My Great, Great Grandfather and the Chicago Stockyard Fire.

From Facebook Notes by Tj Shields on Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 9:58am

My Great, Great Grandfather and the Chicago Stockyard Fire.

From my Father,

Greetings all:

This article reminded me that my grandfather, Charles McElligott, was a lieutenant in the Chicago Fire Department who responded to this fire. I do not have all the details, but my recollection from conversations with my mother is that he was injured and suffered from amnesia as a result. The family thought he had been killed because he was not heard from for a long time. Eventually he was reunited with the family, but a different man. Before the fire he was robust and strong. After he came home, he was quite and sad. I thought I should share that recollection, vague as it is, with you. 

Regards, Dad



Article:
The fire began about 4 a.m. in the basement of Warehouse 7 of the Nelson Morris and Co. plant, run by one of the prominent meatpacking companies in the Union Stockyards. Black smoke was spotted by a night watchman who rang the alarm at 43rd and Loomis streets.

All the firemen in the Stockyards rushed to the alarm with horse-drawn steam engines and trucks in tow. Fire Marshal James Horan, known as "Big Jim" for his large stature, was called out of bed and driven to the scene in the department's only motorized vehicle.

On that frigid morning of Dec. 22, 1910, the men arrived at the windowless "hog house" and were met with an overwhelming firefighting challenge. The only way to attack the fire was to hop on a 4-foot-tall loading dock covered by a rickety wooden canopy, leaving them little space to maneuver, said Bill Cosgrove, a retired Chicago firefighter who recently wrote a book about the fire titled "Chicago's Forgotten Tragedy."

"They had the railroad track (with standing boxcars) at their back, a canopy overhead, the fire in front of them, (and they are) confined to this small space with all this heat and smoke," he said.

The fire began about 4 a.m. in the basement of Warehouse 7 of the Nelson Morris and Co. plant, run by one of the prominent meatpacking companies in the Union Stockyards. Black smoke was spotted by a night watchman who rang the alarm at 43rd and Loomis streets.

All the firemen in the Stockyards rushed to the alarm with horse-drawn steam engines and trucks in tow. Fire Marshal James Horan, known as "Big Jim" for his large stature, was called out of bed and driven to the scene in the department's only motorized vehicle.

On that frigid morning of Dec. 22, 1910, the men arrived at the windowless "hog house" and were met with an overwhelming firefighting challenge. The only way to attack the fire was to hop on a 4-foot-tall loading dock covered by a rickety wooden canopy, leaving them little space to maneuver, said Bill Cosgrove, a retired Chicago firefighter who recently wrote a book about the fire titled "Chicago's Forgotten Tragedy."

"They had the railroad track (with standing boxcars) at their back, a canopy overhead, the fire in front of them, (and they are) confined to this small space with all this heat and smoke," he said.

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The pressure of the heat and smoke climbed, and without warning, an exterior wall collapsed. Six stories of molten brick came falling down on top of the firefighters, killing 21 instantly, including Horan. Three civilians were also crushed.

The furious fire that raged 100 years ago Wednesday ravaged the infamous Union Stockyards, devastated families and upended the Chicago Fire Department. It stood as the single greatest loss of professional big-city firefighters in U.S. history until Sept. 11, 2001.

On this anniversary, relatives of Horan plan to place a wreath at a sculpted memorial erected in recognition of the tragedy inside the gates of what is now known as the Stockyards Industrial Corridor, said his great-grandson John Rice. The Fire Department commemorated the centennial anniversary in October.

Many of the firefighters who fought that day were from the neighborhood, leaving a whole community in grief, said Tim Samuelson, the city's cultural historian.

The fire also made national news, as the Stockyards were one of Chicago's most well-known landmarks at the time, he said.

Local news accounts at the time described the macabre scene in detail, including how the bodies of many of the dead were found buried in the rubble amid hog meat that had been stored in the building. It took 17 hours to pull all the bodies from the ruins.

Though this blaze became infamous, fires at the Stockyards were not uncommon, Cosgrove said. Highly flammable chemicals used for meat production and spilled on Stockyard floors made conditions ripe for fires.

"Every fireman knows what a stockyard fire means," the Tribune reported at the time. "The men knew of the treachery of the ancient shells of grease soaked wood and shaky brick walls. … Chicago firemen cherish no illusions when they go in to strangle a big fire at the yards with their hands."

The fire, started by a faulty electrical socket, left behind 19 widows and 35 orphaned children just before Christmas Day, Cosgrove said. Horan's wife had planned to give her husband a picture of their two young children, Rice said.

Horan had many difficult blazes and rescues under his belt before this day, and was known as a progressive boss who fought for his workers and horses and modernized the Fire Department and its equipment, Rice said.

Rice said his own family never talked about the fire marshal and his terrible death because it was simply too sad. But after Rice began to research him, he came to realize that his ancestor had been a "larger- than-life hero."

"It's something our family feels a great deal of pride about," he said. "We're glad the story is staying out there."

bschlikerman@tribune.com