Soapy Smith: A Very Bad Man

I have sometimes been asked as the history guy why we remember bad people and bad actions. I mean isn't there some history that doesn't deserve to be remembered? To me the simple answer that it's history is enough, but there are other reasons as well. One of the primary reasons that we learn history is as a cautionary tale. We remember bad people and bad actions because we don't, we don't want to repeat them. Sometimes it's that a bad person is so good at being bad that it just makes you wonder what they might have done if they turned their life towards different pursuits. And sometimes it's just a good story, a ripping yarn that reminds us that history does not have to be boring. And I guess all of the above apply to the life of Jefferson Smith, a scoundrel, a very bad man, and yet a man whose history deserves to be remembered. Jefferson Randolph Smith II was born in Georgia in 1860. His father was a lawyer and his family was wealthy. He developed the manners of a southern gentleman, but the family wealth was lost in the Civil War and his alcoholic father struggled to support the family. They moved around, winding up in Texas in 1875. At just 16, Jeff Smith drove cattle down the Chisholm Trail to Abilene. He was apparently quite capable, but cattle drives are very hard work. At the end of one drive he came upon a man who was doing the shell game. It's a simple game that uses three walnut shells and a dried pea. Put the pea under one of the shells, you move them around and the players bet on where the pea is. Versions of the shell game go back at least to ancient Greece. While it appears to be gambling, it's actually a type of confidence trick or con. The game operator, called a sharp, uses sleight of hand to move the pea. The better, always loses. The game is not as simple as it appears. Not only is it a careful play to not get caught, but it depends upon the sharp earning the audience's confidence, often distracting them with their speech. Sometimes conspirators are used to make the game appear real. Such people are called shills. Sometimes the sharp allows a player to win occasionally, to make the game appear real. Sometimes the game itself is a distraction, and the player's pocket is picked while they are distracted. Good sharps are skilled at getting players to choose wrong, and goading them into betting more. The man took all of Smith's trail money, but instead of getting angry, Smith cajoled him into teaching him the trade. Smith was a good fit for a confidence man. While not necessarily handsome, his genteel manner and southern accent were disarming. He had a silver tongue. He had great dexterity and a sharp wit, and he would come to master the trade. The newspaper of the San Francisco Call would later save him. There is not a trick known to confidence men in which Smith is not an expert. He made an early living on the bread and butter of the trade, the shell game, a similar game called three-card Monty, or just cheating at poker using marked cards. He was good at it. He would use shills, accomplices to make the games look real, and get people to up their bets. But these kinds of cons, called short cons, meaning fast swindles, had their limits. Confidence men had to move on quickly before locals became wise to their tricks, or too angry at their losses. It was an itinerant life. Smith spent years moving from town to town, mastering his trade. But he found new opportunities in the Colorado town of Leadville. When Jeff Smith arrived in Leadville around 1885, it was a busy silver mining town. Rough and tumble town had already attracted famous gamblers like Doc Holiday and Alice Ivers, known as Poker Alice. Being a boom town, Leadville was a wild place that, while not complete without law and order, was largely untamed. The advantage of a town like Leadville is that it was always getting a new influx of miners seeking their fortune. A con man could find new suckers without having to leave town. By some accounts, it was in Leadville that Smith learned and then perfected the con for which he is most famous, the soap swindle. The game was fairly simple. Smith offered passers-by a chance to buy soap at a very high price, five dollars a bar, claiming that he had put some money, fifty, or even a hundred dollar bills in the packaging of some of the bars. A person can buy a bar of soap for five dollars, with a chance of striking it rich. And if they don't find money, at least they'll have soap. This game works much like the shell game. Shills are used to make it appear real, and once they see the money, the suckers buy up all the soap at far more than its value. Smith was so associated with that particular con that it earned him his nickname. When he was finally arrested for the swindle in Leadville, the deputy sheriff who arrested him was so flustered by the crowd of angry people who had been swindled, that he forgot to ask Smith his first name, and so on the arrest warrant simply wrote, Soapy, the nickname Soapy Smith, stuck. But the arrest marked the end of the scam in Leadville, and Soapy had to move on. He became determined to find a place where a confidence man could operate without being constantly forced to move on. His goal was not just to play the con, but to build a network of fellow cons, thugs, bribed and coerced officers, and officials that allowed him to operate without fear of arrest. He found that place in Denver, Colorado. In Denver, Smith built a gang that slowly took over the city's criminal element. For all the scams, both short and long, half the money went to Soapy. He used the money not just to bribe police, judges, and elected officials. By 1889, newspapers claimed he was bribing both the mayor and the chief of police. But he also had people like bankers on his payroll who would help him to identify wealthy targets for their scams. His gang did not just include a wide array of grifters, but also people skilled at finding and steering potential victims to the various scams. The steerers used a number of