any
great consequence. But as another fireman unfortunately
noted, “From the beginning of that fatal fire everything
went wrong,” and the above factors melded together to
become a seven-act comedy of errors.
It is these seven factors that exonerate Mrs. O’Leary. When
fire broke out in her barn, there would have been no reason for her to think that this fire would eventually destroy
Chicago. Mrs. O’Leary ran a milk business
in her neighborhood; in her barn were
five cows, a calf, and a horse. The
barn also contained at least
two tons of hay, and there
were two tons of coal in an
adjoining shed, south of
the barn. A new wagon
stood nearby in the
alley. The O’Leary
property was not
insured. Had she been
in the barn when the
fire broke out, it seems
unlikely that she would
have run back into her home
and allow her property to both
literally and figuratively go up in
smoke. Instead, she would have cried
for help and attempted to extinguish what
was then just a minor barn fire and save the building and
its contents.
from http://www.thechicagofire.com/exoneration.php
©2004 Richard F. Bales
Used with permission.
Adapted from The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow
Richard F. Bales by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611,
Jefferson, NC 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com.
©2002
Images ©Shutterstock Images LLC/imaginatoon
-- page 2 --
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The Great Fire
From the Ruins Our City Shall Rise
by George F. Root
A song of hope and resurrection.
1. Ruins! Ruins! far and wide
From the river and lake, to the prairie side,
Dreary, dreary and darkness falls,
While the autumn winds moan
thro’ the blackened walls.
Chorus a tempo
But see! the bright rift in the cloud …
And hear! the great voice from the shore …
Our city shall rise! yes she shall rise
Queen of the west once more …
2. Ruins! Ruins! street and square
In a hopeless confusion are mingled there,
Strangely, strangely our old haunts fade
In the cast open waste that the fire has made.
3. Ruins! Ruins! naught is here
But the wreck of our homes, and our
hopes most dear,
Fallen, fallen in ashes gray
Where they lie with our wealth and
our pride to-day.
The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory
Copyright © 1996 by the Chicago Historical Society
and the Trustees of Northwestern University
Last revised 10-8-96
©2009 by Recorded Books, LLC
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Janet Allen Gazette
THE CHICAGO FIRE
142
Though Mrs. O’Leary’s unfortunate cow historically has borne the blame for the Great Chicago
Fire of 1871, no one is really sure how the fire began. But by the time the “Great Conflagration”
ended, it was one of the greatest disasters of the nineteenth century.
The fire began around 9 p.m. Sunday, October 8, 1871, in a barn behind the house of
Patrick and Catherine O’Leary at 13 DeKoven Street. No one knows what started the fire, but it
would not have taken much to set the city
ablaze. Chicago was constructed mostly of
wood, with 88 miles of wood-paved streets,
561 miles of wooden sidewalks, tens of
thousands of wooden buildings, and acres of
lumber mills and factories. Only an inchand-a-half of rain had fallen since
Independence Day, and the drought, reckless
construction, and poor preparation made
the city vulnerable.
Despite these liabilities, firefighters might
have contained the fire except for a series of
terrible failures. The firemen, exhausted from
having contained a large fire the day before,
were at first sent to wrong the address. When
they finally arrived at the O’Learys the blaze
was out of control, and strong winds were
driving the fire straight to the center of town.
Individuals stayed in some of the buildings because the structures was supposedly
fireproof, and many spectators rushed downtown to see the blaze. They all soon realized
they were in danger, and panicked crowds
filled the streets, cutting off escape routes. Wooden streets and sidewalks burned. Even the river
caught fire as grease on the water ignited and traveled to ships, setting them ablaze.
The fire burned for two days and only died out when rain began to fall on the morning of
October 10. The blaze destroyed 34 blocks of the city, killed 300 people, left 100,000 people
homeless, and caused $200 million worth of property damage.
Sources:
http://www.chicagohs.org/history/fire.html
http://www.chicagohs.org/fire/prefire/index.html
by Lorrie Castaneda; ©2008 by Recorded Books, LLC
Image ©Jupiterimages Corporation
©2009 by Recorded Books, LLC
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The Great Fire
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1266.htm
©2006 Jupiterimages Corporation
Engines
of
Our
Ingenuity
No. 1266: CHICAGO FIRE
by John H. Lienhard
Today, a new look at an old fire. The University of Houston’s College of Engineering presents this series about the
machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
The great Chicago fire began around nine on the windy Sunday evening of Oct. 8th, 1871. It didn’t burn itself out
until Monday night. Rainfall had been only 28 percent of normal that summer, and Chicago’s population had recently grown by a factor of ten.
