Chief O'Neill: The Man
Captain O'Neill was the General Superintendent of Police in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. He preferred the title Captain, to Chief or Superintendent, which perhaps give us some insight into the man. By any measure he led an exciting life. He was born in County Cork and there he learned to play the flute. At the age of sixteen, he was given a letter of introduction to the local bishop. His family sent him off to a life as a priest but he had a change of mind and ran away to sea.
He circumnavigated the globe and was later shipwrecked in the Pacific. He was rescued and landed in San Francisco. He did some ranching in Montana before going to Chicago by way of New Orleans and Missouri. In Missouri, he married a young lady, Anna Rogers, whom he had met when she was an outbound passenger on one of his voyages from Ireland. He and his wife moved to Chicago in 1870, shortly before the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. He came to Chicago to work as a sailor on the ore boats that cruised the Great Lakes.
Fate intervened and the Captain ended up as a patrolman on the Chicago Police force. He was on the force less than a month when he was shot by a burglar. He carried the bullet, lodged near his spine, till his death. Even though he was wounded in the shoot-out he still managed to arrest the felon and bring him into the station. Not a small feat when you consider that patrolmen in those days walked their beat.