Twenty-Eighth Issue: Soapy Smith
Hello! This week I will be talking about a man named Soapy Smith. He was quite a character in the American west around the time where someone would find gold or silver and then there would be wild towns of men trying their luck, only to disappear when the gold or silver ran out shortly after. Soapy was ready to take advantage of this environment and he did.
Soapy Smith’s real name was Jefferson Smith. He was born in Georgia into a rich family. However, the Civil War ruined his family financially, so in 1876 they moved to Texas and the year after that Jefferson’s mom died. He left home and worked his way up from con man to crime boss. In Fort Worth, he gathered a gang of criminals to work for him and became known as “the king of the frontier con men”. His gang was called the ‘Soap Gang’ and had people with colorful names like ‘Texas Jack Vermillion’. They moved around from town to town and mostly did “short cons” that were quick and didn’t need a lot of setup, like the shell game, three-card monte, and poker games that were rigged.
Around this time Jefferson came up with his ‘prize soap racket’ that gave him the name Soapy. Basically he would go to a new town and open up his display case on a tripod on a street corner and put some soap cakes on top of it. He would talk about how great these soaps were, and then he would wrap paper money around some of the bars. Then he’d wrap plain paper on top so you couldn’t tell which soaps had the money and which didn’t. He mixed those soaps in with other soaps that were wrapped but without money, and then sell them to the people for a dollar each. One person he put in the crowd ahead of time would buy one soap bar, open it, and loudly say he won money. That would get more people to buy. The only people who ‘won’ money were people he had planted in the crowd. When he was halfway done selling the soaps, Soapy would announce that there was a hundred dollar bill soap still to be sold, and he’d auction off the rest of the soap to the highest bidders.
Soapy got arrested by the police once for this, and the police officer forgot that his first name was Jefferson and wrote ‘Soapy’ instead. The name stuck and he used this scam all around the West for the next two decades. He paid off police, judges, and politicians to keep his criminal schemes going. In 1879, Soapy went to Denver. He built a criminal empire there, which was different because con men usually moved around but he had enough influence that he could stay put. He basically controlled all of the city’s criminals and gambling by 1887.
Soapy Smith’s real name was Jefferson Smith. He was born in Georgia into a rich family. However, the Civil War ruined his family financially, so in 1876 they moved to Texas and the year after that Jefferson’s mom died. He left home and worked his way up from con man to crime boss. In Fort Worth, he gathered a gang of criminals to work for him and became known as “the king of the frontier con men”. His gang was called the ‘Soap Gang’ and had people with colorful names like ‘Texas Jack Vermillion’. They moved around from town to town and mostly did “short cons” that were quick and didn’t need a lot of setup, like the shell game, three-card monte, and poker games that were rigged.
Around this time Jefferson came up with his ‘prize soap racket’ that gave him the name Soapy. Basically he would go to a new town and open up his display case on a tripod on a street corner and put some soap cakes on top of it. He would talk about how great these soaps were, and then he would wrap paper money around some of the bars. Then he’d wrap plain paper on top so you couldn’t tell which soaps had the money and which didn’t. He mixed those soaps in with other soaps that were wrapped but without money, and then sell them to the people for a dollar each. One person he put in the crowd ahead of time would buy one soap bar, open it, and loudly say he won money. That would get more people to buy. The only people who ‘won’ money were people he had planted in the crowd. When he was halfway done selling the soaps, Soapy would announce that there was a hundred dollar bill soap still to be sold, and he’d auction off the rest of the soap to the highest bidders.
Soapy got arrested by the police once for this, and the police officer forgot that his first name was Jefferson and wrote ‘Soapy’ instead. The name stuck and he used this scam all around the West for the next two decades. He paid off police, judges, and politicians to keep his criminal schemes going. In 1879, Soapy went to Denver. He built a criminal empire there, which was different because con men usually moved around but he had enough influence that he could stay put. He basically controlled all of the city’s criminals and gambling by 1887.
