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Gertrude worked as a housekeeper for George Elias Shipman Jr (1860-1936)* and Clara M. Richardson Shipman (1864-1942). and shared their home at 525 W. Monroe St.
Also living in the Shipman home was the Shipman's two-year-old daughter,
Elizabeth (1898-1951), one-year-old son, George Shipman jr (1902-1955), and Clara Shipman's aged parents, Fred
and Elizabeth Richardson. George Shipman was an attorney and fire insurance broker with offices on LaSalle street.*
Gertrude and her three
siblings (William, Charles and Cecilia) had spent their childhood in Buffalo Grove,
Illinois with their grandparents, Irish immigrants
Edward and Mary Keough. Their mother, Mary Keough, had passed in 1879 and their father, George C. Fitzpatrick (1840-1919) by death had returned to his native land, England.
Gertrude's body was identified by her employer on January 2, 1904, based on her watch and clothing. Her two brothers, William and
Charles Fitzpatrick, helped in the three-day search
for her body.
Funeral
High mass was held in Chicago at St. Jarlath's Church on W. Jackson Blvd. Gertrude had been active in Church of the Epiphany and was a member of Brendan's Court, Catholic Order
of the Foresters, who organized the service.
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In Buffalo Grove, the burial service was conducted by Father Royer in St. Mary's Church. Gertrude was buried next to her mother, Mary
A. Keough Fitzpatrick (1846-1879)
and grandparents, in Saint Mary's
Cemetery in Buffalo
Grove, Illinois.
In the years after the fire
Charles Fitzpatrick named a daughter after his sister.
George and Clara Shipman had a third child in 1905. In 1924 George
acquired Mosso Laboratories, makers of Mosso's Oil of Salt, claimed to cure eczema,
pimples, piles, indigestion, diarrhea, nervousness, female weakness, prostate trouble,
hay fever, rheumatism, wounds from metals, ptomaine poisoning, internal hemorrhage,
colic and dysentery — in 30-60 minutes It was a yellow oily mixture
"of linseed oil with small amounts of oils of turpentine, camphor and sassafras, a pinch
of salt and a trace of muriatic acid of turpentine, camphor and sassafras." It remained in the marketplace until the early 1950s.
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