CHAPTER VII.

F. C. A.  ADMINISTRATION (CONTINUED) —1866 to 1875.

A Calamity Year, 1866—Death and Pestilence—A Financial Crisis—
The City Impoverished—Open Hatches and False Alarms—Burn¬
ing OF S. S. "Crescent"—Chief O'Connor's First Election—City
Appropriations Still Unpaid—Firemen's Charitable Association
Defended by the Courts—Judge Cooley's Opinion—Varieties Thea¬
tre Fire—Popular Sympathy—Paid Department Schemes—Gov.
Warmouth Interferes—SErTLEMENT with the City at a Large
Discount—Appeal to Underwriters for Funds—Attempt of Un¬
derwriters TO Force Chemical Engines Into Service—The " Bab¬
cock Controversy "—Babcock Men Arrested and Acquitted—The
Controversy Subsides—The Chemicals Unmolested—Firemen's In¬
surance Company Founded—False Alarms Again—Chief O'Connor
at the Fire Chiefs' Convention.

IN 1866 Jacob Leidner became Chief Engineer, with Philip Mc¬
Cabe, Joseph Jacobs, A. A. Lipscomb and Charles Smith as
Assistants—the first two continued from the year previous.
The year '66 was marked by the death of several men who had
been exceptionally prominent in the F. C. A. In March, Ex-Chief-
Engineer John F. Gruber fell by the hand of an assassin, an occurrence
that occasioned great excitement in the department. Special meetings
were held to take action ; printed inscriptions in his memory were hung
in the engine houses; and No. 18 came forward with a proposition to
erect a monument in his honor, on the offer of J. T. and A. L. Plathmier,
of No. 20, to assist in building and enclosing it. In May, the Board of
Delegates were called together to take action on the death of James
Delamore, the active Secretary of the Association, who was then serving
his fifth consecutive term in that office; and in the following October
similar action became necessary in reference to the death of Henry Bier,