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Chicago Swarming
The Chicago fire department was a hornet's nest in
the early 1900s. In 1903, chief William H. "Bill" Musham was at the center, with a half dozen targets
on his forehead.
1901 candidates for Chicago fire chief
Musham was appointed in 1901 by democrat mayor
Carter Henry Harrison Jr (1860–1953) to replace
Denis Swenie (1834–1903).*
Swenie was Chicago's fire marshal for twenty-two
years, during which time he helped move the
department from a volunteer to a paid force. Musham
worked with Swenie most of those years, entering the
department as a sixteen-year-old volunteer. Another
candidate for the position, James Horan,
was popular with other firefighters and with a few
of the insurance underwriters. A third candidate,
John Campion,
had on his side long experience and influential
political connections. Musham
wasn't popular, or connected but
he had the approval of a majority of the
underwriters, forty-six years of experience, and a
record demonstrating bravery and a commitment to the
department. He'd earned the right to a shot at the
job, and mayor Harrison gave it to him.
Horan might have been a better choice but, without
the Iroquois disaster as a tipping point, maybe not.
Until the Iroquois Theater fire motivated Chicago's
mayor, building department, and city council to
agree upon changes in ordinances, codes, and
enforcement, the fire chief was destined to be
caught in the middle. A hot mess.
Harrison, in 1901 serving his second mayoral term,
was the first Chicago native to reach the office of
mayor. He would go on to serve five terms, as had
his father, Carter Henry Harrison Sr. (The senior
Harrison was assassinated by a nut case in the final
days of the 1893 Columbian Exposition Worlds Fair.
Before his death, Harrison Sr had purchased the Chicago Times newspaper,
and Carter jr. helped operate it prior to his first
mayoral election in 1897.)
A group of underwriters put pressure on Harrison to
replace Chief Swenie, complaining that his age
(sixty-seven) and poor health (cardiac asthma) were
causing higher fire loss. With Swenie's agreement,
the mayor brought in two doctors to examine him.
When they reported that Swenie's health was
precarious, Swenie resigned, and his family heaved a
sigh of relief. (Medical frailty worked so well in
the Swenie situation that Harrison tried it again a
couple of years later.)
A majority of the underwriters, eighty percent,
favored Musham. The remaining twenty percent
preferred James Horan, arguing that he was younger
than Musham. Horan also had a history of supporting
Republican political candidates, a likely mitigating
factor.
Fire Chief shoots his foot
Within weeks of his appointment, Musham took actions
that shook up the fire department and may have
constituted firing the first shot in a war: he
transferred James Horan, the popular guy, from the
prestigious downtown district to one that saw few
fires. A no-mans land, career-wise. In Horan's
place, Musham appointed Charles Seyferlich. To the
newspapers, Musham gave no explanation for the
transfer, leaving everyone to conclude he hoped to
push Horan far enough into the shadows to reduce his
capacity to challenge chief Musham's authority. That
might have been a strategic gambit for someone in
Musham's position who inherited a fiefdom of
long-standing and might even have been beneficial
for the department, but it backfired. The transfer
fueled the resistance from Horan and Campion
loyalists, giving them the excuse they needed to
start seriously chewing on Musham's backside.
Fickle Chicago insurance underwriters. This one. No, this one.
In mid-1903, mayor Harrison once again found himself
being pressured by underwriters to replace his fire
chief, this time the same chief they'd endorsed two
years earlier. Led by the Chicago Underwriters
Association president
Edward M. Teall,
the underwriters claimed Musham's poor management of
the department was causing undue fire losses.
For six months, the attacks on Musham were
relentless. Fire loses were increasing, the
underwriters cried. Musham showed favoritism, they
accused. He did not impose sufficient discipline,
they said.† He didn't rid the department of unfit
battalion chiefs. He purchased from vendors without
taking open bids. He used salary funds to build
engine houses. Organized labor proponents within the
department joined the chorus and added a few notes
of their own. If there was a fart in the department,
it was blamed on Musham and reported in the
newspaper. Each week brought a new complaint from
the underwriters and/or labor. They wanted Musham
gone and, to exert maximum political pressure on the
mayo (and in some cases damaging the mayor's
reputation was the point of it all, Musham was just
a figurehead), waged their campaign in newspapers.
