Sep 17, 2009 - Sale 2186

Sale 2186 - Lot 132

Price Realized: $ 840
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
CHICAGO NEWSPAPER ISSUED DURING THE GREAT FIRE (ILLINOIS.) Happy Hours: Devoted to News, Literature, Science, Romance and Fashion. Broadside newspaper, one page, 19 x 13 inches; creases, minor repairs on verso. Chicago, 10 October 1871
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Additional Details

The Great Chicago Fire which began on 8 October quickly consumed the presses operated by the city's daily newspapers. A minor literary weekly with the suddenly ironic title of Happy Hours survived to issue a series of daily extras on the fire from 9 to 15 October. This copy reports the news through 5 p.m. on the third day of the fire, just as a gentle rain began to calm the inferno. Most of the paper details the fire's spread, but the latest bulletin announces the opening of provisional post and telegraph offices. The Illinois Newspaper Project reports only 3 libraries holding these Happy Hours fire extras, and none seems to have appeared at auction.
with--Times Extra! Third Edition! Broadside newspaper, one page, 14 x 10 inches. Worn but skillfully repaired; faint underlining under date in text. [St. Louis, 9 October 1871]. Issued at the peak of the fire, although the news is fragmentary, which the editor attributes to "the telegraph office being burned." The editor urges that "the people of Chicago are suffering, and we should hasten at once to help them." Includes the text of a telegraph message from the St. Louis mayor offering to send fire engines, and the Chicago mayor's reply: "Your engines can do us no good, as we have not a drop of water."