# Patrick O'Leary -- 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 16752-16793 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.

Patrick O’Leary, whose wife owned the alleged
kicking cow, said he was in bed and didn’t know
anything about the start of the fire. When he saw
it, only his barn wras ablaze. ITe got on the roof
of his house to protect it, but not “ before his barn
and the whole city was burned down.” Dan Sulli¬
van called him out of bed, and told him his barn
was on fire. He put his children into the street,
and then threw water on his little house until after
one o’clock in the morning. He didn’t see any
engines for a little while. One fireman, with a
stream, asked him if he was insured, and he said
“No,” and the water was taken away from his
house. He could not tell what time the engines

APPENDIX.

427

arrived. Water was thrown on his house by the
pipemen. “ They had enough to do beside that.
He did not know how the tire started. He had no
knowledge of it. “ If he was to be hanged for it
he couldn’t tell. He didn’t blame any man in
America for it.” His “ woman” went to bed about
eight o’clock, and he followed her half an hour
afterward. He was asleep when Sullivan woke
him, or he would have saved a cow. Both doors
of the barn were open — the alley door and the one
on the south side of the building. The latter was
nailed back so that it could not be shut. On the
right hand side of the barn, going north, there
were some shavings and wood, and in a shed out¬
side were some coal and more wood. He some¬
times sprinkled shavings in the barn for his horse
to stand on. He thought the neighbors had shav¬
ings in their dwellings. The wind was very high,
and the fire spread very rapidly.