Looking Back at Medford History with Stephanie Schorow - Episode 38

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Host Laura Duggan interviewed author Stephanie Schorow about her book on the Great Boston Fire of 1872. The discussion explored the fire's origins, the impact of a simultaneous horse flu pandemic on emergency response, and the legacy of Fire Chief John Damrell.

0:16 Guest Introduction — Host Laura Duggan introduced author and journalist Stephanie Schorow to discuss her historical research and recent publications.
3:24 Origins and Spread of the Great Fire — Schorow detailed the fire's start on November 9, 1872, in a Summer Street commercial building and its subsequent spread through the downtown retail district.
7:52 Impact of the Epizootic Pandemic — The guest explained how a horse flu pandemic, or epizootic, incapacitated the city's fire horses, forcing firefighters to manually pull heavy steam engines to the scene.
18:44 Notable Historical Witnesses — The discussion noted first-hand accounts of the fire provided by famous figures such as Louisa May Alcott, Alexander Graham Bell, and William Lloyd Garrison.
22:25 Leadership of Fire Chief John Damrell — Schorow highlighted Chief Damrell's pre-fire warnings regarding poor water infrastructure and his later work establishing Boston's first building codes.
31:53 Preservation of Historical Landmarks — The speakers recounted the saving of the Old South Meeting House and the post office, contrasting these successes with the destruction of the original Trinity Church.
41:30 Sylvester Baxter and Urban Planning — Reporter Sylvester Baxter was recognized for his detailed fire coverage and his subsequent influence on the creation of the Middlesex Fells and regional green spaces.
47:34 Future Literary Projects — Schorow shared details regarding her upcoming works, including an expanded history of the Cocoanut Grove fire and a novel set in the 1980s.

[Unidentified]: Over the river and through the wood, to Grandfather's house we go.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Welcome to Looking Back at Medford History. I'm Laura Duggan, your hostess. Today's guest is Stephanie Shoro, an experienced freelance writer and journalist. She is the author or editor of eight non-fiction books. A few titles are The Crime of the Century, How the Brinks Robbers Stole Millions, and The Heart of Boston. Drinking Boston. The history of the city and its spirits. The Coconut Grove Fire. The Boston Mob Guide. Hitmen, hoodlums, and hideouts in Boston's combat zone. The stripped-down story of Boston's most notorious neighborhood. She has worked for the Boston Herald and Associated Press and the Boston Globe, and her articles appear regularly in the Globe and other New England publications. Stephanie lives in Medford and has been seen on this show before. We're very happy to have her back. Today's subject will be her newest book, The Infernal, that nearly incinerated the city, The Great Boston Fire. Stephanie, welcome back to Looking Back at Medford History.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Anyway, so my first question for you is, how did you first get interested in the Great Boston Fire?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I wrote about the Great Boston Fire in my book, Boston on Fire, so I wrote a little bit on it before, but I got fascinated by it and I have to say it was kind of a voyeuristic reason. When you look at the pictures of the destruction, the downtown Boston absolutely looking like Hiroshima or Dresden or even today Ukraine, you really are amazed at the extent of how the city burned. And the fact that there were no traces remain of this, but looking at those pictures really got me intrigued with how did the city survive this fire? How did it spread? Why did it get so big? And why don't we know that much about it today? Because Everyone knows what the Chicago Fire is. Everyone's heard of that one. Yeah, everyone talks about Mrs. O'Leary's cow and this kind of thing, but the Boston Fire was in its own way as destructive in this sense. It was more costly per acre than the Chicago Fire. It did not have the large loss of life, though. It was not a human disaster. And it wasn't quite as large, but it burned some of the most expensive land in the Boston area.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Let's see the picture of the cover of the book so you know what to look for. Because after the show, I know you're going to want to run out and see it. And there it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, anyway, so when did this fire happen? Well, it began on November 9, 1872. Yeah, and we're coming up with the 150th anniversary of the fire.

[SPEAKER_01]: 150th anniversary. That's kind of another reason why I wanted to write the book, because it was like the anniversary of it. So it started about 7 o'clock in the evening. It was a Saturday evening. It started in the downtown in a building on Summer Street. We don't know exactly how it started. There was probably something in the furnace, the basement furnace. It was coal or wood-burning furnace. A spark got out of control, and it spread very quickly through the building, which was a retail and wholesale space, and a little bit of a lot of clothing. It was a little bit of a factory there, like a manufacturing factory there. And it was filled with material, very flammable material. And once it caught on fire, the spread was, you could almost not stop it because the buildings around that area were so tall that when the firefighters finally arrived and tried to get water, their hose Hoses couldn't reach the top of the buildings, plus the roofs of a lot of these buildings were mansard roofs built out of wood. That's a French style? Exactly, it's a French style.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, in a very popular style, but when made out of wood could be a fire hazard. And so the fire began to spread almost roof to roof. and made it very difficult for the firemen to do anything about it.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So this is like the commercial district of Boston is where it started then?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean basically it's in what we call downtown crossing today. Downtown crossing. Right, so a little bit down from where, from summer and winter streets where Filene's used to be, Jordan Marsh, and now Macy's is there, and you know, that kind of hub. But it basically burned right up to that area. And then it went easterly all the way to the harbor. Now, the harbor was closer in than it is today. In fact, they used a lot of debris.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Now, was this the worst fire that Boston ever experienced?

