Who Caused The Great Chicago Fire

As many know, the Great Chicago Fire was a disaster of devastation, and most likely the worst disaster of the 19th century. The tragedy killed more than 300 people and left more than 100,000 people without homes. Not only did the conflagration take a human toll, but the fire caused 200 million dollars in property damage and decimated more than three square miles of the city of Chicago. Despite speculation on the true cause of the fire, Emily Upton describes natural factors that allowed the fire to become a monstrous conflagration, “Despite not knowing the exact cause of the Chicago fire, it is easy to see just how the fire spread once it started. Chicago in 1871 was not like the skyscrapers-and-concrete Chicago that we know today. Around two-thirds of the buildings in Chicago were made of wood at the time. Most of the buildings
Mr.Cohn was an 18 year old businessman and avid gambler at the time of the fire. His testament to the fire was later found after he died in 1942 in an endowment from Cohn’s estate. Anthony Debartolo quotes Cohn of his testimony in his article titled Who Caused the Great Chicago Fire? A Possible Deathbed Confession, "He steadfastly maintained that the traditional story of the cause of the fire -- Mrs. O'Leary's cow that kicked over a lantern -- was untrue. He asserted that he and Mrs. O'Leary's son, in the company of several other boys, were shooting dice in the hayloft . . . by the light of a lantern, when one of the boys accidentally overturned the lantern, thus setting the barn afire. Mr. Cohn never denied that when the other boys fled, he stopped long enough to scoop up the money." With this information provided by Louis Cohn’s testimony, further conclusions can be made that Mrs. O’Leary and her cow were never the ones to blame. This proves to be another one of the most successful and believable suggested theories about the cause of the