Today in History—October 8: The Day Chicago Burned

The summer and fall of 1871 were extraordinarily warm, dry, and windy. By October 8, wildfires raged around the Midwest, and Chicago’s Southwest Side was about to go up in flames.

You might know that story because of a certain culpable cow.

The Great Chicago Fire did start in a barn owned by Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, but a cow knocking over a lantern was not to blame. Neither was the O’Leary family, whose descendants are still fighting to clear their name.

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What did start the fire, then? Possibilities for the ignition spark include everything from a meteor shower to a milk thief. (The family believes it was the latter.) But it was rampant anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment that turned a story invented by a reporter into a lasting myth that placed the blame—squarely and unfairly—on Mrs. O’Leary.

After the fire, she was vilified as an “Irish hag”—though she was in her 40s and a respected milk seller, mother, and wife. She and her husband were in bed by 8 pm, and no lantern was left alight.

Sometime in the next hour or so, the fire would start.

Real talk: If it hadn’t been the O’Learys’ barn, it probably would’ve happened somewhere else. Chicago was experiencing unprecedented growth, and with it came haphazard wooden construction. Tenement buildings were packed and stacked to maximize landlords’ profits. Even sidewalks were made of wood. Fire code enforcement was sporadic at best, nonexistent at worst.

And the city was parched, mired in one of the driest seasons ever recorded. A huge lumberyard fire started the night before, leaving an already shorthanded fire department even less prepared to respond.

Entire swaths of the city were soon engulfed by a fire that burned for more than a day. On October 10, it rained. That, coupled with the fire reaching less-developed areas, stopped the devastation’s spread. Nearly 300 people died, more than 17,000 buildings burned, and 1 in 3 Chicagoans were left homeless.

Rebuilding commenced immediately, but many poorer residents without insurance—or without proof of insurance, as many policies burned up in the fire—were forced out.

So were the O’Learys. They were harassed and shunned. Mrs. O’Leary never recovered from the scorn, but some of her descendants attended an official hearing in 1997 that exonerated her—and the cow.