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we could say it's the worst. The worst fire was the Coconut Grove fire.

[SPEAKER_01]: You were here before. Yes, I've spoken on that. Because that, it killed almost 500 people. And there's just nothing to compare to the human cost. But this was perhaps the biggest fire and the most devastating fire in the history of Boston. And Boston's had a lot of fires.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: In terms of property, probably. In terms of property, a huge amount of money. Now, in your book, you call this the great, a conflagration, the Boston fire. I think we have an image of the newspaper clip you can put up. And would you define for the audience what a conflagration is?

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people like to throw that around, and a lot of newspaper people like to throw it around, but conflagration to somebody who's in the fire business, it signifies a fire that is so hot it's able to jump a street. It gets so hot that it can literally ignite material on the other side of the street.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think that's the kind of thing that happened in the fires in California. My brother described how the fires would jump over roads.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly. And that must be the same kind of... It's the same kind, it's the same phenomenon, that it gets so hot it ignites things on the other side. And what they did, what they did in, they tried to do in the Great Boston Fire, and I think they've done in California, more successfully in California, is to Create burns so that you that there's nothing to burn.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So the jump the fire cannot jump cannot go any farther I seen it when I was visiting one time They had some controlled fires going on just to get rid of that. So there'll be nothing for the fire to consume exactly That's what that's the idea there. Okay, so now we got how it started in where it started. Okay, and glasses This is what happens as time marches on in the commercial district. Now, there was a problem at the time, because you have to remember, my audience, the fire trucks were

[SPEAKER_01]: were pulled by horses. Were pulled by horses, yes. The fire engines were, the fire engine companies used horses for their transportation. And that was another reason I wanted to write this book, is because it's often mentioned that at the time, just before the fire, there was something called the epizootic. In other words, a... Epizootic, yeah. That would be a pandemic. For the animals. For animals, yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly, exactly. And in this case, Horses all over the country started to get sick. It started in October, and it spread all the way to the west coast. It started in Canada, and the east coast spread all the way across the country. And this was a very mysterious fire. And it's mentioned kind of in passing, but I just was fascinated by this idea, like what caused, and we don't know to this day. It was a flu. I mean, basically, it was a horse flu, but it spread. by contact. The horse sneezed and then? Yeah, exactly. Coughed. They didn't have any masks. No masks for the horses. Can you imagine? Well, you know, but it was funny because the people at that time, they really didn't know what caused it. They had not isolated viruses. Germ theory was sort of an idea. They didn't really know. They thought it was something in the air. A theory. Only a theory. Right. I mean, it seems obvious that it was spread from horse to horse. But we also know the reason that it spread across the country is that horses were being transported by train. And so it followed the railroad. That's how they followed the spread of the disease. The other thing was it took a few days to start. Oh, after you got infected. After you got infected, and then would kick in. So you don't know if the horse is infected. You don't know if they're infected. We've been living through this in our lives for the past. It's kind of relatable. Yeah. In fact, while I was starting this book, that's when the pandemic hit. Oh my goodness. So I was getting, I was getting, I was, I just finished like the first chapter when everything shut down. And what I found was interesting, and if I could draw this comparison, but There were warnings about the pandemic and people weren't paying attention to it, especially at the beginning. There were warnings that Boston could have a horrible fire. And the fire chief of the city was warning about that. Yeah, said it could happen here.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It could happen here. OK. I think we have some more images of the horses. Well, here you can see the fire truck. And you can see the horse is pulling the truck. So this is without the horses.

