No. 700
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
April 30, 2025

A Magical Duet on the Guitar.

An extraordinary account of a mathematician, mechanician, and musician named Alix.
January 8, 2018
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Pastor Johann Gottfried Schupart (1677-1729) was one of the leading German Lutherans of his day, becoming Professor of Theology and eventually Rector at Giesing University.  However, the part of his career that has earned him a place in this blog deals with his lengthy battles with a supernatural force that he naturally described as “the devil,” but what we today would call an unusually
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Strange Company - 4/28/2025
Included in yesterday’s trip to Fall River was a stop at Miss Lizzie’s Coffee shop and a visit to the cellar to see the scene of the tragic demise of the second Mrs. Lawdwick Borden and two of the three little children in 1848. I have been writing about this sad tale since 2010 and had made a previous trip to the cellar some years ago but was unable to get to the spot where the incident occured to get a clear photograph.  The tale of Eliza Borden is a very sad, but not uncommon story of post partum depression with a heartrending end. You feel this as you stand in the dark space behind the chimney where Eliza ended her life with a straight razor after dropping 6 month old Holder and his 3 year old sister Eliza Ann into the cellar cistern. Over the years I have found other similar cases, often involving wells and cisterns, and drownings of children followed by suicides of the mothers. These photos show the chimney, cistern pipe, back wall, dirt and brick floor, original floorboards forming the cellar ceiling and what appears to be an original door. To be in the place where this happened is a sobering experience. My thanks to Joe Pereira for allowing us to see and record the place where this sad occurrence unfolded in 1848. R.I.P. Holder, Eliza and Eliza Ann Borden. Visit our Articles section above for more on this story. The coffee shop has won its suit to retain its name and has plans to expand into the shop next door and extend its menu in the near future.
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 2/12/2024
A scrubby hill, a dollhouse-like chapel, a little boy leaning against a pole, a shack advertising five-cent Coca-Cola ice cream sodas. Are we really in New York City here? Despite the country-ish surroundings in the photo, we sure are in New York—in 1914, at least. Take a look at the street sign showing the cross […]
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Ephemeral New York - 4/28/2025
Youth With Executioner by Nuremberg native Albrecht Dürer … although it’s dated to 1493, which was during a period of several years when Dürer worked abroad. November 13 [1617]. Burnt alive here a miller of Manberna, who however was lately … Continue reading
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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
James Fisk Jr. was a robber baron, stock manipulator, and financial fraudster. In spite of this, he was a popular, much-loved public figure. On January 6, 1872, he was assassinated on the staircase of the Grand Central Hotel in New York City by his friend and sometime business partner, Edward “Ned”
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Murder By Gaslight - 4/26/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 19 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge) oapy Smith begins an empire in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884.This is page 19, the continuation of page 18, and dated April 14 - May 5, 1884, the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy's collection. A complete introduction to
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 4/3/2025
  [Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers. Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
The New Rule at the Post-Office. | Afloat on a Cake of Ice.

A Magical Duet on the Guitar.

Shell Game

America - The shell game is the oldest and simplest of the short cons.  Known for centuries in Europe, if it did not come to America with the pilgrims, it certainly arrived soon after.  In the classic shell game, a pea, or other spherical object, is placed under one of three walnut shells or thimbles. The shell man shuffles the shells around a flat surface, trying to confuse the player. The player wagers on which of the three shells contains the pea. The miracle of the shell game - from the conman’s point of view - is that everyone knows the game is crooked, but everyone thinks he can beat it.[more]

The most important fact pertaining to the shell game is that it is not a game. It is a tiny bit of theatre, a magic show presented at your expense.  If you see someone picking the correct shell, or if the player chooses wrong but you, as an observer, can always pick the correct shell, you are not watching a real player. The shell man and the shill are putting on a performance to make you feel confident enough to bet. When it is your money on the line, you can’t possibly win. The shell man palms the pea early on and can make it appear, or not appear, under any shell he wants. The shell man and the shill, and maybe one or two others-whose job it is to watch for the police and to make sure you stay interested-will split the winnings.

