October 7, 2017 • 28 mins
In this week's SYSK Select episode, Josh and Chuck find who's probably to blame for the Great Chicago Fire. The newspapers of the day reported that a cow (or perhaps its owner) was responsible for a fire that burned half of Chicago in 1871. Yet in 1997 Mrs. O'Leary and her cow were exonerated.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everyone, this is Chuck and welcome to Stuff
You Should Know Saturday selects. UM picking this one this
week from July twelve. Did a cow start the Great
Chicago Fire? Uh? You all know I love my history episodes,
especially those where we can set something straight that history
you might have gotten wrong um in class, at least
(00:21):
as a kid. And uh we talk a great length
today about the Great Chicago Fire, one of the great
tragedies in American history. UM, give it a listen, and
I hope you enjoy it. I hope you have a
great weekend. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
(00:43):
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck O'Brien. Uh. I
guess that makes me the cow. That's the stuff you
should know. Daisy the cow? Is that the boarding count? No,
(01:06):
that's Lizzie. No, they wouldn't have named the boring cow Lizzie.
That'd be bad ad marketing move. Elsie. Yeah, apparently this
cow was either Daisy, Madaline or Gwendoline. There's been different accounts. Well,
one of the counts there wasn't even hers. Who's who
are we talking about? Maybe we should clear everybody in
um Chuck, have you ever seen fire? Yes, well there
(01:31):
happened to be one akin to what you saw, except
there was massive as a matter of fact, Chuck, let's
go back in the way back machine. Oh yes, it's
been a while. All right, here, blow blow the dust
off flex capacitor of flexing man Jerry hated that. I
(01:52):
think it's still working. Let me press a couple of buttons.
Here's all right, all right, here we go in Chicago.
End of the year, Oh yeah, eighteens. Anymore, let's go
the end of the date, October eight. It's a Sunday.
Maybe we should go back on a Saturday and stop it.
(02:15):
I'm not supposed to do that, that's right. Contract, it's
based on continuing yet. Okay, so here we are, Chuck,
what a dump? Yeah, it smells like the death of
cows and the manure. Can't they excrete? Because Chicago is
a huge stock carreed town. If you can't tell the
World's Fair is twenty two years off, Ghostbusters is a
(02:37):
hundred and thirteen years away. Did you just do that
in your head that this is just like basically the
middle of nowhere? Temporally speaking, it's yeah, okay, eighteen seventy
one four mins. Eighteen seventy one is a thirteen? Okay?
Am I wrong? No? I think it's right. Okay, man,
we just had a math argument and I can't do
(02:59):
then cargo in the nineteenth century. You think we're throwing
darts or something. So anyway, there's there's some there's some
things I want to point out to you, Chuck. Do
you see the streets are paved with wood? Yeah, and
the sidewalk we're on is wooden. Yeah, and like the
structures around here all would everything's would. I want you
to make note of that. Also make note of the temperature.
(03:23):
It's October, and yet it's like in the eighties, right,
it's pretty hot and it's been really it was really
dry this summer. Dry. Do you see all this dust?
A lot of it again is dry cow manure just
kind of floating around? Um. But it's also it's because
there there hasn't been any rain at all. Okay, yeah,
are you ready again? Yeah, let's get out of here.
(03:43):
Is that a steak first? The milk steak? All right?
Are we back? And we're back? Okay? Okay, So Chuck, um,
that's pretty good steak. Huh yeah, nothing like a good
milk steak. So what was about to happen? And I
really do feel for these people for not being able
(04:03):
to stop it, especially the three hundred who are about
to die. Three hundred people will die because we were
too busy filling our faces with steak rather than warning anybody.
But that's the that's the way of history. That's right.
You can't change it. Um. What's about to happen is
what's known as the Great Chicago Fire of October eight um.
(04:25):
Three people will die, three point five square miles of
the city will be utterly destroyed, eighteen thousand structures. Yeah,
I've got some stats here if I may please. Because
you hear about the Great Chicago Fire in the eight hundreds,
is easy now to say you're like, oh, yeah, that
was the heck of fire. But dude, it was insane
how big this fire was. I know the West Division
(04:49):
they were divided into two divisions back in the day.
Hundred acres burned. Uh, five buildings, two thousand, two hundred
and fifty people homeless. South Division four hundred and sixty
acres burned. Uh. This is like where all the expensive
stuff was. This is where March County seat, the courthouse,
(05:10):
the newspapers, the lofts, is the banks, all the good stuff.
Thirty six hundred fifty buildings, hotels, twenty one thousand people homeless.
When you say buildings, you're saying utterly destroyed, burned to
the ground, burned to the ground. UM North Division most devastating.
Four hundred and seventy acres burned out of the two thousand,
(05:32):
five hundred acres in that division, so almost the whole
division burned. Uh, thirteen thousand buildings burned. I'm sorry, Yeah,
thirteen thousand buildings burned, seventy four thousand homeless in total.
Because Molly, she did a good job, but she really
didn't hammer home how severe this was. In total, two
thousand one four acres burned, UM, seventeen thousand, four hundred
(05:55):
fifty buildings burned to the ground, and almost a hundred
thousand people, which is a third of this city. We're homeless.
And if you go and type in Google Earth Great
Chicago Fire and hit images, it has a picture of
modern day Chicago and it hasn't read what was the fire,
and it's like it looks like in the city. Wow,
(06:17):
that's really neat. Yeah, it's really really scary and neat
and neat. So the whole thing came to damage is
surprisingly for that much of Chicago. Um, I guess there
wasn't a lot of valuable stuff there, just a hundred
and ninety two million dollars worth of damage, which three
and a half billion. Now, oh so that's in that
(06:38):
that eras Yeah, okay, yeah, that's okay, that makes a
lot more sense. Um. So it was a huge fire.