[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, yeah. Let me correct. You describe it. Yeah. So what we have here going on here is this was an attempt to, rescue material from the burning of a magazine, a particular magazine. And the magazine, when they heard this spreading fire, had to run in and grab everything they could of the next edition of their magazine and get it out of there and try to load it on this horse, which is bucking. Now, here's the very important. You see that horse is acting nervous and trying to buck. You look scared. You look scared. Fire horses didn't act that way. They didn't? No. That's why when the pandemic hit and all the fire horses became sick, and they couldn't use them to pull the fire engines, it was a real problem because they couldn't just find horses that weren't sick. They needed to have specially trained horses. And the horses, the fire horses of that day were extraordinarily well trained. They could stand very calmly around fire and explosions. And the fire companies just loved their own horses. There was a lot of affection for these animals because they really did a very good job.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It'd be interesting to know how they trained him to be able to accept, be around fire. Took a long time.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I would imagine maybe he'd start, like, light a match or something. It could be something like that. Go like, OK, he's all right with that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's do, like, a little bit something bigger until he'd work up. Think of how we train other horses, from sheepdog to other kinds of horses, horse tricks. So I mean, that was the thing about the horse pandemic, this flu, was that everything ran by horsepower. Everything but trains ran on horsepower. So when the horses were sick, when they fell sick, And people had to jump in and start pulling wagons, pull trolleys, pull the fire engines, pull all this material. So it was a real problem when the horses couldn't do this. Now, they recovered. Most of the horses did recover. It wasn't fatal. Well, that's good to know. I'm glad. Yeah. They didn't die from it. But for a period of about two weeks, they were very, very sick.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think we have some more pictures of the horses, the sick horses. Let's see the next one. that Stephanie has, and you have a lot of great photographs.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love this. I love this. This might have been drawn by, it doesn't have a signature, but it might have been drawn by Thomas Nast, who is a famous cartoonist. But I think what was, the thing is, when you research things like the Great Fire, you find all these little side tracks. And one of the things I was able to look into was the treatment of animals. And there were a lot of animal welfare organizations at this time who were very concerned with the way horses were treated. And they used this horse flu to draw attention to the fact that many horses were literally worked to death and that this was not fair to them. And Angel Memorial, the guy, Angel, Mr. Angel himself, was very involved with a lot of these efforts. And he had a newsletter, and it was interesting to read at that time, because we don't think, we don't really think of the animal welfare organizations being in operation then. But they were.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing. A lot of people were very much involved, even at that time.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Let's see the next horse picture. Another horse picture. Oh, now these people are really concerned about their horse. This is a caring family.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it is, but it's also that horse is probably the mainstay of his business. If he was a taxi driver or a hauler, a wagon hauler, that is not only his working companion, but that is his source of income.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I like to think the children are worried about the horse.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I mean, this is just me, Stephanie. I mean, I can see the guys going, I can't make any money, and the kids are going, our horse is sick. Uh-oh. Let's see the next image. I think we have another one of the horses. Another photo. Oh, no.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, let's see. This is interesting, because this shows you the fire engine itself, the machine. These are the steam-powered engines. You can see how big and heavy those things were. you know, several thousand pounds. And they had to be pulled by horses, they were so heavy. However, during the fire, because the horses were sick, these were pulled by men. So this particular engine was pulled to the fire by firefighters. They had to drag it there. And this is, you can still see the fire. So the reason they use fire to fight fire is that the engines of the steam, like a steam engine, where it create the pressure that was used to then shoot water in high streams on buildings.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because I was going to ask you how that works. So it's basically like a steam engine mounted on wheels?

[SPEAKER_01]: Steam engine mounted on wheels that creates pressure that when the fire engine is plugged into or hooked into a water source, like a hydrant, and they actually had cisterns under the city, they could plug into that water and then shoot that water at the fire.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh, that's interesting. And I think we have an image also of a restored fire engine, too. Let's see that one. that I thought was a really, really great picture.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yes, here it is. And that's why you can see it even better, what it looked like. This was restored in Boston?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, this was restored in Boston. This is the Cura Sarge. The companies in those times would name their engines various titles, like Eagle. Oh, they named them? Yeah, they called them Eagle, or even the Jam Jamrel, or Victory, or different kinds of names. This was a fire engine that came down from New Hampshire. From New Hampshire? From New Hampshire, because the fire was so bad and spread so quickly that the chief engineer called for fire companies to come from all over. And they came from, nobody from Medford, I didn't see, but Malden came down, Peabody, many of the others.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And why didn't Medford send that fire? I don't know. I thought your book said, I thought I saw Medford.

[SPEAKER_01]: There might have been a Medford. I'm sure there were some Medford people. There were some Medford people went down. I'm sure they did.

[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, but this came down from New Hampshire and helped to save the Old South Meeting House, which is seen in the background of this picture. So we tried to bring the fire engine back to the exact spot where it might have been during the fire. Oh, that's fascinating.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So it made a revisit to the scene. It made a revisit to the scene. OK. Now, the damage done, I guess, you sort of mentioned, but there was, how many buildings was it? 776 buildings?

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Downtown area. Okay. And so let's go to the next image to show some of the damage that was done by this fire, just to get an understanding of how big it was. Let's see the next picture. Yeah, and this is on the cover of your book.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the cover of the book, yeah. Good choice. And you can see this was kind of a contemporary drawing there, but you can see the fire was so hot and burned so high it could be seen from miles away from the scene. It was called, people even called it a hurricane of fire. Hurricane of fire. Hurricane fire because it sort of created its own wind and it got so hot. And this is showing it burning towards the wharfs. If we didn't have it burning towards the harbor, if we had not had the harbor there, it would have just kept going.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It might have made it all the way to the rest of New England. Well, it might have made it to England, as they say. Let's see the next picture. Yeah, here's some of the ruins.

