Jim Murphy’s The Great Fire, published in 1995, is a work of young-adult historical nonfiction that provides a detailed moment-by-moment account of the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. The book draws on a wide range of primary sources, weaving together the eyewitness testimonies of several individuals—including a young reporter, a newspaper editor, and a 12-year-old girl—to chronicle the disaster from the fire’s beginnings in the O’Leary barn to the widespread destruction of the city. Murphy’s work explores themes such as Urban Growth and the Failure of Chicago’s Infrastructure, Disaster Exposes and Deepens Class Divides, and Eyewitness Accounts and the Making of Chicago Fire Myths.

An acclaimed author of nonfiction for young readers, Murphy was known for his meticulous, source-driven accounts of the past. The Great Fire received a Newbery Honor, among other awards, cementing its place as a classic of the genre. Murphy won a second Newbery Honor for An American Plague and received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for his lifetime contributions to young-adult literature. In The Great Fire, Murphy combines historical detail with eyewitness testimony to present more than a straightforward account of the disaster. He examines the vulnerabilities that left Chicago susceptible to fire, from its flammable wooden infrastructure to the series of human errors that allowed the blaze to spread, ultimately challenging the myths that unfairly blamed working-class immigrants for the catastrophe.

This guide refers to the 2006 Scholastic Inc. first trade paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, illness, death, child death, animal death, racism, and substance use.

Summary

On the evening of Sunday, October 8, 1871, Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan, a one-legged wagon driver on Chicago’s West Side, saw flames coming from the barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, who worked as a laborer and milk seller, respectively, and were already in bed. Sullivan shouted, “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” (14), and rushed in to free the animals. His wooden leg got caught between floorboards, and he barely escaped with the O’Learys’ calf, both badly singed. The fire spread rapidly to neighboring structures. Neighbors doused the O’Learys’ cottage with water, saving it, but the blaze quickly outpaced their efforts.

Chicago in 1871 was highly vulnerable to fire. Of its 59,500 buildings, roughly two-thirds were made entirely of wood. Even structures advertised as “fireproof” hid wooden frames and tar-covered roofs behind stone facades. Over 55 miles of pine-block streets and 600 miles of wooden sidewalks had been elevated above the marshy ground, creating highly combustible conditions throughout the city. A severe drought since July had left the landscape parched; by October, as many as six fires broke out daily. The night before the Great Fire, a blaze destroyed four blocks and took 16 hours to control.

A chain of mistakes prevented early containment. Neighbor William Lee raced to a nearby drugstore where a fire-alarm box was mounted, but the proprietor, Bruno Goll, refused to hand over the key. At the courthouse, watchman Mathias Schaffer misjudged the blaze’s location and sent engines nearly a mile off target. When Schaffer realized his error and ordered that a closer alarm box be struck, his assistant, William J. Brown, stubbornly refused. These mistakes sent fire companies on a “wild-goose chase” and kept nearby companies idle (30).

The first engines to arrive lacked the power to fight the spreading fire. Chief Marshal Robert A. Williams repositioned his forces to surround the blaze, but critical equipment failures undid the effort: A steamer disconnected a firefighter’s hose without redirecting water, another steamer malfunctioned, and an old hose section burst. The wind pushed the fire past the defensive line toward the city’s center. Meanwhile, most Chicagoans remained unconcerned. Twelve-year-old Claire Innes was briefly woken by the commotion but went back to sleep. Horace White, editor-in-chief of the Chicago Tribune, heard alarm bells but didn’t bother getting up.

Once the fire broke through the line of engines, it spread north and east, burning clapboard buildings, shingled roofs, and raised wooden sidewalks. Joseph E. Chamberlin, a 20-year-old reporter for the Chicago Evening Post, crossed a bridge and found the armory, the gasworks, and several streets ablaze. White finally rose, stepped outside, and discovered flames only five blocks away, spreading rapidly across rooftops. Alexander Frear, a New Yorker visiting his sister-in-law, left the Sherman House hotel out of curiosity but quickly realized that this fire was different: Strong winds swept through the streets, crowds were growing increasingly anxious, and his own hands were shaking. Claire later awoke to pounding on the door. The fire had crossed the Chicago River and was heading toward her neighborhood.

