March 6, 2013 • 38 mins
While Al Swearengen's notoriety comes from his famous saloon, his early experiences all informed his later life. Join Tracy and Holly as they examine the life and times of Al Swearengen in the second part of this series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from housetop
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. My
name is Holly Fry. I'm an editor here at houstupp
Works dot com. And across from me is the fabulous
noun Kid. Oh, I'm Tracy P. Wilson. And and we're
(00:22):
going to resume what we were talking about previously, Yes,
which is the real Elsewhere Engine. And we recorded the
first part of the podcast in which we kind of
talked about the parts of his biography that kind of
get glossed over in most accounts of his life. Yes,
his time, you know, as a pioneer child, and his
time riding the rails and learning the trade of a
(00:45):
bar keep and even serving in the Civil War. And
when we left off, he was in the Dakota Territories
in Custer City, and as Custer City was emptying out
and everyone was heading to Deadwood where there had been
a gold strike, he followed suit. And that's why he
(01:07):
bought a lot in Deadwood. Yes, and that was early
eighteen seventy six, so it was almost immediately after he
got there. Um, and at night he ran a saloon
out of a tent on a lot, which just sounds
completely legitimate business. Well it did. Then everything was running
out of a tent, well, and he did eventually make
this into an actual permanent structure. Yeah, you kind of
(01:29):
have to admire his work ethic because basically he was
working at night running the saloon, and then during the
day he was supervising and working on the building of
the permanent structure. So he was basically just working around
the clock to build his business. Yes, even if it
was maybe not the most noble of enterprises in some ways,
I have to admire his work ethics right. Well, And
(01:50):
as we talked about last time, he had at this
point a pretty extensive law breaking history. Yeah, he had
some trouble with entering into business contract that he really
had no intention of fulfilling his part of. Right, So
while he was trying to get this new business off
the ground, he had to do an unfortunate stent in
prison when it finally caught up. Yeah. We mentioned it
(02:15):
in the previous episode in part one that he had
been charged for selling alcohol in what was then referred
to his Indian country. Uh, he was selling Spiritus liquors,
and so he had run from that to Deadwood but
of course he didn't go that far, so caught up
to him pretty quickly, and he did a little a
little bit of time in Yankton in prison, and that
(02:37):
caused him to to miss out on a pretty important
event in what would become his business, yes, which is
the arrival of the first prostitutes. He was not there
that day because he was in jail. But although it
was right before he got out, I kind of wonder
if he was in jail to being like, hi, I'm
(02:58):
missing all the fun um. The July of eighteen seventy six,
the first prostitutes arrived. People were extremely happy about this.
There was cheering in the streets, yes, because remember these
are prospector towns were almost entirely men the most profitable. Yeah,
(03:18):
not a luxury set up at all, so pretty much
any entertainment was welcomed. Uh. And along with the first
prostitutes in town, there was also a theater troupe that
arrived that was also welcomed because people needed all kinds
of entertainment and they wanted diversion. So that was he
missed out on the first entertainment really getting there. And
(03:41):
since he was kind of setting out in the entertainment industry.
It's a little, uh, a little bad luck on his
part that he was in prison at the time. Maybe
he felt like he had to make up for lost
time and that contributed to the things that happened later.
But he was released at the end of July, so
all of that was bepending within one month. And then
the following month. Uh, that August of eighteen seventy six,
(04:06):
there was a lot of things. There were many, many
things going on in Deadwood. On the first seth Bullock
and Saul Star arrived in Deadwood. Um Bullock went on
to become sheriff uh because almost immediately after they got there,
while Bill Hickok was murdered in Deadwood and it made
it apparent that they needed a lawman. Uh. And those
(04:26):
are also figures that you know, most people that have
studied any of the Black Hills history would immediately recognize.
And it's just sort of interesting. This is such a
historical nexus point like that summer really kind of was
an explosion of events that kind of created a domino
effect in many many ways. UH. And we won't go
(04:47):
into it here since we're focusing primarily just on uh
swarringin but he and Bullock always had sort of an
antagonist kind of dramatic and argumentative relationship where at one
point there have been stories that they actually drew a
line down Main Street and one side was for one
of them and one side was for the other. I mean,
(05:08):
which is like, you know, seventies sitcom, but it really is, uh,
you know, something that that allegedly happened at the time.
So there's a lot of other interesting people at this
point in history that I think it's such a rich
sort of area to mine. We may have to revisit
it at some point in the future. So a week
(05:29):
and a half after wild Bill died, is wind swearing
and opened the Cricket Saloon, sadly also on the same
day as a small box outbreak hit. I'm telling you,
August was very busy. August was a tough month. So
this was a kind of weirdly proportioned place to me.
It was reportedly eight ft wide sixty ft long, so
(05:50):
a very long, narrow place. Yes, presumably to fit the
lot he had purchased, but it doesn't stay that size
because this is a man of ambition, and he almost
immediately after the structure was completed he started to expand
the building. He wanted to provide a larger entertainment hall. Uh.
(06:10):
And one of the things that he did, as kind
of a teaser of what sorts of entertainments were to come,
was that he would host in that small space bare
knuckle boxing matches, like really rough, hardcore fights that got
really extremely violent. And if you can imagine it crammed
(06:31):
into that tiny space with a bunch of people betting
and arguing and yelling and probably pretty intoxicated, that's an
intense scene. So yeah, Um, once he had expanded it,
he changed the name to the Gem Variety Theater, which
is how it became known pretty much throughout history just
as the Gem right right, that's the name that everybody
(06:54):
still remembers and associates with him. Yeah, And it was
so it stood on the corner of Wall in Main Street. Um.
And remember Deadwood was really barely coming together at this point,
so it was really one of the formative buildings of
the main square of town at that point. Yea. Um.
But here's what I find really interesting, because we do
talk a lot, not just we, you and I, but
(07:17):
peep anybody that's interested in history. A lot of what
gets talked about is swearing gin seedy enterprises, of which
there were many. But he also sort of envisioned himself
as really like this purveyor of fabulous entertainment, Like he
really hired some pretty impressive acts to appear in his
theater once it was complete, Like I think he really
(07:39):
thought he was setting up like the Western equivalent of Broadway. Um.
He booked African American comedians Oscar Willison, Tom Jefferson. He
booked an act called the McDonald's, which was a father
daughter roller skating act, which don't you wish you could
time travel and see that? Uh. He booked trapeze artists,
and he even hired some of the Lakota to perform
(08:01):
their war salp, scalp and squaw dances, which I can
only imagine what that entailed. Um. And of course that
was kind of like a shock theater experience, I imagine
for a lot of the people that were in Deadwood
at the time. Well, and and so a lot of
the people who were on the stage there were people
who might not have otherwise had a lot of opportunities
(08:21):
to be on stage because of local prejudices and that
sort of thing. So in that sense, the fact that
he was giving opportunities to people who might not have
been able to get a lot of performing gigs otherwise
one of the kind of good things. Although I have
a sneaking suspicion that really it was about exploiting people
that were desperate. He was trying to be positive because
(08:44):
I know, I know what's coming later. Well, we already
called that as good work ethics, so that's okay. Yeah.
He also hired a full band to play the hall,
and after any of the variety acts performed, the chairs
should be cleared and they would have dances just kind
of I I don't it seems kind of quaint in
its own way that they would do that. Um. And
(09:04):
he even had a couple of masquerade balls over the
course of the Gem's life, which is that we're apparently
these huge, really extravagant, fabulous events just sort of a
little bit difficult to piece together, I know for me, Like, okay,
so there were these wild acts, there was bare knuckleboxing,
(09:24):
there were prostitutes around, and then an extravagant basketball doesn't
really all go together, but for him it fits all
perfectly naturally. It was also pretty lucrative and he made
a big success of it, so successful that he was
able to open a sister saloon in bear Butte, but
that one was was it was it that that one
(09:46):
was not successful or was it just too much because
that one only stayed open for a couple of years.
