Personal Experiences During the Chicago Fire, 1871

by Frank J. Loesch

On my third return to the house no one but my roommate was there and to all appearances the street south of us was deserted. We agreed it was useless to try to save any more books and we left. We saw no one else south of us. I remained a moment longer, standing on the top of the outside stairway, and saw a sight which in vividness has never faded from my memory. The fire had crossed Kinzie Street some four blocks south of Ohio Street where I was standing. The roar of the flames, the air alive with flying embers, the fierceness with which the wind and fire combined were whirling the flames into and circling in and above the street, fascinated me. No voice could make itself heard above the roar. Even in the house we had to shout into each others’ ears to make ourselves heard. As I came down the steps facing south, the three blocks south of Indiana Street caught fire with the suddenness of the explosion of a bomb, including the pavement and the sidewalks, and were a mass of flames in a moment. It was the first and only instance in which I saw an enveloping movement of the flames to that extent and especially the burning of the street pavement. The dryness of the season, the superheat for hours of the fiercely driven flames, the tarred-over pavement, were sufficient explanation to account for the street’s burning, while the thousands of falling burning brands added to the other factors before mentioned easily explained how three blocks of buildings, including brick business buildings, could burst into flames at almost the same instant.

I was around the corner in a second after that and with overcoat collar up, sheltering myself from the heat on the north side of the building. It was now after one o’clock of Monday morning.

When I reached Clark Street the dense mass of people who had been moving up Clark Street for two hours or more had apparently not diminished in numbers although the fire was then burning only about three blocks south, but it was burning with a backward movement slowly towards the northwest. I use the word “slowly” in comparison with the terrific speed with which it was burning directly northeastwardly, of which I have just given an instance.

It will be understood that the force of the southwest wind was driving the flames in a straight northeast direction, the termination point so far as inflammable material was concerned being at about the pumping station at Chicago Avenue and present North Michigan Avenue. Every one should have felt, but did not, that safety in flight lay in keeping out of the line of the fire as indicated, by walking northward and branching off westwardly and northwardly as fast as conditions permitted. I have indicated that many people took to the lake, in the direct line of the fire. It was strange how indifferent we all were to the contingency of a sudden shift of the wind to the south or southeast, which would have caught thousands upon thousands of us in instant peril of our lives. But the dense, slowly moving mass of people on sidewalks and roadways hindered any free or fast movement east of Wells Street or south of Ohio Street. There were few moving teams in the roadway at this time.

However, the passing crowd had a puzzle nearly equal to that of “The Lady or the Tiger.” On my first return to the house I noticed unusual excitement two or three doors south of Ohio Street on the east side of Clark Street. Making my way there I found my haberdasher, a Jew and a genial fellow, in the most frantic condition of mind and body. He was running to the rooms above and back again and inquiring about the fire and looking down the street at the oncoming flames and rushing upstairs and down again with inconceivable rapidity. I did manage to extract from somebody the information that a baby was momentarily expected upstairs, but not knowing the exigency, it was not entering the world with that expedition which the nervous father, physician and family in attendance expected of it. Their very excitement, it was said, proved a hindrance. The puzzle, therefore, was, would the fire or the baby first come to that home? The passing crowd caught the state of affairs, took a humorous interest in it and were extending good wishes and “hopes for the best.” I learned a year or two later from the father that “it” came first and was a boy. The mother was carried out of the house on a stretcher when the fire had actually reached the south end of that block.

At the northwest corner of Ohio and Clark Streets there was a hat and cap store. Every time I passed there I heard the proprietor invite every passer-by to enter the store and fit himself with a hat or cap without charge. His reiterated invitation shouted to the moving mass was: “They’ll all burn up anyway. Make yourselves at home with a new hat free. No charge! Take what you want.” Not a man or boy accepted the invitation during the four times I passed there. It was acknowledged with humorous good nature by the men but time was too precious, the fire was too dangerously close; one could not afford to risk the loss of his place in the moving mass and separation from family or friends for a new hat.

At Ohio Street many people turned west so that with those coming up La Salle and Wells Streets the crowd seemed no less on Ohio Street west of Wells than it did on Clark Street. It was more dense then than I saw it anywhere else. It was the best-natured mass of people I ever was in the midst of. The women were more sober-minded than the men. Losing a home was more serious to them, but endless badinage passed back and forth between the men concerning the suddenness and inconvenience of the moving and the ignorance of a destination or abiding place. I never heard a crying child except in one instance. The children as a rule considered it all a wonderful lark. I occasionally saw old people or sick ones being led or almost carried. On Ohio Street west of Clark Street everybody was carrying something, including babies, but most did as I finally did—left everything to burn and walked on with the feeling that we were lucky to escape with our lives.

Two of us men were puzzled as to what we should do with a woman standing in a dazed condition with only a nightgown on. She could not answer a question. While we were puzzling, the husband, in a wild state of mind, rushed up, lifted her into a single buggy standing at the curb, placed himself between the thills and pulled away, not, however, with a trotting gait.

An Italian of middle age carrying a load of bedding on his back was crying lustily. On inquiry as to the cause he said brokenly, with great sobs, that he had lost his dog. Some one inquired if he had a wife and children. He replied that he had but had lost those too. To a jibe from someone as to his failure to cry over their loss, his answer was that they could take care of themselves but the dog couldn’t, and he knew he had lost him forever. The uncomplimentary remarks of the refugees manifested their radical dissent from such unnatural feelings.