The Fires of October 1871

Chicago Fire 1871

Loretta reports:

Nearly every major city in the world has endured a catastrophic fire. Some happen during wartime, sometimes it's arson, but in the majority of cases, an act of nature or an accident sets things off.

Two of the most well-known U.S. fires are those in Chicago (1871) and San Francisco (1906), the latter resulting from earthquake damage. The former supposedly started when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over an oil lamp in the barn, but that’s only one of several versions of what happened.

An article in the Library of Congress’s Today in History (please scroll down) taught me something I didn’t know: On the same day as the Chicago blaze, large parts of Michigan and Wisconsin, including several cities, burnt to the ground. The fires left at least 1,200 people—possibly twice that number—dead. The summer and early autumn had been unusually dry and October was unusually warm. Fierce winds spread the fires far and quickly. In other words, the Midwest was a tinderbox in October 1871.

Chicago after the Fire

Chicago, like London at the time of the Great Fire a couple of centuries earlier, was built mostly of wood. So were other cities. Regulating Mother Nature is a challenge, but given London's experience, you’d suppose cities would take precautions, establishing building codes to reduce risk, as London did back in the 1600s. But usually what happens is that only a catastrophe brings about change, and cities had to work it out for themselves. From what I can ascertain, they usually did so, establishing building codes and other regulations as well as strengthening their firefighting organizations.

For some perspective on how much of the world has burned down over the centuries, you might want to take a look at Wikipedia’s List of Town and City Fires. It provides some fascinating information and food for thought.

Images: The Great Fire at Chicago Oct. 9th 1871. View from the West Side; Chicago after the Fire, courtesyLibrary of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540


Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

From the Archives: The fine art of walking city streets in the 19th century

Louise-Léopold Boilly, Passer Payez, c. 1803

Loretta reports:

The art of negotiating city streets in bad weather, modeled on the Parisian method.
 ~~~
You must pay attention to your manner of walking, for fear of throwing mud around you, and spattering yourself as well as those who accompany you, or who walk behind you. Any person, particularly a lady, who walks in this improper manner, whatever her education may be in other respects, will always appear awkward and clumsy.

Every one knows that the Parisian ladies are celebrated for their skill in walking: we see them in white stockings and thin shoes, passing through long, dirty, and blocked up streets, gliding by careless persons, and by vehicles crossing each other in every direction, and yet return home after a walk of several hours, without soiling their clothes in the least.

To arrive at this astonishing result, which causes the wonder and vexation of provincial visitors on their first coming to Paris, we must be careful to put the foot on the middle of the paving stones, and never on the edges, for, in that case, one inevitably slips into the interstice between one pavement and another: we must begin by supporting the toe, before we do the heel; and even when the mud is quite deep, we must put down the heel but seldom. When the street becomes less muddy, we can compensate ourselves for this fatigue, which, however, in the end, leaves us hardly sensible.

This manner of walking is strictly necessary when you offer your arm to any one. When tripping over the pavement, (as the saying is) a lady should gracefully raise her dress a little above her ancle. With the right hand she should hold together the folds of her gown, and draw them towards the right side. To raise the dress on both sides, and with both hands, is vulgar. This ungraceful practice can be tolerated only for a moment, when the mud is very deep.
—Elisabeth Celnart, The gentleman and lady's book of politeness and propriety of deportment: dedicated to the youth of both sexes, 1833  

Illustration: Louis Leopold Boilly, Passer-payez (ca 1803), courtesy Wikimedia Commons.  

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.lease click on caption for more info.

Talking About Climate Change in 1827

Mail Coach in snow

Loretta reports:

Talking about climate change in the early 1800s?  This was something of a surprise to me at first.  Then I realized that this piece was written only a decade after the Year Without a Summer, during what is known as the Little Ice Age. 
In that context, the theories become quite interesting.

In the discussion of cold weather in North America and Europe, you’ll notice no mention of a volcanic eruption.  And can you imagine 19th century naval vessels trying to move glaciers?* 

Climate change

Climate change

15 January entry from William Hone, The Every-day Book Vol II (1827-28).










*The asterisk in the article refers to a Morning Chronicle piece I’m unable to access.  Undoubtedly another publication—probably several—will have stolen it, but which one(s) and where will take some tracking down and may elude me altogether.



Image:  James Pollard, The Mail Coach in a Drift of Snow (1825).

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

View from the Coachman's Seat

View at source here

Loretta reports:

Stanley Harris is one of several late 19th century authors of books about the golden age of coaching, which he says reached a state of perfection from 1820-40.  Thomas De Quincey was a fan of riding outside the coach. Others were not. Here’s the view from the coachman’s seat, pro and con.

