Swindling Geologist 2 (Pt 2 of 2)
A Con Man No Longer Rocks
Continued from last week.
Unfortunately for the Swindler, his bibliophilic desires got the better of him when he ran off with several books in Whitewater, Wisconsin, in October 1885. Acting as Dr. Leo Lesquereux Jr., he claimed to represent the US Geological Survey for the purpose of loaning a collection of 4,000 fossils from the Smithsonian Institution. The collection would arrive soon but before it did he borrowed several valuable books from William F. Bundy, professor of science at the local college, and skipped town. Bundy was not amused and tracked the Swindler to Milwaukee, 50 miles east, where the fake Lesquereux Jr. had gotten a job at the Public Museum. He had also sold Bundy’s books, which led Bundy to contact the police.
Placed under arrest, the Swindler was charged with receiving stolen property. Of course he was innocent, he said. Someone acting as an imposter and smearing his good name was responsible for the charges of swindling attributed to him. Brought back to Whitewater, “Lesquereux Jr.” finally pleaded guilty and received three months in the county jail at Elkhorn, Wisconsin.
While incarcerated in Elkhorn, the Swindler wrote the only extant letter that illustrates his handwriting. On December 10, he wrote in precise, but oddly, left-leaning script, to Carl Doerflinger, custodian of the Milwaukee museum, to thank him for sending $5 as a loan. Doerflinger’s note and one other were “the only kind words received since my arrest,” signed Leo Lesquereux or F. A. Arendto (it is hard to tell).
By March 1886, the Swindler was out of jail and back on his previous path of no good. As Professor Henry Shaler Williams of Cornell, he identified fossils, borrowed money, and led tours throughout Iowa. In St. Cloud, Minnesota, he was Captain Israel C. White, which prompted the real White to alert the readers of Science. “Cannot something be done to throttle this nuisance before he scandalizes every geologist in the country.” He also had miraculously regained his left arm but lost the use of the right one.
The real White got his wish in July, when the Swindler was arrested in Champaign, Illinois while acting as Captain Roy M. Lindley of the U.S. Army and sentenced to jail in Kankakee, Illinois, (better known more recently as a location in the Steve Goodman song City of New Orleans, “All along the southbound odyssey, The train pulls out at Kankakee, And rolls along past houses, farms and fields”). The Swindler claimed that he hoped to reform and told a reporter that he “never stole anything for the profit there was in it, but because in the presence of rare geologic specimens or works he experiences an overmastering desire to possess himself of them.” (Seems like a logical desire to me!)
Out of jail by November, the Swindler now impersonated Charles D. Walcott (a real geologist best known for his studies of the Burgess Shale) and took a new tack: writing letters seeking the donation of reports and books. Perhaps this route didn’t meet with success, leading him to his short career as Clarence Dutton; followed by Ivan C. Vassile, a deaf mute from Russia; Dr. S. M. Gutmann, a chemist from Germany; Louis P. Gratacap of the American Museum of Natural History; and Otto Syrski, also a deaf mute from Russia.
It was as Syrski that the Swindler served his longest prison term. After he stole several microscopes from the University of Cincinnati in January 1888, city detectives telegraphed out orders for his arrest. Tracked through Kentucky and Indiana, “Otto Syrski” was arrested in Nashville and returned to Ohio, where he pleaded guilty to grand larceny.
Prisoner number 19449, aka Syrski, entered the Ohio state penitentiary in Columbus on March 5, 1888, to serve a five-year sentence. The authorities must have considered his crime serious as another prisoner convicted of grand larceny received just 18 months and another of murder in the second degree got five years. Retaining the name of Syrski, the Swindler was a model prisoner who taught a group of Apache Indians to speak English. It appears that he may have fibbed—saying he had previously taught in an Indian school on the frontier—though it could have been true. He also wrote about prisons and education offering ideas that he apparently did not follow.
Paroled on June 9, 1890, the Swindler now became Otto Ludovitz Sassulich, brother of the famous Marxist and revolutionary, Vera Zasulich. His last known appearance was in Columbia, Missouri, in June 1891. Returning to his deaf and dumb ploy, he attempted to fool Garland C. Broadhead, a professor at the university, but Broadhead recognized him and the imposter did what he so well and vanished. Sassulich was “very gifted and smart, and is well posted in paleontology, and would make the best I have ever known provided he stuck to it and honesty,” wrote Broadhead in a letter to American Geologist.
The Swindler then disappears from the written record, except for one short dead end; in 1894, he may have eloped with Etta Thurber, the “pious forger who wanted to train to be a missionary in India but who ended up in prison in Massachusetts for forgery.” Nothing else appears about him or her and the Swindler’s true name, place of birth, upbringing, and education were never revealed. Amazingly, he was not the first to impersonate geologists for ill gotten gains.
For six months from April to October 1863, a person pretending to be James Dale Owen, son of the well-known geologist David Dale Owen, victimized people from West Virginia to Iowa. More sinister than the Swindling Geologist, Owen scammed train rides, lodging, and meals, stole thousands of dollars, and asked three young woman to marry him. As would later happen, his exploits led to lengthy news accounts, and then he, too, disappeared.
Why were these swindlers so successful? In a provacative article in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, Daniel Goldstein wrote that a network of amateur naturalists existed in the United States. These men and women kept up on scientific developments and who made them and carried on an extensive correspondence with more established scientists at institutions such as the Smithsonian. Goldstein argued that these swindlers succeeded, not because they were duping “country bumpkins whose ignorance and self-importance brought about their downfal,” but because of the “depth of their [naturalists] dedication to what they regarded as civilized life.”
This is certainly evident in the newspaper accounts of the Swindling Geologist. Whenever he arrived in town, the local paper would gush about his arrival, citing his credentials and how he generously helped classify and label specimens. Within a few days, however, the paper would follow up, crestfallen at the ruse. The Advance Sun of Redwing, Minnesota, described him on October 21, 1885: “He is really a rara avis. It would seem as though science must be at a discount, when so learned and expert adopts such a life. He ought to be caught and kept in a museum as a study for anthropologists, psycologists (sic), and students of moral insanity.”
A slightly different version of this story appeared in Earth magazine in October 2011.
I am sad to report that my good friend Tony Angell’s amazing Raven sculpture at the 145th Avenue trailhead of the Interurban Trail was stolen last week. This is a sad loss for the community and for Tony. I hope that the Raven and ravens get their revenge on the art thief.
In March, I wrote one of my more popular newsletters, about monsters in the PNW. They are still popular: if you see Cadborosaurus, please let these folks know.
great story, David, what a guy this was!
I thoroughly enjoyed this two-part story, David. I wrote my dissertation on 19th-century scientific hoaxes and yet had never heard anything about your geologist swindler. The hoaxers that I researched and wrote about often had a genuine fascination with science or natural history, at a time when the fields were still open to the citizen-scientist who could contribute their small discoveries. But their sincere interest could easily be derailed by contact with professional men who made a good living with their scientific knowledge. That seems to be the case here--he was obviously *compelled* to remake himself for each situation. (One wonders how he kept track of the aliases and their quirks.) Slippery identity, amateur science, and railway travel--you're speaking my language!