Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (47 page)

And what did Brinkley do with all this raw power? Why, he told his listeners—a vast, broad audience, arguably the biggest audience anyone in the history of the world had ever had—to buy his pills and tinctures and tonics and injections so that they might once again be sexual dynamos. He continued offering his illicit surgical procedures—primarily prostate operations—out of the hotel in which he lived.

Brinkley also sold air time to hucksters who were so shameless Brinkley himself might well have blushed at their claims. One man sold autographed pictures of none other than Jesus Christ, another sold something called “Crazy Water Crystals,” and long-distance hypnotists mesmerized the masses. Brinkley also peppered the many hours of broadcast time with young musicians to the relatively new country-music scene, giving broad early exposure to such future stars as Red Foley, Gene Autry, Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, and others.

The head huckster continued in this manner until 1934 when the Mexican government, snapping under pressure from Washington, DC, closed him down. So Brinkley opened a new clinic in San Juan, broadened his surgical offerings to include procedures for the colon, and continued with glandular implants, vasectomies, and “rejuvenations” to prostates. And he made, and spent, more money than ever. He built a mansion with lavish grounds on sixteen acres that included a swimming pool, a greenhouse, a fountain, an eight-thousand-bush garden, exotic animals from all over the world, a dozen Cadillacs, and more.

A cut-rate competitor opened shop nearby in Del Rio, so Brinkley pulled up stakes and headed to Little Rock, Arkansas. Soon enough his competition set up a new facility, specializing in cancer treatments, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. (The man who did so was, perhaps, sleazier than Brinkley himself. And you'll read more about him—and the horrors he inflicted on desperate people—later in this chapter.)

Then, in 1938, the good times began swerving and screeching to a halt. Morris Fishbein published a brutal, wide-open, two-part article, “Modern Medical Charlatans,” detailing and exposing Brinkley's entire professional career. Enraged, Brinkley sued Fishbein for libel, demanding $250,000 in damages. But he should have left well enough alone, for that was just the reaction Fishbein and the AMA had hoped for. The trial, set in Texas, kicked off on March 22, 1939, and Fishbein emerged the victor. The jury said of Brinkley that he “should be considered a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary, well-understood meaning of those words.”

And then the lawsuits really began rolling in, seeking damages totaling many millions of dollars. Reeling emotionally and hemorrhaging financially, Brinkley had no time to catch his breath, for the IRS descended and rummaged in every aspect of his life, from his accounts to his closets, claiming massive tax and mail fraud. Brinkley declared bankruptcy in 1941, nearly died from a trio of heart attacks, then had one of his legs amputated due to poor circulation.

“Doctor” John Romulus Brinkley dragged himself through another couple years before expiring, on May 26, 1941, in San Antonio of heart failure. He is buried in Memphis, Tennessee, at Forest Hill Cemetery.

NORMAN G. BAKER: CANCER QUACK

As frightening and bizarre as is the life story of John Romulus Brinkley, the story of Norman G. Baker is, if anything, horrifyingly more fascinating. Born in Iowa in 1882, Baker showed signs of brilliance from an early age, an attribute no doubt gleaned from his accomplished parents. His father was an inventor with 126 patents to his name, and his mother, a writer.

Baker started his own business as a young man, the Tangley Company, maker of the Tangley Air Calliaphone, a modified version of the steam organ. He toured the country with his vaudeville act, showcasing the talents of mentalists, mind readers, and the like. Eventually the potential of radio caught his attention and it seemed an obvious venue for someone such as himself, who not only wanted to make money but rile anyone opposing his often-outlandish schemes.

By this time Baker was no stranger to litigation, bringing lawsuits against larger corporations such as AT&T and Western Electric for suspected conspiracies. He toured the country, railing against everything from fluoridated water and vaccination to the evils of aluminum cookware—which he claimed to be the source of at least 50 percent of cancers.

In April 1930 Baker had opened the Baker Institute in Muscatine, Iowa. Its claim to fame was a cancer cure unaffordable to all but the very wealthy. The ingredients of his wonder drug? Watermelon seeds, corn silk, carbolic acid, clover, alcohol, and water.