tools, including so-called grip men. Grip men had, through years of practice and research, learned the hand signals of various lodges and secret orders that were common in America. Using those, they could gain a person's trust and then send them off to a dishonest casino or one of several businesses that were fronts for various scams. A victim of such a man later described how one of Soapy's grip men drew him into a scam where he lent money to a stranger. I just entered the Knights of Pythias. One of the strangers saw my pin and gave me the grip of the order. I felt very brotherly. The gang also kept barbers on the payroll. The barbers not only played their own short con, a bait and switch where they promised a cheap shave and cut and ran the prices up with extra amenities, but they would also strike up conversations with new customers. If they found out things suggesting the man had money to take, they would cut a small notch in the back of their hair that Soapy's steers could recognize. By some accounts, this was the origin of using the term mark to refer to the target of a crime. Soapy managed to keep the scams to a level that didn't draw too much attention. He was always a supporter of law and order, so long as it kept away all crime but his own. He built community trust via donations to many causes and events, and as his influence grew, more gang members came to him. He maintained their loyalty by providing his, using his connections if they got arrested, always paying their bail and attorney costs. Another bit of Smith's personality emerged. He could be randomly generous. Donations to widows and orphans funds or to build churches may have been to build trust with the community to protect his rackets, but if he ran into someone on the street who was down and out, he might buy them a meal or a new coat. One reporter who would actually clash with Smith recalled seeing him in the street. Smith noticed the man's hat was worn and bought him a new one. When he asked why, Soapy said that he had won some money gambling. He was on his way to the bank to deposit it and was trying to spend as much as possible before he got there. It might be that Soapy Smith was naturally generous or maybe he just hated to save money, but author Stanley Sauerwein speculated in his 2018 book, One Trick Too Many, that it might have had to do with a superstition that's common among confidence men and often attributed to the famous riverboat swindler, Canada Bill Jones. If you help out someone who's truly in need, the superstition goes, you will be rewarded a hundred fold. That superstition is called Bill's luck. While Smith was not generally an unpleasant man, the Lancaster News of Lancaster, South Carolina described him as a most genial and affable crook. He also had a temper and was not afraid of violence. He was known to have been involved in numerous fights and altercations with other gamblers or victims of his scams. A November 1888 edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican reported on a near gunfight in Denver between Smith and a gambler named Pomeroy. When Pomeroy drew a gun on Soapy, the newspaper reported, the latter did not appear to be frightened and pulled his gun from his hip pocket. The newspaper concluded, what might have happened had not bystanders seized the two men and disarmed them. The danger of his temper was demonstrated in 1889. A newspaper editor named John Arkins, who had been a colonel during the Civil War, began a crusade against Soapy's corruption. Arkins went so far as to point out where Smith's family resided. And since, Soapy and a large game member called Banjo Parker attacked Arkins as he left his office at the Rocky Mountain News. Soapy beat the colonel nearly to death with a weighted cane. Smith was charged with attempted murder, but a friendly judge gave him an affordable bail of a thousand dollars. Soapy paid the bail and skipped town. The gang had gotten too brazen and reformers were starting to take over the government in Denver, and so Smith moved his family to St. Louis and laid low. But without Soapy in charge, the criminal element in Denver became more violent. The reform wave subsided and he was quietly asked to come back. When he returned he became even more brazen. Sarwan explained that Smith's gambling establishments were so dishonest that when he was accused of bilking customers and contributing to the city's moral decline, he replied that his operation so cheated people that it served as an educational tool to break them of their gambling habit. In 1892, Soapy and his gang took advantage of a silver boom in the Colorado mountain town of Creed. Using lessons learned in Denver, he quickly took over the town's criminal element. An April 1892 issue of the Sioux City Journal describes Soapy raising a gang to force some Sioux City gamblers from setting up a gambling establishment. The confrontation led to a gunfight and the Sioux City crew quickly left town. Soapy acted the leading citizen, even bringing on his sister's husband, a noted Texas lawman, as town marshal. He brought the lawless town to heel, reducing street violence while allowing Soapy and his band to scam the newcomers hoping to strike it rich for every dime they had. An April 1892 edition of the Topeka newspaper, Kansas Farmer, described how Creed worked. Soapy Smith was a very bad man indeed, and hired at least 12 men to lead the prospector with a little money, or the tender foot who had just arrived, up to the numerous tables in his gambling saloon, where they were robbed in various ways, and so openly that they deserved to lose all that was taken from them. As the Creed boom slowed, Smith went back to Denver, where he became involved in a fight between reformist Colorado governor Davis Hanson Waite and officials at the Denver Fire and Police boards. When Waite fired two of the board members in an attempt to overturn corruption and put an end to illegal gambling, it sparked a confrontation. The disgruntled officials barricaded themselves in City Hall, and Waite deployed