The Vault

Advice For Late–19th-Century Rubes About To Visit Chicago

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This list of advice for travelers to large cities was reprinted in a Chicago guidebook published in 1888. The list advises rural dwellers, used to life in a place less packed with people, on ways that they could avoid becoming a mark for con men or an annoyance to the more savvy city folk around them. 

In the 1880s, Chicago was bouncing back from the 1871 fire that burned a third of its buildings and growing at a record-setting rapid pace. Visitors might be in the city on business—Chicago was a hub for the sale of commodities from the Midwest—or to visit such landmarks as the Marshall Field and Company department store or the Art Institute (founded in 1882).  

The first section of this book, a history of the city, is written in a highly entertaining (if occasionally racist) style, and is worth a browse for sections titled “Hunting Wolves Around Chicago,” “The First ‘Loafer’ in Chicago,” and “How a Cat in the Old Postoffice Saved Its Life [during the Great Fire] By Jumping Into a Pail of Water.”

I found this list on the Chicago history Tumblr Calumet 412. 

Chicago: An Instructive and Entertaining History of a Wonderful City: With a Useful Stranger’s Guide, 1888. 

Internet Archive. 

Chicago: An Instructive and Entertaining History of a Wonderful City: With a Useful Stranger’s Guide, 1888. 

Internet Archive.