Frank J. (Frank Joseph) Loesch

Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1852, Frank Joseph Loesch moved to Chicago in 1870 while working for Western Union and studying law. He witnessed the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 and later wrote about it from personal experience. He earned his law degree from what became Northwestern Law School in 1874.

Over a legal career that lasted about 70 years, Loesch became known as a prominent Chicago attorney and public reformer. In 1908 he served as Special State's Attorney for Cook County, prosecuting fraud connected to the county's first direct primary election. That experience helped turn him into a determined critic of the ties between crime and politics.

He was one of the organizers of the Chicago Crime Commission in 1919, later serving as its president, and he became widely associated with efforts to challenge organized crime's influence in the city. He also served on President Herbert Hoover's Wickersham Commission, which studied law enforcement, crime, policing, and Prohibition. Loesch died in 1944 at the age of 92.