Most accounts that I have read suggests that without him
to really manage it, I mean, he was really the
visionary and without him being able to be there every
day like he was at the gym, it just couldn't
hold together. It just it needed the leadership that he provided.
(10:07):
The Gem, on the other hand, reportedly handled more money
in a day than the bank did. Yeah. Yeah, it
was extremely popular, uh you know it. There have been
rumors that it was even known in other countries, like
people in Australia had heard tales of this Gem saloon
and and people across the US at the time had
heard of it. And it's kind of fascinating to think
(10:29):
about because that was not an age where we had
the big advertising that we have now. We didn't have
access to all of the information we have now. Yet
the legend just spread on its own um as people
went and traveled the world. So he was recognized for
having a pretty shrewd business acumen, but periodically these weird
little stories of him being oddly kind will pop up.
(10:50):
There is one tale that he um one of the
acts that he had hired had a daughter, and the
daughter was horribly burnt in an accident, and that al
actually closed down the gem for several days so that
the girl could be there and convalesce and have someone
constantly watching over her, which, when you consider the amount
(11:11):
of money he was making each day, that's a pretty
significant sacrifice to make. And uh, you know, we don't
know why he chose to do that or why he would,
you know, extend this odd courtesy to someone, but it
does kind of switch out for a moment, sort of
the coloring of him as kind of a heartless, you know,
(11:32):
entrepreneurial focused, like he only thought about the money. Well,
and it kind of reminds me to you bring it
around to something fictional, it kind of reminds me of
Tony Soprano. And now occasionally he would do something really
nice for one of the dancers that at the at
Bottom Bang and you know, then he would cover up
somebody getting beaten to death in the parking lot. Yeah,
(11:53):
like this that's sort of is what al swearing in
reminds me a little like occasionally something might happen that
makes you kind of go, oh, that was good. Well,
And I mean you can't presume, even somebody that leads
a pretty seedy life that they're not all mustache twirling,
caricature grade villains a lot of time. I mean, they're humans,
(12:13):
and they're likely to have moments where they are touched
by an event or feel sympathy or empathy for other people.
It's gonna happen anys human. Yes. On the other hand,
the gym was so rowdy that people would go there
just to watch the fights. Yeah. Not the fights like
the boxing that we were talking about earlier, the fights
among patrons who were angry at each other and drunk. Yeah, patrons, employees, um,
(12:36):
you know, sometimes between the patrons and the staff, sometimes
staff on staff. Um. There is even a tale of
two women that worked at the bar that got in
a huge fight that culminated in shots being fired. But
that and I love this part. The steel boning in
the intended targets corset actually deflected the bullets, which is
(12:57):
sort of just wonderful and hilarious. Uh. But yeah, Allegedly
I think they were fighting over a mom. But it's
I mean, that's a pretty uh that puts the wild
in the wild West for sure. I mean just fights
that breakout among employees that lead to gunfire, and also
fights that broke out between swearing Jon and his employees
(13:22):
and non employees. There was a story about one patron,
Thomas Clark, who had been thrown out for being abusive.
He came back with a gun and swearing Jon. Swearing
Jeon disarmed him and then beat him up and then
was charged with a salton battery and found not guilty. Um.
Similar physical confrontations also happened with women that worked for him.
(13:44):
So he's not he did not you know, he did
not say okay, I'm only going to be like he
wasn't about who he would throw a punch at for sure. Uh. Yeah.
He kind of developed a reputation actually for being abusive
of women, um, and it would come up in the press.
(14:04):
The local paper would often comment that he had been
seeing you know, hitting a woman or engaged in an
argument with a woman, and and they kind of berated
him publicly for his behavior. But it didn't seem to really,
um stop any of it. It just made him hate
the paper so so uh. And there are also tales
of all kinds of you know, specific instances of fights
(14:27):
and deaths that happened at the gem. Um. There was
a jealous lover murder, suicide. There was one instance that
just kind of grosses me out where two women got
in a fight and one woman carved up the face
of another woman and allegedly even you know little eyeball scooping. Um, yeah,
it's pretty gross. And this one is really weird. There
(14:49):
was a logger who keeled over dead after going to
the bar and drinking like a shot of liquor. And
initially it was questioned as to whether or not swimming
Gin was involved in something illicit, but it was determined
that the logger had actually come in from working um
out in the heat and had really quickly chugged ice
(15:10):
water and then gone to get the alcohol, and that
it was actually the ice water that killed him. Um,
but what an odd story to have attached to your business. Um.
So he so all of that had happened like right
before he walked into the gym and ordered his drink. Um.
And then, of course, Calamity Jane was a figure that
sometimes appeared at the gym, and there's one story of
(15:33):
a night where she and Ike Brown came to the
saloon and they were carrying the head of a sue
that Brown had killed. This is really gory, so if
you are touchy of stomach, just be aware. They allegedly
were cutting off pieces of the head and selling them
for a dollar apiece, which is just as gruesome as
it gets. Um. And that there was even one story
(15:57):
that I read where Ike Brown had said that he
was to eat the remainder of the head, like he
was really really horrifying. Um. And apparently Seth Bullock was
so horrified by the whole thing that he snuck in
stole the head from Brown, who was presumably drunk, and
he actually buried it behind the gym because he just
had had enough and thought it was way too gruesome.
(16:19):
Gives me the shivers a little. So through all of
the all then it seems pretty insane to me, the
amount of abuse and fighting and deaths and horror that
was going on in this place of business. There were
still variety shows going on, like there was still entertainment
(16:40):
coming in to perform there, Like I'm not quite sure
how and this may you may be right that he
was not so much that he was giving opportunities to
people that did not have them. Otherwise, it does seem
kind of like people would maybe think twice about getting
on the stage when it was likely that you know,
the audience made get their firearms out halfway through, yeah,
(17:02):
and began shooting one another during the performance. But then
he hired a pretty accomplished theater man, this bestpian named
Harry Montague, who was extremely accomplished, recognized like he had,
you know, his name was a brand in theater, and
he really staged these huge and elaborate productions, including they
(17:24):
did a version of the Makado there um that really
kind of garnered some praise critically um. But when he left,
things kind of started to fall apart a little bit.
It was almost like the theatricality had kind of rescued
the gem's reputation a little bit, or at least, you know,
(17:46):
grown big enough that it hid some of the other
things that had surpassed the all of the crazy fights
and bis are selling of people's parts and uh. But
Montacue departed. He had left at one point but then
come back. But when he finally departed, the gem really
started to flounder. Uh, And they didn't have the huge
stage shows to draw crowds, and so the profits dropped
(18:09):
off because those people would stick around out of the
show and drink, and without them there anymore, they just
weren't making the same amount of money that they had been. UM.
Larndon actually sold it for a little while and brought
it back. Yeah, and somewhere in there he also tried
to make it into like an eatery, like a diner
kind of thing. I mean, he was willing to do anything. Again,
(18:29):
I gotta admire his work ethic, even though I think
his other ethics were not so delightful. Uh. He really
did want to make a stab at kind of keeping
it afloat and finding new ways to to profit from it. UM.
But that was not even the first of the many
problems that the gym kind of floated through. And he
(18:50):
didn't buy back the theater after he sold it. UM.