~~~

…The box-seat in those days was a seat of honour: in a good, stout double-breasted coat, and with a good whip to handle the ribbons by your side, with rattling-bars, and with fair weather and a fine country, what could be more delightful!  Instead of tunnels and cuttings we had hills and dales; one saw the country and its inhabitants. The driver of a coach had his privileges in those days, as the following story, told by Lord William Lennox, will show:

'When we stopped to change horses at Slough, I saw the faithless Lothario [the coachman's wife had given him a bunch of violets at starting] present the pretty barmaid of the Red Lion with the bunch of violets, which she placed near her heart. Nay, more, if my optics did not deceive me, he implanted a kiss on the rosy lips of the blooming landlady, who faintly exclaimed, "For shame, you naughty man!"'

All this shows the bright side of coach-travelling; but there is another picture, and one equally true. 

View at source here

The outside of a coach in mid-winter, with darkness and cold mist such as eats into the very marrow, or with biting wind or pitiless continuous rain, is not pleasant, and is well exchanged for the inside of a railway carriage. What avails scenery when you can only discern the horses' heads through mist by aid of the coach-lamps? Though, when the air was steady, the night bright, and the roads firm, life on the box was not undesirable. The little villages, with lights shining through the diamond panes of the cottages, the odd weird shape of the trees, the interchange of conversation at any stoppage, were pleasant things enough.
—Stanley Harris, The Coaching Age

Illustrations—
Upper left: Charles Cooper Henderson, Mail Coaches on the Road: the Louth-London Royal Mail progressing at Speed (between 1820 and 1830) Oil on canvas, courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.  Lower right:

James Pollard, The mail coach in a thunderstorm on Newmarket Heath, Suffolk, 1827, courtesy Wikipedia.

Breakfast Links On Ice

Isabella reporting,

I hate to deliver the sorrowful news to all you Breakfast Links fans, but this week there will be no fresh links, due to the winter weather.

Obviously I jinxed myself with that blog about the Great Blizzard of 1888. I've had no power, no heat, and no internet since a winter ice storm on Tuesday night dumped a delightful mix of sleet and freezing rain on top of the Sunday night storm's nine inches of snow, left. The ice on top of the weighty wet snow took out power lines and trees (including my poor 70-year-old pink crabapple tree) across the Philadelphia area. With over 750,000 houses and businesses in the dark - mostly in my county - this has been the region's worst storm-related outage since Hurricane Sandy. Misery does love company, I suppose, but it's hard to be companionable when the temperature is below freezing inside your house.

But enough about ice. If the absence of a fresh edition of Breakfast Links seems too much to bear, please consider a visit to some of our older links - look to the "Labels" list to the left, click on Breakfast Links, and you'll have thousands of older links to explore.

Hope to be back next week!

Snow Removal from the Streets of New York, c. 1888

Isabella reporting,

I have spent the day shoveling out a driveway that seems to grow magically in length in direct proportion to the amount of snow covering it, which, of course, being a Nerdy History Girl, made me wonder how snow was cleared away from streets in the days before plows.

The Great Blizzard of 1888 deposited as much as 60 inches of snow over New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts over a four-day span in March. Single-digit temperatures and high winds contributed to the misery, with fifty-foot

drifts reported. Telegraph and telephone lines were knocked down, train lines were halted, ships were wrecked and grounded up and down the coast, and more than 400 people perished from the storm's cold. Many people were trapped in their homes for over a week. Modern weather reporters love to speak of how snow storms leave a city "paralyzed"; in 1888, New York really was stopped cold in its snowy tracks.