Not only was he injecting people with his terrible and ineffective tincture, but they were dying from it. Indeed, at the outset of his venture, all five of his initial test subjects died. Undaunted, Baker plowed ahead and began amassing a fortune. He also attracted press to his ventures by publicly denouncing the American Medical Association, calling it the “American Meat-Cutters Association.”

Baker often held mass healings on the grounds of his sprawling complex, attracting thousands of people desperate for cancer cures. Once there, his persuasive and fiery oratory style convinced them to purchase his products. At one of his healings, he performed what he said was an operation on the brain to cure a patient of brain cancer. The gathered crowd watched as Baker cut into the man's head, without anesthetic. (It was later revealed that the man had not had cancer—he had a condition that caused part of his skull to swell.)

The Baker Institute, which he ran with his partner, the perennially imprisoned quack Harry Hoxsey, was raking in $100,000 a month. Baker continued his rants extolling the tenets of populism, claiming that the good, hardworking prairie folk of Iowa were being exploited by monopolies. He ran failed campaigns for various public offices, including governor and senator, but remained a crowd favorite.

Despite his popularity among the people of Iowa, Baker was soon forced to relocate south of the US-Mexico border—Iowa had run him out on fraud charges and for practicing medicine without a license. As had Dr. John R. Brinkley before him, Baker fired up a massive “border blaster” radio station that promoted his cancer cure, as well as offering various on-air entertainments, usually including him ranting about Jews and Catholics, and sometimes even ranting while having sex with a mistress.

In 1937 a very wealthy Baker cast about for a new location where he might reestablish his cancer treatments. He happened on the once-grand town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and the dilapidated but still grand Crescent Hotel, a popular destination for the well-heeled prior to the onset of the Great Depression. Baker bought the place with cash, renamed it the Baker Hospital, and transformed it into a high-end resort for cancer patients.

Soon he was treating thousands with his poisonous tinctures and injections, pulling in half a million dollars a year from desperate cancer sufferers looking for a cure. What no one knew was that deep in the bowels of the massive old hotel, Dr. Baker kept a dank operating theater where he performed autopsies and cruel experiments.

But it all caught up with him in 1939 when the federal government nailed Baker and his partner, R.A. Bellows, on seven counts of mail fraud. Baker was given four years in jail and fined $4,000, a pittance considering the barbarous treatment he'd been subjecting his patients to for years. By January of 1940 he was ensconced, as inmate number 58197, at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas.

During the trial various experts and investigators provided testimony, including the following: “Our investigation indicates that Baker and his associates defrauded cancer sufferers out of approximately $4,000,000. Our investigation further shows that a great majority of the people who were actually suffering with cancer who took the treatment lived but a short while after returning to their homes from the hospital. We believe that the treatment hastened the death of the sufferers in most cases.”

Apple: Also known as the victim, the mark, the sucker.

Big con / big store: A fake storefront or gambling den easily dismantled once the sucker splits.

Bilk: To sucker someone out of something.

Buck the tiger: To play the card game faro (odds are against staying in the saddle!).

Bumpkin: A rube, naïve and inexperienced in the ways of the world.

Bunco: A confidence game.

Bunco artist: One who orchestrates a confidence game.

Claim jumper: One who steals another's claim, usually a mine.

Con: The swindle, the game, the grift.

Con man: Short for confidence man, one who swindles for a living.

Dove: A prostitute. Also soiled dove.

Dry gulcher: One who ambushes another for nefarious purposes.

Faro (sometimes pharo): Derived from the French game pharao; the most popular nineteenth-century game, in which players bet on which order cards appear.

Filch: To steal or thieve from another.

Fourflusher: One who bluffs and cheats, especially at cards.

Greenhorn: A naïve person inexperienced at a task.

Grift: A con, a game, a swindle in which the grifter uses wit rather than violence.

Grifter: A confidence man who uses wit instead of violence to make a living.

Gold brick: Brick of fake gold, often junk metal with a plug of real gold for “testing.”

Hawk: To lure someone into a game; to sell one's shoddy wares.

Hornswoggler: One who gets the better of someone through cheating or deception.