But for like twenty two years it was really a
pretty successful establishment UM and was it was an institution
in Deadwood, but disasters, even outside of interpersonal dramas, kept
sort of hitting it in one way or another. UM
three months after it opened it was burned when a
(19:12):
lamp in a sign that swear Engine had ordered he
had had it custom made, in the lamp ignited and Uh.
Swear Engine consequently refused to pay for the sign, But
that comes back on him later. Um. And then he
in the Great Fire of seventy nine which started in
a bakery that was nearby, and that fire burned a
(19:33):
hundred businesses and seventy homes in Deadwood. The gem was
really badly damaged, and swear Engine swore that he would rebuild,
And in just a couple of weeks he had put
up an entire new building. It was only lacking a
roof at that point, uh, and he covered that by
with a canvas while he waited on the materials and permit,
uh the materials for his permanent roof. So he took
(19:56):
advantage of those setbacks, and in that one in particular,
he expanded a square footage to include both a dance
hall and a theater, whereas it had been the theater
before and then they would clear chairs for dances. Now
it was like all of these things he kind of
kept turning lemons into lemonade in a way. Yeah, he
didn't have to redo the whole room to be able
to have something different in there anymore. After it was reopened,
(20:18):
though it was set upon by arsonists again. Uh, it's
not a long walks. Presume that swear Engine had his
fair share of enemies. Yes, he definitely did. Um. There
was the arsonists, came some Chinese immigrant workers. UM put
(20:39):
the fire out. In May of eighteen eighty three, or
rainstorm and melting snow flooded all of Main Street, including
the gym. Some buildings actually got washed away. UM. I
think it was in rebuilding from that, making repairs from that.
He put a drain plug in the performers so that
(20:59):
that might not be quite a problem anymore. Um. And
then another fire. Yeah. I mean he had just a
series of smaller floods and fires um that hit the building.
But then there was a really bad one. Uh, when
an employee of his tried to dry clean a suit
(21:21):
using gasoline. Um. That was a thing that people used
to do. I know, and I think I'm not sure,
I'll have to look it up. We might have an
article on people doing something like that. I know there's
a riff tracks about people doing that. Um. But yeah,
that incident actually destroyed the top floor of the gym
(21:42):
for good because it was not a single floor structure,
so the top floor was gone forever after that point.
But in the midst of all of this there had
been you know, we talked about the fighting and the
the bare knuckle boxing and the theater shows and the
dances and the drinking, but there was a whole other
lucrative business going on, which was Al's prostitution business. Yes,
(22:03):
and this is really where I mean he was not
a good guy in a lot of ways. And with
apart from all the illegal activities and the beating people
and all that, I feel like some of the some
of his worst dealings had to do with the prostitution business. Yeah,
Because what he would do is that he would advertise
that he needed like female wait staff. Uh girls and
(22:27):
young women would come to Deadwood to work as his
white staff. A lot of them thought they were going
to work in a swank hotel. Yeah, they were not
wink wait staff jobs that he was recruiting for at all.
And so uh girls and young women would arrive, they
would learn that that that was false. There was there
(22:48):
was no hotel staff job for them. They would not
have the money or the resources to return home, so
they would be stranded in in Deadwood, and their choice
was either to work as a pro institute or or starved. Right,
those real choices at that point, right, and he even
I mean he did also hire experienced ladies of the night,
(23:09):
but he also would often hire some of these stage
troops with the intent of trying to turn the female
performers into his other employees as part of his prostitution dealings.
Um just so squirrely uh. And the Black Hills Daily Times,
who we mentioned before he was not on good terms with,
(23:31):
ran an article at one point entitled a den of
prostitution under the guise of a dance hall stocked with
unsuspecting and innocent girls engaged through misrepresentations by its beastial proprietor.
There's a headline for you in Nicean's The Saint uh,
and it basically kind of recounted the tale of one
particular group of girls that were lured to Deadwood from
Chicago again thinking they were going to work in a hotel,
(23:53):
and then swearing and locked them in their rooms and basically, um,
allegedly townspeople heard about this, and they liberated the girls
and eventually sent them back home. Um. But the story,
even though it was a total smear on swearing swear
Engine's name, I mean it was intended as a smear piece,
(24:15):
it really had almost no impact on his business. His
prostitution dealings continued to thrive um and of course, like
his other employee dealings, those women were often beaten. He
didn't he didn't discriminate on who he would hit at all, uh,
And he would threaten them that if they ever tried
to leave, he would bring threat or theft charges against him,
(24:38):
that he would claim that they have been stealing from
the business. And so a lot of women felt like
they didn't have the recourse to fight a charge like that.
You know, they were all poor, they would all have
like reasonable um um intent, so they felt like most
of them would lose, and they just kind of got
stuck in life, which instinks, Well, it's sort of further
(25:03):
evidence of the kind of character that he had because
while that was going on, he was continuing to dodge debts.
He talked in the previous episode about how he often
borrowed money that then his business would fail and he
would not pay back, And it became clear in some
cases that he had never intended to pay that money back.
That continued on. Um. His original debt from back in
(25:26):
Iowa was finally tracked down to him in eighty one
and he was forced to either pay up or go
to jail. I'm guessing he paid up. Yeah. That became
his like sort of Dobriger way of handling business is
that he would enter these business contracts never pay them.
They pretty much had to take him to court and
have it come to a point where if he did
(25:46):
not pay, he was going to jail, and then he
would like grudgingly pay them. And that was sort of
his business model, right, which is a little bit um.
It's hard to think about that because you know, no
business could get away with that today. But it was
a different time. Of course. There was a man named
Joseph Broghammer who in eighteen ninete, knowing that his m
(26:08):
O was that he would say I don't have the
money to pay that back, he instead decided that he
would go after his property. Um. He had done some
work at the gem that had he had never been
paid for, and what he was awarded was several horses
and buggies. Since he knew he was probably not ever
going to get the money, Yeah, which is kind of
(26:29):
a fascinating awardment. But yeah, here's some horses. Now. We
did mention in the first part of this story in
the previous podcast that swearing Jin had taken a wife
when he was in Helena, and she kind of vanishes
from the record a little bit. There's not much that
we hear about her, but in her name does come
(26:50):
up again because in the Black Hills Daily Times there
was an announcement that swar engin place that read, my
wife has left my room and board without provocation. All
that's in by her will not be paid by me. Uh. Basically,
they had had a fight and he was like, fine,
go you're on your own, because she apparently left that
same day. However, she came back to him a few
(27:10):
weeks later and she stayed for two more years before
she finally divorced him. Um. And then remember again at
the Times were was not his friend. Uh. There was
a follow up article after he after she finally left,
where they printed two letters that were um written under
(27:35):
a pseudonym, but everyone sort of believed it to be
Nettie's letters about al that she had written to her
parents UM or to her mother specifically, and they were
printed under the name of Emmy instead of Nettie, and
they basically just detailed the cruelties and indignation she suffered
(27:55):
while living with him. Uh. And there are some accounts
that I've read that rumored that she in fact had
friends on the Times, and so she kind of placed
those as a final parting shot to him, uh, so
that people would publicly have a record of all the
horrible things that he did. But she was not his
only wife now Now, on July three nine, he married
(28:17):
a twenty one year old woman named O'delia turgent Um,
when within six months there were reports again that that
there was domestic abuse going on and that, uh there
were people who witnessed altercations between them in the street
and in one of which he choked and beat her Um.
Several months after that, she needed a doctor's care because
(28:42):
of a serious hemorrhage, and she survived, but not long
after that he divorced her, claiming she had been unfaithful. Yeah,
and it's weird. The accounts never say what type of
hemorrhage it is. It's just listed as a severe hemorrhage.
