Picture it - Chicago, 1871 - it's dry, windy, and everything is made of wood (sound familiar?). Chicago's small force of firemen are exhausted from battling a fire at a lumber yard next to a cardboard box factory - if you put that in a movie people would think you made it up! Then, around 8 pm one dry October night, there's a fire in the O'Leary barn. A cow probably didn't do it... probably. Learn more about the Great Chicago Fire with us! Episode up now!
Picture it - Chicago, 1871 - it's dry, windy, and everything is made of wood (sound familiar?). Chicago's small force of firemen are exhausted from battling a fire at a lumber yard next to a cardboard box factory - if you put that in a movie people would think you made it up! Then, around 8 pm one dry October night, there's a fire in the O'Leary barn. A cow probably didn't do it... probably.
Learn more about the Great Chicago Fire with us! Episode up now!
Chicago's Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City: Smith, Carl
https://www.weather.gov/grb/peshtigofire
Chicago Symphony’s conductor-to-be Theodore Thomas and the Great Fire
https://graphics.suntimes.com/great-chicago-fire/
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of the State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my
fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your welcome back Taylor welcome back F on
this chilly chilly cold Wednesday in Oakland it's true no it shouldn't be too
bad I'm I'm pretty so wait so how long are you there for a day just a day yeah
like one yeah turn around yeah it's on my on my list of things of like I have
my I have like so many like cities on my weather app I'm looking at it now because like every where everyone I know
lives oh my god um my brother listens spaine at 7 right now we got Baltimore
snowing Austin 25 windchill advisory and three more
advisories yeah yeah freeze on Thursday is gonna be
67 60 wait where in Austin wait when
Thursday oh that's awesome okay yeah yeah so you're gonna you you're gonna get through it all right so it's only a
few days we got to Bunker down yeah good good um great so we are on to your story
today and per usual I'm gonna go ahead and do an introduction we're doomed to
fail we are going to have a fun podcast today about a topic that I'm going to guess that tells clues for which I don't
know because we don't share each other's details before we record the podcast I'll stop talking like that um can you
give me a clue um it's a a continuation of a series that I guess I started earlier
this year volcanos no we finished volcanoes we're done we printed out that
diploma oh yeah that's right and we released the omnius um yeah yeah the
continuation of something you started I don't know the fire
oh wait the fire yeah the fire okay sweet which fire the one in Chicago the
Great Chicago Fire the Great Chicago Fire yes I also want to say so we're GNA talk about the Great Chicago Fire of
1871 and I also wanted to say Chicago like that like Chicago and Lindsay my
cousin Lindsay that's what your mom sounds like Lindsay's mom is like I'm from Chicago it's it's great she's the best I love I love that I love
Midwestern accent me too they're so cute um so yeah the um the Great Chicago Fire
we talked about the Great Fire of London in 10 in 1666 so let's talk about the
Great Chicago Fire my friend Agnes emailed and was like you're GNA do that right and I'm like yes obviously I I grew up in Chicago so um my Chicago
friends were like let's do it so okay you ready I'm in let's do it did you
ever read the jungle when you were in school fars up in Clair you're going to be shocked to know that I did not but I
am very very familiar with it what are you familiar about it uh the H meat yeah
but you know what it is actually was supposed to be about the no by the
people like it wasn't it wasn't written to be a think piece about how gross the
um you know the meat packing industry was but that just happened to be something that that they brought up and
people took that but it was really about the people and I read it and I you know
I know I know that it was about you know he mentions how disgusting all of the meat meat plants were it actually led to
the US Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 so it actually had like impact across the country which is great you know that
should be safe and clean but it's also a story about people and it's so devastating so it's all these immigrants
coming to Chicago and they're having like such a hard time finding a place to live finding a place to work they're
getting screwed over everywhere like their houses is gets mortgaged if they miss a payment or even if they don't
miss a payment someone else can move in they just like have terrible employ employment um there's one time where a
terrible thing happens where a baby falls into a puddle and dies so sad there's like so many human stories in it
too one of them about like the guy meets a rich person in Chicago and the rich person gives him $100 bill but he can't
get anyone to make change on it and he's afraid he like ends up losing it it's just like so devastating it's such a devastating human story but I I had that
