Great Chicago Fire of sidewalk, 2,000 lampposts, 17,500 buildings, and $222 million in property, which was about a third of the city's valuation in 1871. The value of the property destroyed by the fire is equivalent to $ billion in . Of the 300,000 inhabitants of Chicago in 1871, 100,000 were left homeless, one-third of the population. 120 bodies were recovered, but the death toll may have been as high as 300. The county coroner speculated that an accurate count was impossible, as some victims may have drowned or had been incinerated, leaving no remains. In the days and weeks following the fire,
Monument to the Great Fire of London Tamdiu Patravit Nondum Restingvitur" (but Popish frenzy, which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched) were added to the end of the inscription on the orders of the Court of Aldermen in 1681 during the foment of the Popish Plot. Text on the east side originally falsely blamed Roman Catholics for the fire ("burning of this protestant city, begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish faction"), which prompted Alexander Pope (himself a Catholic) to say of the area: <poem>Where London's column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies. –