During the Sheehan cousin’s initial election back in ’93, the Sheehan brothers and Fingy Conners had imported scores of thugs and pugilists to beat senseless opposing voters at the First Ward’s polling places while the colluding Buffalo police looked on smirking and aloof. Now a civilian, Sheehan discovered that voters had not only not forgotten, but had enshrined the cruel chapter indelibly into their local lore. He and his cousins were anathematized. It was clear that First Warders would never let go of the memory of the cold-blooded circumstances surrounding that notorious election when a conspiracy among politicians and police denied them their Constitutional right to vote and cracked more than a few skulls for good measure.
Civil War veterans who had routed the enemy in the name of liberty and a better life for themselves, their families and all Americans, who had lost limbs and eyes and half their minds due to the barbarity of combat, were outraged to discover the freedoms that they had so valiantly fought for on the battlefields were under attack by their own countrymen. From every direction in their own native First Ward, despicable millionaire labor contractor Fingy Conners, his political puppets at the city hall, his street gang pugilists, and his dirty complicit police waged a fierce war on American Democracy.
On this particular night the threatening aggressions of vengeful saloon celebrants, their inhibitions loosened and their seething anger toward him and his shitty family unleashed by drink, drove Sheehan from the establishment out onto the icy streets, but not before he was forced to draw his knife in his own defense.
Escaping out of the tavern toward the darkened quai, the cruel winter wind walloped him in the face. Spotting the dejected form of Nora Sullivan, who much like himself was of unsettled mind, wandering aimlessly and alone in the night, Sheehan looked around to see who might be observing him before he began to stumble after her.
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To hear the Alderman tell it, New Year’s Day was no different than any other. The Alderman’s idea of a family holiday celebration was to spend most of New Year’s day at his icehouse with sons Thomas and Daniel.
JP awoke abruptly on New Year’s morn and stepped into his dungarees to set off for the giant ice harvesting barn he’d newly reconstructed on the beach at Tifft Farm. As he opened the door to leave there stood his cousin, fire Captain Thomas D. Sullivan of Engine 8, along with Chief Mike Regan.
“Thomas! Mike! Hello! Happy New Year!” he cheered. Then almost immediately JP could see by the torment on Capt. Sullivan’s face that there was nothing happy about it. The Alderman’s Sullivan kin was in a panic.
JP, have you seen my Nora? Were you at your offices last night?”
“Why no, Tom, I haven’t seen her. I was at my office until after eleven. We’d had a break-in. Someone trying to make off with some horses. New Year’s pranksters.”
“Did you happen to notice her? Nora? On the street? Anywhere?”
“No, Tom. I didn’t. When did you discover she was missing?”
“I worked the midnight shift. Nora’s sister Molly ran down to the station to tell me she was missing about 5:30 this morning. As you may know, Nora’s only been home from the hospital for a week. I walked into the house and our bed was empty. She was gone. Molly was up and down with the baby much of the night. She said she had sent Nora back to bed around 3 o’clock. I ran right over to Mike’s house and we’re getting up a group now to go out searching. Nobody’s seen her. I was hopin’ maybe you had, since your office is so close to my house.”
JP just shook his head, imagining Thomas’ terrible distress.
“I wish I had, Tom. But nonetheless I’ll alert everyone I see today. I’ll stop by Father O’Connell’s on my way and ask him to spread the word to the congregation at Mass and I’ll keep my eyes wide open. We’ll find her Tom. I’m sure of it.” The Alderman lay his hand on the Captain’s shoulder and squeezed assuringly.
The men said goodbye. Before heading back the Captain steered his sleigh a few yards further down Hamburg St. to the edge of the river at Chief Regan’s direction. There they stopped and scanned the surface for some minutes as bergs of ice slowly floated past, imagining the worst. JP headed over to Our Lady of Perpetual Help church to tell Fr. O’Connell of the troubling circumstance.