in my mind when I was thinking about this because Chicago is such a rapidly growing city in this time and it is one
of the biggest cities in America you know even a couple years later so the Chicago Fire is also the name of
their soccer team isn't that funny it's bad bad and a TV show obviously Chicago Fire
you know the uh like a drama show do you okay I know I mentioned Tacoma FD a bunch on our socials because I just love
that show so much and I'm thinking about fires but they have they always make fun of other shows and at one point they
they're watching a show that it's like Pittsburgh FD is in or P yeah Pittsburgh
FD is the name of the show but then they're filming it in Seattle and it's Pittsburgh FD Seattle like Mak you laugh
so hard like it's not like Seattle FD it's Pittsburgh FD Seattle you know what I mean so Chicago
is a huge City now it was a huge City then so it's 1871 and Chicago has been
growing like crazy in 1840 the population of Chicago was
4,470 in 1870 so just 30 years later it's almost 300,000 so it's gone from
like 5,000 people to 300,000 people in 30 years so it's
huge by 1880 so after the fire it's it's still going to grow it's going to be 500,000 people so it's still going to
grow kind of forever it's obviously a great connector City there's tons of trains now and then and um it's cold as
[ __ ] but it's beautiful and a lot of people live there so do you remember where the Great Chicago Fire started
in a bakery nope that was the other one it started in in Mrs oler's Barn
that's like the myth that like the cow kicked over the Lantern and that started the Great Chicago Fire so there's a song
that was released in 1896 called there'll be a hot time in
the old town tonight and it goes late one night when we were all in bed old's
mother lry 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 but she wasn't old she's only 44
but still it did start yeah it did start in and around their Barn um in Chicago
they live like a little bit they live on the um like the the southern side of of the city um so Katherine and Patrick o
were immigrants from Ireland they moved to Chicago and they had a couple of side hustles so when when they talk about
about Patrick oir in the book I read I read a book called the Great Chicago Fire and listen to some podcasts that I'll share but they always call Patrick
o an unskilled laborer like an unskilled worker those are the jobs that he had and I'm like how learn a skill what how
can he be unskilled forever but whatever that he just had like [ __ ] jobs the whole time and Mrs o had a cow and some
other animals and she would deliver milk to her neighbors so she had a barn where she had some animals and she was like a
a milk lady they owned their home the barn and a house on their property that they rented out to other Irish
immigrants so they they you know they weren't they were like working working poor so here are the facts it's Sunday
October 7th 1871 the ois live at 137 West Deen
Street it was dry as [ __ ] it was the hottest October on record and the driest
summer they'd ever had which is exactly what happened in London if you remember super dry
and it was still warm everything was made of wood obviously because everything was still made of wood then
there was a strong wind exactly what happened in in London and Mrs o had just gotten two
tons of hay delivered to her Barn so she the Barn's a dve full of driv L yeah
exactly the people in the back house are having a party they're probably smoking cigarettes you know whatever they have
candles like all that's happening kind of on the property um the week has been very very fiery so
it is you know 200 years after the Great Fire of London but fire trucks are you
know still very similar you know they don't have like there's it's still kind of the same way that they're going to try to fight this try to fight this fire
um and there's so many fire still because people still rely on fire so much so like I said before we're super lucky that we don't have to rely on fire
constantly but the firefighters are exhausted so the day before there was a fire at a lumber yard that caught on
fire and it was guess what it was next to that caught on fire after a Cotton
Factory it's like it's so ridiculous that you couldn't make it up it's a cardboard box Factory not good it sounds
like it happened in a cartoon you know like oh my card box arery is on fire now you know that was literally a Simpsons
episode yeah so sometime in the evening around 8 o00 the old lry barn caught
fire a neighbor his name was Daniel O O Sullivan he was 2 he only had one leg he had a wooden leg
which would make me even more afraid of fire than I think I don't know that seems scary but he like kind of like
hobbled over started yelling um everybody's like holy [ __ ] there's a fire they try to get it out they try to
get the animals out they get one calf out um but the cow dies and the horses die and the and the carriage that they
have is destroyed the OAS were in bed when it happened so one of the myths is like the cow kicked over the lantern
while she was milking the cow but she was like why would I ever be milking my cow in the middle of night that doesn't make any sense she was asleep she had to