It was an enormous fire. And again like three people
lost their lives. Yeah, it was. I think it's number
three all time in the US, behind World Trade Center
and um or San Francisco, San Francisco. And uh. The
crazy thing about this fire is just about every buddy
(07:00):
points to the same location as the source today. Back
then it was um in a barn at one three
seven to Covid Street. And that barn did happen to
belong to a woman named Mrs O'Leary, Katherine Kate O'Leary
and Mr H. Leary. Yeah. Mr and Mrs O'Leary and
their children, um lived at one seven to Covid Street.
(07:22):
They had a house. They rented another house to another
family that was right in front of them, and then
behind them was the barn. And in the barn they
had three cows. Three cows, yeah, no, five cows total
I think, okay, five cows I believe a calfine horse.
And then also in this barn, wooden barn, two tons
(07:43):
of hay and two tons of coal and apparently like
hundreds of pounds of wood shavings which they kept to
use as kindling, and their pyromaniac nephew in a straight jacket.
It was just pretty much a big accident waiting and
a halfpen. Yeah, and you meant that they owned another house.
But they were poor. They weren't like some rich family
(08:04):
that owned these houses. Like they were poor family. Right.
Mr O'Leary, he was a laborer. I couldn't find what
kind he was. They were definitely working class. And Mrs
O'Leary um sold her milk in the neighborhood. But they
were on welfare as I understand it. Yeah, and ridiculously
the Chicago Chicago Tribune claimed early on that one of
her motives was that she was booted off of welfare
(08:26):
when they found out when the city found out that
she was selling her milk and she was like, I'll
get you. I'll burn the city down right, and um,
which is starting with all my stuff? This is the
Chicago Tribune still around today, Um, the Tribune. Immediately they
pointed to the O'Leary's as the source of the fire.
(08:46):
It was either Mrs O'Leary or another Tribune reporter made
up the idea that it was possibly her cow. A
guy named Michael ahearn Um later confessed to just making
up the cow story. And so Mrs O'Leary cow kicking
over a lantern and setting the barn on fire that
started the Great Chicago Fire gained a lot of traction
(09:06):
before Um ahearn ever admitted to making it up. I
think in many years later. Apparently he was quite the
drunkard of newspaper reporter in nineteenth century Chicago is a drunkard,
so you're right. Over the years, through song and legend
and story, Mrs o leary's cow was always blamed. And
(09:29):
if you ask people on the street Jay Leno style,
I bet eight out of ten people would say, if
they have heard of the Great Chicago Fire, that it
was started by a a cow of some sort. And
then jay Leno's NBC lawyers would serve you with cease
and desist papers, and Jay Len will go. Um. One
of the other reasons that this cow has persisted for
(09:51):
so long, this cow leg And it's not just because
it's like it makes a great story, like a cow
set Chicago on fire, um, but also because they never
really figured out who the source was. Mrs o'learys just
kind of went down um in history as this as
the villainous whether it was accidental or on purpose or
(10:14):
at the very least the causer of the Great Chicago Fire.
It was her barn. Yeah, no matter which way slice
it right exactly. UM. And this was despite like an
exhaustive inquiry. I mean you were saying, it's an enormous fire,
Chicago burned. They did a really big investigation into this.
There was eleven hundred pages of testimony taken, all taken
by shorthand of some court stenographer took it all by hand. Um.
(10:39):
And they still never figured it out. But history has
shown us possibly who the culprit was. But let's talk
about UM. Let's talk about Mrs O'Leary first and why
she may or may not have been culpable. Um. She
testified that her neighbors and was it in the house
that they were renting from her and the McLaughlin's in
(11:01):
the house in front of hers um. She said, they
threw a big party. They're all partying, and some of
them went into my barn to get milk for milksteak
for oysters. Oysters or a punch that required milk. Yeah,
a milk punch. I looked it up. Milk punches. The thing.
It's so sugar and vanilla and bourbon and milk, which
(11:22):
sounds well, there's a lot of different milk punches. That
sounds disgusting. It's got the bourbon in it. Yeah, just
drink the bourbon and milk with the oysters. Sounds really disgusted. Yeah,
it was really curious what that's like. But I mean oysters,
rocket feller, it's cheesy. I mean, what's cheese if not
milk at its heart? Yeah, I don't like the rocket
feller though, I'll just go raw. I like it both ways. Really,
(11:45):
Oh yeah, do you like him fried? Um? Yeah? Only
oysters pretty much anyway, as long as they're good. Yeah,
all right, So anyway, Mrs o Leary contends that the
party or's the revelers went into her barn seeking milk
for some odd meal time or drink time. We're sitting
there milking the cow. We're like, oh, I'm so wasted exactly,
(12:06):
And then kicked over a lantern, right, either kicked over
a lantern or you know, it was smoking out there.
Something happened, they don't know. Um. There was another suggestion
as recently it's two thousand four, that Bila's comment split
into pieces that night, and chunks of it set fires
(12:26):
in various points all over the Midwest on the same night,
which is not possible. Not possible. A scientists say that
when a comment enters our atmosphere, it's not going to
be what hot enough a meteorite to set a fire, right,
it's gonna cool down too much to to be able
to set a fire by the time it makes contact
with the ground. So how do this abtraction in oh Ford?
(12:46):
You know, I couldn't find that fringe a big foot expert. Yeah. Um,
so those are a couple of the other theories. Um,
what about Mrs O'Leary herself. Oh well, they said that
she was out there milking the cows at night, and
she said, no, I was asleep. She was asleep with
(13:07):
a sore foot. And the piece of evidence that probably
exonerates her more than any other is that none of
her stuff was insured. Well, yeah, exactly like I said earlier.
