# Sheahan & Upton's comment on the neighbourhood testimony -- CONDENSED (reported-speech) summary of testimony before the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, Chicago, Nov. 1871
# Source: Sheahan & Upton, The Great Conflagration: Chicago (1871), Appendix 'The Origin of the Fire', pp. 419-439 (testimony 'thus far (Nov. 27) taken').
# Internet Archive item greatconflagrati0000shea, OCR lines 16866-16878 of greatconflagrati0000shea_djvu.txt (https://archive.org/download/greatconflagrati0000shea/greatconflagrati0000shea_djvu.txt). Uncorrected OCR. Fetched 2026-09-14T06:03Z; written 2026-09-14T06:26:37Z.
# STATUS: extract/summary in reported speech (not verbatim transcript), with a few direct quotations.

The above testimony is from those who lived im¬
mediately adjacent to the locality where the fire
commenced, and although it does not give any very
definite idea concerning the origin of the fire, it is
quite evident that a drunken orgy of some descrip¬
tion was going on, which undoubtedly had much to
do with the more immediate cause of the fire. Be¬
low we append the testimony of one or two firemen,
which will give the reader some idea of the fire as
firemen regarded it, and of some of the difficulties

under which they labored :