Mayor stood by his man.
Harrison stood behind Musham and agreed with data
Musham presented that refuted the underwriter's
accusations. In October, Musham took action that
contradicted the allegation that favoritism was
running the department but added oil to the fire,
by investigating
the son of a competitor for the fire chief position,
John Campion.
Also, in response to the charge of favoritism,
Harrison repeated the medical solution and brought
in two doctors to examine the targeted aged
battalion chiefs. Though the physicians disagreed
about the mens' fitness, underwriters tried to force
Musham to fire the officers. Musham wasn't the sort
of man who tolerated bullying. His refusal was
immediate and loud. The underwriters were shocked,
mortified, and offended. They assured newspapers
they would have a firm talk with the mayor.
No win for Musham
Musham was in a bad spot. Even if he had been
inclined to resign, he could not do so without
giving the underwriters a victory. If there was one
thing Chief Musham and mayor Harrison agreed upon,
it was that a committee of insurance men should not
run the Chicago fire department.
Elephant and malcontents
The underwriters weren't the only ones who could use
the press, and mayor Harrison proved himself to be a
wily opponent. He first went public with the story
that the three battalion chiefs with questionable
fitness would resign voluntarily.
To make sure underwriters got the message, Harrison
coupled the announcement with an emphatic
reiteration of his support for chief Musham. (If I
had a time machine and could transform into a mouse,
I'd like to live in Harrison's office in 1903 to see
the Harrison-Musham duo working out their strategy.)
Harrison's next announcement was to tell the
newspapers of his growing impatience with morale
problems in the fire department and to place the
blame on a handful of anti-Musham/pro-Horan
(Republican) malcontents.
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Harrison expressed his eagerness to learn their
identities and instructed Musham to sniff them out.
Until then, the behind-the-scenes anti-Musham
campaign was the elephant in the corner. By
reinforcing his support of Musham, Harrison paraded
the elephant across the pages of the
Chicago Tribune. He then took it a step further and asserted that
Horan loyalists were responsible for the
department's morale problem, not Horan himself,
thereby giving both Horan and the underwriters a
face-saving cover. Horan would make a fine future
fire chief, and the underwriters were well-meaning
citizens who had been misled by a
soon-to-be-disciplined handful of malcontents. Purge
them, and everyone would live happily ever after.
Whether or not this strategy would have quieted the
hounds was never learned because the Iroquois
Theater fire changed the course of things.
Six days before the Iroquois Theater fire, Musham
suspended the five designated malcontents, accusing
them of carrying unsubstantiated tales outside the
department. The first hearing about the suspensions
was in progress when word came that the Iroquois
Theater was on fire. All the men immediately headed
to Randolph St. to fight the fire. Afterward, as an
acknowledgment of their assistance at the Iroquois,
they were reinstated.
Fire Chief Swenie's shadow may have outlived him.
Jurors at the coroner's inquest concluded Musham was
guilty of gross neglect of duty for not enforcing
city ordinances and not demanding accountability
from Iroquois fireman William Sallers. Musham was
held over for the grand jury.
The grand jury disagreed with the coroner's inquest.
Though it was apparent from Musham's testimony that
he was unfamiliar with some city ordinances, his
testimony was more interesting in what he didn't say
than in what he did. He admitted he had not demanded
the requisite weekly reports from Iroquois fireman
Sallers — but no mention was reported of reports
from any theater firemen. If his predecessor Swenie had been meeting
with theater firemen, there would have been a system
in place and the remnants of that system would have
lingered when Musham came on the job. Musham didn't
do it, and was only vaguely aware of it, because
Swenie hadn't done it.
In January, 1904 testimony after the Iroquois
Theater fire Musham asserted he did not know that he
had the authority to close a theater. He had been on
the job then for thirty months and was First
Assistant for two decades before becoming chief.