As the fire spread through the city’s business district, Chamberlin made his way to the Randolph Street Bridge, which had become a major escape route for people fleeing the area, where a “torrent of humanity pour[ed] over the bridge” (62). Frear loaded his sister-in-law’s three children into a wagon, but a series of misunderstandings left him convinced they were lost. He witnessed disturbing scenes: animals frightened by cinders charging through streets, a woman kneeling in prayer struck by a runaway truck, and a little girl running past with her hair ablaze. Claire and her family pushed through chaotic crowds until her father told them to drop their bundles and hold hands. In the confusion, Claire’s family vanished into the smoke. Alone, she followed fleeing crowds until they scattered and then sheltered in a wide alley. When fire blocked both exits, she retreated to a pile of bricks, hid her face in the dirt, and pulled her bundle over her head. The surrounding buildings burned for what was likely more than an hour. The brick pile shielded her from the worst heat and debris, and she emerged with burns on her legs, arms, and back.

The city’s waterworks, covered by a wooden roof, burned at around three o’clock on Monday morning, cutting off the water supply and leaving even “fireproof” structures like the Tribune building vulnerable. Mayor Robert B. Mason sent desperate telegrams: “CHICAGO IS IN FLAMES. SEND YOUR WHOLE DEPARTMENT TO HELP US” (84-85). Aid arrived from Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Detroit, and other cities. Former alderman James H. Hildreth used gunpowder to blast apart buildings along Harrison Street, which helped slow the fire’s southward advance. Julia Lemos, a recent widow and mother of five who also cared for her ailing parents, marched to the Half-Orphan Asylum where she had placed four of her children weeks earlier and demanded them back. She led her entire family to the open prairie, where her nine-year-old son Willy asked if it was “the Last Day” (93). Lemos watched a church steeple topple but continued leading her family across the prairie until they reached safety together.

Nearly 30,000 unhoused people gathered in Lincoln Park along Lake Michigan, where the crowd remained largely calm. At around 11 o’clock on Monday night, people felt drizzle. By three o’clock on Tuesday morning, steady rain broke the weeks-long drought and halted the fire.

The burned district stretched four miles long and one mile wide; 17,500 buildings had been destroyed, and nearly 100,000 people were unhoused. General Philip Sheridan volunteered troops to distribute supplies, and cities across the United States and Europe sent aid. Frear, who had become exhausted at his sister-in-law’s intact house, learned on Monday afternoon that her children were safe. Claire returned to where she believed her house had stood. After waiting for some time, she spotted her father pacing nearby; she had been waiting in front of the wrong house. Her mother, brothers, and sister had all survived.

Even before the fire ended, citizens demanded answers. The Chicago Evening Journal published the unverified rumor that Catherine O’Leary’s cow had kicked over a lamp. Other papers amplified the story, adding false details about Catherine’s age and motives. In reality, she was in her mid-thirties, she had never received public relief, and both she and her husband were described as hardworking people. A two-week official inquiry cleared the O’Learys but didn’t change public opinion; they eventually sold their property and left the area. The firefighters became a second scapegoat, though the inquiry attributed any sluggishness to exhaustion.

The book concludes by examining the fire’s deeper social consequences. Stricter building codes requiring expensive brick or stone effectively barred poorer citizens from rebuilding. As Professor Ross Miller argues in American Apocalypse, the antifire legislation “disproportionately penalized the working poor who owned their own wooden homes” (137). Chicago’s German community protested with a nighttime march in January 1872, but public sympathy was scarce. When a national depression beginning in 1873 and the destructive “Little Fire” of 1874 finally forced further changes in building practices, architects such as William Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, and John Root pioneered the fire-resistant style later associated with “Chicago School” architecture, using steel girders and brick or granite exteriors. The author concludes that while Chicago rebuilt itself rapidly, poorer residents were increasingly forced to live farther from the city’s center.