sutton039

Mimi Cowan In yesterday’s post I gave you the basics of Chicago’s 1871 Great Conflagration, as they called it, and how Mrs. O’Leary became everyone’s favorite scapegoat. I also promised you a story about what French socialists, women with Molotov cocktails, Mrs. O’Leary, and the creation of modern Chicago all have in common. So here’s where the story starts: as I flipped through a series of old images of Mrs. O’Leary, I realized that she looked different in every picture. That’s because Mrs. O’Leary hid from the press; she didn’t want anyone to sketch her likeness in the papers. As a result, illustrators were free to depict her in anyway they chose. But if these aren’t accurate representations of Mrs. O’Leary , what were the models for these images ? Turns out that these depictions of Mrs. O’Leary bear a striking resemblance to images of the pétroleuses of the 1871 French Commune. In March 1871, the citizens' militia and city council of Paris ran the French national government and...

Mimi Cowan Yesterday I told my eighty-eight-year-old grandmother I was writing a blog post about the Great Chicago Fire. She replied, "the one the cow started?" Yup. The one the cow started. Well, actually, no. Everyone and their grandmother have blamed Chicago's biggest disaster on Mrs. O'Leary and her incendiary bovine for the past 142 years, but here's the thing: The cow didn't do it . But that got me thinking. Why, almost a century and a half later, is her name often the one thing people know about the fire? I've got some theories so grab a mug of milk, pull up a stool, and keep an eye on that lantern. First, a little background: Late on Sunday October 8, 1871, a fire broke out on the west side of Chicago. Legend tells us that Catherine O'Leary placed a lantern behind the hoof of the cow she was milking. The cow kicked and the lantern broke, catching the surrounding hay on fire. Within moments, the entire barn was engulfed in flames. Whether or not...