Why would she burn down, especially in retribution for being
put off welfare? Why would she burn her house down,
her livelihood or livelihood down, possibly killing her her her
(13:30):
family cows, which is like tantamount to killing the goose
that lay the golden egg. Um. Yeah, the fact that
I wasn't insured. It doesn't matter what kind of person
she is. Right out the window, nobody is going to
do that on purpose. So at the very least she
didn't do it on purpose, correct, But she also probably
didn't do it on accident either. She probably really was
(13:51):
in bed with the sore foot. No one saw her.
There were no reports of any of her being around
the barn. Right, And how did Mr Leary escape all this?
I don't know. I wonder if he was at work
or something. I guess she was really strongly associated with
the cow. I mean, yeah, you always only hear about her.
Mr o Leary is just like I guess he enjoyed
(14:13):
his anonymity. Well she did too, just like her as
you find later on right exactly. He just didn't even
say anything. She's like, say something, what I don't want
to be in the papers? So where are we then?
(14:53):
So Mrs O'Leary, we're gonna go ahead and just kind
of exonerate her at this point, which officially happened in right,
there was a guy named Lewis M. Cone who went
on to Great Wealth in Chicago. Uh and later on
he after he died, somebody came forward, I think in
the forties and said, remember Lewis Cone. He told me
(15:16):
that when he was eighteen, he was gambling in the
O'Leary's barn with one of the O'Leary boys, which kind
of holds water because James O'Leary went on to become
one of the biggest gambling bosses in Chicago, one of
the Sun's um and we kicked over a land and
accidentally and set the set the place on fire, and
we accidentally started the Chicago Fire. Oh. This guy was
(15:37):
apparently kind of a boastful type, so it's possible that
he made it up. Even said I was winning at
the time, like he bragged about it. Yeah, so you've
got all these people and none of them really though,
can hold the candle. Even Mrs A Leer herself to
one Daniel peg leg Sullivan leg for a very good reason.
(15:58):
He had one wooden leg and then went clop clop clop.
That's right. And he testified, he testified, and it sort
of became a case of that doth protest too much, sir,
because he made up the story. We'll remember in the
lying episode. It's like when you add stuff that I
need to be in there, it's usually a pretty good sign.
(16:18):
And I'll bet he didn't use any contractions when he
gave his testimony. He did not. And he's like, you
want to know. I can't believe you want to know
why I was sitting on the curb in front of
someone else's You want to know, then I will tell you,
But I can't believe you want to know. In the meantime,
he's cooking this little story up. He testified that he
(16:39):
had gone to visit the Olearies about eight o'clock that night,
said Ms O'Leary was in bed um. Again I mentioned
Mr O'Leary at all. After the visit, he apparently start
went to go home. See this is one I don't
get it says that he started for home, but then
later it says he passed his home and to smoke
(16:59):
a pipe in front of house. So I'm just gonna
go have a little pipe smoke for some reason, I'm
gonna walk by my house to do it in front
of Willie White's house. Do you know why. Here's why
he said that, because that places him near enough the
fire that he could reasonably say he saw it, but
not so close to the McLaughlin's house. Like his house
(17:22):
was closer to the McLaughlins. You could have been like,
I didn't see you there, and I was standing right
outside looking at in front of your house. Very clever, mr,
Mr peg leg um. He claims that he spotted the
fire and ran for help, screaming fire a hundred and
ninety three ft with his peg leg um and tried
(17:44):
to extinguish the fire and then escaped to the burning barn,
freeing animals too. He freed the animals and he actually
did do that. Yes, so this guy was there. He was,
he was around the fire. But the problem is is
placing him on the curb in front of William White's
house has some real problem. So no one disputes that
(18:08):
this guy was near the fire, but exactly where that
was changes everything. So he was a pig leg pig
legged man, so he couldn't um. He couldn't run fast
and certainly not closet. No one heard anybody shouting fire
alongside the house. It's definitely not him, so he definitely
(18:29):
didn't um. Another problem was that he his mother kept
a cow in the O'Leary barn, and he admitted to
frequently visiting the cow in the evenings. Really yeah, okay.
And then it's also possible that another man named um
Dan Dennis Reagan was present. It was something of an
(18:54):
accomplice or at least a sympathetic witness to peg Leg
because he had another part of the story that didn't
quite add up. He was about a block away in
his home, ah and he testified that he heard someone
yelling fire jumped out of bed to help. But Richard Balees,
this attorney modern day attorney for a title insurance coming
(19:16):
in Chicago's one that dug this all up, pieced it
together and said, how would this guy block away have
heard this? And none of the other people, the aleries
especially not have heard this. Not only that he got
his hands on the property diagrams of the area at
the time and mapped it out and placed peg leg
where he said he was and showed that he would
(19:39):
have had to have been able to look clear through
a two story house to see the barn. There's no
way he could have seen that it was on fire
from where he said he was sitting. So the fact
that this guy confabulated all of this story suggests that
he may have done it. And probably what he did
was he was visiting his mother's cow, decided to have
(20:00):
a smoke afterward, and um accidentally set the barn on fire.
The lawyer Richard Bales is very understanding. He said it
was probably an accident, but that once he saw that
he pretty much burned a third of the city of
Chicago down. Um, he just kind of kept his mouth
shut and let Mrs O'Leary take the full Yeah, once
(20:22):
that rumor circulated, I'm sure he was like, yeah, that's
how it went down, Alright. I was there, So I
think I feel bad for the guy. He's there, probably
starts his fire, probably gets out of hand and freaks out,
and the animals first kind soul and uh, in the end,
(20:43):
they couldn't put out the fire for some of the
reasons you talked about earlier. All the wood, Um, the dryness.