the state militia. The matter was decided in the courts without bloodshed, but Smith had, in the crisis, managed to have been deputized as part of a special police force, called up by the mayor of Denver to defend City Hall. The reform-minded governor started shutting down Denver's illegal gambling, but Smith managed to even benefit from that. As a special deputy, he would raid his own underground gambling establishments, forcing the customers to flee, leaving the money that they had bet behind. But there was another opportunity about to open up. In 1896, gold was discovered in the Klondike region of Canada's Yukon Territory. Soapy saw the draw of miners to the remote territory as a golden opportunity, as the newspaper the San Francisco Call described it. Then he went to Alaska, and from the moment of his arrival there, his record was one of crime and violence. Soapy and members of his gang moved to Skagway, a muddy boomtown port in Alaska that was one of the few gateways to the Klondike. It was nearly lawless and disputed territory between the U.S. and Canada, and bustling with hordes of adventurers hoping to strike it rich. All the men that Soapy and his gang hoped to separate from their money. He used all the tricks he'd learned in Denver. He became a leading citizen, befriended local businessmen, donated to civic causes, and was charitable to the poor, even if he was the reason that they were poor. Newspapers branded him the uncrowned king of Skagway. His gang fleeced the crowds with shell games and three-card Monty. His steerers met them at the docks, posing as ministers or grizzled veteran miners offering advice. They led them to Soapy's gambling parlor or one of his dishonest businesses. Once you got off the boat, you could go to the telegraph office and for just five dollars, telegraph your family that you had made it there safely. If you were willing to wait around for another five dollars, you could wait and hear their reply, which would sometimes ask for money for some sort of emergency at home, and for of course a small fee, you could wire money to the family. It was all fake, one of Soapy's scams, the telegraph wires just ran into the bay. Telegraph didn't actually reach Skagway until 1901. Those who complained had little recourse, the only law in town was one US Marshal and he was on Soapy's payroll. When a vigilance committee arose to threaten his operation, he raised an even larger law and order society and intimidated them away. When the Spanish-American war started, he created a local militia with him at its head. On July 4th, 1898, he rode at their head in the town parade, but the Confidence Man's gang took a step too far when they robbed a miner named John Douglas Stewart three days later. Stewart was one of the first of the Klondike miners to be heading back to the US, having actually struck it rich. The gang parted him from his sack of gold by tricking him into a game of three-card Monty. When he pulled out his sack of gold dust, a gang member simply grabbed it and ran away. This theft, after so many, upset the town for a specific reason. Robbing a successful miner was different than taking some greenhorn's steak. If word got out that miners who had found gold were being robbed in Skagway, the men about to return home might choose a different route, depriving Skagway of their business. On the evening of July 8th, when a group of vigilantes met, Soapy took a He was denied entry by Frank H. Reed, the town surveyor. Accounts differ as to what happened next. Neither man seems to have had deadly intent, but after a short argument, Smith shot Reed through the groin with his rifle, and Reed shot Smith through the heart, killing him instantly. Smith's last words were reported to have been, for God's sake, don't shoot. Reed died 12 days later. He was treated like a hero by the people of Skagway, who built a monument at his gravesite. As for Soapy Smith, many people just wanted to chuck his corpse in the bay. They finally did hold a ceremony, but the Methodist and Baptist minister refused to officiate. The town wouldn't even let him be buried in consecrated ground. He's buried just outside the cemetery. His gang was rounded up and either arrested or run out of town. It was a stunning reversal of fortune for the man who had led the 4th of July parade, just four days earlier. Both Reed's and Smith's graves are now visited by tourists and Skagway. The character of Soapy Smith has been in several films, and the 1941 Clark Gable film, Honky Tonk, was based on a biography of Smith, although the studio was not allowed to use his name. As a surprising legacy, there is a charity costume ball every year in Hollywood called the Soapy Smith Party, and if you want a real legacy, you can hire Soapy Smith's great grandson, Jeff Smith, to give you a talk about his famous ancestor, about whom he is an expert. He's written a book and hopes to produce a feature film. In the end it's kind of hard to divine what kind of lesson we should take from the life of Soapy Smith. While he was a complicated man, he was also generally described as a scoundrel and a very bad man. Certainly his story is a ripping yarn, it's just fun to hear, and his violent death a cautionary tale about the inevitable consequences of a life of crime. Newspapers at the time said of him, he died with his boots on. Perhaps for someone like Jefferson Smith, that's exactly the epitaph that he would have wanted. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the History Guy, short snippets of forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long, and if you did enjoy, please go ahead and click that thumbs up button. If you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes, please write those in the comment section, I will be happy to personally respond. Be sure to follow the History Guy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and check out our merchandise on teespring.com. And if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history, all you need to do is subscribe.