Did Mrs. O'Leary's Cow Really Start the Chicago Fire?
Did a cow really start the Great Chicago Fire of 1871? Was it really Mrs. O'Leary's fault? In this episode we discuss different theories about how the Great Chicago Fire started.
Transcript
Tzeela: Hi I'm Tzeela and I'm 17
Rina: Hi I'm Rina and I'm 15
Dalia: Hey, I'm Dalia and I'm 11
Penina: I'm Penina and I'm 7
All: And this is Things You Thought You Knew About History!
Tzeela: Where we show you the real story behind historical misconceptions.
Rina: Moo
Dalia: Mooooo
Rina: Moo moo
Tzeela: What are you doing???
Dalia: I’m Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and this other cow is blaming me for the Chicago Fire of 1871
Tzeela: What’s the Chicago fire?
Rina: On October 8, 1871, a fire started in southwest Chicago. It burned for close to two days before rain put it out. By then it had destroyed about 17,500 buildings, left a third of the city’s population without homes, and killed probably close to 300 people.
Dalia: A dry summer had made it easy for the fire to spread quickly. The windy weather also carried the fire up in convection spirals, when hot air is carried up in a widening spiral. These spirals, called fire devils, sprayed out burning debris that spread the fire even more.
Tzeela: The firefighters were all tired from a bad fire the night before, and the frequent fires they’d been getting for weeks, making it even harder to put out the fire.
Penina: Did Mrs. O’Leary’s cow really start it?
Tzeela: The fire did start in the O’Leary’s barn, the question is if it was Mrs. O’Leary’s fault.
Dalia: Mrs. Catherine O’Leary and her husband Patrick O’Leary were Irish immigrants living on the west side of Chicago with their 5 kids. Mrs. O’Leary had a dairy business and sold milk from her cows kept in a small barn in the back of their property.
Rina: The story goes that Mrs. O’Leary was in her barn milking a cow when the cow knocked over her lantern and set the barn on fire.
Dalia: Some people claimed she confessed to them, but their stories don’t always match up. Newspapers spread the story of how the fire started, some giving slightly different details, but still blaming Mrs. O’Leary and her cow.
Tzeela: The stories were mean and often anti-immigrant, describing her as an old drunk hag when she really wasn’t and pointing out that she was Irish. One article in the Chicago times even said she started the fire on purpose out of bitterness.
Dalia: However, Mrs. O’Leary testified that she had been in bed by around eight, definitely not in her barn when the fire started at 9. She was woken by Patrick only once a neighbor, leaving a party next door, noticed the burning and alerted them that their barn was on fire.
Rina: The Board of Police and Fire Commissioners held an inquiry to find out how the fire started. It questioned 50 people over 9 days before concluding basically that they have no way of knowing what happened and that the O’Leary’s were probably asleep.
Tzeela: But the public still blamed Mrs. O’Leary for the fire and her life couldn’t go back to normal. The O’Leary’s renters moved out, she was constantly asked for interviews which she understandably denied, and she was even offered a spot in a sideshow. After Mrs. O’Leary died in July 1895, the headline of her obituary in the Chicago Tribune was, “MRS. O’LEARY IS DEAD - SHE WAS NOTED PRINCIPALLY BECAUSE OF HER COW. That Milk-Producing Animal Caused the Fire That Devastated the City in 1871.”
Rina: In 1911, Michael Ahern, a reporter who worked for the Chicago Republican at the time of the fire, said that he and some other reporters made the story up
Dalia: And finally, in 1997 the Chicago City Council exonerated Mrs. O’Leary and her cow of any blame for the fire.
Penina: So what really started the fire?
Tzeela: We can never really know, but there are a few theories. One is that a group of boys snuck into the barn to smoke or gamble and they started the fire.
Rina: “Big Jim” O’Leary, Mrs. O’Leary’s son and a successful saloon owner, claimed the fire was caused by spontaneous combustion newly harvested hay
Dalia: author of The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of O'Leary's Cow Richard F. Bales thinks that a neighbor of the O’Leary’s named Daniel Sullivan, who was a suspect in the original inquiry in 1871, accidentally started the fire.
Tzeela: And there’s even a theory that sparks from a meteor shower lit the barn on fire
Dalia: Yep. Now it’s trivia time. We’ll ask a question then count down from 10 to give you a chance to answer. Ready? Let’s see what you know about cows!
Penina: How many cows are there in the world?
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1
About 1 billion!
Rina: How many states have more cows than humans?
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1
9! South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma
Dalia: What’s the most common breed of cow in the US?
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1
Black Angus Cattle
Tzeela: How many compartments do cow’s stomach’s have?
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1
4
Rina: How many years did the oldest cow on record live?
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1
48
Thanks for listening!
Bye!