Mrs. O’Leary and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871

This week’s posts feature women who became famous for something they didn’t do. And we begin with the case of Mrs. O’Leary and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

On a windy day on October eighth of that year, after a lengthy dry season, a barn belonging to the Irish immigrants Mr and Mrs O’Leary caught on fire. A lack of building-code regulations and a preponderance of wooden structures contributed to the potency of the blaze, which went on for three days. About 300 people died and much of Chicago was destroyed.

Rumors about the fire’s origins began circulating immediately, and in a short period of time a newspaper journalist named Michael Ahern printed up a story that it had originated when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a kerosene lamp. Mrs. O’Leary denied any knowledge of her cow’s (or her) culpability, but the story stuck. The lithograph pictured here shows Mrs. O’Leary and the cow, and the moment became captured in the parody of a famous contemporary song called “Hot Time.” In contrast with the original lyrics (which traversed from a religious revival to a sexual rendezvous), the “Hot Time” parody featured Mrs. O’Leary cavalierly observing that “there’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!” The song has been chanted at camps among children ever since. (You can hear a clip in the second slide.).

Mrs. O’Leary was shunned after the event, which forced her to move. She died in 1895 after a lifetime of distress at the accusations of her involvement with the conflagration. Despite the fact that the reporter Michael Ahern publicly admitted to concocting the story, Mrs. O’Leary still is falsely remembered for her involvement in one of the major disasters in 19th-century America.