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It is a bye-week for the regular podcast, but this is a bonus from the newsletter On This Day in Women’s History. If you sign up for it on Patreon or on Substack, every Monday you will get a small story about what historical women did on that day. If today were Monday, it might say something like this:
On the evening of October 8, 1871, Kate O’Leary headed to bed early. Though she could hear the party music coming from the people who lived at the front of the house, she was ready to sleep. Her cows were locked up in the barn, along with one calf, and the horse that pulled her wagon. She’d set in a good stock of coal, wood shavings, and hay to see them all through the coming winter. Kate O’Leary was a hard-working woman, and her barn showed it. Or at least it did before the whole place went up in flames.
Later people would say that the Great Fire of Chicago began while Mrs. O’Leary was in the barn, when her cow kicked over a lantern and set the place ablaze. But that’s not what she said. She later testified that “I was in bed myself and my husband and five children when this fire commenced.” The first she heard of it was when two men came and pounded on her door. Her husband got up to answer, and afterwards ran back to say “Kate the barn is afire.”
Other rumors said it was her lodgers who had snuck into the barn and set the fire. Still others said it was a passing tramp. Or a spark blown from a neighbor’s chimney. Or a meteor strike. Every suggestion was more unlikely than the last, and in the end there was no verdict on exactly how the fire began, but everyone agreed that it began in the O’Leary barn.
The Fire Department got their first alarm at 9:30 p.m. By the time they arrived, several buildings were burning, and the O’Leary’s were dousing their house with water from the washtub. The commissioner’s report noted that the Fire Marshall called for more and more engines to come, but “before this could be accomplished, the strong wind had scattered the fire into the many buildings, all as dry as tinder, and spread it over so large an area that the whole Department, although working with their utmost energy, were unable to cut it off or prevent the wind, which soon became a gale, from carrying burning shingles and brands over their heads, and setting on fire buildings far away from the main fire. After it got into the high church, at the corner of Clinton and Mather streets, and thence to the match factory and Bateham’s planing mills and lumber, it was beyond the control of the Fire Department.”
And indeed, it was completely out of control.
The fire crossed the river, and took in a roofing establishment, the gas works, and the Court House. Most devastating of all, it took the Water Works. By which I mean to say, the pumps that delivered water through the firemen’s hoses, along with 7,500 feet of hose. Those Water Works were roofed with wood and there was no sprinkler system of any kind. Though they were in the source of water itself, they had no good way to get the water to the roof. With the one and only pumping station in ashes, all water flow ceased, and all those engines coming in from far afield were of very little good in most of the city. They could only battle the fire along the riverbanks, where they still had a source of water.
The report again says “The firemen and their officers were sober, and did all that men could do. They worked heroically to save the property of others, when their own houses were burning and their families fleeing from the flames.”
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The Great Fire of Chicago burned for 36 hours before a rain shower finally put it to rest. The commissioner’s report estimated that between 17,000 and 18,000 buildings burned. About 300 people died.
When it was finally over, many people were naturally angry and upset. Criticism found its way to all corners. The commissioner’s report blamed poor building codes and insufficient funds for the Fire Department. The politicians blamed corruption in the Fire Department. Most everyone blamed Kate O’Leary. The story was that she must have been careless, letting her cow kick over that lantern. Of course, she never said her cow kicked over a lantern, and no one else was in a position to know. The journalist who first reported that version later admitted to making that part up.
But Kate O’Leary was a convenient scapegoat for people who were hurting: she was Irish, she was Catholic, she was an immigrant. And to many people, all those things together meant she was poor, sloppy, and slovenly. Also, she was a woman. I’ve always found it interesting that the blame landed on her, and not equally on her husband Patrick. Wasn’t it his barn as well? Everyone talks about it as if were her barn, and while I’m all for women owning property, in the 19th century that’s not usually the way it worked.
And of course, Kate herself was one of the people hurting. She said as much in her testimony. She was asked if she had insurance, and she said:
“Never had five cents insurance–I had those cows one of them was not in the barn that night. It was out in the alley. That one went away. I could not get that one. My husband spent two weeks looking for it and could not find it anywhere in the world. I could not get five cents. I had six cows there. A good horse there. I had a wagon and harness and everything I was worth. I couldn’t save that much out of it (snapping her finger) and upon my word I worked so hard for them.”
Kate went to her grave knowing that people believed her responsible for so much death and destruction, even though she was officially exonerated.
Later generations, who didn’t live through the horror, found the tale sort of fun. Cartoons and films and songs were made about it. The very popular song “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” was written in 1896, and the lyrics were using “hot time” in the way you’d expect a popular song to be using it. A hot time meant a fun time downtown with attractive people for company. But later generations used that line to mean something quite different. The song, as sung by generations of camp kids, goes:
Late last night when we were all in bed,
Mrs. O’Leary left her lantern in the shed.
Well, the cow kicked it over, and this is what they said:
“There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!”
Why the legendary story of Kate O’Leary and her cow has such staying power, I have no idea. Except that once you couple a story with a catchy tune, that story’s going to be around for a long time.
My major source for today is a website by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University. If you would like to hear what happened to other women on other days in history, please sign up for the newsletter on Patreon or on Substack. The basic newsletter is free. But if you can spring for the paid version, you get far more and the satisfaction of knowing that you, like powerful women throughout history, are supporting scholarship and the arts. Plus, I really appreciate you.
Sound effects used in the audio version include:
1915 recording of Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
Fire.wav by Cyril Laurier — https://freesound.org/s/17717/ — License: Attribution 4.0