[SPEAKER_01]: The city was just left. Yeah, it was eerie. In fact, the ruins of the fire, they finally got it out after three days, they managed to get everything out, were so bizarre and eerie that it became quite a tourist attraction. people would come to look at it.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That was an interesting point in your book. And even when the fire was going on, you said people came down to watch the fire. Yeah. Watching fires was a big deal. Oh, let's go down and watch the fire. OK, nothing else to do. Let's go do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people would do that. I don't say it was amusement, but a lot of people would go out and watch the fire, including such luminaries as Louise Mallacat went down to see it. William Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolitionist, was fascinated by fires, and he went down to see it. And Alexander Graham Bell actually went down and tried to fight the fire. He apparently volunteered and worked for him. Did he really? Yes. And he wrote an account of his experiences, but he sent it to the Globe, which unfortunately did not print it. And so it's lost to history. Yes. Oh, my God.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Lost opportunity Boston Globe. Yeah, maybe they'll dig it up. I mean they've been top talking about their 150th anniversary lately They should they should dig it up and I apologize to the heirs of William apologize to him and find that story in print it Yeah, you heard it here. So if I hope they're watching they're listening. Yeah, they'll get the word, huh? Stephanie I hope so look at a call for me. Yeah, I

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's kind of a shame because we have letters from him describing somewhat of what he said in the piece, but we don't know what he actually wrote. So it's a real shame. You know, it could be somewhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: I bet you'd love to find that. I definitely would. I spent a lot of time trying to track it down. Did you really? Yeah, I did. I called in his archive. I called. I mean, the Globe, I know, would not have it, but there are other archives if he had saved a copy of it, perhaps. If he made a copy of it, it would be good.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Now, this fire, how many firemen were killed in fighting this?

[SPEAKER_01]: About a dozen firefighters, one kind of volunteer firefighter included in that. So it was a high loss of life for the firefighters in this.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They really were out there. I mean, this was a really dangerous fire. Very dangerous. So how do you, I think you spoke on this earlier a little bit, but how did you compare the Chicago fire to the Great Boston fire?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the Chicago Fire was definitely a larger event. It covered a lot more territory. It killed, we think, from 250 to 300 people. We don't actually have... That's the Chicago Fire. The Chicago Fire did that. Wow. And so the Boston Fire was much smaller in scale. It was a very expensive fire. And here's the irony of that. After the Chicago fire, Boston's fire chief, John Damrell, took a train to Chicago to go witness firsthand, to go see what happened there. He was very curious about it because he was a very good professional firefighter. So he went all the way to Chicago, talked to the people there, brought money from the, they raised money and they brought things. And he came back and basically told the city council this, what happened in Chicago could happen in Boston.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or wait, maybe a little more than a year, but just about a year. But that's not a lot of time. Not a lot of time. And Damrel was convinced that the downtown lacked the water pressure, the infrastructure. He didn't have enough fire stations in the downtown area. Yes. Those mansard roofs were a fire hazard. The French-style kind of roofs, yeah. Yeah. And that They just needed more protection for people downtown. He asked also for a fire boat. A fire boat. A fire boat that could fight from the, use water from the harbor and used to fight from the wharfs. And he did get that, but it went into service about a month after the big fire.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: OK, so I think we have a picture of the gentleman you're speaking of, John Damrell. You put that up, you'd find that picture of him. Handsome guy. But he figures largely in your book. And here he is. I mean, he looks like a hero to me. Well, he was a kind of hero. You mentioned in the book that you were really taken by him. I was. I was. He confessed.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's in the book. It's funny. Everyone gets taken by him who starts researching this because he was just a really extraordinary man. And not only was he, he was a firefighter who wanted to be out at the front lines. He was not someone to sit back. He was ready to get out there. He knew what he was talking about. He was a builder himself. So he knew how to build things and he knew a lot about firefighting and fire prevention techniques. The thing about this fire, here he is, he warned and warned that it could happen there.

