“America’s Sherlock Holmes” or the Bluth’s Gene Parmesan?: Clifton R. Wooldridge and his “Tricks and Traps” 1898-1919

I found this little gem, titled Tricks and Traps Over 100 Varieties of Confidence Games, Fakers Snares and Swindles Worked on the Unwary, True Thrilling Experiences and Trials, at a record store I frequent, due to its fragility, the publication was placed in a plastic holder, with “Victoria Era Pamphlet on Underground Conning, Hustling, Gambling etc. Watch out Poor Farmer in the Big City $8.” The store owners had definitely flipped through this tiny book. For only $8,  I could not pass it up, so I purchased it and stuck it on my ephemera/blog shelf where it has lived for the last year.

Background Information:

The resource was published by Max Stein Publishing House at 519-521 S. State Street in Chicago, ILL. I could not find much on the publisher online, but housed at the Chicago History Museum is a collection on the publishing house. The description reads:

Catalogs, advertisements, invoices, financial materials, business and personal correspondence, orders, and other records from Max Stein & Company, a publishing company located at 508 S. State Street, Chicago (Ill.). The company sold instructional booklets, stationary novelty items, joke books, satires, and postcards. The collection includes samples of items sold by the company and a guest book from Stein’s bookstore. (1)

Due to the differences in the addresses, either the company had multiple locations or most likely had moved. The back of the book lists the variety of books that were available through the publishing house. To acquire the books, the customer had to simply mail in the money. The cost was 25 cents each or 5 for a $1.00. As you can see in the image to the left, the publications can be described just as the Chicago History Museum did, “instructional booklets, stationary novelty items, joke books, satires…”

Tricks and Traps was printed c. 1919 and was written by a seemingly peculiar person named Clifton R. Wooldridge. (2) Wooldridge was a detective in Chicago and due to his technique of dressing in disguises to gain information that ultimately ended in arresting individuals, he became known as “America’s Sherlock Holmes.”(3) Wooldridge served as a detective for Chicago’s police department from 1898 to 1907. Per The Chicago Tribune Wooldridge “arrested 19,500 people, 200 of them were sent to penitentiary; 3,000 of the house of correction; 6,000 paid fines; 100 girls under age were rescued from the lives of shame; $100,000 worth of property was recovered; 100 panel houses were closed; 100 matrimonial bureaus were broken up.” (4) Additionally and after his career as a detective, Wooldridge authored several books on the experiences, individuals, and tips on how to protect one’s self from being conned.

Tricks and Traps

Tricks and Traps is comprised of five parts:

1. Confidence Games. Details of the Many Schemes and Devices Employed to Fleece Strangers
2. Tricks of Country Fair Fakers. Crooked Gambling Tools Sold to Fleece Farmers.
3. Fleecing Invalids and Cripples. The Letter Writing at Home Graft is the Most Despicable of All – How Unfortunate Are Made to See Hope of Earning a Living Only to Be Mercilessly Disillusioned and Robbed
4. Took Roulette Wheel and Cash
5. Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge’s “Never-Fail” System for Defeating the Grafter

Wooldridge discusses himself in the third person throughout the book and begins the publication by giving an overview of his career as a detective, his objective, and who he found himself at odds with. Wooldridge writes:

Detective Wooldridge has been the known enemy of the of the vile tongued criminal, and during his service in the Chicago Police Department he has battled with him unrelentingly… Chief of Police Joseph Kipley called Wooldridge in and instructed him to wage a relentless warfare on the “con” men… Soon the “tip” went to the politicians who posed as the protectors or backers of the confidence men, “Have Wooldridge called off, or the game is gone”… Wooldridge was not “called off,” and as a result, Chicago, for the first time in twenty years, was practically cleared of confidence men.(5)

By Wooldridge unpacking his career and explaining to the reader how his efforts altered Chicago, he is informing the reader that he is an expert on the remaining content of the book, and that he can be trusted. He is attempting to do what the men he has been waging war with to do, gain confidence, though with a different intent. While confidence men were con men, who used their victims’ trust in them or the situation to then rob them, Wooldridge used their trust to help people protect themselves, or at least sell a book.

