Capt Dennis McSweeney

An Ohio native, born about 1860, McSweeney joined the department in 1878 when it was known as the Tigers.  At the Iroquois Theater he was Captain of Hook & Ladder Company 9.  In 1897, as Captain of Engine Company 31, fighting a blaze on Fifth Avenue at the J&P Coats Thread Company, he suffered three scalp cuts when a cornice fell upon him.  He was back to work after fourteen stitches and a few days off.

In 1905 he was charged with failure to pay $70/month (inflation adjusted: $2,500) in child support for his three daughters, Nellie, Gertrude and Marian. He and Ellen Nolan had married June 24, 1882 and were divorced in 1900.  In 1906 he was briefly jailed for the same offence when he fell behind by $690.  The girls then were ages ten to seventeen.  Ellen died in 1908 without remarrying.  Dennis remarried Catherine Alexander, a woman over twenty years younger, and they had a daughter.

He was scheduled to testify in Iroquois Theater manager William J. Davis' trial in Danville in March 1907 but was suspended from the fire department and came back to Chicago before Davis' acquittal. When numerous tales of his generous spending in Danville taverns leaked upstairs, fire department manager inspector/Assistant Fire Marshall John C. McDonnell determined McSweeney was presenting a bad image of the department.  Dennis was then captain of Engine Company 88.  Soon thereafter he left the department and became a teamster.