So the suggestion there is that he once again beat
(29:02):
her and you know, brought her apparently near death because
many reports of it make it sound like she really
was at death's door, and you know, it was sort
of miraculous that she rallied and survived. And then he
had another really weird relationship, uh, with a woman named
Hattie Lewis, and he this relationship allegedly began when he
(29:26):
stormed into her resort and am using the air quotes
where he had spent the previous night, claiming that he
had been robbed of a thousand dollars. And he started
to destroy furniture and attempted to burn the building down,
and he was stopped by an employee. But somehow, in
the midst of all of this Swearingeon and Hattie like
took up together. I guess, you know, too extreme personalities
(29:50):
sometimes they're drawn together and usually we know how those
relationships go, and it's not so good. And this was
not good at all. Uh, Their their relationship was not
very happy for very long. They it turned sour pretty quickly,
and Hattie Lewis committed suicide with morphine overdose. Yeah, so
he was not um, not really good news for women.
(30:12):
He wasn't good news. For anybody. Women were really rough. Now,
so we're we're getting to the point of how much
more bad stuff could this guy do? You and and
we're sort of also near the end of his story. Yeah,
in December of another fire tour through the gym, and
this time he did not rebuild it. I actually there's
(30:35):
a part of me that just takes this sort of schadenfreud,
a gleefulness about this particular fire. Um, because it's a
fire that started in multiple places simultaneously. Yeah, witnesses saw
the fire blaze up in some report say five, some
say six different spots at the same time. Firefighters came
and they miraculously could not find the wrenches to use
(30:58):
to connect their hoses to the to the water water. Um.
And so another fire department was called in, who also
could not find a problem. Yeah, so how in the
world could that have happened? Um? My first in reading
about that, my first response was like, did he do
it for the insurance money? But that was not quite
(31:19):
a thing. Then. It's much more likely than one of
his many enemies took it upon themselves to do a
very thorough job of burning down the gym. Yeah, he
really had plenty by that point, so he finally decided
it was not worth trying to rebuild again. That was it.
So he left Edwood and went to Leadville, Colorado, to
meet up with his younger brother, Theodore, who also had
(31:41):
a saloon, and he worked with Theodore for four years.
Uh So then his end is a little bit anti climactic,
kind of yeah, because we don't really know for sure
what happened. But his body was found in November of
nineteen o four, uh adjacent to some street car tracks
(32:02):
that were near Denver and um The initial observation observation
of the body suggested that he had died from a
massive head wound from a blunt, heavy object, but in
the Oscaloosa Harold it was reported that he had likely
fallen while he was trying to board the motor car,
possibly having been hit on the head by some part
(32:23):
of the train. However, he also reportedly had scratches on
the side of his face, which I guess could happen,
you know, if he fell and slid against the ground.
But it kind of almost doesn't add up. I'm sure
I'm not the only person who thinks he must have
been attacked. Yeah, it's a little weird. It's sort of
a strange way to go to just you know, be
found and for him to have been trying to board
(32:45):
a street car and fall and died, but no one
knew about that. They just found the body later. It
could have happened, happened that they're just coincidentally, were not
any witnesses speaking up to what had happened. Maybe they
had those wrenches that were lost from maybe Uh. And
then there was the murder weapon. And then his body
was eventually transported back to Oscaloosa for burial, which is
(33:08):
where if you listen to the first part, he grew
up as a pioneer child, even though I believe his
parents had divorced, but they were still both buried there together. Uh.
And then he was buried there with the rest of
the family. Just it is sort of at such an
anti climactic end for so much drama in his life. Uh.
But we don't really know. It could have been a
(33:28):
very climactic night of craziness. All we know is that
he was found by the street car tracks. So that's
the story of Elsewhere and Jim and his wild and
only life. I mean, I can't even imagine. Yes, well,
and then to have his actual life be even stranger
and more dramatic and more full of crime and craziness
(33:48):
than it's ever portrayed in fiction than it's ever portrayed
in in a very expletive filled Yeah, if you are
interested in watching Deadwood, I really love it and highly
recommend it, but be ready if you are not comfortable
with a lot of swearing, it is probably not the
show for you because they really floor it. I hold
back nothing. Yeah, well, and it's uh it rather than
(34:10):
using swears that were in use at the time, which
sounds weird to people now. Yeah, they don't read the
same new they use modern they last, you have no
questions of the intent of the language, absolutely not. Although
you know that show is written in i ambic pentameter,
did not know that it's bizarre. You don't think of it,
and then when you know it, you can't stop hearing. Well,
now I'm it's going to be stuff there in my head.
(34:32):
And now I have some listener mail. Yes, I have
two pieces, and they are both about our pope, Pope
Benedict the Ninth Podcast, which is about his renunciation of
the papacy, and both are corrections. So I appreciate it.
We have such awesome listeners. The first one is I
(34:53):
found your episode on the other Pope Benedict very interesting.
One thing I noticed is that you always mentioned the
Pope is being a strictly spiritual leader. I think we
mentioned briefly I'm jumping out of the letter um that
it wasn't it had more to do with power at
that time, but we did not address this listener's specific correction.
So I'm very glad they were it. In uh. It says, however,
for most of its history, including Benedict the ninths period,
(35:14):
the Holy See owned the Papal States. The Pope was
a secular and a spiritual leader, since he needed to
manage the Papal States as well as hold the role
we now know for we know him for uh. It
is only in eighteen seventy that the Papal States were
fully incorporated into the then newly born Italian State in
the nine that the Vatican renounced any claim on the
people states. In Benedict the ninth Day, being pope was
(35:36):
more than leading souls. It was being a major landowner
and managing or reaping the benefits of very lucrative lands
on top of the wealth deriving from tithing and numerous
donations to the church. Keep up the good work, Zarah. Yeah,
I um, I completely blipped right over that. I mean,
we did kind of talk about Benedict the nine not
really being the most spectacular spiritual leader, so but I
(35:56):
did not talk about the politics of uh, that being
not just a religious seat at the time. So thank
you for that correction. And the other one is from
our listener brook from Florida, and Brooks says, I was
listening to your podcast on Pope Benedict the Ninth, and
I just wanted to let you know the proper term
isn't resigning, because that would indicate a higher power, and
(36:17):
there's no higher power within the Church on earth. The
proper way to say what happened is that the Pope
announced the office of the papacy. Anyway, I just wanted
to correct that great podcast. Keep it up. Yes, that
is absolutely also accurate. I tend to not attribute it
to Benedict the ninth though, because, ah, his behavior was
not really what I would categorize as high bar It
(36:39):
was a little, uh, it's a little dicey. So I
think that's just sort of one of those mental jumps
that I'm like, it doesn't apply to him, but it
is absolutely the correct terminology to call it our renunciation.
Although I have noticed in the coverage of he's no
longer the current Pope Benedict, but Pope Benedict the sixteenth
that just stepped down. The press uses resigned a lot,
(36:59):
and I I don't know if that's just a desire
to be um um neutral and not sort of engage
the the language that is most accepted by the Catholic
Church or not. I don't I would have to ask
the editors of all other press outlets. I kind of
want to ask the editor of the A P Style Guide.
They might have a thing, they might we should do that.
(37:20):
So thanks to you both, Brooke and Zara for those
awesome corrections, because those are important and maybe not always
recognize differences from you know what we did? Uh. If
you like to write s, you can do so at
History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also follow
us on Twitter at missed in History, and we are
also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash history class stuff.
(37:43):
If you want to learn a little bit more about
something we talked about today. It's not the most upbeat topic.
