Robert P. W. Boatright (1859–1904)

Robert P. W. Boatright, hailed as the “dean of confidence men” by scholar David Maurer, was born in 1859 in Franklin County, Missouri. Shortly after his father returned home from being paroled as a Confederate prisoner of war in 1865, Boatright and his family moved to St. Louis, presumably in search of greater economic opportunity. There the family lived in a series of working-class neighborhoods. Due to its inadequate sanitation infrastructure, St. Louis suffered periodic outbreaks of cholera and typhoid. As a young man Boatright contracted typhoid, most likely from drinking contaminated water. He recovered, but according to family, friends, and neighbors, he was never quite the same. The once bright, studious boy reportedly became “idiotic” and uncontrollable. By the age of fourteen Robert was so incorrigible that his father, Robert M. Boatright, successfully petitioned the St. Louis courts to send his son to the House of Refuge, where abandoned, delinquent, and orphaned children were sent. Just over a year later, in 1873, Boatright escaped and returned to the streets of St. Louis.

In 1874 Boatright’s older brother Oscar was struck in the head by a rock during an altercation with a group of boys from a neighboring street. Before he died, Oscar told his family that young Charley Woodson had thrown the rock that struck him. Woodson went on trial for murder. During the proceedings, Robert P. W. Boatright entered the courtroom and attacked Woodson with a knife. Woodson subsequently died from infection of his wounds. Boatright stood trial twice for the child’s murder; each time the jury reached a 10–2 decision. A third trial was deemed too costly, and he returned to the streets of St. Louis. Boatright was later charged with robbery but seems to have escaped serious jail time. He continued to live in St. Louis until the mid-1880s, when he and his parents moved to Jasper County, Missouri. It is unknown exactly why they moved there, but Boatright’s uncle, Salathiel, had moved to nearby southeast Kansas and may have written to them about potential opportunities in the tri-state lead and zinc mining district that covered southwest Missouri, southeast Kansas, and northeast Oklahoma. 

After working briefly in the mines, Boatright turned sometime in the mid-1890s to an illegal, but somewhat safer, way to make a living. According to court records, Boatright ran gaming rooms until he himself was allegedly swindled on the very confidence game that he would later adopt and perfect. This con game, allegedly invented in Iowa by Council Bluffs gambler turned political boss Ben Marks, was known as the “big store.” The big store was not really a store; instead, it was a con centered around a fixed physical location where the men behind it operated. Otherwise, the place remained unoccupied. Big store cons varied; the operation Boatright eventually carried out was referred to as a “fight store” by confidence men because the con consisted of fixed footraces and prizefights. He shrewdly appropriated the name and letterhead of a defunct local sporting organization, the Webb City Athletic Club, and presented it as a legitimate, chartered athletic club. Nothing, however, could have been further from the truth.

Boatright, working together with talented associates whose numbers were estimated between 30 and 114, swindled dozens of victims out of millions of dollars on rigged footraces and prizefights. The organization was dubbed the “Buckfoot Gang” by the local press because the gang’s sprinters would often pretend that their foot hit a clod of dirt, causing them to stumble or “buck,” and fall to the ground, thereby losing the race. Some accounts allege they also participated in dog fights, fake bicycle races, and even a crooked baseball game. One of Boatright’s confederates, acting as a “roper,” would go out on the road to look for a wealthy individual who liked to gamble; once they had identified a victim, they would approach the mark and entice him to come to Webb City for either a footrace or prizefight. The roper would often pose as a disgruntled athlete who wanted to get even with the club by throwing a race or fight. The victim was assured he would not have to bet any of his own money; instead, he would secretly bet the roper’s money and in return would get 25 percent of the winnings. Because the con was often tailored to the individual mark, the gang’s methods sometimes varied. The goal, however, was the same: “to separate the suckers from their money.” Of course, the marks would bet not only the roper’s money, but also large amounts of their own. Then the sprinter or prizefighter they bet on would lose. Any victims who protested the outcome were met with threats and intimidation.

