{"id":5762,"date":"2023-10-08T06:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-08T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/?p=5762"},"modified":"2023-07-03T14:24:07","modified_gmt":"2023-07-03T14:24:07","slug":"catherine-olearys-cow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/08\/catherine-olearys-cow\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine O’Leary’s Cow"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"woman
Illustration of how Mrs. O’Leary’s cow may have started the Chicago Fire that appeared in Harper’s magazine in 1871. Photo in public domain.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

On this day in 1871 Chicago burned. How someone could blame a woman (an Irish woman no less) for leaving a lantern burning in a barn is a perfect example of casting the blame elsewhere. Chicago had a population explosion, resulting in haphazardly built immigrant buildings made of wood. And the sidewalks and bridges were wooden along with some streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’d like to see what a wooden street looked like there is still one on the north side of Chicago called Wooden Alley. It’s made of wood “bricks.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"wooden
Jim Roberts, CC BY-SA 4.0 https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The river was full of wooden vessels and businesses were in the practice of dumping grease in the water. It had hardly rained a drop for months. Only one water station existed for over 300,000 residents. Chicago in 1871 was ripe for disaster and that’s what happened–four miles burned. Three hundred people died in the fire and thousands were displaced–perhaps as much as one-third of the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did Mrs. O’Leary and her cow get blamed for this? Blame the media. A newspaper journalist later admitted creating the tale, but not until more than twenty years had passed. Apparently, however, Catherine O’Leary and her husband Patrick were\u00a0chastised\u00a0and family members say Mrs. O’Leary was\u00a0vilified\u00a0for the rest of her life. (Reminds me of Fred Merkle, player for the New York Giants baseball team who bore the blame for the Giants losing the pennant in 1908 when he failed to complete a play. He never lived it down, even when he stopped playing. He even thought they’d engrave his error on his tombstone.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was speculation that another man dropped a match in the O’Leary’s barn. But the real blame should rest on the lack of city planning. Unfortunately sometimes\u00a0tragedy\u00a0has to hit before safety measures and just plain good sense take affect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late 1990’s Chicago exonerated Catherine O’Leary. Too little much too late for her, however.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this day in 1871 Chicago burned. How someone could blame a woman (an Irish woman no less) for leaving a lantern burning in a barn is a perfect example of casting the blame elsewhere. Chicago had a population explosion, resulting in haphazardly built immigrant buildings made of wood. And the sidewalks and bridges were…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278,64,11],"tags":[547,548,546],"class_list":["post-5762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-history","category-immigrants","tag-chicago","tag-fire","tag-mrs-olearys-cow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5765,"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762\/revisions\/5765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindyswriting.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}