The Tivoli Club was opened in 1888 by Soapy, with a sign saying ‘Caveat Emptor’ (let the buyer beware). His brother Bascomb operated a cigar store that was a front for poker games and other cons operating in a back room. There was also an assortment of fake lottery shops, a stock exchange, fake watch and diamond auctions, etc. Soapy and his gang weren’t often arrested, because they were paid off. He had attorneys and associates who were always ready to get them out of jail if they were arrested. Soapy did have enemies and rivals, and shot and killed a few people who tried to kill him. He was known for his bad temper.
In 1892, Soapy moved from Denver to Creede, a mining town. He hired prostitutes to go convince property owners to sign over leases, and got lots of property along the main street, renting out to his friends. He declared himself as camp boss after he procured enough influence and allies. He had his own brother in law and gang member William Sidney “Cap” Light as deputy sheriff and opened a gambling hall and saloon called the Orleans Club. He bought a petrified man and charged ten cents for people to go see him. While they waited in line he used his shell and three-card monte games to scam them for even more money.
As with many criminals, Soapy was said to be generous as well as rich, building churches, helping the poor, and burying prostitutes who died and couldn’t afford proper burials. The mining boom in Creede ended quickly and Soapy went back to Denver just in time as a fire burned down most of the business district as well as his own club, in June of 1892.
When he got back to Denver, Soapy opened more businesses that were fronts for his cons, for example he sold train tickets but the ticket agent was out of the office and would be back soon. Then they’d offer to play games and con them out of money while they waited. Soapy was powerful enough at this point that he openly admitted he was a con man and said it didn’t matter, because at least he was more honest than a politician.
Colorado’s new governor started firing people for corruption and they refused to leave their positions. They gathered in city hall with Soapy and fought the governor’s state militia. However, before anything truly bad happened, the corruption issues were settled in court instead of outside. The governor also ordered that all of Denver’s gambling dens, saloons, and bordellos were closed. Soapy used the deputy sheriff to make fake arrests in his own gambling houses so that the patrons didn’t make a fuss about the amount of money they lost in rigged poker games. They were just happy to be allowed to leave and didn’t make a fuss about how much money they lost.
After a while, Soapy and his brother’s reputation was too well known for them to stay in Denver. Bascomb, Soapy’s brother, was arrested for attempted murder of a saloon manager, but Soapy escaped, becoming a wanted man. In 1897, the Klondike Gold Rush started, so Soapy moved to Alaska.
After a month, the miner’s committees made him leave after he tried his shell games and three-card monte for under a month. He went to St. Louis and Washington DC and then came back to Alaska about a year later. Soapy set up his third empire by making friends with the police and collecting allies. He opened a fake telegraph office and started getting money from sending messages that were never actually sent. Then the patrons would make ‘friends’ with people in the office and lose money in poker games. There were no actual telegraph lines in Skagway, Alaska, until 1901.
Soapy had his men play fake roles and befriend new arrivals to the area. They’d pretend to be newspaper reporters or clergymen, and steer people to dishonest hotels or gambling dens. A vigilance committee did at one point threaten to banish Soapy and his gang, but he formed his own law and order society that made the other committee back down. Soapy did make an effort to show that he was respectable to the community after this though.
During the Spanish American War, Soapy made his own volunteer army that he was the captain of. He wrote to President McKinley and got official recognition, which he then could leverage to keep control of the town.
In 1898, John Douglas Stewart came to Skagway with a bag of gold. Soapy’s gang played him in a game of three-card monte. Stewart lost, but didn’t want to pay. The gang members grabbed his bag of gold and ran. The Committee mentioned earlier said Soapy had to give the gold back, but he said no, John lost it “fairly”.
The committee organized a meeting on the wharf at Juneau. Soapy started arguing with one of the men, Frank Reid, and there was a shootout, causing both men’s deaths. Soapy was killed with a bullet to the heart. Reid died about two weeks later from the bullet in his leg. The three gang members who’d stolen the sack of gold were put in jail. Soapy was buried just outside the city cemetery. His legend has grown to the point where there are wakes held around the country in his honor on July 8th, the day he died.
If you like to read about the mining towns in North America around the turn of the century, I like this poet's works (aside from the racism/sexism of course).
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