Thirty years earlier, the modern balloon-frame house had come out of Chicago. That’s the wooden structure with
light joists and cross-members that we use in houses today. Chicago had become an overcrowded, wood-built, bonedry city with a poor fire department.
The fire destroyed over three square miles of city, killed 250 people, and left 100,000 homeless. If one thing hadn’t
started the fire, another would’ve. But, still, we wonder what did start it.
My 1970 Encyclopaedia Britannica says the cause was unknown. My 1897 Britannica says the cause was an overturned lamp. When I was young, the great urban legend told how the fire began when Mrs. O’Leary milked her cow,
and the cow kicked over her lantern.
Now Richard Bayles, who works for the Chicago Title Insurance Company, has gone back into his company’s old
files looking for Mrs. O’Leary. He found that she lived in a small rear house off DeKoven Street. Behind her house
was a barn where she kept five cows. She sold milk to the neighborhood. Bayles has gone through testimony from the
hearing after the fire.
Pegleg Sullivan, a young man with a wooden leg, testified he’d been on the far side of DeKoven Street and seen fire
break out in the O’Leary barn—nothing about Mrs. O’Leary or cows kicking lanterns. Sullivan had a lot to say about
that night. He told how he’d run across the street to the barn and released the animals.
But old insurance maps show a house and a high fence blocking Sullivan’s view of the barn. And are we to believe
he ran 200 feet on a wooden leg, then fought his way through the fire in the barn?
Sullivan also testified that he went to the barn every evening to feed his mother’s cow—also in Mrs. O’Leary’s
barn. So Sullivan had been in the barn himself. Bayles thinks he started the fire by dropping his pipe—or maybe by
kicking over a lantern.
In any case, Mrs. O’Leary had been home in bed when the fire started. But the fire department ended the hearings
quickly—before it could come out that they’d been taking bribes. They’d been looking after places that could afford
bribe money at the expense of Mrs. O’Leary’s working-class neighborhood.
As for Mrs. O’Leary: the myth about the kicked lantern grew as the tabloid press went after her. She finally had to flee
to Michigan. In those days, it was the Irish who occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder, and Mrs. O’Leary made a
good target. But Chicago really burned because all the factors favored a fire—and no one was paying proper attention.
I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
For more on the Chicago fire see Episodes 61 and 836 and the website http://www.chicagohs.org/fire/. For more on the balloon frame house see Episode 779.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is copyright © 1988-1997 by John H. Lienhard.
©2009 by Recorded Books, LLC
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Escape from
the Blaze
Claire Innes was woken by a pounding on her bedroom door and
her mother’s shouts. A huge fire was approaching their home, and the
family had to flee.
Claire ran downstairs, where her parents and sibling were desperately throwing a few of the family’s belongings into a cart. Claire grabbed a bundle, and the
family fled, running toward the Chicago River.
The strong wind filled the air with burning bits of wood thrown by waves of fire
and superheated air. The fragments landed on buildings, sparking new fires and
spreading the blaze.
The streets were filled with frantic people and the crowd pushed Claire along. She
managed to stay with her family until a man grabbed her bundle and tried to pull it from
her. Another man intervened and stopped the thief, but the delay had separated Claire from
her family.
Claire waited, assuming her parents would return for her. But another building caught fire and
the frightened crowd surged forward, forcing Claire from her place. She ran down an alley, hoping
to see her family in the group of people rushing by. But the crowd passed and Claire was alone.
All around her, buildings were ablaze. Claire ran to follow another crowd into an alley and
stopped to catch her breath. When she looked up again, the fire had cut off her escape. She quickly
hid behind a pile of bricks and buried her face in the dirt, using her bundle to cover her head. The
fire burned around her, lighting her dress, but she managed to extinguish the flames.
After the fire passed, Claire continued searching for her family. Finally, exhausted, and not knowing what else to do, she decided to return to her home.
Her family’s house had been reduced to a pile of brick and ash. But, luckily, Claire spotted her
father standing nearby, and she was reunited with her family.
Source: http://nationalgeographic.org/ngkids/9809/chicago/chicago.html
by Lorrie Castaneda; ©Recorded Books Image ©Jupiterimages Corporation
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The Great Fire
The Great Chicago Fire
by Julia A. Moore
The great Chicago Fire, friends,
Will never be forgot;
In the history of Chicago
It will remain a darken spot.
It was a dreadful horrid sight
To see that City in flames;
But no human aid could save it,
For all skill was tried in vain.
In the year of 1871,
In October on the 8th,
The people in that City, then
Was full of life, and great.
Less than four days it lay in ruins,
That garden City, so great
Lay smouldering in ashes,
In a sad and pitiful state.
