This is CBS, I In The World. I'm John Bachelorette with Professor Benjamin O'Carp

of Broken College. We're looking at his new book, The Great New York Fire of 1776, A

Law Story of the American Revolution. We come to the moment that begins the puzzlement

about who and when and how accident or design. Whitehall slip around 9pm that night is the

memory. Now the town is depopulated but their eyes everywhere when you pull all the investigations

together. Professor, as I understand it, one version is there is a party that is drinking

heavily at a tavern and they may or may not have deliberately started a fire in a pile

of lumber. There were women involved, women present, possibly Demi Mondais, unclear. It's

not clear whether they're soldiers or whether these are elderly people. What do we know about

that incident at 9pm?

Yeah, we only know of a couple of witnesses to this who don't testify until much later

in 1783. It could well be that they didn't start it on purpose but just that they were

careless because they'd been drinking. They left a candle without blowing it out. It caught

on something dry or flammable and that the whole thing had begun there at Whitehall slip.

That is definitely a story that has been told over the years and it's a story that favors

the American version because it's just an accidental circumstance in the midst of the

chaos and war of war. It points to British carelessness. It points to accidental circumstances.

It's not something that lays any blame on the rebel army or their associates at all.

9pm, that's important. More like midnight. It's possible that the party was witnessed

at 9pm and then people went to bed but the fire is said to start by most accounts between

midnight and 1am.

Yes, the fire starts at midnight to 1pm. I wanted to emphasize that the incident of these

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