Cause of Great Fire of Vaasa cleared up - 154 years later

Local investigators even uncovered the identity of the fire-starter

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Regular readers of the International Edition will recall that last year's news was often taken up with the Bodom Lake Murders, a grisly multiple homicide dating back to 1960. Following the acquittal in October 2005 of the man eventually brought to trial for the killings, this crime remains open and on the books. However, an even older Finnish whodunit has apparently been resolved. This one dates back more than one and a half centuries...
     
      By Eeva Palm in Vaasa
     
     
The cause of the fire that razed practically the entire wooden town of Vaasa in August 1852 has been determined, 154 years on.
      Attempts were made to find the culprit immediately after the fire, but it is only now that a team of investigators has been able to piece together all the facts and even to come up with a name for the man who started the conflagration.
     
The fire was started through the carelessness of one Mårten Pehrinpoika Ohls, a farmer and merchant from Vöyri. Ohls died in the Vaasa Lazar Hospital in April 1853.
      He arrived at the hospital running a very high fever and expired within a couple of hours. With his final ounce of strength Ohls made a deathbed confession that he had been responsible for the previous year's fire, passing the information to Mathias Christian Churberg, who was the hospital and garrison physician.
      Churberg withheld the man's secret until 1865, when the doctor himself fell ill with typhoid. Shortly before his death, Churberg passed the story on to one August Lassell. The tale of Ohls's confession remained alive in oral form, but it was not committed to paper until early in the 20th century.
     
Ohls had apparently travelled by horse and cart the 50 kilometres from Vöyri to the county seat of Vaasa.
      Based on information about roads and roadside inns at that time, the researchers guess that Ohls would have reached a tavern in the village of Vähäkyrö some time before midnight on the day before the fire broke out.
      There he changed his horse and stayed to do some drinking, because Vaasa was a three-hour journey and the city gates would not be opened before 5 a.m.
      When he eventually arrived in Vaasa, Ohls went to sleep in an outhouse belonging to a merchant (some sources name him as district court judge J.F. Aurén). The building was used to store dried hay and turf intended to line the stalls of domestic animals.
      Much hung-over after the previous night's indulgence, the traveller only awoke at around 10 a.m., by which time the citizens of Vaasa were nearly all at work in the fields or in the harbour. Vaasa was an important shipbuilding centre and trading port.
     
Ohls lit his pipe with a friction match. These things, taken for granted today, were relatively new in Finland in the 1850s, but some traders sold them.
      The lighted match fell onto the soft mattress of turf and ignited it. The fire spread very quickly. Ohls rushed outside and fled the city on horseback.
      The fire was investigated by the local magistrate, but the rebuilding of the city proved to be a more important issue than attaching blame for what had triggered the blaze.
     
The cause has only now been revealed. The researchers started with the Vaasa Magistrate's records, which noted that two of the maids in the Aurén household had initially been under suspicion, and then some people from Vöyri, because a cart typical of that area had been found in the yard of the burned-out Aurén house.
      It was not possible to put an owner's name to the buggy, however, since nobody had been seen driving it.
      The keys to the mystery eventually emerged from the church register in Vöyri. According to the ledgers, the date of Ohls's demise fitted perfectly with Churberg's story. There was no mention whatsoever of Ohls in the hospital records, since he was barely there more than a day, and only a few hours in the land of the living.
     
The origins of the Vaasa Fire were determined by a small group that included a senior fire offcier and an investigator of major fires in addition to a clutch of historians and history enthusiasts.
      Marianne Koskimies-Envall, Director of the Ostrobothnian Museum in Vaasa, says she doesn't believe any more thorough research is possible.
      This latest investigation also produced new information that filled in some gaps in the earlier historical research into an event that very much shaped what Vaasa looks like today.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 21.10.2006

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: Six dead, more than 300 houses destroyed

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Swedish royals see cultural sights and visit educational facilities in Vaasa (15.9.2006)
  President Tarja Halonen to meet Swedish King and Queen in Vaasa (24.8.2006)

Links:
  Ostrobothnian Museum, Vaasa
  Vaasa (Wikipedia)
  Vaasa 400 Years

EEVA PALM / Helsingin Sanomat
eeva.palm@hs.fi