Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Did a cow start the Great Chicago Fire?

Episode Date: October 7, 2017

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host on the podcast. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey everyone, this is Chuck and welcome to stuff you should know Saturday selects Picking this one this week from July 19th 2012. Did a Cal start the Great Chicago fire? You all know I love my history episodes Especially those where we can set something straight that history you might have gotten wrong In class at least as a kid and we talk at great length today about the Great Chicago fire One of the great tragedies in American history

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 of works comm Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck O'Brien it I guess that makes me the cow This is stuff you should know Daisy the cow Is that the aborting cow? No, that's Lizzie. No, they wouldn't have named their born cow Lizzie. That'd be bad. Yeah, bad marketing move Elsa Elsie Elsie. Yeah, apparently this cow was either Daisy Madeline or Gwendolyn. There's been different accounts Well, one of the cows there wasn't even hers Who's who we talking about? Maybe we should clear everybody in Chuck. Yes

Have you ever seen fire? Yes, well there happened to be one akin to what you saw except it 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 Flux capacitor up flexing man. Jerry hated that I think it's still working. Let me press a couple of buttons here. All right All right, let's go here we go Chicago Wait, enter the year. Oh

Let's go enter the date October 8th. Okay, it's a Sunday. Maybe we should go back on a Saturday and stop it We're not supposed to do that. That's right. It's based on continuum. Yeah. Okay. So here we are Chuck What a dump. Yeah, it smells like the death of cows and the manure. Yeah, they excrete Because Chicago is a huge stockyard town if you can't tell the World's Fair is 22 years off Ghostbusters is a A hundred and thirteen years away. Did you just do that in your head? Yeah, this is just like basically the middle of nowhere

Temporarily speaking Yeah, okay, 1871 1984 minus 1871 is a hundred and thirteen. Okay Am I wrong? No, I think that's right. Okay Man, we just had a math argument. I can't do it in Chicago in the 19th 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 this sidewalk we're on is wooden

Yeah, and like 90% of the structures around here are all wood wood. I want you to make note of that Okay, also make note of the the temperature. It's October and yet. It's like in the the 80s right now It's pretty hot and it's been re 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 But it's also it's because there there hasn't been any rain at all. Okay. Yeah, are you ready to go? Let's get out of here. Let's have a steak first. A milk steak All right, are we back? And we're back. Okay. Okay. So Chuck that was 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 to stop it Especially the 300 who are about to die 300 people will die because we were too busy filling our faces with steak rather than warning anybody Yeah, but that's the that's the way of history. That's right. You can't change it What's about to happen is what's known as the Great Chicago fire of October 8th 1871 300 people will die 3.5 square miles of the city will be utterly destroyed 18,000 structures Yeah, I've got some stats here if I may please cuz you hear about the Great Chicago fire in the 1800s It's easy now to say like yeah, yeah, that was heck of a fire. Yeah, but dude

It was insane How big this fire was I know the West Division they were divided into it to divisions back in the day Okay, 194 acres burned 500 buildings 2250 people homeless South Division 460 acres burned This is like where all the expensive stuff was this is where Marshall you see the courthouse the newspapers the lofts is the banks all the good stuff. Mm-hmm

3,650 buildings 28 hotels 21,000 people homeless when you say buildings you're saying are really destroyed burn. Yes to the ground burned to the ground North Division most devastating 1,470 acres burned out of the 2,500 acres in that division so almost the whole division burned. Yeah 13,000 buildings burned I'm sorry. Yeah, 13,000 buildings burned 74,000 homeless in total because Molly she did a good job

But she really didn't hammer home how severe this was in total 2,124 acres burned well 17,450 buildings burned to the ground and almost a hundred thousand people which is a third of the city were homeless Yeah, 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 has in red What was the fire and it's like? The it looks like 75% of the city. Wow, that's really neat. Yeah, it's really really scary and neat and neat

so The whole thing came to damages surprisingly for that much of Chicago I guess there wasn't a lot of valuable stuff there just 192 million dollars worth of damage. Yeah, which three and a half billion now. Oh So that's in that that errors. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's okay. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah So it was a huge fire. It was an enormous fire and again like 300 people lost their lives. Yeah It was I think it's number three all time in the U.S. behind World Trade Center and