You can go to our website and type in human
trafficking in the search bar, and the article how human
Trafficking Works will come up, which is drained to the
alsware engine story since he did some kind of creepy
things with people. Uh. You can also research almost anything
else your heart desires, hopefully more upbeat than that, at
(38:04):
our website, which is how stuff Works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, does it
how stuff works dot com m
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from housetop
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. My
name is Holly Fry. I'm an editor here at houstupp
Works dot com. And across from me is the fabulous
noun Kid. Oh, I'm Tracy P. Wilson. And and we're
(00:22):
going to resume what we were talking about previously, Yes,
which is the real Elsewhere Engine. And we recorded the
first part of the podcast in which we kind of
talked about the parts of his biography that kind of
get glossed over in most accounts of his life. Yes,
his time, you know, as a pioneer child, and his
time riding the rails and learning the trade of a
(00:45):
bar keep and even serving in the Civil War. And
when we left off, he was in the Dakota Territories
in Custer City, and as Custer City was emptying out
and everyone was heading to Deadwood where there had been
a gold strike, he followed suit. And that's why he
(01:07):
bought a lot in Deadwood. Yes, and that was early
eighteen seventy six, so it was almost immediately after he
got there. Um, and at night he ran a saloon
out of a tent on a lot, which just sounds
completely legitimate business. Well it did. Then everything was running
out of a tent, well, and he did eventually make
this into an actual permanent structure. Yeah, you kind of
(01:29):
have to admire his work ethic because basically he was
working at night running the saloon, and then during the
day he was supervising and working on the building of
the permanent structure. So he was basically just working around
the clock to build his business. Yes, even if it
was maybe not the most noble of enterprises in some ways,
I have to admire his work ethics right. Well, And
(01:50):
as we talked about last time, he had at this
point a pretty extensive law breaking history. Yeah, he had
some trouble with entering into business contract that he really
had no intention of fulfilling his part of. Right, So
while he was trying to get this new business off
the ground, he had to do an unfortunate stent in
prison when it finally caught up. Yeah. We mentioned it
(02:15):
in the previous episode in part one that he had
been charged for selling alcohol in what was then referred
to his Indian country. Uh, he was selling Spiritus liquors,
and so he had run from that to Deadwood but
of course he didn't go that far, so caught up
to him pretty quickly, and he did a little a
little bit of time in Yankton in prison, and that
(02:37):
caused him to to miss out on a pretty important
event in what would become his business, yes, which is
the arrival of the first prostitutes. He was not there
that day because he was in jail. But although it
was right before he got out, I kind of wonder
if he was in jail to being like, hi, I'm
(02:58):
missing all the fun um. The July of eighteen seventy six,
the first prostitutes arrived. People were extremely happy about this.
There was cheering in the streets, yes, because remember these
are prospector towns were almost entirely men the most profitable. Yeah,
(03:18):
not a luxury set up at all, so pretty much
any entertainment was welcomed. Uh. And along with the first
prostitutes in town, there was also a theater troupe that
arrived that was also welcomed because people needed all kinds
of entertainment and they wanted diversion. So that was he
missed out on the first entertainment really getting there. And
(03:41):
since he was kind of setting out in the entertainment industry.
It's a little, uh, a little bad luck on his
part that he was in prison at the time. Maybe
he felt like he had to make up for lost
time and that contributed to the things that happened later.
But he was released at the end of July, so
all of that was bepending within one month. And then
the following month. Uh, that August of eighteen seventy six,
(04:06):
there was a lot of things. There were many, many
things going on in Deadwood. On the first seth Bullock
and Saul Star arrived in Deadwood. Um Bullock went on
to become sheriff uh because almost immediately after they got there,
while Bill Hickok was murdered in Deadwood and it made
it apparent that they needed a lawman. Uh. And those
(04:26):
are also figures that you know, most people that have
studied any of the Black Hills history would immediately recognize.
And it's just sort of interesting. This is such a
historical nexus point like that summer really kind of was
an explosion of events that kind of created a domino
effect in many many ways. UH. And we won't go
(04:47):
into it here since we're focusing primarily just on uh
swarringin but he and Bullock always had sort of an
antagonist kind of dramatic and argumentative relationship where at one
point there have been stories that they actually drew a
line down Main Street and one side was for one
of them and one side was for the other. I mean,
(05:08):
which is like, you know, seventies sitcom, but it really is, uh,
you know, something that that allegedly happened at the time.
So there's a lot of other interesting people at this
point in history that I think it's such a rich
sort of area to mine. We may have to revisit
it at some point in the future. So a week
(05:29):
and a half after wild Bill died, is wind swearing
and opened the Cricket Saloon, sadly also on the same
day as a small box outbreak hit. I'm telling you,
August was very busy. August was a tough month. So
this was a kind of weirdly proportioned place to me.
It was reportedly eight ft wide sixty ft long, so
(05:50):
a very long, narrow place. Yes, presumably to fit the
lot he had purchased, but it doesn't stay that size
because this is a man of ambition, and he almost
immediately after the structure was completed he started to expand
the building. He wanted to provide a larger entertainment hall. Uh.
(06:10):
And one of the things that he did, as kind
of a teaser of what sorts of entertainments were to come,
was that he would host in that small space bare
knuckle boxing matches, like really rough, hardcore fights that got
really extremely violent. And if you can imagine it crammed
(06:31):
into that tiny space with a bunch of people betting
and arguing and yelling and probably pretty intoxicated, that's an
intense scene. So yeah, Um, once he had expanded it,
he changed the name to the Gem Variety Theater, which
is how it became known pretty much throughout history just
as the Gem right right, that's the name that everybody
(06:54):
still remembers and associates with him. Yeah, And it was
so it stood on the corner of Wall in Main Street. Um.
And remember Deadwood was really barely coming together at this point,
so it was really one of the formative buildings of
the main square of town at that point. Yea. Um.
But here's what I find really interesting, because we do
talk a lot, not just we, you and I, but
(07:17):
peep anybody that's interested in history. A lot of what
gets talked about is swearing gin seedy enterprises, of which
there were many. But he also sort of envisioned himself
as really like this purveyor of fabulous entertainment, Like he
really hired some pretty impressive acts to appear in his
theater once it was complete, Like I think he really
(07:39):
thought he was setting up like the Western equivalent of Broadway. Um.
He booked African American comedians Oscar Willison, Tom Jefferson. He
booked an act called the McDonald's, which was a father
daughter roller skating act, which don't you wish you could
time travel and see that? Uh. He booked trapeze artists,
and he even hired some of the Lakota to perform
(08:01):
their war salp, scalp and squaw dances, which I can
only imagine what that entailed. Um. And of course that
was kind of like a shock theater experience, I imagine
for a lot of the people that were in Deadwood
at the time. Well, and and so a lot of
the people who were on the stage there were people
who might not have otherwise had a lot of opportunities
(08:21):
to be on stage because of local prejudices and that
sort of thing. So in that sense, the fact that
he was giving opportunities to people who might not have
been able to get a lot of performing gigs otherwise
one of the kind of good things. Although I have
a sneaking suspicion that really it was about exploiting people
that were desperate. He was trying to be positive because
(08:44):
I know, I know what's coming later. Well, we already
called that as good work ethics, so that's okay. Yeah.
He also hired a full band to play the hall,
and after any of the variety acts performed, the chairs
should be cleared and they would have dances just kind
of I I don't it seems kind of quaint in
its own way that they would do that. Um. And
(09:04):
he even had a couple of masquerade balls over the
course of the Gem's life, which is that we're apparently
these huge, really extravagant, fabulous events just sort of a
little bit difficult to piece together, I know for me, Like, okay,
so there were these wild acts, there was bare knuckleboxing,
(09:24):
there were prostitutes around, and then an extravagant basketball doesn't
really all go together, but for him it fits all
perfectly naturally. It was also pretty lucrative and he made
a big success of it, so successful that he was
able to open a sister saloon in bear Butte, but
that one was was it was it that that one
(09:46):
was not successful or was it just too much because
that one only stayed open for a couple of years.
