A LETTER FROM THE FIRE
From a photograph taken in
London, Can., shortly after the
Chicago Fire
A LETTER FROM THE FIRE
BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE
GREAT CHICAGO FIRE
WRITTEN IN 1871
BY
THOMAS D. FOSTER
PRIVATELY PRINTED
1923
THE TORCH PRESS
CEDAR RAPIDS
IOWA
INTRODUCTION
Since the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, now slumbering eternally beneaththe waters of the Dead Sea, the pages of history have been illumined atintervals by the glare of mighty conflagrations, and the Fire Fiend hasnever ceased to exact his toll from the world’s most famous cities.
In the year 504 B.C. the Ionians and Athenians burned Sardis, once oneof the most splendid and opulent cities of the East; one hundred andseventy-six years later Alexander the Great startled the world whenhe applied the torch to the wonderful marble palaces of Persepolis,which, with the greater portion of the city, were reduced to a heap ofblackened ruins.
On the night of July 18, 64 A.D., an[Pg 6] insignificant blaze caught insome wooden booths at the south end of the Circus Maximus, in the cityof Rome. This fire, spreading rapidly and unchecked, burned itself outwhen it reached the Tiber and the solid barrier of the Servian Wall;then it started afresh in another section, and when finally quenched,after eight days, had destroyed over two-thirds of the Eternal City,but then little past the zenith of its power and glory. From apolitical viewpoint, this was the most important fire in all history,for it marked the beginning of the downfall of Nero, whose suicidea few years later ended the line of the Caesars. Gossip had it thatNero—monster of ungovernable passion—started the fire himself, buthistorians are uncorroborative; nor is it likely that he “fiddled whilethe city burned.”
In the year 70, Titus burned Jerusalem and the temple of Solomon.Josephus tells us that over one million[Pg 7] people perished in theholocaust by fire and sword.
In more modern times the great fire of London holds the center of thestage. In extent and results it was not unlike the Chicago fire of twocenturies later. How little does man profit by the lessons and thelosses of the past! London burned for four days and five-sixths of theCity within the walls was consumed.
Other notable fires that might be mentioned are those which devastatedConstantinople in 1778-82; Moscow in 1812, and Hamburg in 1842.The first great fire in the United States occurred in New York in1835. Boston in 1872 suffered a loss of $75,000,000, and in 1906 SanFrancisco was visited by earthquake and fire that took five hundredlives and wiped out property variously estimated at from three hundredand fifty to five hundred millions of dollars.
Possibly no fire of modern times has[Pg 8] received as much pu