It was a sad, sad scene indeed,
To see the fire arise,
And hear the crackling of the flames
As it almost reached the skies,
And sadder still, to hear the moans,
Of people in the flames
Cry for help, and none could get,
Ah, die where they remained.
To see the people run for life;
Up and down the blazing streets,
To find then, their escape cut off
By the fiery flaming sheets,
And others hunting for some friend
That perhaps they never found,
Such weeping, wailing, never was known,
For a thousand miles around.
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Some people were very wealthy
On the morning of the 10th.
But at the close of the evening,
Was poor, but felt content,
Glad to escape from harm with life
With friends they loved so well,
Some will try to gain more wisdom,
By the sad sight they beheld.
Five thousand people were homeless,
Sad wanderers in the streets,
With no shelter to cover them,
And no food had they to eat.
They wandered down by the lake side,
Lay down on the cold damp ground,
So tired and weary and homeless,
So the rich, the poor, was found.
Mothers with dear little infants,
Some clinging to the breast.
People of every description
All laid down there to rest,
With the sky as their covering,
Ah, pillows they had none.
Sad, oh sad, it must have been,
For those poor homeless ones.
Neighboring Cities sent comfort,
To the poor lone helpless ones,
And God will not forget them
In all the years to come.
Now the City of Chicago
Is built up anew once more,
And may it never be visited
With such a great fire no more.
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The Great Fire
Text Connection
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The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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Text Connection
The Great Fire
The New York Times
August, 17, 1997
Page A1
Barn Door Reopened on Fire
After Legend Has Escaped
by PAM BELLUCK
Late one night, when we were all in bed,
Mrs. O’Leary lit a lantern in the shed.
Her cow kicked it over,
Then winked her eye and said,
“There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!”
Now it can be told: Mrs. O’Leary and her cow have got a bum
rap. Somebody else may have started the Great Chicago Fire.
So, at least, says a title insurance company lawyer, who has
spent every other Saturday for the last two years burrowing into the
underbelly of Chicago’s most grievous disaster and most popular
legend—indeed, one of the most notorious yarns of urban
American folklore.
Richard F. Bales, a 45-year-old employee of the Chicago Title
Insurance Company, contends that his research throws water on the
O’Leary cow-conflagration theory.
He says evidence suggests Mrs. O’Leary was not in the barn
milking her cow that night 126 years ago, but was home in bed.
And he says there is another likely culprit: a relatively unknown
fellow named Daniel (Peg Leg) Sullivan, a one-legged horse-cart
driver who was a neighbor of Mrs. O’Leary and who may, in fact,
have been in her barn, lighting a lantern or smoking a pipe on Oct.
8, 1871, when one-third of Chicago burned down, 300 people
were killed and 100,000 were left homeless.
stood where, how the doors were positioned and where the fences
stood. Then he sat down in the Chicago Historical Society archives
with his laptop computer and began to transcribe the 1,000 pages
of the official inquiry conducted by the Chicago Fire Department.
He was struck that Peg Leg Sullivan seemed to have a lot to say.
Mr. Sullivan said he had been in front of another neighbor’s house
and had seen the fire break out in the O’Leary barn. But Mr. Bales
discovered that the title records showed that at least one house,
maybe two, plus an eight-foot-high fence, would have blocked Mr.
Sullivan’s view.
Mr. Sullivan also told the fire department that he had run to
the barn, had tried to rescue the animals and then had run to get
help—all on his wooden leg.
“It does not seem possible that Sullivan would be able to hobble 193 feet into a burning barn that was full of hay and wood shavings, struggle with animals, fall down, but still ultimately free a
calf,” Mr. Bales wrote in an article published in the Spring issue of
The Illinois State Historical Society journal.
Mr. Bales thinks that Mr. Sullivan, who also testified that he
went to the O’Leary barn every evening to feed the cow that his
mother kept there, might have been in the barn and inadvertently
caused the fire himself.
“There’s no smoking gun, but I think I have enough ancillary
smoke,” Mr. Bales said this week as he stood outside the old water
tower that was one of the few structures to survive the fire.
Mr. Bales says he thinks that Mr. Sullivan “dropped a pipe or
maybe dropped a lantern,” adding: “A third of Chicago burned
down. You can’t blame him for being afraid to tell.”
Mr. Bales is not the first person with a hunch that Mrs.
O’Leary might be innocent. But he realized a couple of years ago
that, for all the speculation, no one had ever looked in depth at
some crucial pieces of evidence. No one, for example, had been able
to map the area around DeKoven Street, where the fire started in
the O’Leary barn.