wake up really early to to do smoke the cow so however it happened fire got into the barn and the barn like it was
engulfed in in Flames really really quickly it could have been the people at the fire or um at the party or people
from you know an ember from the wind just like blowing around and like catching the barn on fire what is kind
of fun is that their house did not burn down so like the whole city of Chicago pretty much burnt down but in the other
direction that was very was still yeah so now the fire starting to get crazy
and they're like okay we need to tell someone we need to alert someone and so we talked about last time that there were like bucket bade brigades and
volunteers and Watchmen so this time the there's a little bit more technology so there's Watchmen in towers around the
city watching for fires and also local businessmen and business owners have keys to a call box that they can call
the fire station so like if you own the store on the Block you're going to have the key to open up the box to to call
the fire department like you're the only one who has it but like it exists to be able to do that so Daniel Sullivan went
to like a local store and tried to get the guy to call and the guy didn't do it he said no I'm not going to call it's
not a big deal the fireman are really tired so he like didn't didn't make the call but finally someone did see it um a
dude named Matias Schaefer was one was on one of the towers and he saw it and he was um he sent the fire trucks to the
wrong place cuz he wasn't he couldn't really tell where it was from he was so they ended up going about a mile away so
it took them a while to get to where the fire was make sense yeah oh these um these are wor drawn fire trucks yeah
okay and so have you ever heard the term like a three alarm fire yeah I heard it
in the context of Chile do you know what that means oh like spicy food like three
yes I would assume it's based on the severity of something it is yeah and it's based on literally ringing a bell
so if you saw a fire you ring it once if it wasn't that big of a deal twice if it was getting pretty bad and three times
if it was really bad so three it three times just always ring it three times like 100% I totally agree but they um
but they didn't ring it three times in the beginning for this one because they didn't think it was like that big of a deal because there were fires all of the
time so um by the time the firemen get there it's um it's about 10 o00 so about
two hours have gone by and it's already spreading a ton also obviously because of the like crazy everything's dry and
it's really windy so it's already starting to spread so a couple things that happen in Chicago that are kind of
sad and I thought interesting kind of side notes is one of them is this is
only six years after Lincoln was assassinated and one thing that I know
about him is that he left Springfield the day like that he was going to DC to become president and he was like I love
Illinois I can't wait to come back and he never went back it wasn't easy to travel obviously and like Lincoln had
planned after he was done with his second term to go back to Illinois to check out the West maybe go to Europe he
never really went anywhere you know he was poor and then he was President so sad and
so he had had all those plans he's been dead for six years but you know who was in Chicago during the Great Chicago Fire
you John WS boo no I don't know where he was but marri Todd Lincoln that poor [ __ ] woman his wife oh jeez she had
just lost she had they had four Sons three of them died two of them died in childhood one died while they were in
the White House her third son um Tad had died just a couple days before or a
couple months before so she was like mourning her third son he died when he was 18 and just like so sad and of
course she's there during this like Panic like she was fine she wasn't affected but like mentally I'm sure she's like why what the [ __ ] why do I
deserve this yeah crazy um and also a lot of people in Chicago were people who
knew Lincoln really well like they knew him as a person and they were like lawyers with him on the circuit and like
he was big in Illinois so the fire also destroyed a lot of personal papers of
Lincoln of letters of like historical things it would have been really cool to have but the fire destroyed them which
is a bummer that sucks another thing that happened on the same day is actually the dead deadliest fire in
American history happened in Wisconsin it's the peso fire p t g o that one
killed 2400 people that's the deadliest fire in American history and happened
the exact same day as the Chicago Fire it started with a slash and burn kind of getting out of control cuz they're trying to control fire and end up
destroying a city and killing a ton of people but it's the same wind and the same dry climate so like it makes sense
that other fires happened this day as well you know wait where is it what state in Wisconsin in peso peso
Wisconsin okay not good little bit north yeah so here's what happens in Chicago
the the rich people are of course running away with their most expensive things so they're trying to get away a
lot of like paintings and books and and things are destroyed um some of them bury things in their yard one guy buried
