MFDJ 1/15/2022: Green Mill Hotel Fire

Today’s Wretched Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On April 28, 1955, Chicago awoke to another in a series of fire tragedies involving a transient hotel.  Eight men and three firefighters died in a four-alarm fire at the Green Mill Hotel at 518 N. Green St., an older brick building that featured a combustible interior, open stairways, and no sprinkler system. The blaze erupted just after midnight, when many of the hotel’s 85 residents were asleep. Flames originated beneath a staircase on the first floor and spread so quickly that, by the time the first firefighters arrived, they were already exploding out the rear windows. Some 35 residents, including several women and children, hanging from the front windows, were taken down with ground ladders. In the back of the building a father dangled his two small children from a fourth-floor bay window while his wife stood next to him clutching ;a third child. As smoke billowed from the window, firefighter Karl Scheel of Truck 14 shouted to them not to jump. Scheel climbed up a drainpipe to the second-story roof of an adjacent building, butting him directly beneath the trapped family. “Throw me the kids,” he yelled to the parents who dropped them in his outstretched arms. Firefighters then threw a ladder up to Scheel, who wedged it against the bay window and climbed up to rescue the mother. By this time smoke had overcome the husband and he fell back into the room unconscious. With flames searing his eyebrows, the determined Scheel reached over the sill, pulled the father up, threw his limp body over his shoulders and brought him down the ladder. For this rescue, Scheel was awarded the fire department’s highest award, the Carter Harrison Medal.

A firefighter (presumably Scheel) carries an injured man to safety

As the fire continued to burn, an interior stairway between the second and third floor collapsed, plunging several firefighters advancing a hoseline into the flames. One captain was killed instantly while a second firefighter died four days later. A deputy fire marshal suffered a heart attack and succumbed the following week. Another firefighter was burned over 75 percent of his body after being trapped in the collapse. He remained in a coma for two months while undergoing numerous skin grafts to rebuild his face, shoulders, and ears. Though he recovered, he never returned to work. Because the Green Mill fire was listed as suspicious, the 11 deaths resulting from it were ruled homicides. No arsonist was ever apprehended, and the case remains unsolved.

Culled from: Great Chicago Fires: Historic Blazes That Shaped a City

Arcane Excerpts: Fetus Edition

Here’s an excerpt from the fabulous Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle (1896):

Discharge of the Fetus through the Abdominal Walls.—Margaret Parry of Berkshire in 1668 voided the bones of a fetus through the flesh above the os pubis, and in 1684 she was alive and well, having had healthy children afterward. Brodie reports the history of a case in a negress who voided a fetus from an abscess at the navel about the seventeenth month of conception. Modern instances of the discharge of the extrauterine fetus from the walls of the abdomen are frequently reported. Algora speaks of an abdominal pregnancy in which there was spontaneous perforation of the anterior abdominal parietes, followed by death. Bouzal cites an extraordinary case of ectopic gestation in which there was natural expulsion of the fetus through abdominal walls, with subsequent intestinal strangulation. An artificial anus was established and the mother recovered. Brodie, Dunglison, Erich, Rodbard, Fox, and Wilson are among others reporting the expulsion of remnants of ectopic pregnancies through the abdominal parietes. Campbell quotes the case of a Polish woman, aged thirty-five, the mother of nine children, most of whom were stillborn, who conceived for the tenth time, the gestation being normal up to the lying-in period. She had pains followed by extraordinary effusion and some blood into the vagina. After various protracted complaints the abdominal tumor became painful and inflamed to the umbilical region. A breach in the walls soon formed, giving exit to purulent matter and all the bones of a fetus. During this process the patient received no medical treatment, and frequently no assistance in dressing the opening. She recovered, but had an artificial anus all her life. Sarah McKinna was married at sixteen and menstruated for the first time a month thereafter. Ten months after marriage she showed signs of pregnancy and was delivered at full term of a living child; the second child was born ten months after the first, and the second month after the second birth she again showed signs of pregnancy. At the close of nine months these symptoms, with the exception of the suppression of menses, subsided and in this state she continued for six years. During the first four years she felt discomfort in the region of the umbilicus. About the seventh year she suffered tumefaction of the abdomen and thought she had conceived again. The abscess burst and an elbow of the fetus protruded from the wound. A butcher enlarged the wound and, fixing his finger under the jaw of the fetus, extracted the head. On looking into the abdomen he perceived a black object, whereupon he introduced his hand and extracted piecemeal the entire fetal skeleton and some decomposed animal-matter. The abdomen was bound up, and in six weeks the woman was enabled to superintend her domestic affairs; excepting a ventral hernia she had no bad after-results. Kimura, quoted by Whitney, speaks of a case of extrauterine pregnancy in a Japanese woman of forty-one similar to the foregoing, in which an arm protruded through the abdominal wall above the umbilicus and the remains of a fetus were removed through the aperture. The Accompanying illustration shows the appearance of the arm in situ before extraction of the fetus and the location of the wound.

Bodinier and Lusk report instances of the delivery of an extrauterine fetus by the vagina; and Matheison relates the history of the delivery of a living ectopic child by the vagina, with recovery of the mother. Gordon speaks of a curious case in a negress, six months pregnant, in which an extrauterine fetus passed down from the posterior culdesac and occluded the uterus. It was removed through the vagina, and two days later labor-pains set in, and in two hours she was delivered of a uterine child. The placenta was left behind and drainage established through the vagina, and the woman made complete recovery.