Fascinating

According to an "Unsolved History" episode I've just seen on The History Channel, the forensic evidence suggests that it was neither Mrs. O'Leary nor the cow in her barn, but rather either a match from the pipe of Daniel "Peg Leg" Sullivan (the actual owner of the cow) or an ember from a neighbor's chimney that caused the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.

I've read ever since I was a child growing up in Chicago that historians doubted Mrs. O'Leary's responsibility, but the show provided documentary evidence. The Chicago Fire, BTW, was the occasion for the familiar tune, There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.

Seriously. Here are the words:

Late one night, when we were all in bed,
Old Mother Leary left a lantern in the shed;
And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said,
"There’ll be a hot time in the old town, tonight."

Catherine O'Leary was singled out as a scapegoat by the Chicago Tribune, and identified to this day by popular culture as the person responsible for the fire. The History Channel documentary pretty much established her innocence, and the source of the fire as likely being either a carelessly discarded match from Sullivan's pipe ("Peg Leg's" story just doesn't check out on a number of scores), or a stray ember from a nearby chimney. According to experts interviewed on the program, the latter was a leading cause of barn fires in those days. Either way, once dry hay is ignited, the resulting fire spreads rapidly and in mere moments becomes almost impossible to put out.

Interestingly, the Chicago City Council concluded back in 1997 that Sullivan was responsible for the fire, Hadn't heard that. But one thing is certain: Catherine O'Leary is off the hook.

So too, pretty much, the cow. Not so the cow's owner, Sullivan; he couldn't have seen the fire from the spot where he said he was standing at the time, and it's a commonplace among arson investigators that the person reporting a fire is automatically the number one suspect. But there remains a reasonable doubt: the stray ember theory.