As the days passed, great search parties were organized. Firemen, police, neighbors and concerned strangers looked far and wide. Schoolchildren on Christmas vacation formed battalions and scoured every inch of the neighborhood. They examined the local lumber yards’ stacks. They invaded barns and stables. They peered into every alley, cellar, slip, canal and body of water as the most troubling of possible outcomes was feared. There were many reports of sightings. All were investigated. Hopeful searches were conducted in the train depots, in adjoining neighborhoods, at boarding houses and hotels, in empty warehouses and abandoned buildings. It was imagined by some optimists that in her confused state someone had taken pity on Nora and was keeping her safe and warm. Others theorized she may have boarded a train for parts unknown.
For weeks after she went missing Captain Sullivan searched for his beloved wife before each shift and after. While on duty he could think of nothing else, and his every idle moment was spent looking, wondering, searching and hoping. At night, exhausted, he comforted as best he could his little children, who desperately missed their mother. He had no idea how to answer their persistent questions or alleviate their anxiety. His sister-in-law Molly continued to take charge over the babies. It was a stressful, anxious time for all. The toll taken on Captain Sullivan was swiftly evident. Balancing his duties as fire captain of Engine 8 with the care of his three small children and the never-ending search for Nora had depleted him. Depression was taking a firm grip. He was disturbed by fears that, having witnessed Nora’s decline and having placed her in the Forest Ave. insane asylum for an interval for her own safety, he himself might possibly end up following suit. Consumed with worry and anxiety, nothing could have prepared him for what came next.
In the sub-zero early morning hours of January 28 the call came in to Engine 8 from the Hoodoo Box, No. 29, at the corner of Seneca and Wells. The box was so named by Buffalo firefighters because of the accepted belief that it represented the most dangerous section in the city in which a fire might occur based on the many daunting conflagrations to which the brave men of the department had already been summoned in the past.
Engine companies 8, 4, and 10 rushed to the scene at 101 Seneca St. The eight story Seneca Jewett building was fully involved. It housed dozens of businesses, a number with highly combustible inventory. It had been built in 1888 by the Jewetts to replace the previous location of their iron stove business, it too destroyed by fire. It had been converted into a hotel during the 1901 Pan American Exposition, and currently housed dozens of businesses, including a candy factory producing chocolate chips. The fire had started on one of the upper floors.
First responders on the scene climbed to the roof of the four-story Eagan building next door. At first it was believed the blaze could be efficiently brought under control, but the air shaft located at the center of the Seneca building unfortunately fed the fierce blaze with abundant oxygen. Soon the conflagration was launching flames so high into the black sky that the fire could be viewed from every point in the city.
Almost as quickly as the mighty streams from firefighters’ hoses landed on the structure the water froze. Ice covered the ladders that the firemen used to climb skyward, turning them into veritable toboggan chutes and presenting the slickest of hazards. Water froze on the equipment and the coats and boots of the firemen themselves, weighing everything and everyone down in icy armor, promising slips and slides and topplings with every step cautiously taken. Besides the overwhelming problem of putting out the fire and keeping it from spreading throughout the congested neighborhood, the firemen were confronted with how to succeed without breaking limbs and losing life due to the ice.
Two additional special calls were sent out, bringing in more fire companies. All told, 22 en
gines, 9 trucks and many other apparatus were on scene. Water was trained on the blaze from every direction. The neighborhood’s spaghetti jumble of overhead wires were encased with ice to such an extent that they sagged to within reaching distance of the firefighters and the thousands of spectators drawn to the scene, posing a major electrocution hazard. The power was at once shut off. On Carroll St. all the wires were cut down.
Around 10 a. m., just as success seemed to be within grasp, catastrophe struck. As the interior of the Seneca building burned, the floors buckled and collapsed from top to bottom, leaving the towering outer walls standing with no support. In the slight breeze the monolithic walls could at first be seen barely perceptibly swaying.Ominously the momentum quickly escalated. Shrieks and horrified screams arose from the thousands who had been drawn to the scene of the massive blaze. A stampede of firemen and sightseers careened down Seneca Street in both directions in an attempt to escape the crushing descent of the tons of brick and iron.