To be fair, Mr. Sullivan was not the one trying to implicate
Mrs. O’Leary, who kept five cows and made rounds selling milk in
the working-class Irish neighborhood. Indeed, Mr. Sullivan said his
calls for help roused Mrs. O’Leary and her husband—Catherine
and Patrick—out of bed.
Mr. Bales had access to the property records kept by Chicago
Title. He dug them up and figured out what houses and barns
But Mr. Bales says he thinks the fire department, in an effort to
close the case quickly and cover up what reportedly was its own
Article continued on the following page.
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Text Connection
The New York Times
August, 17, 1997
Page A2
Barn Door Reopened on Fire After Legend Has Escaped
Continued from previous page.
bumbling, booze-drenched, bribe-influenced manner of quenching
the fire in certain neighborhoods and not in others, neglected to ask
Mr. Sullivan about inconsistencies in his story.
The official panel demurred on reaching a conclusion.
Still, the legend of Mrs. O’Leary and her cow rocketed around
the world, elasticized and altered along the way.
A 1938 movie, In Old Chicago, starred Tyrone Power, Don
Ameche and, in an Oscar-winning role, Alice Brady, as the firestarting cow milker, who was called Molly O’Leary in the film.
Lyrics about Mrs. O’Leary were written to the tune of “Hot
Time in the Old Town Tonight.”
In the telling of the tale, the cow went through various identity crises. In most versions of the story, her name was Daisy; in others it was Gwendolyn or Madeline. (Her real name, if she had one,
has been lost to history.) There was even a postcard circulating in
the years after the fire that putatively showed the culpable cow—
except the animal was a steer, complete with long horns.
And as a symbol of Chicago, the cow has endured in poetry, paintings, product commercials, tavern names and gift-shop trinkets.
“One of the most remarkable things about this is the way that
the city embraced its own destruction,” said Carl Smith, a professor
of English and American Studies at Northwestern University, and
author of a book about the Great Fire, Urban Disorder and the
Shape of Belief (University of Chicago Press, 1995). “It is one of the
nodes of memory in American popular culture, another Kennedy
theory, another Lincoln theory.”
Mrs. O’Leary herself was both vilified and sought after by the
1870’s incarnations of paparazzi and the tabloid press; she reportedly refused to sell her story or her photograph, and, mortified
by descriptions of her as lazy or slow-witted or as a woman with
a husband who made her do the milking, she moved to Michigan
for a time.
“On one hand it can be seen in a kind of sinister way, antiIrish, anti-woman, anti-Catholic, anti-poor,” Professor Smith
said of the O’Leary legend. “On the other hand, it became integrated in the Chicago booster mythology: This is the city that a
cow kicked over.”
On occasion, other theories have been floated.
There was an allegation that the fire was started by an exiled
member of the Paris Commune who wanted to “take revenge on the
capitalist class,” but missed and burned down mostly working-class
houses, said Karen Sawislak, an assistant professor of history at
148
Stanford University and the author of a 1995 book on the Chicago
fire, Smoldering City: Chicago and the Great Fire (University of
Chicago Press). There was the rumor that the fire had been prophesied by an American anarchist.
And, in 1985, Mel Waskin, who worked for a science filmmaking company, wrote a book called Mrs. O’Leary’s Comet! Cosmic
Causes of the Great Chicago Fire, which said the fire was caused by
pieces of a comet hitting Chicago.
Both Professors Smith and Sawislak say they think the mystery will never be solved, but they add that Mr. Bales might be
onto something.
“It’s really a very impressive piece of historical detective work,”
Professor Sawislak said. “And I think he has gone at it with sources
and skills that are unique.”
Professor Smith, who last year wrote the text for a Chicago
Historical Society Web site in honor of the 125th anniversary of the
Great Fire, said he would very likely include Mr. Bales’s thesis in an
updated version of the site.
“Dick Bales has done a very careful and suggestive investigation,” Professor Smith said.
Will the Peg Leg Sullivan theory catch on?
Will Steven Spielberg option the Illinois State Historical
Society journal article?
Mr. Bales knows that legends have a longer shelf life than facts.
But, with less than 100 pages of the fire department inquiry
left to transcribe, he is working on a book he hopes will become
accepted history.
And a month and a half ago, in the city’s upscale Lincoln Park
neighborhood, came the first sign that the man with the wooden leg
might yet earn a spot in the Chicago pantheon of infamy, right up
there with Al Capone and John Dillinger: A new bar and restaurant
opened—the first to be called Peg Leg Sullivan’s.
Belluck, P. “Barn Door Reopened on Fire After Legend Has Escaped.” The New York
Times, National Report, Sunday, August 17, 1997, p. 10.
From the New York Times, August, 17 ©1997 by The New York Times. All rights reserved.
Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.
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