Huckleberry: The ideal person for a job, usually a dim-bulb underling.

Hustler: A cheating gambler on the make to bilk a sucker.

Mark: The sucker, the intended victim, the apple.

Monte: Common abbreviation for the card game three-card monte.

Poke: A wallet, coin purse, gold-dust bag, usually belonging to a miner or cowboy.

Roper: One who ushers the mark into the con; a steerer.

Rube: A bumpkin, naïve and inexperienced in the ways of the world.

Rustler: One who steals another's horses or cattle.

Shell game: A game of chance involving the manipulation of three walnut shells and a dried pea.

Shill: A participant in a con game (not the mark).

Short con: A con game requiring little time.

Snake-oil salesman: One who sells a substance of no worth or medicinal value.

Snitch: To rat on a con man; one who rats or informs.

Soap game: Short con in which the grifter appears to wrap bars of soap in valuable cash to sell, with his shills getting the goods.

Soiled dove: A prostitute. Also dove.

Steerer: One who ushers the mark in to the con; a roper.

Sting: The moment when the sucker's money is taken.

Sucker: Also known as the victim, the mark, the apple.

Thimblerig: A game of chance involving the manipulation of three thimbles and a ball of paper.

Thimblerigger: One who operates a thimblerig.

Three-card monte: Easily rigged card game, using just three cards, in which the dealer's dexterity overrides chance.

Tiger: Another name for the card game faro.

Page 3: Portrait of Ned Buntline. Napoleon Sarony.

Page 15: Soapy Smith in his saloon. Peiser, 1898. Skagway, Alaska. Alaska State Library, Historical Collections, ASL-P277-001-009.

Page 29: Asbury Harpending. Photograph in
The Great Diamond Hoax and Other Stirring Incidents in the Life of Asbury Harpending
, edited by James H. Wilkins. A. Harpending, 1913. The James H. Barry Co.

Page 41: $1,250,000 gold bullion, Miners and Merchants Bank in Nome Alaska. Lomen Bros., 1906. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-01961.

Page 53: Clark Stanley's Snake Oil Liniment label. Illustration in
The life and adventures of the American cow-boy: Life in the Far West
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Page 63: George H. Devol, 1829–1903. Illustration in:
George Devol, Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi
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Page 73: James Addison Reavis imprisoned at Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory.
The Land of Sunshine
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Page 87: Bird's-eye view of men panning gold in Nome, Alaska. Lomen Bros. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-01699.

Page 97: Title page.
The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California
by Lansford W. Hastings, 1845.

Page 110: Top: Albert and Bessie Johnson (left) had a surprising decades-long friendship with Death Valley Scotty (right). National Park Service. Bottom: Scotty's Castle, Death Valley National Park, California. Jennifer Smith-Mayo, 2014.

Page 121: Prisoners, from Black Kettle's camp, captured by General Custer, traveling through snow. Sketched by Theodore R. Davis.
Harper's Weekly
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Page 136: The Gem Variety Theater and Dance Hall, Pioneer Days in Deadwood. Deadwood History, Adams Museum Collection, Deadwood, South Dakota.

Page 144: Pegleg Smith Monument, Borrego Springs, California. Jennifer Smith-Mayo, 2014.

Page 157: Plummer's Men Holding Up the Bannack Stage. John W. Norton, 1907.
The Story of the Outlaw
by Emerson Hough. The Outing Publishing Company.

Page 170: Nate Champion, who was killed in the KC Ranch fight by the Invaders. Hoofprints of the Past Museum, Kaycee, Wyoming.

Page 186: “It's my hand against your eye. Watch me close!”
Marion Daily Mirror
, October 13, 1911.

Page 197: Mugshot from Colorado State Penitentiary Record of Lou Blonger #12258. Colorado State Penitentiary, 1923.

Page 209: Puter at work in his cell, revealing the author in his customary attitude while engaged in preparing the manuscript.
Looters of the Public Domain
by S. A. D. Puter, 1908. Portland Printing House Publishers.

Page 221: A Winning Miss. Buxom woman rolling dice, 1911. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-58977.