After discussing his career history, Wooldridge discusses the myriad of ways in which confidence men trap and trick their victims. Overall, Wooldridge claims that those who have the least power within the society, whether that is due to financial issues or those who are from the country, are individuals who tend to be targeted. For example, Wooldridge describes a situation in which he dressed and posed as a countryman and found himself as a target of a con. The con is a standard one in which:

 The unsophisticated stranger in Chicago is approached by a booster who asks him if he has seen the tunnel cavein or steamboat explosion. This usually excites the curiosity of of the victim and he is easily led to some out-of-the-way spot to be shorn by the shell gamr or held up by a fake policeman. In the latter instance he is accused of having counterfeit money in his possession. The bogus officer flashes a star and the booster promptly hands over his money for the scrutiny of the alleged policeman.

This is returned as “sound,” and the victim is induced to allow the examination of his oney. This is “found” to be counterfeit. The fake policeman takes it away after telling the victim to call at the police station later, and if it is found that the money is genuine he can secure its return. If the victim is inclined to object to seeing his money go from him, he is told that he will be arrested for carrying counterfeit money and that the punishment is a year’s confinement in the penitentiary. This yarn usually settles the most suspicious victim.(6)

The strategy of dressing as a countryman was due to the belief that individuals who lived in rural areas were easily tricked and lacked the knowledge that those who inhabited cities possessed. Wooldridge discusses the different tactics used on the country population in the second section: “Tricks of Country Fair Fakers. Crooked Gambling Tools Sold to Fleece Farmers.” Wooldridge begins this section by stating: “The Country Fair is the harvest time for the genial faker. And now dealers in crooked apparatus for fleecing the farmers are sending out catalogues of their wares.”(7) Per Wooldridge, confidence men saw country fairs as hot spots of possibilities to earn some extra income, due to the perceived naivete of the crowd that it attracted.

Wooldridge discusses another con that he viewed as the worst of all, in the third section, “Fleecing Invalids and Cripples. The Letter Writing at Home Graft is the Most Despicable of All – How Unfortunate Are Made to See Hope of Earning a Living Only to Be Mercilessly Disillusioned and Robbed,” due to the individuals who tended to fall victim to it. The victims were made up of people who were unable to work and who wanted to earn their own income. The con involves the confidence men placing ads in newspapers for letter writers. Candidates would be paid $20 for copying 1,000 letters, all they had to do was pay $1 to receive the goods they had to write about. Individuals who were replied to the ad were setup for failure, per Wooldridge:

Of all the offices raided Detective Wooldridge did not find a record of one instance where a victim had been able to keep the requirements of the swindlers. The supposed letter sent to be copied was generally about 800 words in length, full of words difficult to spell, of rude and complicated rhetorical construction and punctuated in a most eccentric manner. The task imposed was practically a life-time job and even if any one had fulfilled it there were a hundred loopholes whereby the thieves could escape payment by declaring their specifications had not been heeded to the letter. (8)

After discussing the many different ways that confidence men trick their victims for monetary gain, Wooldridge ends the publication with a list of tips that the readers can use to protect themselves from being conned. Wooldridge was so confident in these tips that he states that “$1,000 Redward will be paid to anyone who uses Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge’s Never Fail System and Fails to beat the above swindles.” (9) The full list can be viewed in the images below.

Tricks & Traps was fun to research. At this point, while the sources have confirmed that Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge was a real detective, I would not be surprised if he wasn’t because his disguises and arrest records just seem like something you’d read in fiction. I did not expect the history that was connected to this publication and I enjoyed the process of piecing it together. As always, so much more can be written on this book, but for now we will leave it there.

I hope you enjoyed it and thank you so much for reading it!

Sources:

(1) Due to my geographical location, I was unable to see the material of the collection. “Max Stein & Company records [manuscript], ca. 1914-1925.,” Chicago History Museum, 

(2) There is no publication date on the back of the book. The following auction house dates it to 1919. “Lot 17.,” Potter & Potter Auctions, https://auctions.potterauctions.com/lot-37886.aspx

(3) “Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge,” Chicagology, 

(4) The Chicago Tribune, Nov. 25, 1906, quoted on “Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge,” Chicagology,

(5) Clifton R. Wooldridge, Tricks and Traps, (Chicago: Max Stein Publishing House, 1919).

(6) Ibid.

(7) Ibid.

(8) Ibid.

(9) Ibid.

Image:

Clifton R. Wooldridge in Disguises, “Flashback: 19,500 arrests and dozens of gunfights? The legendary claims — and ego — of Clifton R. Wooldridge, ” Chicago Tribune News,

Other:

Wooldridge Books