Great Chelsea Fire of April 12, 1908
Chapter III – The Start*
The fire started a little before eleven on Sunday morning, April 12, 1908. Its origin will probably never be positively known. The most plausible theory, however, is that the roof of a building of the Boston Blacking Company, which is located just off Summer Street, close to the Everett line, in the extreme western part of the city, caught fire from a burning pile of rags on the dump to the windward. At all events, the flames were first seen just before eleven o’clock licking up this inflammable building with its contents of oil, and sending a shower sparks blown by a forty-mile gale towards the heart of the city, and an alarm was at once sent in.
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