Most accounts that I have read suggests that without him
to really manage it, I mean, he was really the
visionary and without him being able to be there every
day like he was at the gym, it just couldn't
hold together. It just it needed the leadership that he provided.
(10:07):
The Gem, on the other hand, reportedly handled more money
in a day than the bank did. Yeah. Yeah, it
was extremely popular, uh you know it. There have been
rumors that it was even known in other countries, like
people in Australia had heard tales of this Gem saloon
and and people across the US at the time had
heard of it. And it's kind of fascinating to think
(10:29):
about because that was not an age where we had
the big advertising that we have now. We didn't have
access to all of the information we have now. Yet
the legend just spread on its own um as people
went and traveled the world. So he was recognized for
having a pretty shrewd business acumen, but periodically these weird
little stories of him being oddly kind will pop up.
(10:50):
There is one tale that he um one of the
acts that he had hired had a daughter, and the
daughter was horribly burnt in an accident, and that al
actually closed down the gem for several days so that
the girl could be there and convalesce and have someone
constantly watching over her, which, when you consider the amount
(11:11):
of money he was making each day, that's a pretty
significant sacrifice to make. And uh, you know, we don't
know why he chose to do that or why he would,
you know, extend this odd courtesy to someone, but it
does kind of switch out for a moment, sort of
the coloring of him as kind of a heartless, you know,
(11:32):
entrepreneurial focused, like he only thought about the money. Well,
and it kind of reminds me to you bring it
around to something fictional, it kind of reminds me of
Tony Soprano. And now occasionally he would do something really
nice for one of the dancers that at the at
Bottom Bang and you know, then he would cover up
somebody getting beaten to death in the parking lot. Yeah,
(11:53):
like this that's sort of is what al swearing in
reminds me a little like occasionally something might happen that
makes you kind of go, oh, that was good. Well,
And I mean you can't presume, even somebody that leads
a pretty seedy life that they're not all mustache twirling,
caricature grade villains a lot of time. I mean, they're humans,
(12:13):
and they're likely to have moments where they are touched
by an event or feel sympathy or empathy for other people.
It's gonna happen anys human. Yes. On the other hand,
the gym was so rowdy that people would go there
just to watch the fights. Yeah. Not the fights like
the boxing that we were talking about earlier, the fights
among patrons who were angry at each other and drunk. Yeah, patrons, employees, um,
(12:36):
you know, sometimes between the patrons and the staff, sometimes
staff on staff. Um. There is even a tale of
two women that worked at the bar that got in
a huge fight that culminated in shots being fired. But
that and I love this part. The steel boning in
the intended targets corset actually deflected the bullets, which is
(12:57):
sort of just wonderful and hilarious. Uh. But yeah, Allegedly
I think they were fighting over a mom. But it's
I mean, that's a pretty uh that puts the wild
in the wild West for sure. I mean just fights
that breakout among employees that lead to gunfire, and also
fights that broke out between swearing Jon and his employees
(13:22):
and non employees. There was a story about one patron,
Thomas Clark, who had been thrown out for being abusive.
He came back with a gun and swearing Jon. Swearing
Jeon disarmed him and then beat him up and then
was charged with a salton battery and found not guilty. Um.
Similar physical confrontations also happened with women that worked for him.
(13:44):
So he's not he did not you know, he did
not say okay, I'm only going to be like he
wasn't about who he would throw a punch at for sure. Uh. Yeah.
He kind of developed a reputation actually for being abusive
of women, um, and it would come up in the press.
(14:04):
The local paper would often comment that he had been
seeing you know, hitting a woman or engaged in an
argument with a woman, and and they kind of berated
him publicly for his behavior. But it didn't seem to really,
um stop any of it. It just made him hate
the paper so so uh. And there are also tales
of all kinds of you know, specific instances of fights
(14:27):
and deaths that happened at the gem. Um. There was
a jealous lover murder, suicide. There was one instance that
just kind of grosses me out where two women got
in a fight and one woman carved up the face
of another woman and allegedly even you know little eyeball scooping. Um, yeah,
it's pretty gross. And this one is really weird. There
(14:49):
was a logger who keeled over dead after going to
the bar and drinking like a shot of liquor. And
initially it was questioned as to whether or not swimming
Gin was involved in something illicit, but it was determined
that the logger had actually come in from working um
out in the heat and had really quickly chugged ice
(15:10):
water and then gone to get the alcohol, and that
it was actually the ice water that killed him. Um,
but what an odd story to have attached to your business. Um.
So he so all of that had happened like right
before he walked into the gym and ordered his drink. Um.
And then, of course, Calamity Jane was a figure that
sometimes appeared at the gym, and there's one story of
(15:33):
a night where she and Ike Brown came to the
saloon and they were carrying the head of a sue
that Brown had killed. This is really gory, so if
you are touchy of stomach, just be aware. They allegedly
were cutting off pieces of the head and selling them
for a dollar apiece, which is just as gruesome as
it gets. Um. And that there was even one story
(15:57):
that I read where Ike Brown had said that he
was to eat the remainder of the head, like he
was really really horrifying. Um. And apparently Seth Bullock was
so horrified by the whole thing that he snuck in
stole the head from Brown, who was presumably drunk, and
he actually buried it behind the gym because he just
had had enough and thought it was way too gruesome.
(16:19):
Gives me the shivers a little. So through all of
the all then it seems pretty insane to me, the
amount of abuse and fighting and deaths and horror that
was going on in this place of business. There were
still variety shows going on, like there was still entertainment
(16:40):
coming in to perform there, Like I'm not quite sure
how and this may you may be right that he
was not so much that he was giving opportunities to
people that did not have them. Otherwise, it does seem
kind of like people would maybe think twice about getting
on the stage when it was likely that you know,
the audience made get their firearms out halfway through, yeah,
(17:02):
and began shooting one another during the performance. But then
he hired a pretty accomplished theater man, this bestpian named
Harry Montague, who was extremely accomplished, recognized like he had,
you know, his name was a brand in theater, and
he really staged these huge and elaborate productions, including they
(17:24):
did a version of the Makado there um that really
kind of garnered some praise critically um. But when he left,
things kind of started to fall apart a little bit.
It was almost like the theatricality had kind of rescued
the gem's reputation a little bit, or at least, you know,
(17:46):
grown big enough that it hid some of the other
things that had surpassed the all of the crazy fights
and bis are selling of people's parts and uh. But
Montacue departed. He had left at one point but then
come back. But when he finally departed, the gem really
started to flounder. Uh, And they didn't have the huge
stage shows to draw crowds, and so the profits dropped
(18:09):
off because those people would stick around out of the
show and drink, and without them there anymore, they just
weren't making the same amount of money that they had been. UM.
Larndon actually sold it for a little while and brought
it back. Yeah, and somewhere in there he also tried
to make it into like an eatery, like a diner
kind of thing. I mean, he was willing to do anything. Again,
(18:29):
I gotta admire his work ethic, even though I think
his other ethics were not so delightful. Uh. He really
did want to make a stab at kind of keeping
it afloat and finding new ways to to profit from it. UM.
But that was not even the first of the many
problems that the gym kind of floated through. And he
(18:50):
didn't buy back the theater after he sold it. UM.