This kind of fire could happen in Boston. It does. And who gets most of the blame for it? heat us. That's so unfair. It is, it is. But he got a lot of, I mean, there was a commission afterwards and they took pains to say, well, he did a good job, he did this. But they said, well, he could have done this and he could have done that. And I just, and it was just, when you read it, you feel like he must have been so

[SPEAKER_01]: Right. But you know what he did? He stayed with the fire department for another year until they reorganized it, and then he left. But then he became the first building commissioner of Boston, and he stayed in that job for 25 years. He was still interested in fires, but he switched from fighting to prevention.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Well, that's an interesting question. He went into that with a lot of knowledge. So I think maybe that was almost better to go into, possibly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he really believed that the best way to fight a fire is for the fire never to happen at all, or to be able to be contained by techniques in terms of building. And some of those he was able to put through after the fire in terms of better structure, better protection between buildings, better systems of water, and more fire stations in that downtown area.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, and you mentioned, well, he actually, in your book, you said he predicted where the fire would start. It was just a matter of time. The commercial district.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That was a very vulnerable area. And lo and behold, that's where the fire started.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he knew it was a problem because the commercial district had been a residential district. But when it grew into a commercial district, they didn't change the water infrastructure. So the water mains running under that district were too small. They're okay for residential use, but they needed to be bigger. They needed to have bigger so they could get more water on the buildings. Because the buildings became taller. The buildings became a lot taller.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And not a little residential house here, but a big, tall building.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And they were crammed together. So you had that as a problem. And you also wrote about the hydrants, the style hydrants in your book. The Boston hydrant.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's Boston and the Lowry. And there was a problem when fire, there were different ways to couple it. And when firefighters came from, I said they came from all over the area.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and probably Medford, came here and tried to hook, they had to get different couplings to hook their engines to the fire hydrants in Boston, because the fire hydrants in Boston were more of the Boston version, and they used lorry, the lorry versions.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Was the lorry the more advanced? More modern at the time?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't know if it was more advanced, but the firefighters wanted it more. They felt it was a better way to couple. It was more efficient, shall we say.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So this commercial was using a style that was not being used by anybody else?

[SPEAKER_01]: It was not. Did it upgrade? It wasn't as widely used. I mean, it wasn't with everybody, but it was widely used. But that was a real problem. I think they've standardized all that now, but at the time it was a real problem.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, so anyway, so you mentioned they couldn't have enough water pressure. That was a problem. The buildings were taller. The roofs, you mentioned already that. And there was also some other problem you mentioned. They had decided something about if it's a big fire, they would only send so many fire engines. How many? Well, here was the problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. The problem was that with the horse flow, all the firefighters were going to be dragging, pulling. the fire, physically pulling. And that delays the response. It just, so they said, okay, what we've got to do is make sure everybody's covered. So if there's a fire, like if usually a certain number of fire engines would go to boxes pulled, I mean, the alarms in the downtown area. And they said, well, let's not send everybody. Let's hold back because we don't want to leave other places uncovered because it's going to be,

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So if there's a big fire, we want to leave some in reserve in case another fire breaks out. Which sounds reasonable. And it worked until it didn't. Until it didn't. Things like that. So they didn't have enough fire trucks coming. Did they rescind that after a while?

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, because the horses were back to work by the next couple weeks. The horses recovered and came back to work.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Now, I think we have a picture of Louis May Alcott, of course, the writer of Little Women, very famous book. And she had a really interesting account. You include it in the book. And here she is. I'm sure everybody's read that. If they haven't, they should. I understand why they haven't read it. Okay. Because I wanted to read, this is in your book here. And she said, she was also living in Beacon Hill at the time. At the time, yes. Yes. And her book was selling very well, so she could afford to go there. She was living there. Here's what she wrote. She said, a very splendid and terrible sight. The red glare, the strange roar, the flying people, all made the night terrible and I kept thinking of the last days of Pompeii." And she goes on to describe the blazing boards, great pieces of cloth and rolls of paper.

flying in all directions, falling on roofs and spreading the fire. Granite blocks of buildings on Franklin Street went down like houses of cards and heavy corners, what is it? Yeah, peeled off as if made of paper. Very nice. So it's nice how you got some description.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, she was, there was a lot of people who tried to describe what this fire looked like because it was so huge. And it's interesting that Louisa went out there to look at it with everyone else.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, at one point she thought the fire was going to come up to where she was in Beacon Hill, and they all got prepared to evacuate, but then it didn't go off that far.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: That's not far from the Parker House, right? No. Because the Parker House... I'm trying to think, yeah. Because I stayed there with my husband, but that didn't burn, so that apparently... No, and I think...

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the witnesses got up to the top of that and looked down at the fire and were looking at the fire to see what was going on.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because I know what that is. I was trying to imagine that they're getting up there and looking out at the fire. So what else? Okay. Then we have, oh, let's the next image. Another gentleman, the Reverend Philip Brooks. look at him, of Trinity Church. Now, everybody knows Trinity Church down in Copley Place, but that wasn't the first Trinity Church.

[SPEAKER_01]: No. The first Trinity Church, or at least the previous Trinity Church, was in the downtown area on Summer Street.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was kind of a massive landmark. And that burned in the fire. And Brooks actually went to the church and tried to rescue things out of the church and was there watching it burn. He watched it burn. And they had already started, they already started building the new trinity, but he- They'd already started with good- They already started, yeah, in Copley. Oh, I see. But he said, you know, when he was watching it burn, he said things like, I never really liked that building, but she's, and she is burning magnificently.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, I think here's the exact quote, because I thought his quote was in it. Let's go to the next image of the burning Trinity Church.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: But yeah, there it is. The next one is really great. It'll go with this quote. So you go to the next image. I think they'll get it. And here's the quote. She burned majestically. Her great tower stands now, solid as ever, a most picturesque and stately ruin. She died in dignity. Which the next image here I think really shows right there. You can put the next picture up. Is that it?