There was a strong wind. Did you notice the strong
wind when we visited Chicago. I don't know if they did,
but it was strong, josh Um, fifty six miles a
wooden street eats five d sixty miles of wooden sidewalks
and only about two firemen in the whole city. That
(21:06):
was about a sixteen acre fire. The night before that
they had put out, and well it had started the
they had fought it all through the night before and
into the Sunday afternoon. So most of these guys hadn't
like eaten or slept, and the fire the fire brigade
damaged their equipment in some cases. Um. Then some of
(21:27):
the fire engines went to the wrong address to begin with. Right,
there was a guy whose job it was to look
out for fires, like he sat in a basically a
crows nest in the courthouse fire watcher. You're right, and um,
he didn't see it for a while. He finally did,
but he picked the wrong department to activate. Yeah, like
the wrong like little segment that he was supposed to guess.
(21:47):
And so some people went to the wrong place first,
and it took a little while to correct it, so
there's some confusion. So that happened too. And then apparently
the fire destroyed the building that housed the water pumps
for the city, and then they tried to get water
from Lake Michigan and that didn't work out so well.
And uh, all these things added up to the third
(22:08):
biggest fire disaster in the nation's history. And like you said,
the longhead idea of connecting the the wooden buildings with
wooden streets and wooden sidewalks that I think fell out
of fashion pretty quick after the Chicago fire, I bet,
and people smoking on the streets, and well that probably
involved keeping two tons of hay and two tons of coal.
(22:30):
And apparently it burned what through the following evening and
then thankfully it finally rained and that helped put it out.
And that is a great Chicago fire. You want to
hear in irony of it all, I'd love to The
O'Leary house was spared, no way, it was not burned,
So it just took off in one direction and from
(22:51):
the from the barn and now um, the O'Leary's house,
the house they ran to the mclaucklin's William White's house.
All this stuff is gone, and uh, in its places
the Chicago Fire Department's training academy and they have a
Maltese crossed on the floor. Um, they have a cross
on the floor. Uh, that marks the spot where the
barn stood. I thought you're gonna say, like a CBS. No, No,
(23:15):
it's very appropriately it's the fire department. Did they do
that there on purpose? I believe so. Okay, that would
have just been too much of a coincidence exactly. And
then Mrs O'Leary really did not like the well, she
didn't like the limelight. I get the impression anyway, but
she really didn't like being, you know, treated like this
horrible person. And she was not shy about taking a
(23:38):
broom to people like reporters who came to her doorstep.
And um, she also chased off a representative of P. T.
Barnum's at least sent somebody to go offer a job
traveling with this circus like the Scapegoat. I guess yeah,
they would bring out a cow and her and oh no,
we forgot to mention she had a pretty healthy beard.
(23:59):
Would It's like, man, he's in the wrong line of work. Um, yeah,
it would have gone right up with the fire. Her
house is spare bitter beard burned off. Yeah, that's good.
So yeah that's the Chicago fire. Um you said she
was exonerated, right, Yeah, she was exonerated. Richard Bale's worth
and Um I had something else. Oh, I think it's
(24:23):
just remarkable that did you have the number of three
hundred people died. I've seen varying accounts, but that's the
max that I've heard. And it's just amazing that that
much of the city burned in eighteen thousand. Eighteen thousand
buildings burned down. Like you hear about a fire today
that hits like three buildings on a block in a city,
(24:43):
it's a huge deal. Um, I'm surprised only three people died.
It's pretty remarkable and that's a lot. But I'm surprised
that it wasn't, you know, like five thousand people. They
always say God loves Chicago. Yeah, except when it comes
to the Cubs. Yeah, that's true. Uh. If you want
(25:03):
to learn more about Mrs O'Leary, her cow, the Great
Chicago Fire, fires in general, anything, you can type whatever
you want into the search bar. How stuff works dot com,
I said, search bar, and that is time for listener mail.
But first, mm okay, listener mail, Josh, I'm gonna call
(25:51):
this a fish called ganja. You're getting pretty good today
with them. I appreciate that. Hey, guys, I'm a tender
of bar in the Para city of New York and
one of my regulars turned me onto your podcast if
You short months ago. He even gave the guy's name.
But in the interview, it's a funny when they put
it like that, like, hey, man, turned me onto that podcast,
like in a backga. Since then, I've been playing catchup
(26:14):
and listening to as many episodes as I can on
a daily basis to quench my thirst for knowledge. I
currently lived near Philly with my wife a new daughter,
but I sling drinks in New York. Before I had
been turned onto 'all, I dreaded my two hour commute.
Now I look forward to it and have managed to
listen to a hundred and ninety two episodes some dedication
that's hardcore. Uh. Several years ago, my uncle decided to
(26:37):
purchase a new saltwater aquarium and ended up purchasing an
enormous one hundred and fifty gallon unit. He bought the
tank online from a reputable website, but to save money,
he purchased most of the accoucher malts, including lighting, fish,
coral and plant light, from a local pet store. This
is where it gets good, because the lighting he purchased
was a special type of lamp, also very commonly used
in grow houses. You must have been flat by the
(27:00):
d A at the moment of sale, because about a
month later after the tank was finished, on a Tuesday evening,
my uncle, my aunt, and three cousins, all under the
age of seven, we're sitting down to dinner. In an instant,
six fully armed d e A agents burst into the house,
including the front door, back door, and from the garage,
and proceeded to scream things along the lines of on
(27:22):
the floor, hands behind your head. They even held my
aunt and uncle at gunpoint while they looked around the house.
After searching from top to bottom, realizing they made a
huge mistake, they calmly apologized and left. I'm not a
hundred per cent sure if the lawyers were involved, but
I believe my family received a handsome compensation for the mistake,
and that it's from Ben the bartender and he has
(27:44):
a hook up for us in New York if we
want to have an event at a bar hanging on
to Betty. No man to do that again, sintimes. I
know we miss you New York. All of our work
travel has been on the West Coast, Um and certain others. Yeah,
uh so, let's see what else? What I can't top
(28:05):
that I can't send? Send your other misinformed d A stories.
How about any anyone that has any Chicago fire like
I always wondered about the olearies if their family line continue. Yeah, so,
if you have any family members that had anything to
do with the Chicago fire, we'd have to know about it.