Since it would have been easy for prosecutors to
present evidence disproving Musham's claim of
ignorance, it seems likely his testimony was
truthful. Had a formal procedure been commonly used
during Swenie's term, it would have left behind a
trail of departmental procedures and paperwork that
Musham, by most accounts a stickler for detail,
could not have ignored. Swenie was the sort of
fellow who could have stopped Iroquois manager Davis
on a street corner and told him the Iroquois didn't
cut the mustard, and Davis would have listened. On
the other hand, there was the
Building
Commissioner George William's report the
mayor had relayed to the city council a few weeks
earlier that described nearly all Chicago's theaters
as fire traps — a condition years in the making,
certainly predating Musham. The grand jury likely
recognized Musham's failure to enforce ordinances as
a case of his having followed the status quo in a
seriously flawed system.
Musham takes jury recommendations
Musham followed the recommendation from the
coroner's jury and grand jury that more attention
would be given to inspections and safety concerns if
handled by a separate sub department. At the end of
March 1904, he set up a bureau headed by William J.
Burroughs, who had been chief of the first
battalion, and the city council granted the funds
for an additional battalion chief to replace
Burroughs. Musham named John Campion as Burrough's
assistant, transferring Campion to engine Company 5
on Jefferson and Van Buren. Traditionally the First
Assistant Marshal's office was in city hall but
Campion had earlier requested his office be
relocated to nearer his home on the west side. In
addition to inspections of theaters, the new bureau
was made responsible for elevator shafts and other
ordinance-mandated safety matters.
Edward
J. Buckley succeeded Burroughs as chief of the first battalion.
Chief Musham out, Campion in
In October, 1904 Musham resigned, and Harrison
appointed First Assistant chief John Campion Chief.
Musham loyalists, including his son, John W. Musham,
asserted that Musham's resignation (denied by
Harrison as being even a smidgeon coerced) was a
consequence of Harrison's political ambition.
By some reports, Harrison traded Campion's
appointment to the fire marshal position for
political support from alderman John Brennan of the
18th ward. Harrison denied the accusation, of
course. John Musham maintained that some of
Harrison's past loyalty to his father was
reciprocation for chief Musham having admonished
Horan and Campion for violating department policy by
campaigning while on duty for Graeme Stewart,
Harrison's Republican opponent. With another mayor,
that'd seem like a stretch. As Harry Bosch might
say, high
jingo.
Musham contracted to supervise double platoon experiment
A year after his retirement, Musham was hired by
mayor Dunne to supervise a double-platoon experiment
at one fire house. That set off a storm of
opposition that contributed to Campion's downfall. Campion
exit gave rise to more Musham bashing.
Campion's hold on the fire
chief position was of even shorter duration than
Musham's. Mayor Edward Dunne wanted to organize the
department in platoons and Campion refused. Dunne
suspended Campion and accused him of graft. Dunne's
accusations were disputed by many Chicago aldermen
but to poke a stick in the eye of insurance
underwriters, they went along with the mayor's wish
to dismiss Campion. The controversy went on after
the dismissal, with fire truck vendors jumping into
the fray on behalf of Campion. An American La France
salesman said Campion was a good guy just trying to
break a long-time deal Musham had with a former
sales representative of a competitor. The sullied
sales representative, Chicagoan Daniel Healy, of
course, disputed the allegation, and elaborated on
American La France's errors. In the end it was
he-said/they-said with Campion out of the job,
replaced by Horan.
Grief and Pneumonia take Musham
While 1906 brought a mayoral mauling for Campion, it was a worse year for
Musham. In December came the unexpected death of his
twenty-two-year-old son, Joseph, of heart disease.
When Musham died two months later, in February of
1907, it was said his resistance to illness was
diminished by grief. William and Kate had lost their
oldest son, William jr., in 1890, at age seventeen.
Five children survived: John, Frank, Harry, Anna
(see sidebar), and Ella.
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