Chicago or San Francisco. I'll bet and The crazy thing about this fire is just about everybody Points to the same location as the source today back then. Yeah, it was in a barn at 137 to Coven Street And that barn did happen to belong to a woman named mrs. O'Leary Catherine Kate O'Leary and mr. O'Leary. Yeah, mr. And mrs. O'Leary and their children lived at 137 to Coven Street They had a house they rented a 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

A calf and a horse and then also in this barn wooden barn two tons of hay and two tons of coal And apparently like hundreds of pounds of wood shavings, which they kept it uses Kentling and their pyromaniac nephew in a straight jacket It was just pretty much a big accident waiting to happen. Yeah, and you mentioned that they owned another house, but they were poor They weren't like some rich family that 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. Yeah, and mrs. O'Leary Sold their 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 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 which is really starting with all my stuff. This is the Chicago Tribune still around today. Yeah the the Tribune Immediately they pointed to the O'Leary's as the source of the fire It was either mrs. O'Leary or Another Tribune reporter made up the idea that it was possibly her cow a guy named Michael Ahern Later it confessed to just making up the cow story and so mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern

Yeah, setting the barn on fire that started the great Chicago fire Gained a lot of traction before a hern ever admitted to making it up. I think in many years later Yeah, apparently he was uh, oh Yeah, quite the drunkard of newspaper reporter in 19th century Chicago is a drunkard hard to believe huh huh So you're right over the years through song and legend and story mrs. O'Leary's cow was always blamed and 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 cow of some sort and then Jay Leno's NBC lawyers would serve you a cease and desist papers. Yeah, and Jay Leno go One of the other reasons that this cow has persisted for so long this cow legends Not just because it's like it makes a great story like a cow set Chicago on fire. Yeah But also because they never really figured out who the source was Mrs. O'Leary just kind of went down in history as this as the the villainous whether it was accidental or

On purpose or the very least the cause or of the great Chicago fire It was her barn. Yeah, no matter which way you slice it right exactly 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 1100 pages of testimony taken all taken by shorthand of some court court stenographer took it all by hand Oh, man, and they still never figured it out, but history has shown us Possibly who the culprit was but let's talk about let's talk about Mrs. O'Leary first and why she may or may not have been culpable Okay She testified that her neighbors and I was it in the house that they were renting from her

Yeah, the McLaughlin's in the house in front of her. Okay. Yes, she said they threw a big party They're all partying and some of them went into my barn to get milk for Milk steak for oysters milk oysters or a punch that required milk. Yeah a milk punch I looked it up milk punches a thing. It's a sugar and vanilla and bourbon and milk. Yeah, which sounds though There's a lot of different milk punches. It sounds disgusting. It's got the bourbon in it Yeah, just drink the bourbon and milk with oyster sounds really disgusting. Yeah, I was really curious what that's like But I mean yeah oyster's Rockefeller. That's cheesy. I mean, what's cheese if not milk at its heart? Yeah, I don't like the Rockefeller though. I just go raw. I like it both ways. Oh, yeah, do you like him pride?

Yeah, I'll eat oysters pretty much anyway as long as they're good. Yeah, all right So anyway, Mrs. O'Leary contends that the partiers the revelers went into her barn seeking milk for some odd Meal time or drink time. We're sitting there milking the counter like oh, I'm so wasted. Yeah, exactly and then kicked over a lantern right either kicked over a lantern or You know was smoking out there something happened they don't know There was another suggestion as recently as 2004 that a Bela's Comet split into pieces that night and chunks of it set fires in various points all over the Midwest on the same night Which is not possible not possible

Scientists say that when a comet enters our atmosphere, it's not gonna 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 does this have traction in 04? Do you know? I I couldn't find that fringe I would imagine a big foot expert. Yeah So those are a couple of the other theories, um, what about what about mrs. O'Leary herself. Oh well They said that she was out there Milk in the cows at night and she said no I was asleep

She was asleep with 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 her livelihood down possibly killing her her family cows Which is like tantamount to killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Yeah Yeah, it's the fact that it 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. No, 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 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. O'Leary escape all this? I don't know. I wonder if he's a worker or something. I Guess she was really strongly associated with the cow. I mean, yeah, you always only hear about her. Yeah Mr. O'Leary is just like I guess he enjoyed his anonymity Well, she did too. Just like it's her as you find later on in my cow, right exactly. He just didn't even say anything She's like say something. What I don't want to be in the papers Hey everybody when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it

Earn so I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard tree house And the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So, yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca slash host on the podcast pay dude the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping-off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it

