The EOD operator who dealt with more IEDs than anyone else

I’ve been researching the IED history of New York, and it’s pretty fascinating.  I think there have been more IEDs in New York’s history than any other city in the world – it’s certainly up there with Baghdad and Belfast. I’ve already posted some details earlier about the Irish revolutionaries based in New York, in the 1880s and in fact there were two IED training schools in Brooklyn alone in those days, sending IEDs and trained bomb makers to England.  In the early 1900’s Italian extortion gangs used IEDs extensively in the city, and later there were anarchist devices and a very extensive IED campaign by German saboteurs between 1915 and 1917.  There’s lots of great stories, which I’ll put up posts about in coming weeks. For now here’s an image of Inspector Owen Eagen, of the New York Fire Department Bureau of Combustibles, who was in effect New York’s Bomb Tech between 1895 and 1920.  He dealt with over 7000 (yes seven thousand) IEDs between 1895 and 1920.  He lost a couple of fingers along the way.  I think you can tell by the jaunty angle of his hat and the twinkle in his eye that he was a guy who enjoyed the good things in life and maybe the occasional lunchtime tipple.  He has on the desk at his side, I think, a German incendiary IED.  He died in 1920 from “acute indigestion” whatever that means.  As an aside there was an NYPD police bomb squad from 1914, but they focused more on the investigations rather than the render safe.

Eagen was a remarkable man.