I don't even know why I'm here anymore. Did you
(28:27):
just take a chuck for more on this and thousands
of other topics? Does it how stuff works dot com
M Hey everyone, this is Chuck and welcome to Stuff
You Should Know Saturday selects. UM picking this one this
week from July twelve. Did a cow start the Great
Chicago Fire? Uh? You all know I love my history episodes,
especially those where we can set something straight that history
you might have gotten wrong um in class, at least
(00:21):
as a kid. And uh we talk a great length
today about the Great Chicago Fire, one of the great
tragedies in American history. UM, give it a listen, and
I hope you enjoy it. I hope you have a
great weekend. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
(00:43):
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck O'Brien. Uh. I
guess that makes me the cow. That's the stuff you
should know. Daisy the cow? Is that the boarding count? No,
(01:06):
that's Lizzie. No, they wouldn't have named the boring cow Lizzie.
That'd be bad ad marketing move. Elsie. Yeah, apparently this
cow was either Daisy, Madaline or Gwendoline. There's been different accounts. Well,
one of the counts there wasn't even hers. Who's who
are we talking about? Maybe we should clear everybody in
um Chuck, have you ever seen fire? Yes, well there
(01:31):
happened to be one akin to what you saw, except
there was massive as a matter of fact, Chuck, let's
go back in the way back machine. Oh yes, it's
been a while. All right, here, blow blow the dust
off flex capacitor of flexing man Jerry hated that. I
(01:52):
think it's still working. Let me press a couple of buttons.
Here's all right, all right, here we go in Chicago.
End of the year, Oh yeah, eighteens. Anymore, let's go
the end of the date, October eight. It's a Sunday.
Maybe we should go back on a Saturday and stop it.
(02:15):
I'm not supposed to do that, that's right. Contract, it's
based on continuing yet. Okay, so here we are, Chuck,
what a dump? Yeah, it smells like the death of
cows and the manure. Can't they excrete? Because Chicago is
a huge stock carreed town. If you can't tell the
World's Fair is twenty two years off, Ghostbusters is a
(02:37):
hundred and thirteen years away. Did you just do that
in your head that this is just like basically the
middle of nowhere? Temporally speaking, it's yeah, okay, eighteen seventy
one four mins. Eighteen seventy one is a thirteen? Okay?
Am I wrong? No? I think it's right. Okay, man,
we just had a math argument and I can't do
(02:59):
then cargo in the nineteenth century. You think we're throwing
darts or something. So anyway, there's there's some there's some
things I want to point out to you, Chuck. Do
you see the streets are paved with wood? Yeah, and
the sidewalk we're on is wooden. Yeah, and like the
structures around here all would everything's would. I want you
to make note of that. Also make note of the temperature.
(03:23):
It's October, and yet it's like in the eighties, right,
it's pretty hot and it's been really it was really
dry this summer. Dry. Do you see all this dust?
A lot of it again is dry cow manure just
kind of floating around? Um. But it's also it's because
there there hasn't been any rain at all. Okay, yeah,
are you ready again? Yeah, let's get out of here.
(03:43):
Is that a steak first? The milk steak? All right?
Are we back? And we're back? Okay? Okay, So Chuck, um,
that's pretty good steak. Huh yeah, nothing like a good
milk steak. So what was about to happen? And I
really do feel for these people for not being able
(04:03):
to stop it, especially the three hundred who are about
to die. Three hundred people will die because we were
too busy filling our faces with steak rather than warning anybody.
But that's the that's the way of history. That's right.
You can't change it. Um. What's about to happen is
what's known as the Great Chicago Fire of October eight um.
(04:25):
Three people will die, three point five square miles of
the city will be utterly destroyed, eighteen thousand structures. Yeah,
I've got some stats here if I may please. Because
you hear about the Great Chicago Fire in the eight hundreds,
is easy now to say you're like, oh, yeah, that
was the heck of fire. But dude, it was insane
how big this fire was. I know the West Division
(04:49):
they were divided into two divisions back in the day.
Hundred acres burned. Uh, five buildings, two thousand, two hundred
and fifty people homeless. South Division four hundred and sixty
acres burned. Uh. This is like where all the expensive
stuff was. This is where March County seat, the courthouse,
(05:10):
the newspapers, the lofts, is the banks, all the good stuff.
Thirty six hundred fifty buildings, hotels, twenty one thousand people homeless.
When you say buildings, you're saying utterly destroyed, burned to
the ground, burned to the ground. UM North Division most devastating.
Four hundred and seventy acres burned out of the two thousand,
(05:32):
five hundred acres in that division, so almost the whole
division burned. Uh, thirteen thousand buildings burned. I'm sorry, Yeah,
thirteen thousand buildings burned, seventy four thousand homeless in total.
Because Molly, she did a good job, but she really
didn't hammer home how severe this was. In total, two
thousand one four acres burned, UM, seventeen thousand, four hundred
(05:55):
fifty buildings burned to the ground, and almost a hundred
thousand people, which is a third of this city. We're homeless.
And if you go and type in Google Earth Great
Chicago Fire and hit images, it has a picture of
modern day Chicago and it hasn't read what was the fire,
and it's like it looks like in the city. Wow,
(06:17):
that's really neat. Yeah, it's really really scary and neat
and neat. So the whole thing came to damage is
surprisingly for that much of Chicago. Um, I guess there
wasn't a lot of valuable stuff there, just a hundred
and ninety two million dollars worth of damage, which three
and a half billion. Now, oh so that's in that
(06:38):
that eras Yeah, okay, yeah, that's okay, that makes a
lot more sense. Um. So it was a huge fire.
