George E Brennan

Biography

Brennan was born in Ireland and he lost his right leg when he was 13. He had substituted for a switchman who was off on a post-payday drunk, at a coal mine in Braidwood, Illinois. He tried to uncouple two cars from a moving train and his right foot became wedged in a railroad switch. He was "plump and nimble-witted, a poker player and duck hunter, a successful and honest businessman, a philanthropist who gave away several hundred wooden legs." In 1923 he supported William Emmett Dever as Mayor of Chicago. In 1926, Brennan "bet his bossdom against a seat in the U. S. Senate that Illinois is sick of Prohibition" and lost to Frank L. Smith.