an entire piano in his yard just like hoping for the best they would like bury they bury their silver bury their jewels
and then like run hopefully that would save it um I don't know exactly what happened to all the stuff that was buried but one person said that when he
came back it was still so hot for like a really long time that he tried to dig up his stuff and as soon as his stuff hit
the oxygen it bursts into flames that's how hot it was you know so like a lot of it is like they couldn't even go back
into the city for like at least a week because it was just like so hot so a bunch of people try to bring their
things to the Chicago historical society um but they're like it's too crowded in here we have too much stuff so they're like closing the doors and don't let
people bring their things to that um the rich people were also being saved by their friends so they could like you
know walk to a different part of town and stay with friends um at some point there are
rich neighborhoods that think that they're not going to get the fire they think that they're safe and one man says
like his family's packing he's like don't pack we're safe he's like let's make breakfast for as many people as we
can make breakfast for because we know people are going to be hungry in the morning and so like the servants were like Panic cooking but they ended up
getting consumed by the fire anyway like they lost their house too it happened so fast um another thing that rich people
could do is they could leave so now like I don't I never have cash I use my credit card all the time use it all over
the world but in this time what you would do is if I had you know a house in like a lake town in Chicago I would have
a bank account there you know okay and that bank would have money in it so they
could go and like reach get money out of the bank in other parts of of like around like Michigan so people were able
to do that the poor people of course were just running with their stuff they were some of them some people after it
was over said that the poor were better off because they had less to lose and you're like no that's not how that works
that's not how that works no um they ended up in refugee camps people got small pox like it's very sad it was very
if you lost everything you lost everything um there are reports of you know obviously and this is something that like I was reading this right after
the London Fire and in the London Fire had they were like oh only like six people died but in the Chicago Fire like
people remember hearing like mothers crying because they can't find their children like of course that happened in London you know of course that happened
in all these ancient fires carts were being filled and toppled over of course there was looting like one guy was
running and he saw a guy wearing his clothes cuz the guy had like looted his house and he was like [ __ ] it you know
better than have it burned you know yeah so people ran all the way to Lake
Michigan so Lake Michigan is cold even when it's hot have you ever been in like Michigan I've never been in it but I've
been around it enough to be like that is a terrifyingly huge body of water like it it has the it has the same
gravitas of an ocean yeah absolutely um yeah and it's just it's freezing it's
freezing all year long and but people running to like Michigan and they ran waste deep into the water just like
remember this year in Hawaii when people were running into the ocean yeah it was just like that like the and it was loud
the fire was like roaring and people were running and like standing in the ocean some standing in the ocean stood in the ocean for hours and it was like
freezing and they were just watching the city burn with like fire flying above them um there was a the jail was
um everybody in jail was let go the mayor wrote a note and it said release all prisoners from jail at once keeping
them in custody if possible and like they let everybody go for like Petty crimes immediately and then they took
the rest of them like with them and almost all of them just got away and just like in the wind but they're like we're not gonna let you burn to death
here you know so just of course just go um and so they had hoped that the fire
would be um stopped by the rivers cuz there tons of rivers in Chicago but they weren't and it was because of
the wind and the shoreline of course had all the lumber yards and things like that because they needed to have access
to the boats and all the things so the shoreline was very very combustible so I'm looking at this map
and it looks like the fire would have jumped to Rivers yes it did and you're
saying the reason I was going to ask about that you're saying the reason that happened was because they were there were Lumber boats there yes not like
like yeah lumber yards are on the shores of the rivers and then it's so windy like the wind like just B blows like Embers and burning things across the
river so where they thought they might be able to stop it it was not able to um so I was actually
around well the first okay the first river that it that it jumped was around midnight so around midnight the Flaming