With a terrifying roar the facing wall collapsed 8 stories into the street below, while the entire facade adjacent to the Eagan building tilted over atop it just as firemen climbed on icy ladders upward to the roof in order to gain a vantage point to fight the blaze. Other firemen had entered the four-story Eagan Building and were heading up the stairs to the roof when they heard a deafening rumble. Eight stories of Seneca Building collapsed, pulverizing the roof of the Eagan Building, raining the structure’s iron beams, heavy timbers and a blizzard of brick upon the heads of a dozen firefighters. Members of fire companies Four and Eight were buried under an avalanche of debris from which no one might expect any man could be taken out alive. With a horrifying momentum fifty tons of wall had been pulled down by murderous gravity onto the roof of the Eagan Building and those trapped inside. The debris had punched through the roof. One after another all four floors pancaked, ending up in a massive pile of co-mingled detritus in the basement. When the third floor in the Eagan building on which the firemen had been caught gave way, thousands of wooden tables and chairs that were warehoused there were carried down to the floors below in a splintered entangled mass only to be soon enough congealed into one solid mass by the firehoses’ streams freezing almost instantly.
Captain Sullivan could not believe what was happening. Within moments he snapped into action, rallying his men to comprise a rescue party.
Furniture of every description, beams of iron and timber, bricks, stone, floorings, tiles, iron stairway railings, broken toilets and sinks, mortar and fragments of every conceivable material utilized in the construction and the equipment of a major edifice were piled so high and jammed and frozen so inextricably that for many hours the rescuers seemed to make no progress at all. Ladders were hoisted up to the Eagan Building’s imprisoning floors while the men of truck companies Four and Eight worked their way with much difficulty through the rear of the structure to the spot where the walls had fallen. Water from the hoses had already fused the masses of debris into a frozen tangle. Over the ice-encased piles of collapsed debris the heroes precariously made their way. All the while the fire in the Seneca building next door continued to rage out of control, magnifying the peril.
Two massive holes were dug by rescuers, one at the front and the other at the rear of the Eagan Building. Hours passed. They failed to reveal the lost men. Reaching the basement as the short January day began to grow dark, the rescuers were bitterly disappointed at finding none of their comrades. The best estimates as to the location of the bodies had been wrong. There was but one thing left to do: clean out the entire building of its collapsed debris, a monumental task. A line of citizen volunteers formed as would a bucket brigade, with materials excavated from the interior passed along the long line to end up piled in the street. That debris pile itself soon became a hazard.
Dense volumes of smoke continued to issue forth from the precariously wavering Seneca building. It poured through glassless window casements of those walls still standing. The Carroll Street wall had remained upright. Three immense iron doors which had not been dragged down with the east wall, and which projected from the rough edge of that part still standing, swung east and west, much after the manner of immense weather vanes. With every little gust of wind spectators gasped at the probability of the deadly iron tonnage crashing down into the ruins of the Eagan Building inside of which rescuers were desperately working.
The ruins were ghastly indeed, but withal they offered a majestic ice-covered spectacle. The water tower and Truck No. 2, which had been stationed out front of the Eagan Bldg. were so imprisoned in ice that at first glance it was difficult to tell precisely what these were. Things inanimate were not the only prey for freezing water, for firemen encased as they were from head to foot appeared more like snowmen than humans.
Behind the ropes erected by police to keep the thousands of spectators at bay gathered crowds of worried friends, relatives and neighbors of the unfortunate firemen who responded to the conflagration. Ambulances stood by in wait so that if there was any sign of life in the victims upon their being exhumed they might be rushed to a hospital. It proved a long and trying vigil.
It was found that fallen iron girders had remained attached to the Eagan building’s skeleton at one end, forming a lean-to shelter of sorts that might preserve the lives of many of the trapped men beneath by breaking the force of the falling fragments. Were it not for this freak formation of the girders the lives of all those trapped would most certainly have been crushed out. Feverishly the frozen hands of the firefighter rescuers relentlessly dug when the first muffled cry was heard from beneath. Within minutes the breathing body of Mike Bunce from Engine 8 was uncovered. He arose and shook himself free of mortar and dust. He was led away and taken to the Emergency Hospital, and after his bruises were treated he returned to the scene to help recover his comrades.
