I have searched the city of San Francisco for a museum and historical record of the great fire of Aptil 18, 1906. The best, so far, seems to be the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco and a collection of images and letters on a few walls in the Bay Model Visitor Center in Sausalito. Another collection is in the Fairmont Hotel. None tells a complete story but they do reveal much controversy at the time that is probably far from anyone’s mind today.
The resident federal militia started a campaign to dynamite large sections of the city to back-burn as well as establish a fire break. This apparently is why Van Ness avenue is so wide. Some said the fires created by the Army were far worse than the quake causing far more destruction to the city. The San Francisco Museum has letters that suggest residents actually were in favor of burning down their own homes to collect insurance.
The death toll is another example. It is said to have been severely underestimated for three reasons. First, politicians wanted to paint a positive picture and keep property values high. The reality was that the city had such severe displacement that Los Angeles quickly gained prominence as a new port for commerce in the West. Second, racism prevented many thousands of people living in China Town from being counted. Third, the Army had been authorized to shoot and kill anyone suspected of looting. With more than 400,000 residents approximately 4,000 troops killed around 500 people; the quake was said to have killed 3,000.
This post, however, is not really about San Francisco. The BBC reports that the Great Fire of London in 1666 is being recast. Today we can look back at this disaster and learn a great deal about investigations and security.
Everyone learns at school that the fire raging for four days in that hot, dry summer began in a bakery in Pudding Lane.
But a new Channel 4 documentary focuses on the lesser known story of the fire – it sparked a violent backlash against London’s immigrant population, prompted by the widely-held belief at the time that it was an act of arson committed by a foreign power.
The countries already least in favor with the English, the Netherlands and France, were quickly suspected of some involvement. The BBC tells of how the British Navy attacked the Dutch weeks before the fire. That created a sense of victory that turned to guilt and led people to believe the Dutch were counter-attacking. The desire to find a cause of terror also led many to blame Catholics, whom they already disliked. Interrogation practices during an investigation ended with officials placing blame on immigrants from France, and one man in particular:
At the end of September, the parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate the fire, and a French Protestant watchmaker, Robert Hubert, confessed to having deliberately started the fire at the bakery with 23 conspirators.
Although his confession seemed to change and flounder under scrutiny, he was tried and hanged. Afterwards, colleagues told the inquiry Hubert had been at sea with them at the time, and the inquiry concluded the fire had indeed been an accident. No-one knows why he confessed.
I suspect the toll from this fire is wildly underestimated and there was likely to be conspiracy that made the fires spread, similar to San Francisco. Wanton destruction could have been a natural reaction to the plague of 1665. While the San Francisco fire is a study of human behavior relative to technology and liability a clear lesson in the London fire is how prejudice dictates a sense of security. We must fight the urge to satisfy ourselves with false resolutions and declarations, such as this one:
Until the 19th Century, the plaque at London’s Monument stated that followers of the Pope were to blame, says Ms Horth, and named Hubert as the fire-starter. It was only after Catholic emancipation in the 19th Century that the government decided the plaque was inflammatory and had those inscriptions removed.
Speaking of plagues, we know today that the disease was spread by rats and fleas. Those who washed regularly as part of their customs were unlikely to be infected. Some deduced in the 1300s that this meant a group of people were to blame. Those who practiced clean living and did not get the plague were thus attacked for being its cause.
Monty Python’s “She’s a Witch” skit does a fair job of reenacting how fear can have a powerful yet absurd influence on the concepts of security and justice.