There had been for a long time a concerted campaign in all of America’s major cities against the poor, Irish Catholic migrants who made up a large portion of the underclass. Their faces did not fit for a variety of reasons: their Catholicism was at odds with the Protestantism of the American ruling classes, their accents (or lack of English proficiency) and lifestyles seen as uncouth and their potential political power feared by the powers that were in Chicago.
Anti-Irish and anti-Catholic groups – think Daniel Day-Lewis’ character in Gangs of New York – had made ground in most major cities, capitalizing on the fear that many Americans had for the thousands upon thousands of Irish immigrants that had arrived in the United States after the Great Famine of the 1840s in Ireland. Earlier in 1871 in New York, some 63 Irish Catholics had been killed in sectarian rioting in New York City. Certainly a fire that originated in a predominantly Irish area and in the house of Irish immigrants was convenient to many in the Chicago establishment.
Mrs O’Leary’s cow was not, however, the only rumoured culprit. The man who had initially reported the fire, another Irish immigrant named Daniel “Pegleg” Sullivan was also suspected of having started the conflagration while attempting to steal from the O’Learys. Furthermore, the O’Learys were known to host a gambling den on their premises and one of the gamblers later claimed in his will to have started the fire, fleeing from Mrs O’Leary when she chased him and some friends away, having caught them playing craps with her son. Even wilder, an 1882 article suggest that a meteorite may have been responsible – a comet was sighted over the Midwest on October 8 and there were several other fires that day, though meteors rarely retain enough heat to ignite on landing.
The theory regarding Mrs O’Leary’s cow was later admitted to have been fabricated by a journalist in 1893, though by then it had passed into folklore and was widely accepted by the public. The wider perception was such that the city of Chicago was forced to officially exonerate the O’Leary family – though no charges had ever been made and no evidence ever presented against them – in 1997. The Fire has long since passed into the annals of history and the true cause will in all likelihood never be known.
What is indisputable is the effects of the Great Fire on the modern day city of Chicago. With almost the entire downtown destroyed and the previous method of construction – balloon framed, timber built houses – not totally discredited, the city was forced to completely rethink its urban design and infrastructure.
Fortunately – as fortunate as a city can be when its entire central business district has been destroyed – the bulk of the economic activity in Chicago was not focussed on the modern day Loop area, but instead on the huge stockyards and railway intersections that were to be found on the South Side. Chicago had built its economy on meat packing and transportation infrastructure, the vast majority of which survived the fire, and thus the economic effect was mollified. Thus the draw to the city still existed, the financial backing was still there and the city was able to fund a rebuild that would turn Chicago into one of the great cities of the world.
Well aware of the problems of timber-framed buildings, Chicago decided to use brick and steel to create the new city centre. The first skyscraper was constructed in 1885 and today the city is marked by some of the most impressive examples of late 19th century and early 20th century architecture to be found anywhere in the world. It might not have been all down to Mrs O’Leary and her cow, but the Great Chicago Fire is the dividing point between the old Chicago and the new, modern metropolis on the banks of Lake Michigan that exists today.