Paul Yaiser, pipeman, was uncovered next. With a serious spinal contusion he was taken to the Emergency Hospital.
John Molloy, pipeman of Engine 10, and Lucius Benzinger, pipeman of Engine 4 were rescued next, both suffering with injuries requiring hospitalization.
Capt. Mike Haggerty of Engine 8 was the most seriously injured of all the imprisoned men, rescued along with Patrick Size of Engine 8. Size, not badly hurt, blurted “For God’s sake hurry! All the rest of our boys are under that pile.” Size was evacuated over mounds of broken chairs and other furniture to the rear of the building where he made his way carefully down a frozen ladder. He had received a blow over his right eye but was otherwise uninjured. As soon as he recovered from the shock he was treated on the scene and immediately went back inside to aid in the rescue. Capt. Haggerty, badly injured, was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
The small army continued to claw at the mass of broken rafters, twisted sheet-iron from the roof and thousands of bricks. Mittens were torn to shreds and hands mangled and frozen as they pawed through broken glass, brick shards, exposed nails and split wood.
Charles Heineke of Engine 4 was rescued next, losing a boot in the process. He was helped to descend the ladder, badly bruised, but after an examination showed no serious injury, he was warmed up, lent a new pair of boots and quickly returned to take up rescue work.
It was 11 o’clock. The arc lights were as equally blinding as they were helpful. Five men were still missing. It seemed a certainty they were buried under the pile. Six to eight feet of debris had already been taken out of the building where the men were believed to be. As rescuers worked, nails pierced feet and many a hand was bleeding as the men shivered in the freezing cold. A few minutes after eleven it was shouted that a man could be seen. It was Pipeman John Daly of Engine 8.
“Get me out of this quick, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed, convinced that the tangle of beams above the rescuers’ heads would soon come crashing down. The men reassured him, and once an arm was free he was handed a flask of whiskey and he took a healthy drink. Dr. Albert Dellenbaugh was present on scene and crawled down into the eerily-lit excavation. The
re he gave Daly a hypodermic injection and made him swallow a strychnine tablet, which produced an immediate effect.
“Look out for that box hanging over my head!” Daly gasped, not realizing it was being held steadfastly in place by the girder it had landed on. “If I ever get out of this,” he said, “I wouldn’t work at this business again for $500 a minute!”
After what seemed like hours to the rescuers, chipping away at the ice that imprisoned Daly, he was finally freed and raised from the hole. He lay prostrate on his back shivering with cold. Another hypodermic injection revived him somewhat. He was placed on a stretcher and carried out as carefully as the men could manage. The rescuers slipped and fell with every step, their feet, legs and buttocks pierced with exposed nails, their rubber coats shredded by broken glass, as they slowly proceeded. Daly called out, “Mickey Elliott’s in there too, but I guess he’s done for!”
Soon after Daly was taken out, Elliott was found and removed, revived at the scene by hypodermic injection administered by the now-bloody Doc Dellenbaugh. Elliott’s spine was badly injured. His body shook furiously with cold and shock. He was taken to the Emergency Hospital.
Upon the fire’s beginning rampage, guests at the Hotel Broezel located just 100 feet from the Seneca Building were roused and evacuated. Guests of the hotel, traveling men from other cities, were unstinted in their praise of the way the firemen performed. It was commonly said that no finer work was ever accomplished by any firemen in any other city.”You’ve got a fire department here that is without an equal in any part of the world,” said a veteran traveling man.
The hotel workers, once guests were evacuated, despite the danger, reentered the Broezel’s kitchen and set to work preparing hot dinners and beverages to deliver to the firemen as they battled the blaze and carried out rescue efforts.
Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins Page 26