But for like twenty two years it was really a
pretty successful establishment UM and was it was an institution
in Deadwood, but disasters, even outside of interpersonal dramas, kept
sort of hitting it in one way or another. UM
three months after it opened it was burned when a
(19:12):
lamp in a sign that swear Engine had ordered he
had had it custom made, in the lamp ignited and Uh.
Swear Engine consequently refused to pay for the sign, But
that comes back on him later. Um. And then he
in the Great Fire of seventy nine which started in
a bakery that was nearby, and that fire burned a
(19:33):
hundred businesses and seventy homes in Deadwood. The gem was
really badly damaged, and swear Engine swore that he would rebuild,
And in just a couple of weeks he had put
up an entire new building. It was only lacking a
roof at that point, uh, and he covered that by
with a canvas while he waited on the materials and permit,
uh the materials for his permanent roof. So he took
(19:56):
advantage of those setbacks, and in that one in particular,
he expanded a square footage to include both a dance
hall and a theater, whereas it had been the theater
before and then they would clear chairs for dances. Now
it was like all of these things he kind of
kept turning lemons into lemonade in a way. Yeah, he
didn't have to redo the whole room to be able
to have something different in there anymore. After it was reopened,
(20:18):
though it was set upon by arsonists again. Uh, it's
not a long walks. Presume that swear Engine had his
fair share of enemies. Yes, he definitely did. Um. There
was the arsonists, came some Chinese immigrant workers. UM put
(20:39):
the fire out. In May of eighteen eighty three, or
rainstorm and melting snow flooded all of Main Street, including
the gym. Some buildings actually got washed away. UM. I
think it was in rebuilding from that, making repairs from that.
He put a drain plug in the performers so that
(20:59):
that might not be quite a problem anymore. Um. And
then another fire. Yeah. I mean he had just a
series of smaller floods and fires um that hit the building.
But then there was a really bad one. Uh, when
an employee of his tried to dry clean a suit
(21:21):
using gasoline. Um. That was a thing that people used
to do. I know, and I think I'm not sure,
I'll have to look it up. We might have an
article on people doing something like that. I know there's
a riff tracks about people doing that. Um. But yeah,
that incident actually destroyed the top floor of the gym
(21:42):
for good because it was not a single floor structure,
so the top floor was gone forever after that point.
But in the midst of all of this there had
been you know, we talked about the fighting and the
the bare knuckle boxing and the theater shows and the
dances and the drinking, but there was a whole other
lucrative business going on, which was Al's prostitution business. Yes,
(22:03):
and this is really where I mean he was not
a good guy in a lot of ways. And with
apart from all the illegal activities and the beating people
and all that, I feel like some of the some
of his worst dealings had to do with the prostitution business. Yeah,
Because what he would do is that he would advertise
that he needed like female wait staff. Uh girls and
(22:27):
young women would come to Deadwood to work as his
white staff. A lot of them thought they were going
to work in a swank hotel. Yeah, they were not
wink wait staff jobs that he was recruiting for at all.
And so uh girls and young women would arrive, they
would learn that that that was false. There was there
(22:48):
was no hotel staff job for them. They would not
have the money or the resources to return home, so
they would be stranded in in Deadwood, and their choice
was either to work as a pro institute or or starved. Right,
those real choices at that point, right, and he even
I mean he did also hire experienced ladies of the night,
(23:09):
but he also would often hire some of these stage
troops with the intent of trying to turn the female
performers into his other employees as part of his prostitution dealings.
Um just so squirrely uh. And the Black Hills Daily Times,
who we mentioned before he was not on good terms with,
(23:31):
ran an article at one point entitled a den of
prostitution under the guise of a dance hall stocked with
unsuspecting and innocent girls engaged through misrepresentations by its beastial proprietor.
There's a headline for you in Nicean's The Saint uh,
and it basically kind of recounted the tale of one
particular group of girls that were lured to Deadwood from
Chicago again thinking they were going to work in a hotel,
(23:53):
and then swearing and locked them in their rooms and basically, um,
allegedly townspeople heard about this, and they liberated the girls
and eventually sent them back home. Um. But the story,
even though it was a total smear on swearing swear
Engine's name, I mean it was intended as a smear piece,
(24:15):
it really had almost no impact on his business. His
prostitution dealings continued to thrive um and of course, like
his other employee dealings, those women were often beaten. He
didn't he didn't discriminate on who he would hit at all, uh,
And he would threaten them that if they ever tried
to leave, he would bring threat or theft charges against him,
(24:38):
that he would claim that they have been stealing from
the business. And so a lot of women felt like
they didn't have the recourse to fight a charge like that.
You know, they were all poor, they would all have
like reasonable um um intent, so they felt like most
of them would lose, and they just kind of got
stuck in life, which instinks, Well, it's sort of further
(25:03):
evidence of the kind of character that he had because
while that was going on, he was continuing to dodge debts.
He talked in the previous episode about how he often
borrowed money that then his business would fail and he
would not pay back, And it became clear in some
cases that he had never intended to pay that money back.
That continued on. Um. His original debt from back in
(25:26):
Iowa was finally tracked down to him in eighty one
and he was forced to either pay up or go
to jail. I'm guessing he paid up. Yeah. That became
his like sort of Dobriger way of handling business is
that he would enter these business contracts never pay them.
They pretty much had to take him to court and
have it come to a point where if he did
(25:46):
not pay, he was going to jail, and then he
would like grudgingly pay them. And that was sort of
his business model, right, which is a little bit um.
It's hard to think about that because you know, no
business could get away with that today. But it was
a different time. Of course. There was a man named
Joseph Broghammer who in eighteen ninete, knowing that his m
(26:08):
O was that he would say I don't have the
money to pay that back, he instead decided that he
would go after his property. Um. He had done some
work at the gem that had he had never been
paid for, and what he was awarded was several horses
and buggies. Since he knew he was probably not ever
going to get the money, Yeah, which is kind of
(26:29):
a fascinating awardment. But yeah, here's some horses. Now. We
did mention in the first part of this story in
the previous podcast that swearing Jin had taken a wife
when he was in Helena, and she kind of vanishes
from the record a little bit. There's not much that
we hear about her, but in her name does come
(26:50):
up again because in the Black Hills Daily Times there
was an announcement that swar engin place that read, my
wife has left my room and board without provocation. All
that's in by her will not be paid by me. Uh. Basically,
they had had a fight and he was like, fine,
go you're on your own, because she apparently left that
same day. However, she came back to him a few
(27:10):
weeks later and she stayed for two more years before
she finally divorced him. Um. And then remember again at
the Times were was not his friend. Uh. There was
a follow up article after he after she finally left,
where they printed two letters that were um written under
(27:35):
a pseudonym, but everyone sort of believed it to be
Nettie's letters about al that she had written to her
parents UM or to her mother specifically, and they were
printed under the name of Emmy instead of Nettie, and
they basically just detailed the cruelties and indignation she suffered
(27:55):
while living with him. Uh. And there are some accounts
that I've read that rumored that she in fact had
friends on the Times, and so she kind of placed
those as a final parting shot to him, uh, so
that people would publicly have a record of all the
horrible things that he did. But she was not his
only wife now Now, on July three nine, he married
(28:17):
a twenty one year old woman named O'delia turgent Um,
when within six months there were reports again that that
there was domestic abuse going on and that, uh there
were people who witnessed altercations between them in the street
and in one of which he choked and beat her Um.
Several months after that, she needed a doctor's care because
(28:42):
of a serious hemorrhage, and she survived, but not long
after that he divorced her, claiming she had been unfaithful. Yeah,
and it's weird. The accounts never say what type of
hemorrhage it is. It's just listed as a severe hemorrhage.