It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Gameboy Blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s Listen to hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

So Where are we then? Uh, so Mrs. O'Leary we're gonna go ahead and just kind of exonerate her at this point agreed which officially happened in 1997 Right. There was a guy named Lewis M. Cohn who went on to Great Wealth in Chicago And later on he after he died somebody came forward I think in the 40s and said remember Lewis Cohn He told me that when he was 18 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

Oh, really one of the sons? And we kicked over a lantern accidentally and set the set the place on fire and we accidentally started the Chicago fire Well, this guy was apparently kind of a boastful type. So it's possible that he made it up Right Because he even said I was winning at the time right 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. O'Leary herself To one Daniel Pegg legs Sullivan

Why they call him Pegg leg? Well for a very good reason. He had one wooden leg It went clop clop clop. That's right and he testified He testified and it sort of became a case of thou doth protest too much sir Yeah, because he made up this story. Well remember in the lying episode. It's like when you add stuff that doesn't need to be in there It's usually a pretty good sign and I'll bet he didn't use any contractions when he gave his testimony He did not sir 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 had gone to visit the O'Leary's about eight o'clock that night Said miss O'Leary was in bed um Again, I mentioned mr. O'Leary at all Uh after the visit he apparently started went to go home See this is why I don't get it says that he started for home But then later it says he passed his home right And to smoke a pipe in front of William White's house said I'm just going to go have a little pipe smoke

For some reason I'm going to walk by my house to do it. Mm-hmm in front of Willie White's house. Do you know why? Here's why he said that because that places him Um near enough the fire that he could reasonably say he saw it Yeah But not so close to the McLaughlin's house like his house was closer to the McLaughlin's that the part of your 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. Pegg leg, um, he claims that he spotted the fire and ran for help screaming fire

193 feet With his peg leg um And tried to extinguish the fire And then escaped the burning barn Freeing animals too. He freed the animals. Oh really? Mm-hmm, and he actually did do that. Oh, he did. 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. Yeah has some real problems So no one disputes that this guy was near the fire, but exactly where that was changes everything, right? So he he was a peg leg peg legged man. So he couldn't um, he couldn't run fast No, and certainly not close to 200 feet. No one heard anybody shouting fire Alongside the house, right? It's definitely not him. So he definitely didn't um Another problem was is that he his mother kept a cow in the O'Leary barn and he Admitted to frequently visiting the cow in the evenings. Oh, oh really? Yeah, okay

And then it's also possible that another man named, um, dan Dennis Regan was present It was something of an accomplice or at least a sympathetic witness To peg leg right because he had another part of the story that didn't quite add up He was about a block away in his home And he testified that he heard someone yelling fire jumped out of bed to help

But Richard Bales this attorney modern-day attorney For a title insurance company in Chicago's one that dug this all up Pieced it together and said how would this guy a block away have heard this right and none of the other people The O'Leary's especially not have heard this. Not only that he got his hands on the, um 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 have had to have been able to look clear through a two-story house to see the barn So 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 a smoke afterward and Accidentally set the barn on fire. Yep. Uh, 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 the city of Chicago down um He

Just kind of kept his mouth shut and let Mrs. O'Leary take the fall. Yeah, once that room recirculated. I'm sure he was like Yeah, that's how it went down. All right pretty crazy. I was there So I think I feel bad for the guy. He's there Probably starts this fire probably gets out of hand and Freaks out and hobbles animals first freezy animals kind of soul and uh in the end they couldn't put out the fire for Some of the reasons you talked about earlier all the wood

um The dryness There's 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 56 miles of wooden streets 560 miles of wooden sidewalks And uh, only about 200 firemen in the whole city. There was about a 16-acre fire the night before That they'd put out right and um, well it had started The

They had fought it all through the night before and into the sunday afternoon Oh, okay So most of these guys hadn't like eaten or slept and the fire the fire brigade damaged their equipment in some cases Yeah, um, then some of the fire engines went to the wrong address to the begin with right There was a guy whose job it was to look out for fires like he sat in a basically a crow's 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 Oh, really? Yeah, like the wrong like little segment that he was supposed to guess 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 uh, apparently the fire destroyed The building that housed the water pumps for the city. Yeah, and then they tried to get water from like michigan and that didn't work out so well and uh All these things added up to The third biggest fire disaster in the nation's history and like you said the long cut idea of connecting The the wooden buildings with the wooden streets and wooden sidewalks