It was an enormous fire. And again like three people
lost their lives. Yeah, it was. I think it's number
three all time in the US, behind World Trade Center
and um or San Francisco, San Francisco. And uh. The
crazy thing about this fire is just about every buddy
(07:00):
points to the same location as the source today. Back
then it was um in a barn at one three
seven to Covid Street. And that barn did happen to
belong to a woman named Mrs O'Leary, Katherine Kate O'Leary
and Mr H. Leary. Yeah. Mr and Mrs O'Leary and
their children, um lived at one seven to Covid Street.
(07:22):
They had a house. They rented another house to another
family that was right in front of them, and then
behind them was the barn. And in the barn they
had three cows. Three cows, yeah, no, five cows total
I think, okay, five cows I believe a calfine horse.
And then also in this barn, wooden barn, two tons
(07:43):
of hay and two tons of coal and apparently like
hundreds of pounds of wood shavings which they kept to
use as kindling, and their pyromaniac nephew in a straight jacket.
It was just pretty much a big accident waiting and
a halfpen. Yeah, and you meant that they owned another house.
But they were poor. They weren't like some rich family
(08:04):
that owned these houses. Like they were poor family. Right.
Mr O'Leary, he was a laborer. I couldn't find what
kind he was. They were definitely working class. And Mrs
O'Leary um sold her milk in the neighborhood. But they
were on welfare as I understand it. Yeah, and ridiculously
the Chicago Chicago Tribune claimed early on that one of
her motives was that she was booted off of welfare
(08:26):
when they found out when the city found out that
she was selling her milk and she was like, I'll
get you. I'll burn the city down right, and um,
which is starting with all my stuff? This is the
Chicago Tribune still around today, Um, the Tribune. Immediately they
pointed to the O'Leary's as the source of the fire.
(08:46):
It was either Mrs O'Leary or another Tribune reporter made
up the idea that it was possibly her cow. A
guy named Michael ahearn Um later confessed to just making
up the cow story. And so Mrs O'Leary cow kicking
over a lantern and setting the barn on fire that
started the Great Chicago Fire gained a lot of traction
(09:06):
before Um ahearn ever admitted to making it up. I
think in many years later. Apparently he was quite the
drunkard of newspaper reporter in nineteenth century Chicago is a drunkard,
so you're right. Over the years, through song and legend
and story, Mrs o leary's cow was always blamed. And
(09:29):
if you ask people on the street Jay Leno style,
I bet eight out of ten people would say, if
they have heard of the Great Chicago Fire, that it
was started by a a cow of some sort. And
then jay Leno's NBC lawyers would serve you with cease
and desist papers, and Jay Len will go. Um. One
of the other reasons that this cow has persisted for
(09:51):
so long, this cow leg And it's not just because
it's like it makes a great story, like a cow
set Chicago on fire, um, but also because they never
really figured out who the source was. Mrs o'learys just
kind of went down um in history as this as
the villainous whether it was accidental or on purpose or
(10:14):
at the very least the causer of the Great Chicago Fire.
It was her barn. Yeah, no matter which way slice
it right exactly. UM. And this was despite like an
exhaustive inquiry. I mean you were saying, it's an enormous fire,
Chicago burned. They did a really big investigation into this.
There was eleven hundred pages of testimony taken, all taken
by shorthand of some court stenographer took it all by hand. Um.
(10:39):
And they still never figured it out. But history has
shown us possibly who the culprit was. But let's talk
about UM. Let's talk about Mrs O'Leary first and why
she may or may not have been culpable. Um. She
testified that her neighbors and was it in the house
that they were renting from her and the McLaughlin's in
(11:01):
the house in front of hers um. She said, they
threw a big party. They're all partying, and some of
them went into my barn to get milk for milksteak
for oysters. Oysters or a punch that required milk. Yeah,
a milk punch. I looked it up. Milk punches. The thing.
It's so sugar and vanilla and bourbon and milk, which
(11:22):
sounds well, there's a lot of different milk punches. That
sounds disgusting. It's got the bourbon in it. Yeah, just
drink the bourbon and milk with the oysters. Sounds really disgusted. Yeah,
it was really curious what that's like. But I mean oysters,
rocket feller, it's cheesy. I mean, what's cheese if not
milk at its heart? Yeah, I don't like the rocket
feller though, I'll just go raw. I like it both ways. Really,
(11:45):
Oh yeah, do you like him fried? Um? Yeah? Only
oysters pretty much anyway, as long as they're good. Yeah,
all right, So anyway, Mrs o Leary contends that the
party or's the revelers went into her barn seeking milk
for some odd meal time or drink time. We're sitting
there milking the cow. We're like, oh, I'm so wasted exactly,
(12:06):
And then kicked over a lantern, right, either kicked over
a lantern or you know, it was smoking out there.
Something happened, they don't know. Um. There was another suggestion
as recently it's two thousand four, that Bila's comment split
into pieces that night, and chunks of it set fires
(12:26):
in various points all over the Midwest on the same night,
which is not possible. Not possible. A scientists say that
when a comment enters our atmosphere, it's not going to
be what hot enough a meteorite to set a fire, right,
it's gonna cool down too much to to be able
to set a fire by the time it makes contact
with the ground. So how do this abtraction in oh Ford?
(12:46):
You know, I couldn't find that fringe a big foot expert. Yeah. Um,
so those are a couple of the other theories. Um,
what about Mrs O'Leary herself. Oh well, they said that
she was out there milking the cows at night, and
she said, no, I was asleep. She was asleep with
(13:07):
a sore foot. And the piece of evidence that probably
exonerates her more than any other is that none of
her stuff was insured. Well, yeah, exactly like I said earlier.
Why would she burn down, especially in retribution for being
put off welfare? Why would she burn her house down,
her livelihood or livelihood down, possibly killing her her her
(13:30):
family cows, which is like tantamount to killing the goose
that lay the golden egg. Um. Yeah, the fact that
I wasn't insured. It doesn't matter what kind of person
she is. Right out the window, nobody is going to
do that on purpose. So at the very least she
didn't do it on purpose, correct, But she also probably
didn't do it on accident either. She probably really was
(13:51):
in bed with the sore foot. No one saw her.