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: All right. So now Old South Church was saved. How was it saved?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's where the legend of the Kyrgyz comes in, because the fire crept up Washington Street. And it was coming closer and closer to that building. It burned a number of, like the transcript newspaper building was nearby, and that went up in smoke, and people were moving things out of there. And it got closer and closer to the old South Church. In fact, there's a story that people heard the bells ring, and they said, that's the last time we're going to hear that, we're going to hear that. But what happened is that the Curaçao is credited with, there were probably some other people, but it arrived from New Hampshire about this time. Freshmen, very solid machine, pulled in.

[SPEAKER_01]: That one that got restored. Pulled up and it was able to get water on the Old South. It was. And save it. Now there were other, that may be slightly exaggerated, but they were able to save it. It's a great story. So we will not get facts in the way of that. But anyway, they managed to get water out, and they had people up in the roofs putting out sparks and things like that. So they were able to save it. And then barely, they just barely saved it. I mean, really, the next building over was burned. It was destroyed.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: It would have been a totally tragic loss, yes. And another thing that was saved, I guess, was the post office. I think we have a picture of that, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah. Now, that's interesting because there was a new post office. This is the new post office. The new? It was being built. It wasn't finished then? It was not finished. It was in the process of being built. And the postmaster general, William Burt, who was quite a character, and he was everywhere at once trying to help with the fire. Yeah, I had some ideas that would there should have been more use of dynamite to blow up. Oh, he's the one that you know He's the one that he's really pushed that you you you create a fire building it but not mine. Yeah, exactly. Uh, yeah, but um, You know, I he's been kind of vilified for that by a lot of people, but I'm really reading the record. I think he um He was just trying to do the best he can. And he really did a good job in making sure this building was protected. And he also praised the firefighters. And Dan Roland specifically praised him for helping to keep this from burning. So he was able to prevent this new post office building from burning. And the old post office burned. I mean, he had to bring all the mail. I think it was at Fenyal Hall for a while. He brought all the mail. Well, you got it out, huh? You got it out. You managed to get it out. But the picture that we're looking at right now is a picture of the post office as it was being built, but it managed to withstand. It managed to survive. Wow. And I don't know if you have a picture of the final version. It's in my book.

The final post office built was a magnificent building, but it was torn down, I think, in the 60s or 70s as part of urban renewal. I think that's a Trinity Church. That is a Trinity Church. That was the one we were looking for when I was doing the dramatic reading, the majestic, yeah, whatever. But you can see, and one thing, thank you for showing all these photos, and that's one thing in the book I really tried to tell the story through the images. We don't have a picture of the fire. We don't have a photograph of the fire itself. But what we had were so many illustrators drew it. They're wonderful illustrations of it. Drew these amazing illustrations of the book. And it was interesting because there's a lot of the pictures, a lot of the photos of the ruins were sent to newspapers all around the world. Now, they could not reproduce photographs at that time. There wasn't the technology.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they had people draw them. So, a lot of the illustrations that you see are based on photographs. Oh, is that right? Yeah, because of the technology.