debris blew across the river and landed on the roof of the souths side Gas Works so that like exploded you know yeah and
that caused it to continue to spread out to the South Side the mayor was Roswell
B Mason it was his only term as mayor um but he did a bunch of calls for other cities to help and they did other cities
sent their fire trucks um they were able to like get the word out but it didn't really help they were connecting to um
to the Waterworks so there was like a general Waterworks that they could connect to but the water it was so hot
the water would just turned to steam when it came out of the hoses it just like didn't do anything so because of
the wind there were also fire whls like tornadoes of fire going through the city
and that ended up hitting the roof of the Waterworks so the Waterworks caught
on fire and all of the pumps went dry so at some point a little bit after midnight they couldn't even pretend to
use their hoses for water anymore didn't work this map is also really interesting because it shows where the fire started
it literally just consumed everything above it yeah yeah everything below it
is like totally fine is fine including the O's house um so after seeing the
damage the Fire Marshall after the Waterworks you know exploded and and and was gone the Fire Marshall said I gave
up all hopes of being able to save much of anything they really couldn't do anything um a couple people did try to
do those like fire breaks and one of them a man named James hildr was an alderman who had the idea to blow up
buildings with gunpowder to try to stop it and create those like fire brakes um he did a couple I don't think it was
ever like super successful um he got into an argument with a civil war hero named Philip Sheridan and um who was who
was chapping buildings down with axes and so they kind of like there was a little bit of back and forth I want to
be in charge of doing this I want to be in charge of doing this and so there you know it doesn't no one really was able to make that fire Break um it moved
North across the lake there was a big um a big like Melee on the Randolph Street
Bridge because that's where people were trying to like run across and run out of the the run out of the city um a lot of
stuff was like happening as people tried to leave um but luckily the wind died down cuz like we said before these
things just have to end you know like you can't like d it with water so on October 9th it started to rain and the
fire slowly went out the last house that the fire claimed was owned by a man named John a Huck so poor guy this house
was the last one to go all in all um about $222 million in in damage which is
onethird of the total City's value at the time 2,000 lamp poost 17,500 buildings 120 M
of sidewalk 73 miles of Road and officially about 300 people died but probably more yeah
I'm sure I'm sure there's because I would assume at that time like it's hard to keep tabs on people anyways you know
exactly not like IDs and whatever like
it's prob not prob one yeah if you like lose your family you like lose your family you don't know where they are
right so the mayor put the US Army general in charge and put the city under martial
law for 2 weeks to make sure that people weren't looting and weren't like hurting each other they were roving police
special units citizen volunteers just trying to make sure there wasn't any um any lawlessness there was deadly force
was allowed if someone like didn't comply so it was kind of kind of crazy there for a while afterwards tons of Aid
came from all over the world so people were giving money from everywhere FDR's dad gave
$5,000 um and a bunch of cities and individuals helped the money was managed
by a charity that like wasn't great it didn't it was one of those Charities
that was like oh we don't need to give the poor that much because they they're always poor you're like no like you should help everyone but um it was you
know eventually managed and doled out and then they started to rebuild and they rebuild rebuilt better like what
happened before and now that started a lot of what we see in Chicago with like the Terracotta buildings obviously
skyscrapers the first skyscrapers were there there was someone who was like let's make an 11 story building because we're going to make like the skeleton
out of steel and people were like no that's crazy you could never do that you
know so they had the opportunity then to do the beginnings of these things and then by um you know by you know the
1890s they have you that World Fair so things are pretty much rebuilt you know pretty pretty quickly there um Mrs oir
was never charged with anything they did bring her to court and she was like you know I was not in the barn I would not
have been milking my cow you know I didn't do it I didn't start it some people have like a theory that like a meteorite hit and like hit Chicago and
that's what happened or whatever but it was like all those conditions to have a terrible fire that we talk about they
were all there is it isn't it almost like not then for those people but like
kind of now wasn't it like kind of like the best thing that could have happened in Chicago was the whole thing [ __ ]