There were no reports of any of her being around
the barn. Right, And how did Mr Leary escape all this?
I don't know. I wonder if he was at work
or something. I guess she was really strongly associated with
the cow. I mean, yeah, you always only hear about her.
Mr o Leary is just like I guess he enjoyed
(14:13):
his anonymity. Well she did too, just like her as
you find later on right exactly. He just didn't even
say anything. She's like, say something, what I don't want
to be in the papers? So where are we then?
(14:53):
So Mrs O'Leary, we're gonna go ahead and just kind
of exonerate her at this point, which officially happened in right,
there was a guy named Lewis M. Cone who went
on to Great Wealth in Chicago. Uh and later on
he after he died, somebody came forward, I think in
the forties and said, remember Lewis Cone. He told me
(15:16):
that when he was eighteen, he was gambling in the
O'Leary's barn with one of the O'Leary boys, which kind
of holds water because James O'Leary went on to become
one of the biggest gambling bosses in Chicago, one of
the Sun's um and we kicked over a land and
accidentally and set the set the place on fire, and
we accidentally started the Chicago Fire. Oh. This guy was
(15:37):
apparently kind of a boastful type, so it's possible that
he made it up. Even said I was winning at
the time, like he bragged about it. Yeah, so you've
got all these people and none of them really though,
can hold the candle. Even Mrs A Leer herself to
one Daniel peg leg Sullivan leg for a very good reason.
(15:58):
He had one wooden leg and then went clop clop clop.
That's right. And he testified, he testified, and it sort
of became a case of that doth protest too much, sir,
because he made up the story. We'll remember in the
lying episode. It's like when you add stuff that I
need to be in there, it's usually a pretty good sign.
(16:18):
And I'll bet he didn't use any contractions when he
gave his testimony. He did not. And he's like, you
want to know. I can't believe you want to know
why I was sitting on the curb in front of
someone else's You want to know, then I will tell you,
But I can't believe you want to know. In the meantime,
he's cooking this little story up. He testified that he
(16:39):
had gone to visit the Olearies about eight o'clock that night,
said Ms O'Leary was in bed um. Again I mentioned
Mr O'Leary at all. After the visit, he apparently start
went to go home. See this is one I don't
get it says that he started for home, but then
later it says he passed his home and to smoke
(16:59):
a pipe in front of house. So I'm just gonna
go have a little pipe smoke for some reason, I'm
gonna walk by my house to do it in front
of Willie White's house. Do you know why. Here's why
he said that, because that places him near enough the
fire that he could reasonably say he saw it, but
not so close to the McLaughlin's house. Like his house
(17:22):
was closer to the McLaughlins. You could have been like,
I didn't see you there, and I was standing right
outside looking at in front of your house. Very clever, mr,
Mr peg leg um. He claims that he spotted the
fire and ran for help, screaming fire a hundred and
ninety three ft with his peg leg um and tried
(17:44):
to extinguish the fire and then escaped to the burning barn,
freeing animals too. He freed the animals and he actually
did do that. Yes, so this guy was there. He was,
he was around the fire. But the problem is is
placing him on the curb in front of William White's
house has some real problem. So no one disputes that
(18:08):
this guy was near the fire, but exactly where that
was changes everything. So he was a pig leg pig
legged man, so he couldn't um. He couldn't run fast
and certainly not closet. No one heard anybody shouting fire
alongside the house. It's definitely not him, so he definitely
(18:29):
didn't um. Another problem was that he his mother kept
a cow in the O'Leary barn, and he admitted to
frequently visiting the cow in the evenings. Really yeah, okay.
And then it's also possible that another man named um
Dan Dennis Reagan was present. It was something of an
(18:54):
accomplice or at least a sympathetic witness to peg Leg
because he had another part of the story that didn't
quite add up. He was about a block away in
his home, ah and he testified that he heard someone
yelling fire jumped out of bed to help. But Richard Balees,
this attorney modern day attorney for a title insurance coming
(19:16):
in Chicago's one that dug this all up, pieced it
together and said, how would this guy block away have
heard this? And none of the other people, the aleries
especially not have heard this. Not only that he got
his hands on the property diagrams of the area at
the time and mapped it out and placed peg leg
where he said he was and showed that he would
(19:39):
have had to have been able to look clear through
a two story house to see the barn. There's no
way he could have seen that it was on fire
from where he said he was sitting. So the fact
that this guy confabulated all of this story suggests that
he may have done it. And probably what he did
was he was visiting his mother's cow, decided to have
(20:00):
a smoke afterward, and um accidentally set the barn on fire.
The lawyer Richard Bales is very understanding. He said it
was probably an accident, but that once he saw that
he pretty much burned a third of the city of
Chicago down. Um, he just kind of kept his mouth
shut and let Mrs O'Leary take the full Yeah, once
(20:22):
that rumor circulated, I'm sure he was like, yeah, that's
how it went down, Alright. I was there, So I
think I feel bad for the guy. He's there, probably
starts his fire, probably gets out of hand and freaks out,
and the animals first kind soul and uh, in the end,
(20:43):
they couldn't put out the fire for some of the
reasons you talked about earlier. All the wood, Um, the dryness.
There was a strong wind. Did you notice the strong
wind when we visited Chicago. I don't know if they did,
but it was strong, josh Um, fifty six miles a
wooden street eats five d sixty miles of wooden sidewalks
and only about two firemen in the whole city. That
(21:06):
was about a sixteen acre fire. The night before that
they had put out, and well it had started the
they had fought it all through the night before and
into the Sunday afternoon. So most of these guys hadn't
like eaten or slept, and the fire the fire brigade
damaged their equipment in some cases. Um. Then some of
(21:27):
the fire engines went to the wrong address to begin with. Right,
there was a guy whose job it was to look
out for fires, like he sat in a basically a
crows nest in the courthouse fire watcher. You're right, and um,
he didn't see it for a while. He finally did,
but he picked the wrong department to activate. Yeah, like
the wrong like little segment that he was supposed to guess.