[SPEAKER_01]: The artists and the photographers were really busy. I mean, the photographers moved in. I think we showed some of the double images there. Photographers after the fire, they couldn't take pictures during the fire. They moved in like gangbusters, took as many photos as they could because they could sell them for a lot of money.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Everybody wanted to see it. Well, you can see people, tourists coming to see it. People coming to see it. Oh, I didn't get to see the fire. I have a photograph I can show you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And not only photograph, you can use one of those double images to create a 3D image. Oh, you mentioned how about, yes. To make a 3D image. That was on the market.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Those were a big thing on the market. So the strategy to fight the fire was, well, they did the best they could with water, right? Right. and they were blowing up. I'm not sure if that really helped. You have an interesting story about the Hovey building, how that was saved.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was a case of where the employees of the building stuck with it. They had a little bit of water, like a trickle of water, and they took carpets and fabrics and they kept slapping the sides of the building to put out the sparks. The employees did it. employees saved that building. And it's interesting because when you read about Hovey's, you read that it was, that Mr. Hovey started it and he was one of the first to have fixed prices. You mean they didn't have fixed prices? People would, you'd go and there would be some bargaining about the price. At least that's what the record said. I'm sure there were some fixed prices, but he emphasized a fair price for a fair product, and he also did a lot for his employees. And he was a supporter of the abolitionist movement. He's ahead of his time. He was ahead of his time. Yeah, good guy here. He's a good guy, and his employees paid him back. They respected him, no doubt. He was probably dead. He was dead by that time, but they respected the legacy of preserving and saving that building. And then Dameril singled them out after he said if other people had done what they had done, we'd have more.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: They would have had more buildings saved, because it takes courage to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It took courage to stay in there and fight it as opposed to trying to get material out and run for your life.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think you mentioned in your book that one fellow was like giving stuff away, and then people came in and were looting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, there was a lot of looting. Yeah, it wasn't just one person. A lot of people were trying to get their merchandise out, and they couldn't get it out, so they just were giving it away to people.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, one people after the fire, they said, if you only got one shoe, come back in and we'll match it. There's something to that effect.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was interesting. The business people really were able to recover fairly quickly after this fire. A lot of them had insurance, which is good. Not totally covered it, but they were able to withstand There were some people going bankrupt, but not as many as you think. Because most people were insured, weren't they? Were insured. And they talked about New England pluck, and they talked about people just, they rolled up their sleeves and they get back to work. And weren't they like, some people set up business in the ruins, right? Right in the ruins. There were some people set up business right in the ruins. There were other people went in and looked for their safes, because some of them, the safes survived. And they could get out money and important papers out of the safes. And the safes got wind of this, and the people who make safes immediately ran an ad in a publication saying, see, our safes can withstand the Great Boston Fire.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Cash in on that? Yeah, so buy it. Wow. And even in advertising, when you hear about safes, they go, and fireproof. I've seen that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, this proved that it was, we're talking about very, very high heat, because a lot of safes did not survive. And they'd open it up to find like gold melted inside and paper disappeared.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yes. Anyway, so, okay, so Dan, I actually, in reading your book, I think this would make a great movie. Have you ever thought of writing a movie script? No, but you got to hear it all. You got a disaster. You got like, he comes back to Chicago.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hollywood, are you listening? Yeah. This could be another career direction. Well, there's a great documentary. There's a documentary called Damrel's Fire. So there's a great, and the guy who did it. No, I'm talking a movie. A movie movie.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, I think John Hamm would do a great job Okay, and then I really when I was reading that I saw my husband I said she's this has got to be made into a movie. Mm-hmm. I think I love it He goes, you know, he's doing this. He's talking arguing with the officials. We need to improve things. We need to have more more, you know We don't have things are right here. And then they ignore him. He goes to Chicago. He comes back. Come on. They ignore him again. There's building tension, as you know, like and he starts showing pictures of the, you know, the dangerous situation there. And then the fire. Yeah, I think would be great.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it would be. I would love to see what kind of picture what kind of movies they've made of the Chicago fire That would be interesting curve comparison, but with special effects today, you could really you could do a really good job I think you should consider this.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, you know writing a script I'm I'm open to I am okay. She is open.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: All right But wait, but you'll remember who suggested it. I will I will go to the Academy Awards to accept for you for writing this Can you give me my date? Oh, great. I'll make you remember that, too. There was one other interesting story in here about a reporter, Sylvester Baxter. I found that fascinating because it impacts our community here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Baxter was interesting because he wrote this account. He was a reporter, and the more I learned about him, the more I related to him as a reporter. And he wrote this account of the fire, a very good, a little bit rambling, but just filled with details of his experience in the fire. And it came out some years afterwards. But it had the kind of details you like, because he talked about running around the city and circling the fire and seeing everything that he saw. And he talked about after the fire burned out, he was trying to cover it and he burned the soles of his shoes because he was walking off a still hot ruins. And he had a real eye for detail. And then the more I found about him, the more I realized he had an amazing life because he was involved with sort of the metropolitan parks movement, if you will. He helped to, he's one of these people helped push for the Middlesex Fells. Well, you write how he, didn't he go to Europe to study landscape, architecture, landscaping, or parks?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he came back, and he was involved with that. And he was involved with some of the people involved with the Emerald Necklace, the guy who did that. Yes, the Emerald Necklace. Homestead? Homestead, his firm. He was involved with him. And it's funny, because there's even a park named for him on the border of Somerville. It's in Somerville. It's kind of on the border of the river. But I would love, he's the kind of person that, we talk about rescuing people from history. I would say he would be someone to rescue. And the thing about these people, and there's been a number, a lot of them you need to rescue, they don't have children. And they never marry. And read into that what you want, but he lived quite a life, he never married, and you just, you wonder, that we don't know more about him, because he really lived quite an extraordinary life. And he gave one of the best descriptions of this fire, not with a lot of florid detail, but real specific anecdotes. Yes, which you as a reporter would appreciate. Yeah, and I really appreciated his.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Because I think Felsmere Pond, which is near me, that's like on, it's from the height you can walk down there. I walk around there all the time. And that's sort of an outgrowth, too, of his influence.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Green space. So that was an interesting little sideline.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you think, you wonder how his covering the fire might have affected that. That might have had a psychological impression that he saw this terrible, terrible destruction and thought, well, what What can we do? We need green growing spaces that might have helped.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: He's looking into the future. This is an opportunity. Now it's burned down. We might be able to sneak in some green area now that they have to rebuild.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't know if you thought that, but he did have a fondness for redoing cities and redoing the human landscape. So we had this idea about that.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I think this really must have inspired him, that whole thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would think so. We don't know for certain, but we can speculate.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Something positive coming out of something very negative.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: And I think you have to go looking for those parts of the story, too, just so that you don't get completely defeated by what happened. But obviously it didn't defeat New England.