Boatright’s victims ranged from attorneys, bankers, lawmen, merchants, and stockmen to a future governor of Kansas and a Yale graduate who had worked on Wall Street. Many lost substantial amounts of money; in some cases, victims like Texan John Cobb agreed to a rematch and lost even more money before accepting that they had been conned. This technique, called “the send,” was allegedly pioneered by Boatright. The gang swindled men—no women were ever alleged to have fallen for Boatright’s con—from across the United States. Most, however, came from Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. They wisely did not swindle individuals from Jasper County to avoid turning public opinion against them; at least one account claimed Boatright engaged in philanthropic acts to foster local goodwill. Boatright, described by contemporaries as a handsome, mustachioed man with a blacksmith’s physique, was known for his affable personality, which likely helped charm many would-be detractors. The Buckfoot Gang primarily operated in Webb City but also carried out cons in Galena, Kansas; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Hot Springs, Arkansas. 

Boatright and the Buckfoot Gang carried out their schemes from the mid-1890s until 1904 thanks to assistance from the Exchange Bank of Webb City, the Joplin Savings Bank, and the political protection of Democratic political boss Gilbert “Gib” Barbee. Barbee, a wealthy self-made businessman, was one of the most influential men in southwest Missouri politics. He vied for control of Jasper County’s Democratic Party with William Phelps of Carthage. Phelps, a lawyer and reportedly Missouri’s most powerful political lobbyist, controlled Jasper County’s eastern Democratic faction, while Barbee commanded the county’s western Democratic faction. As the gang’s victims began to go public, unfavorable stories linking Boatright to Barbee’s political patronage began to appear in the local press. It did not help that Barbee also owned the infamous House of Lords. Named for the upper House of Parliament, the three-story building near the corner of Fourth and Main in Joplin housed a restaurant and bar on the first floor, gaming rooms on the second, and a brothel on the third floor. It became synonymous with corruption in early twentieth-century Jasper County.

Barbee owned the Joplin Globe, one of the most influential papers in the region, as well, but Phelps supporter and future Missouri Secretary of State Cornelius Roach owned the Carthage Jasper County Democrat. The two papers, as well as local Republican papers like the Joplin News-Herald, engaged in a partisan proxy war that sprang from the Barbee–Phelps rivalry and quickly enveloped Boatright and the Buckfoot Gang. News stories about the gang and its alleged connection to Barbee drew unwanted attention and soon engulfed the local Democratic Party. The gang became the subject of an informal public referendum during the election of 1902. Voters, including those in Boatright’s own stronghold of Webb City, resoundingly signaled their disapproval of crime and corruption in Jasper County by overwhelmingly voting Republican. To add to Boatright’s woes, lawsuits filed by victims began to mount. Boatright, who allegedly paid some victims to settle out of court, began to run out of money as he and several associates also had to pay multiple bail bonds to remain free. In 1903 Boatright and two associates, Bert “Curley” Bromley and Ed Ellis, were convicted in Lawrence County and faced a three-year sentence in the Missouri State Penitentiary. While out on bond, Bromley drowned during a fishing trip in rural Jasper County. 

In May 1904, as rumors swirled that Boatright’s conviction would be overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court, word came from Kansas City that the footrace chieftain was ill. On May 25, Boatright died of acute pneumonia; he left behind his mother and common-law wife as his only survivors. After much pomp and ceremony, he was buried in the Webb City Cemetery. Ironically, as predicted, Boatright’s conviction was overturned. Victims pursued claims against his estate for years, but few if any assets were recovered, having been allegedly taken by Boatright’s cronies. Public memory of Boatright faded, and he would have likely remained a forgotten figure but for the work of linguist David Maurer. Maurer, who studied criminal slang, corresponded with dozens of confidence men and criminals, and many of them apparently knew Boatright or were his peers in the criminal underworld. Maurer’s research resulted in the publication of The Big Con, a classic book on crime in America, in 1940. In it, he hailed Boatright as the “dean of modern confidence men.” Decades after his death, Boatright’s reputation endured among his old associates and fellow criminals, thereby securing his place as one of Middle America’s most accomplished confidence men.