The Great Chicago Fire of 1871-- Part 4: What Did George Train Say?

In 1870, there were 600 fires in the city, most started by  lamps overturning in barns.  During the first week of October the next year, more than 30 fires sprang up, the last one on the night of the 7th, wiping out four blocks and causing $750,000 in damages (nearly $1.7 million today).

It was on the same night that eccentric businessman George Francis Train spoke to a crowd at Farwell Hall at Clark and Madison streets.  

He offered a grim prophesy, saying, "This is the last public address that will be delivered within these walls!  A terrible calamity is impending over the city of Chicago!  More I cannot say, more I dare not utter."

He did not live in Chicago, being Boston born.  But he was aware that it had not rained in Chicago in a long time and that many of the city's wells were empty.  He could have observed buildings baked dry by the sun.  He would have known that the men of the fire department were exhausted.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune, operating from its new four story "fire-proof" building, had published all through the hot and dry smmer and fall, almost daily stories about fires throughout the country.  In early October, the paper declared, "We will continue to print these stories on conflagrations until the common council acts."

It was too late for that.  Chicago was a city ready to burn.  And burn it would.

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