“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” goes the old expres­sion. And some­times when there’s fire there’s an insur­ance pol­i­cy involved, as well. In the years fol­low­ing the Civ­il War, Amer­i­cans increas­ing­ly took out insur­ance poli­cies to pro­tect their busi­ness­es from fire loss­es and, so, too, there was an uptick in the num­ber of arson­ists who delib­er­ate­ly set fires to col­lect the pay­out on the pol­i­cy. This was espe­cial­ly true in urban areas, such as New York City. 

Arson­ists in New York usu­al­ly got away with their crimes, up until the ear­ly 1900s. In 1907, the caus­es of rough­ly 3,500 out of 14,000 fires (25%) was declared to be unknown, though the Chief of the New York Fire Depart­ment declared that the major­i­ty of them were arson related. 

Since most build­ings in New York City dur­ing this time were not fire-retar­dant, by the time the horse-drawn steam fire engines arrived and the fire­men brought the fire under con­trol, incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence (like oil-soaked rags) was often con­sumed by the blaze. An 1895 New York City fire report stat­ed: ​“Upon the arrival of the first com­pa­nies the fire was found to have con­trol of the build­ing.” With­out incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence, if wit­ness­es had not spot­ted a pos­si­ble ​“torch” (the per­son like­ly respon­si­ble for start­ing the fire) enter­ing or leav­ing the build­ing, and if the busi­ness own­er was away from the premis­es at the time of the fire, it was dif­fi­cult to prove that a fire had been delib­er­ate­ly set. Then, too, it was also pos­si­ble that the fire had been caused acci­dent­ly, per­haps set off by a kerosene lamp. 

By the late 1860s, kerosene (refined from petro­le­um) had not only replaced can­dles but sperm oil, as well, as the pri­ma­ry source for light­ing homes and busi­ness­es across Amer­i­ca. It was shipped in bar­rels from the oil fields of Penn­syl­va­nia to retail stores in large towns and cities. It was then siphoned into small oil cans that the cus­tomers brought in with them. From there it was poured into kerosene lamps, facil­i­tat­ed by the nar­row spout of the can.

Though the kerosene lamp pro­duced a bright light (the equiv­a­lent of six­ty to eighty can­dles), kerosene, ini­tial­ly, was a dan­ger­ous sub­stance. In its pure form it posed lit­tle dan­ger but when adul­ter­at­ed with left­over petro­le­um prod­ucts (so a refin­ery could make high­er prof­its), it was extreme­ly explo­sive. While the vapor from good qual­i­ty kerosene could be heat­ed up to 100 degrees with­out explod­ing, vapor from adul­ter­at­ed kerosene could ignite at 40 degrees. The heat from a near­by stove, for exam­ple, could cause the lamp to explode. 

While by the 1890s New York reg­u­la­tions, as well as qual­i­ty inspec­tors, elim­i­nat­ed most adul­ter­ation, care and cau­tion were still need­ed. But light­ing pro­vid­ed by kerosene lamps, despite their dan­ger, was deemed to be absolute­ly nec­es­sary, espe­cial­ly since build­ings and mul­ti-sto­ry ten­e­ment apart­ments in New York often con­tained rooms with no or lit­tle direct light. In addi­tion, kerosene lamps were used for oth­er pur­pos­es. By the 1880s, small kerosene lamps with a met­al plate on top, called ​“babies,” were found in tiny ten­e­ment rooms (often con­tain­ing straw mat­tress­es) that were rent­ed out to board­ers. The board­ers used these stoves for cook­ing, as well as light, in these small, clut­tered spaces. 

Well into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, fires start­ed by kerosene lamps were, thus, a com­mon occur­rence. Small won­der then, that some arson­ists at this time delib­er­ate­ly left a bro­ken kerosene lamp at the scene of their crime, to sug­gest that acci­dent, not arson, was the cause of the fire. 

My new book opens a win­dow into the lives and activ­i­ties of Jew­ish arson­ists in New York, Boston, and Chica­go at the turn of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, and exam­ines how spu­ri­ous charges against the Jews as arson­ists began just after the Civ­il War, appeared on the vaude­ville stage, in silent movies and car­toons dur­ing the late 1800s, and final­ly in sen­sa­tion­al­ized sto­ries in news­pa­pers across America.