Yeah, 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 didn't fall in keeping two tons of hay and two tons of coal 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. Why do you want to hear an irony of it all? I'd love to the oliri house was spared. No way. Yeah It was not burned. So it just took off in one direction and from the from the barn. Yeah

And now um, the oliri's house the the house they ran to the mcglock lens william whites house all that stuff is gone And in its place is the chicago fire department's training academy and they have a maltese cross on the floor Um, they have a cross on the floor That marks the spot where the barn stood. I thought you're gonna say like a cvs No, no, it's very appropriately. It's the fire department. Did they do that their own purpose? I believe so Okay, that would have just been too much of a coincidence exactly and then mrs. Oliri really did not like the We well, she didn't like the limelight. I got the impression anyway, but she really didn't like being you know Treated like this horrible person

Yeah, and she would not shy about taking a broom to people like reporters who came to her doorstep And um, she also chased off a representative of pt barnum's He sent somebody to go offer a job traveling with this circus It's like the the scapegoat. I guess yeah, they would bring out a cow and her and oh, no I we forgot to mention. She had a pretty healthy beard So what? It's like man. She's in the wrong line of work. Um Yeah, it would have gone right up with the uh with the fire her house was spared, but her 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 officially thanks to richard bale's work. Yeah 1997 and um, I had something else Oh, I think it's just remarkable that Did you have the number at 300 people died? Mm-hmm. 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 18,000 18,000 buildings burned down. Yeah, like you hear about a fire today that Hits like three buildings on a block in a city. It's a huge deal. Yeah. Um, I'm surprised only 300 people died. Yeah

It's pretty remarkable I mean, that's a lot, but I'm surprised it wasn't you know, like 5,000 people They always say god loves chicago. Yeah except when it comes to the cubs Yeah, that's true Uh, if you want 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 at howstuffworks.com Uh, I said search bar and that is time for listener mail Uh, but first

Hey friends when you're staying at an airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an airbnb? And if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about lisa in manitoba who got the idea to airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an airbnb too find out what your place could be earning at airbnb dot ca slash host On the podcast pay dude the 90s called david lasher and christine taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point

But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair Do you remember aol instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your game boy blowing on it and popping it back in

As we take you back to the 90s Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Okay, listen to me now Josh i'm gonna call this a fish called ganja You're getting pretty good today with us. I appreciate that. Hey guys I'm a tender of bar in the fair city of new york And one of my regulars turned me on to your podcast a few short months ago He even gave the guy's name, but it's so funny when they put it like that like hey man turn me on to that podcast

Yeah, like in a back alley Since then I've been playing catch-up and listening to as many episodes as I can on a daily basis to quench my thirst for knowledge I currently live near Philly with my wife and new daughter, but I sling drinks in New York Before I'd been turned on to y'all. I dreaded my two hour commute now I look forward to it and I've managed to listen to 192 episodes nice 15 months It's some dedication. It's hardcore Several years ago my uncle decided to purchase a new saltwater aquarium and ended up purchasing an enormous

150-gallon unit he bought the tank online from a reputable website But to save money he purchased most of the accoutrements Including lighting fish coral and plant life 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 He must have been flagged by the dea 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 were sitting down to dinner in an instant

Six fully armed dea agents burst into the house. Oh my god Including the front door back door and from the garage and proceeded to scream Things along the lines of on 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 100% sure if the lawyers were involved But I believe my family received a handsome compensation for the mistake I'll bet and that is from ben the bartender

And he has a hookup for us In new york if we want to have a bit at a bar nice hand on to bed He'll be able to do that again sometimes. I know we miss you new york. All of our work travel has been on the west coast. Yeah um In a certain other city. Yeah Uh, so let's see what else what I can't top that I can't I can't send send your other misinformed dea stories. How about uh, any anyone that has any chicago fire?

Like always wondered about the oliris if their family line continued lower. Yeah, so lower if you have any family Members that had anything to do with the chicago fire. We'd love to know about it. I don't even know why I'm here anymore So you just take a chuck For more on this and thousands of other topics visit howstuffworks.com On the podcast hey, dude the 90s called david lasher and christine taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're going to use hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it

Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, i'm lance bass host of the new i heart podcast frosted tips with lance bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would lance bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because i'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boybander Each week to guide you through life tell everybody you everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with lance bass on the i heart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts