Personal Experiences During the Chicago Fire, 1871

by Frank J. Loesch

The carelessness with which some people must have viewed the oncoming flames was evident to me when I saw numbers of guests rushing out of the Sherman House onto Randolph Street. Most of them were in nightclothing, carrying whatever other clothing came handiest in the panic. The Court House opposite must have been burning for over a half hour for it was now near midnight and yet those people had apparently waited, or were left asleep, until the hotel was about to burst into flames before deciding to leave.

I joined the rush of people passing up La Salle Street to the tunnel’s pedestrian-passage entrance. Some time after leaving Monroe and Franklin Streets there was a loud explosion. I learned from the crowd making its way to the tunnel that it was the explosion of the gas works. Gas lights had gone out everywhere and the escaping gas had doubtless hastened the action of the fire in many buildings. At any rate the tunnel was dark. As we entered it in pairs with a regularity that seemed as if it were a drill, each person put his hands on the shoulders of the person in front of him and with almost a lock step, with the slogan, “Keep to the right!” “Keep to the right!” “Keep to the right!” repeated sing song by almost everyone we emerged on the North Side at Kinzie Street. Strange to say that at the same time that a double line of us was walking north through the tunnel, a single line was going south in the same order repeating the same slogan. There was no panic, no crowding, only good humor and good order.

On reaching my boarding house I found Dearborn Street a mass of people and of horses and vehicles. It appeared like an aimless confusion but it was everyone looking out for himself and family without regard to others, and expecting others to do the same. It was exciting but not wildly panicky. We all realized that haste was necessary to get away somewhere out of reach of the flames which were shooting high above the blazing business district and by the light of which we were moving about inside as well as outside the houses, but frankly I saw no evidence of disregard of others’ rights in the confused moving to and fro. There were more calm people than one would expect. Our landlady had bethought herself to examine every room a few moments before I returned, she told me, and found two young men sound asleep. I saw one of those two standing on the upper landing of the outer stairs, looking wildly toward the blazing South Side. He had on a dress vest over a long linen duster. His confusion of mind was not much greater than that of most of us later when it came to a question of what we wished to save and what we could save.

I found that most of the boarders were still in the house but were fast leaving with whatever they could carry. I found two, who, ignorant of the extent of the fire, still refused to believe that it would reach the North Side. At that time the air was literally full of burning embers, the wind being so strong that we saw pieces of wood two or more feet long in full blaze being driven northeastwardly.

Individuals and groups were concerned as to the direction to take in seeking to escape the oncoming flames. I joined a company of a dozen or more, broken into smaller groups later, who decided on going directly west on Ohio Street to as near the North Branch as we could get, thence northward toward Fullerton Avenue, then the city limits, which no one thought of as ever likely to be reached by the fire. Some of the others decided to go directly north into Lincoln Park. That was a bad choice. Others decided that they would go east on Ohio Street to the lake and be in safety on the beach which was very wide at that point. That was the worst choice. I recall a lady and her family taking that direction. When next I saw her she was minus much of her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. They had been scorched off by the intense heat in spite of the fact that she sat in the lake and frequently ducked her head into the water.

In a very short time we had carried two trunks about three blocks west on Ohio Street and leaving two people to guard them, two returned to the house, threw two more trunks down the stairs and out into the street and carried them to the place where the others were guarded. We returned a second time for our books and carried some armfuls a block or two away and placed them alongside an alley fence.

During this time there was, of course, the greatest excitement on all sides as people were leaving their houses with whatever they could carry. The fire had now crossed the river and was making rapid progress on the North Side.

One scene took place, the relation of which will bring a sympathetic thought for an unknown book lover from all my hearers. I was on the walk in front of the boarding house when my attention was called to a gentleman who had a set of beautifully bound books in his two arms. He explained to an expressman that they were a set of Shakespeare and was asking him to take and move the books. He declined because he said he was trying to save his own goods. The gentleman then offered him $50.00 to carry the books to a place of safety. This was declined on the ground that he must go quick to save his family. Then the gentleman said “won’t you take and save the books if I make you a present of them?” “Yes,” he would. “Then take them,” said the owner, as he put them into the wagon, turned away and burst into tears.

At our second return to the house there were few people in the immediate vicinity. I saw one man whom I knew as a leather dealer weeping bitterly as he stood at the corner taking a farewell look at the home he owned which was so soon to go up in flames, and while that saddened me, another incident gave me a hearty laugh. It was the sight of a man simply crazy rushing up Dearborn Street with a window blind under one arm but clearly under the impression that he was saving a valuable household article.