burn to the ground and then they rebuilt it I know I it feels yeah yeah I mean I kind of think like yes like for these
cities especially you're like the cusp of the Industrial Revolution where like you can start building things out of steel you know and you don't have to
tear people's houses down because they're already down yeah sure you know and it obviously
Chicago it continued to gr continue to grow um the place where the O's Barn is
in 1956 the Chicago Fire Academy was built on that site and it's still there today so Chicago firefighters are
trained on the spot that the Chicago fire started and that's so cool yeah
yeah and that's it I'm gonna look up the site of the O's Farm
they they should have kept the barn I know I'm sure it's just like um I
don't know you know melted away by now Chicago Fire
Academy it's bought soccer not soccer yeah you know I was going to ask about that I was going through the Chicago
Fire FC's face um Wikipedia page and was like how is
nobody said anything about this I totally agree no I totally agree like
that it seems it seems ill it's like in it's like in like 200
years they call like a baseball team the 911 New Yorkers like it's like exactly
little insensitive um but I guess so much time has passed that maybe they don't care yeah I know but it
that I know that's funny that like you know after this much time it can be something that's like funny and like
ubiquitous with the word Chicago when you're like I I don't know we don't need it ubiquitous um man there's so many of
these there's so many like horrible horrible thoughts I know and a lot of them I mean a lot of them are like the similar
things like you have those like things are bad and especially in these older um
like older cities so I I read I read a Stephen King book a long time ago called cell was about cell phones like well
something happened and like cell phones happened and there's like magic in it and like whatever all stuff happens but like in his intro he's like I wrote this
thing this story thinking could a modern city burn could a modern Boston burn
down the way that like these things did you know and it has to it has to be like tons of chaos and that people have to
like be in on it was like his answer and it was you know magical and mystical and all those things but um but I don't know
if could like happened these days as much as like you can destroy it with like bombing obviously we see that all
the time but like cities aren't really like made of wood in this way I I don't I don't know
because I remember living in Los Angeles and it was like do you remember Taylor that one day we were driving to work and
there's there was that huge oh yeah building the apartment yeah it was that huge apartment complex it was mid
construction and somebody torched it and you're just driving down you're like
what like that was incredible I but also it didn't spread you know it's true it
didn't spread but it didn't spread because I think it was in the heart of downtown um but at the same time you
look at like Malibu for example where they'll have wildfires and yeah know
it'll be like pepper is the only thing that was saved because they create all these breaks and stuff and like they
plann for wildf that happened there which is like do you remember do you remember that where they were like telling people that telling their
students not to go home and not to leave because they get conom wer and they were safer there I I so would have left I
mean that's how you die you die when you like try to run away you know like your car oh no you're right because you're
right but I'm I was thinking like big city like Chicago the Fall Skyscrapers I feel like no but you're but a smaller
City especially in California all our wild wildfires definitely yeah yeah yeah
terrifying absolutely terrifying um cool lots of fun ways to die this this week you got clouds you got fires let's see
what we can cover next week um unbelievable awesome well thanks for sharing that Taylor I hope at some point
we can get to the San Francisco Fire because I think I if I recall correctly that was that also was an earthquake it
was literally just like hell opening up on Earth and I think it was all connected I think it was at 1904
earthquake turned into the fire but I do I will get to that for sure I did actually so I just I'm finishing up my two weeks off but I prepped at least
read books for three other episodes that I'm excited about so I feel a little bit ahead fun yeah sweet cool well if
there's nothing else we can go ahead and wrap again per usual please do write to us at Doom thepod gmail.com find up on
socials we love to hear from people and we're doing a little bit of a later release this week than usual um given
some issues that have Arisen it's fine everything's fine fine
B um cool well thank you yeah do to follow pot gmail.com do do help P any at
everything please tell your friends please please review us on Apple podcast we really would love to have more people
um more people listen and we're trying our best to hustle if you're like if you're a podcast promoter or know someone who is let us know we need help
we we we need some help it be great so awesome well thank you Taylor we'll go
ahead and cut things off [Music]
there