File:Owen Eagan (1857-1920) obituary in New-York Tribune of New York City, New York on 3 March 1920.jpg

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Owen Eagan, Bomb Expert, Drops Dead. Man Who Flirted With Explosives for Twenty-five Years in Police Work is Victim of Indigestion. Friend With Him at Death. Seriously Injured but Once, He Examined Thousands of Infernal Machines. Owen Eagan, inspector of the bureau of combustibles since 1895, who had handled thousands of bombs and near bombs found in the city, dropped dead of acute indigestion last night in front of the Grand Central Palace. Eagan left his home, 154 East Forty ninth Street, after supper last night with his nephew, John T. Eagan, a former alderman, to take a tour of inspection. His nephew and he parted and the inspector was walking along Lexington Avenue when, at Forty-sixth Street, he met William A. Churchill, of 153 East Forty-ninth Street, an old friend. Churchill noticed that Eagan was walking slowly and looking pale. "I'm sick," Eagan told him. "I got a pain in my stomach. Take me to a drug store." At a drugstore restoratives were administered. Eagan revived and asked Churchill to take him home. In front of the Grand Central Palace he collapsed and died before an ambulance from the Reception Hospital could reach him. For a quarter of a century "Owney," as tho city called him, flirted daily with extinction. He probably knew more of the nature and anatomy of bombs than any other man in the country. Scarcely a week passed since his appointment that he was not called on to risk his life at least once. Skill and uncanny luck saved him from death. Only once was he injured. This was in March, 1912, when he was called in to examine a suspicious looking package sent to Judge Otto A. Rosalsky. Just this once his fortune and his cunning failed him. The bomb went off while he was holding it and took most of his right hand with it. Eagan went to the hospital, and when able returned to work, calmy continuing to probe the depths of infernal machines with his left hand. During the epidemic of "Black Hand" cases ten years ago, during the war and, more recently, during the whole? sale bomb outrages by anarchists, the work that Eagan did was invaluable to the city, state and nation. He knew the make of every bomb that human ingenuity could devise and often was able to aid the police materially by identifying this or that infernal machine as the handiwork of definite individuals. Owen Eagan was born in a house at Forty-second Street and Third Avenue sixty-three years ago. He was educated in Public School 27 and the College of the City of New York. He served as a cashier in the County Clerk's office before entering the Fire Department. He has been far from well ever since he was injured in an automobile collision in Westchester several months ago. He was a member of Tammany Hall, and is survived by his wife, Mary, and a brother, Thomas.

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