How did they clear all that snow away? In much the same way that I've been clearing my driveway. As these pictures show, snow was slowly and laboriously shoveled by hand into horse-drawn carts. The carts were then driven to the river, and one by one emptied into the rivers. It must have been back-breaking work, and in the wind and freezing temperatures, an exhausting challenge to both the men and the horses.

Top left: The Snow-Storm - Carting snow from the Streets of New York, by Stanley Fox, 1888.
Right & lower left: Photographs following Blizzard of 1888 by E.A.Austen. All images from New York Public Library.

Miserable Winter Weather, 1825

Isabella reporting,

Considering how much of the Northern Hemisphere is wallowing in snow, sleet, and Arctic Vortex, this pair of prints from 1834 seems particularly appropriate. (As always, please click on the image to enlarge.)

Although they're ostensibly for the Christmas holidays – the caption below the man reads "A merry Christmas & a happy new year in London" while the woman's caption replies "The same to you, sir, & many of 'em"  – they're  more portraits in weather-related misery than any seasonal good cheer. Without the modern protection of down coats and waterproof boots, these two are not happy. The wind is blowing and the snow is wet, umbrellas are sprung and noses are red, and it's altogether clear that they would much rather be anywhere else, thank you very much.

The winter miseries also continue in the backgrounds. Here in the 21st century, we can't wait for the plows to arrive after a heavy snow, for a passable street is the first step back towards normalcy after a storm. But there were no snow-plows in 1825, and as these prints show, streets would have remained a snowy, slushy mess. Not only do other pedestrians slip and slide, but the horses do as well, no matter how the drivers exhort them to do otherwise. Up above, other men struggle to clear the rooftops, shoveling snow onto the hapless passersby below. Brrrrr!

Above: Detail, The same to you, sir, & many of 'em, George Hunt, printmaker. c. 1825, London. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.
Below: Detail, A merry Christmas & a happy new year in London, George Hunt, printmaker. c. 1825, London. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

The Great Frost, 1607-8

Isabella reporting,

While it's currently very, very cold in much of America (and from our friends in the U.K., it's much the same there), it could be worse. England in January, 1608 was in the middle of a winter of record-breaking cold, part of the much longer "Little Ice Age" that ranged from roughly 1350-1850. Not that the average Englishman or woman was thinking in climatological terms; all he or she knew was that it was wicked cold, so cold that the Thames froze solid.

The river became an impromptu fairground, with amusements and refreshments available. Though not as elaborate as later frost fairs, this deep freeze was still enough of a wonder to merit its own publication. The great frost. Cold doings in London, is a slender tract printed in 1608, no doubt to cash in on the novelty of the frozen river. The cover illustration, left, shows Londoners amusing themselves on the frozen river near London Bridge - which seems to have shrunk through some mysterious artistic licence.

The tract is written in the form of a conversation between two friends, the Country-man and his urban counterpart, the Citizen, who discuss how the cold weather has affected London and the countryside. It reads a bit like an exchange between a pair of Weather Channel reporters - if the guys in the blue jackets spoke in Shakespeare's English. Here the Citizen describes the frozen river:

"The Thames began to put on his Freeze-coate about a week before Christmas, and hath kept it on till now, this latter end of January. This cold breakfast being given to the Cittie, and the Thames growing more & more hard-harted, youthes and boyes were the first Merchant venturers that set out to discover these cold Landes upon the River; and the first path was beaten forth, to passe to the Bank-Side without going over Bridge or by Boat, was about Cold-Harbour, and in those places neere the Bridge....

Both men, women, and children walked over, and up and downe in such companies, that I verily believe, and I dare almost sweare it, that one half (if not three parts) of the people in the Citie, have been seene going on the Thames. The rivers shows not now (neither shows it yet) like a river, but like a field where archers shoot, while others play at football....It is an alley to walk upon without dread, albeit under it be the most assured danger. The Gentlewoman that trembles to passe over a bridge in the field, doth here walk boldly: the Citizens wife that lookes pale when she sits in a boate for fear of drowning, thinks that here shee treads as safe now as in her parlour. Of all ages, of all sexes, of all professions this is the common path: it is the roadway between London and Westminster, and between Southwark and London."

Above: Illustration from The Great frost. Cold doings in London...Printed for H. Gosson, London, 1608. Harvard University Library.