So the suggestion there is that he once again beat
(29:02):
her and you know, brought her apparently near death because
many reports of it make it sound like she really
was at death's door, and you know, it was sort
of miraculous that she rallied and survived. And then he
had another really weird relationship, uh, with a woman named
Hattie Lewis, and he this relationship allegedly began when he
(29:26):
stormed into her resort and am using the air quotes
where he had spent the previous night, claiming that he
had been robbed of a thousand dollars. And he started
to destroy furniture and attempted to burn the building down,
and he was stopped by an employee. But somehow, in
the midst of all of this Swearingeon and Hattie like
took up together. I guess, you know, too extreme personalities
(29:50):
sometimes they're drawn together and usually we know how those
relationships go, and it's not so good. And this was
not good at all. Uh, Their their relationship was not
very happy for very long. They it turned sour pretty quickly,
and Hattie Lewis committed suicide with morphine overdose. Yeah, so
he was not um, not really good news for women.
(30:12):
He wasn't good news. For anybody. Women were really rough. Now,
so we're we're getting to the point of how much
more bad stuff could this guy do? You and and
we're sort of also near the end of his story. Yeah,
in December of another fire tour through the gym, and
this time he did not rebuild it. I actually there's
(30:35):
a part of me that just takes this sort of schadenfreud,
a gleefulness about this particular fire. Um, because it's a
fire that started in multiple places simultaneously. Yeah, witnesses saw
the fire blaze up in some report say five, some
say six different spots at the same time. Firefighters came
and they miraculously could not find the wrenches to use
(30:58):
to connect their hoses to the to the water water. Um.
And so another fire department was called in, who also
could not find a problem. Yeah, so how in the
world could that have happened? Um? My first in reading
about that, my first response was like, did he do
it for the insurance money? But that was not quite
(31:19):
a thing. Then. It's much more likely than one of
his many enemies took it upon themselves to do a
very thorough job of burning down the gym. Yeah, he
really had plenty by that point, so he finally decided
it was not worth trying to rebuild again. That was it.
So he left Edwood and went to Leadville, Colorado, to
meet up with his younger brother, Theodore, who also had
(31:41):
a saloon, and he worked with Theodore for four years.
Uh So then his end is a little bit anti climactic,
kind of yeah, because we don't really know for sure
what happened. But his body was found in November of
nineteen o four, uh adjacent to some street car tracks
(32:02):
that were near Denver and um The initial observation observation
of the body suggested that he had died from a
massive head wound from a blunt, heavy object, but in
the Oscaloosa Harold it was reported that he had likely
fallen while he was trying to board the motor car,
possibly having been hit on the head by some part
(32:23):
of the train. However, he also reportedly had scratches on
the side of his face, which I guess could happen,
you know, if he fell and slid against the ground.
But it kind of almost doesn't add up. I'm sure
I'm not the only person who thinks he must have
been attacked. Yeah, it's a little weird. It's sort of
a strange way to go to just you know, be
found and for him to have been trying to board
(32:45):
a street car and fall and died, but no one
knew about that. They just found the body later. It
could have happened, happened that they're just coincidentally, were not
any witnesses speaking up to what had happened. Maybe they
had those wrenches that were lost from maybe Uh. And
then there was the murder weapon. And then his body
was eventually transported back to Oscaloosa for burial, which is
(33:08):
where if you listen to the first part, he grew
up as a pioneer child, even though I believe his
parents had divorced, but they were still both buried there together. Uh.
And then he was buried there with the rest of
the family. Just it is sort of at such an
anti climactic end for so much drama in his life. Uh.
But we don't really know. It could have been a
(33:28):
very climactic night of craziness. All we know is that
he was found by the street car tracks. So that's
the story of Elsewhere and Jim and his wild and
only life. I mean, I can't even imagine. Yes, well,
and then to have his actual life be even stranger
and more dramatic and more full of crime and craziness
(33:48):
than it's ever portrayed in fiction than it's ever portrayed
in in a very expletive filled Yeah, if you are
interested in watching Deadwood, I really love it and highly
recommend it, but be ready if you are not comfortable
with a lot of swearing, it is probably not the
show for you because they really floor it. I hold
back nothing. Yeah, well, and it's uh it rather than
(34:10):
using swears that were in use at the time, which
sounds weird to people now. Yeah, they don't read the
same new they use modern they last, you have no
questions of the intent of the language, absolutely not. Although
you know that show is written in i ambic pentameter,
did not know that it's bizarre. You don't think of it,
and then when you know it, you can't stop hearing. Well,
now I'm it's going to be stuff there in my head.
(34:32):
And now I have some listener mail. Yes, I have
two pieces, and they are both about our pope, Pope
Benedict the Ninth Podcast, which is about his renunciation of
the papacy, and both are corrections. So I appreciate it.
We have such awesome listeners. The first one is I
(34:53):
found your episode on the other Pope Benedict very interesting.
One thing I noticed is that you always mentioned the
Pope is being a strictly spiritual leader. I think we
mentioned briefly I'm jumping out of the letter um that
it wasn't it had more to do with power at
that time, but we did not address this listener's specific correction.
So I'm very glad they were it. In uh. It says, however,
for most of its history, including Benedict the ninths period,
(35:14):
the Holy See owned the Papal States. The Pope was
a secular and a spiritual leader, since he needed to
manage the Papal States as well as hold the role
we now know for we know him for uh. It
is only in eighteen seventy that the Papal States were
fully incorporated into the then newly born Italian State in
the nine that the Vatican renounced any claim on the
people states. In Benedict the ninth Day, being pope was
(35:36):
more than leading souls. It was being a major landowner
and managing or reaping the benefits of very lucrative lands
on top of the wealth deriving from tithing and numerous
donations to the church. Keep up the good work, Zarah. Yeah,
I um, I completely blipped right over that. I mean,
we did kind of talk about Benedict the nine not
really being the most spectacular spiritual leader, so but I
(35:56):
did not talk about the politics of uh, that being
not just a religious seat at the time. So thank
you for that correction. And the other one is from
our listener brook from Florida, and Brooks says, I was
listening to your podcast on Pope Benedict the Ninth, and
I just wanted to let you know the proper term
isn't resigning, because that would indicate a higher power, and
(36:17):
there's no higher power within the Church on earth. The
proper way to say what happened is that the Pope
announced the office of the papacy. Anyway, I just wanted
to correct that great podcast. Keep it up. Yes, that
is absolutely also accurate. I tend to not attribute it
to Benedict the ninth though, because, ah, his behavior was
not really what I would categorize as high bar It
(36:39):
was a little, uh, it's a little dicey. So I
think that's just sort of one of those mental jumps
that I'm like, it doesn't apply to him, but it
is absolutely the correct terminology to call it our renunciation.
Although I have noticed in the coverage of he's no
longer the current Pope Benedict, but Pope Benedict the sixteenth
that just stepped down. The press uses resigned a lot,
(36:59):
and I I don't know if that's just a desire
to be um um neutral and not sort of engage
the the language that is most accepted by the Catholic
Church or not. I don't I would have to ask
the editors of all other press outlets. I kind of
want to ask the editor of the A P Style Guide.
They might have a thing, they might we should do that.
(37:20):
So thanks to you both, Brooke and Zara for those
awesome corrections, because those are important and maybe not always
recognize differences from you know what we did? Uh. If
you like to write s, you can do so at
History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can also follow
us on Twitter at missed in History, and we are
also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash history class stuff.
(37:43):
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You can go to our website and type in human
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Trafficking Works will come up, which is drained to the
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(38:04):
our website, which is how stuff Works dot com. For
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