(21:47):
And so some people went to the wrong place first,
and it took a little while to correct it, so
there's some confusion. So that happened too. And then apparently
the fire destroyed the building that housed the water pumps
for the city, and then they tried to get water
from Lake Michigan and that didn't work out so well.
And uh, all these things added up to the third
(22:08):
biggest fire disaster in the nation's history. And like you said,
the longhead idea of connecting the the wooden buildings with
wooden streets and wooden sidewalks that I think fell out
of fashion pretty quick after the Chicago fire, I bet,
and people smoking on the streets, and well that probably
involved keeping two tons of hay and two tons of coal.
(22:30):
And apparently it burned what through the following evening and
then thankfully it finally rained and that helped put it out.
And that is a great Chicago fire. You want to
hear in irony of it all, I'd love to The
O'Leary house was spared, no way, it was not burned,
So it just took off in one direction and from
(22:51):
the from the barn and now um, the O'Leary's house,
the house they ran to the mclaucklin's William White's house.
All this stuff is gone, and uh, in its places
the Chicago Fire Department's training academy and they have a
Maltese crossed on the floor. Um, they have a cross
on the floor. Uh, that marks the spot where the
barn stood. I thought you're gonna say, like a CBS. No, No,
(23:15):
it's very appropriately it's the fire department. Did they do
that there on purpose? I believe so. Okay, that would
have just been too much of a coincidence exactly. And
then Mrs O'Leary really did not like the well, she
didn't like the limelight. I get the impression anyway, but
she really didn't like being, you know, treated like this
horrible person. And she was not shy about taking a
(23:38):
broom to people like reporters who came to her doorstep.
And um, she also chased off a representative of P. T.
Barnum's at least sent somebody to go offer a job
traveling with this circus like the Scapegoat. I guess yeah,
they would bring out a cow and her and oh no,
we forgot to mention she had a pretty healthy beard.
(23:59):
Would It's like, man, he's in the wrong line of work. Um, yeah,
it would have gone right up with the fire. Her
house is spare bitter beard burned off. Yeah, that's good.
So yeah that's the Chicago fire. Um you said she
was exonerated, right, Yeah, she was exonerated. Richard Bale's worth
and Um I had something else. Oh, I think it's
(24:23):
just remarkable that did you have the number of three
hundred people died. I've seen varying accounts, but that's the
max that I've heard. And it's just amazing that that
much of the city burned in eighteen thousand. Eighteen thousand
buildings burned down. Like you hear about a fire today
that hits like three buildings on a block in a city,
(24:43):
it's a huge deal. Um, I'm surprised only three people died.
It's pretty remarkable and that's a lot. But I'm surprised
that it wasn't, you know, like five thousand people. They
always say God loves Chicago. Yeah, except when it comes
to the Cubs. Yeah, that's true. Uh. If you want
(25:03):
to learn more about Mrs O'Leary, her cow, the Great
Chicago Fire, fires in general, anything, you can type whatever
you want into the search bar. How stuff works dot com,
I said, search bar, and that is time for listener mail.
But first, mm okay, listener mail, Josh, I'm gonna call
(25:51):
this a fish called ganja. You're getting pretty good today
with them. I appreciate that. Hey, guys, I'm a tender
of bar in the Para city of New York and
one of my regulars turned me onto your podcast if
You short months ago. He even gave the guy's name.
But in the interview, it's a funny when they put
it like that, like, hey, man, turned me onto that podcast,
like in a backga. Since then, I've been playing catchup
(26:14):
and listening to as many episodes as I can on
a daily basis to quench my thirst for knowledge. I
currently lived near Philly with my wife a new daughter,
but I sling drinks in New York. Before I had
been turned onto 'all, I dreaded my two hour commute.
Now I look forward to it and have managed to
listen to a hundred and ninety two episodes some dedication
that's hardcore. Uh. Several years ago, my uncle decided to
(26:37):
purchase a new saltwater aquarium and ended up purchasing an
enormous one hundred and fifty gallon unit. He bought the
tank online from a reputable website, but to save money,
he purchased most of the accoucher malts, including lighting, fish,
coral and plant light, from a local pet store. This
is where it gets good, because the lighting he purchased
was a special type of lamp, also very commonly used
in grow houses. You must have been flat by the
(27:00):
d A at the moment of sale, because about a
month later after the tank was finished, on a Tuesday evening,
my uncle, my aunt, and three cousins, all under the
age of seven, we're sitting down to dinner. In an instant,
six fully armed d e A agents burst into the house,
including the front door, back door, and from the garage,
and proceeded to scream things along the lines of on
(27:22):
the floor, hands behind your head. They even held my
aunt and uncle at gunpoint while they looked around the house.
After searching from top to bottom, realizing they made a
huge mistake, they calmly apologized and left. I'm not a
hundred per cent sure if the lawyers were involved, but
I believe my family received a handsome compensation for the mistake,
and that it's from Ben the bartender and he has
(27:44):
a hook up for us in New York if we
want to have an event at a bar hanging on
to Betty. No man to do that again, sintimes. I
know we miss you New York. All of our work
travel has been on the West Coast, Um and certain others. Yeah,
uh so, let's see what else? What I can't top
(28:05):
that I can't send? Send your other misinformed d A stories.
How about any anyone that has any Chicago fire like
I always wondered about the olearies if their family line continue. Yeah, so,
if you have any family members that had anything to
do with the Chicago fire, we'd have to know about it.
I don't even know why I'm here anymore. Did you
(28:27):
just take a chuck for more on this and thousands
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