[SPEAKER_01]: It did not. And that's the positive story. It's interesting because on the 100th anniversary of the fire, the Globe and a lot of your audience may remember in 1972 they came out with a booklet about the fire with a lot of information. That's the last, but then almost nothing after that. That was the last, and we celebrated the 100th anniversary. anniversary, and that's another reason I want her. I said, well, we're coming up at the 150th anniversary, maybe we should, let's revisit this and let's find new material about it. Let's not just say the same old stuff, but I was able to find Louise May Alcott, William Lee Garrison, I was able to find all these other source materials.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: I'd like to have people that we are familiar with reporting on what they're seeing. And that kind of anchors the story, oh, it did happen, you know what I mean, in a way, not just some of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you would think. I mean, it was kind of like, you would think, you know, famous people. Because I never heard of this fire. Yeah, I know. I know. People have not heard of it. And yet, when you look at the photos, and by the way, if your reader's interested, you can go to the Boston Public Library Flickr site, and you can see these amazing photos of destruction. Flickr, the Flickr site. And some of them are weirdly beautiful. But these photographers who went in and took these pictures were very, very talented. They were really trying to capture the essence of what happened. They weren't just taking gruesome pictures. They were really trying to capture that sense of grandeur of destruction.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: But they also, I think they probably got, like the last days of Pompeii, I'm thinking like the ruins, the glorious ruins, in a way, sort of an artistic rendering. They're exactly, they're exactly. Some of the photographs said that to me when I looked at them, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's exactly right. That's exactly how they're presented, these kind of weird, twisted ruins. And there was a sense of that Boston had grown too far too fast. that it was a victim of its own hubris, which was another kind of theme that I think some of the photographers were trying to capture. And certainly that was a theme after the fire by a lot of writers. We grew too fast, we should have paid attention, blah, blah, blah.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yes, they do. They do indeed, but not if they read your book. No. So everybody should go and see that. So what's next on the agenda here for you? What are you going to do?

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for asking. Yes, I'm going to update the Coconut Grove book because I did, because I keep finding out new things about that fire. So I'm going to do a new edition and kind of twice as big of that fire. Oh, wow. I'm also involved with a book about the Boston Harbor Islands and four women who camped out there in 1891.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, in a small house. They had a small house on the island, and they kept a journal, which was just amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, we're positioning this as a great, this book, we're going to reproduce the journal and position it as a teaching tool for if you want to teach students how to keep journals.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the last thing I'm working on is a novel. A novel? A novel which is with the publisher right now. I have to do some revisions of it. What is it? Can you give Give us a little sneak preview. It's called Cat Dreaming, and it's a novel of the 1980s. It's a little bit of a memoir, but it's about four women. I guess I'm hung up on four women, but four women during the 1980s and their relationship with each other and their lovers and their cats. So it's kind of a feline Sex and the City kind of take.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Feline sex in the city. I love your titles. You always come up with them.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Yeah, we'll have to look for that one in the future. That's a coming attractions here from Stephanie. Okay. Now, Stephanie, you know, for being on my show, you always get, and here it is, something from me, a gift. Oh, thank you. It's actually the new improved model, so you have to open it up and take a look. Oh, great. How many times have you been on this show?

[SPEAKER_00]: Three or four. I think this is your fourth appearance. Yeah, so this is great. I think you've got the record here. Very nice.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, love. You like that? Yes, look at that size. That's the way I drink coffee, too. That's great.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: So you have a collection every time you come here, and the next time you get another one.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this is great because, and I also reuse these bags, which I love. Everybody loves the bags. The bags are great, but that's the kind of coffee mug I, you know, when I'm writing my books, that's what I need.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Okay, well this is going to help you write your next book.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right, well I appreciate that. I also appreciate you having me on the show. I love having you on the show. It's just great to have it because you write these books and you never know who's going to read them and so I really appreciate you bringing me on. My husband loved reading it too.

[SxgiOOMwDHY_SPEAKER_23]: Oh great, well that's important. He was going like, are you done yet? He's like ready to grab it and read it. Anyway, so I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And I want to tell my audience, I hope you tune in again for Looking Back at Medford History.

[Unidentified]: through the wood to Grandmother's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the