Omaha officials had a rather serious problem in January 1901. The city needed a pesthouse, but someone had burned it down.
The smallpox isolation building had gone up in flames on a Saturday night, and Chief of Police Mitchell was not treating the fire as an accident. He said he already had the names of several men believed to have taken leading parts in the affair, and once enough evidence was gathered, arrests for arson might follow.
Mayor Kelly wanted the matter pursued. To him, the burning was more than the destruction of one unwanted building. If the guilty parties were not punished, he feared any future pesthouse could meet the same fate at the hands of a mob…