Three-card-monte

Three Card Monte

The most common form of this game in the United States is three card monte, in which three playing cards are used instead of shells and a pea.  The dealer will show three cares-two black aces and the queen of hearts, or two red deuces and the ace of spades, etc.-and he will toss them back and forth across the table. When the dealer is not trying to conceal its location, a careful observer can follow the money card, but when a real bet is placed, a simple flick of the wrist will swap the cards, unnoticed by the player. The selected card is turned over and amazed player is now a little bit poorer.

George-Devol

George Devol

Three card monte allegedly originated in the California gold fields in 1849 and spread rapidly across America. Though notoriety was not something a monte dealer would actively seek, by the end of the 19th century there were several whose names would forever be associated with the game. George Devol was a gambler on Mississippi riverboats. Contrary to the romantic image, a professional riverboat gambler was not a well-dressed, but adventurous, gentleman, in pursuit of lady luck; if he made his living gambling, he was a cheater. Only two types of men gambled on riverboats; cheats and their marks. When there was time, Devol would organize a crooked poker game; when there was not he would play three card monte. He did this for over forty years.

Canada-Bill

Canada Bill

Some said the best three card monte man was Devol’s longtime partner, Canada Bill Jones.  Though famous for his good heart and habit of giving away his winnings to those in need, Canada bill is also famous for saying, “suckers have no business with money, anyway.” Herbert Asbury described Canada Bill this way:

"The greatest Monte thrower on the Mississippi was Canada Bill Jones, probably the cleverest operator who ever “pitched a Broad,” and one of the few men who could display the Monte tickets and, in the very act of tossing them on the table, palm the queen and ring in a third ace, thus reducing the sucker’s chances to minus nothing."

He was also known as the worst dressed gambler on the river, wearing clothes that were too big, and looking more like a hayseed than a card sharp. No doubt that helped him succeed.

Soapy-Smith

Soapy Smith

Others say the greatest three card monte man was Soapy Smith. Jefferson Randolph Smith earned the nickname “Soapy” by selling soap in mining camps (he was portrayed in the recent television series, Deadwood, as the annoying little man always hawking “soap with a prize inside.”) He became one of the greatest American conmen, with one of the largest bunko gangs in history. But three card monte was his passion. He would be constantly working the crowds and when a crowd didn’t exist he created one. In 1892 he exhibited the body of a petrified man, known as McGinty, in Creede, Colorado,  with the express purpose of playing three card monte with those standing in line. Soapy Smith was killed in the Klondike in 1898, by a man who did not want to pay his three card monte losses.

As incredible as it seems, three card monte, and the old shell game, are still found on the streets of America’s cities. The fact that this particular hustle, despite frequent and persuasive debunking,  has thrived in our cities for over a hundred and fifty years, is pretty much all you need to know about America.


Sources:

  • Asbury, Herbert. Sucker's progress: an informal history of gambling in America from the colonies to Canfield. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1938.
  • Devol, George H.. Forty years a gambler on the Mississippi. Cincinnati: Devol & Haines, 1887.

 

Magical Duet on Guitar

An extraordinary account of a mathematician, mechanician, and musician named Alix. [more]

So many wondrous stories are told by the ancient writes of magic and mechanism that ordinary belief is entirely at fault. If we are to believe what we read of the mechanics and learned men of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, the little of chemistry or mechanical invention that we know in these times, but was then familiar to learned men, but was suppressed, either by monkish intolerance or noble ignorance. That much of these clams are true we must admit, from the fact that many wonderful inventions have come down to us, among which we can only mention gunpowder and watches as an example.

Among the wonderful stories of this kind is one told by Bonnet in his “Historie de la Musique,” where he gives the following extraordinary account of a mathematician, mechanician, and musician named Alix, who lived at Aix, in Provance about the middle of the 17th century:

“Alix, after many years’ study and labor, succeeded in constructing an automaton figure, having the shape of a human skeleton, which, by means of a concealed mechanism, played, or had the appearance of playing on the guitar. The artist after having turned in perfect unison two guitars, placed on in the hands of the skeleton, in the position proper for playing, and on a calm summer evening, having thrown open the window of his apartment he fixed the skeleton, with the guitar in its hands, in a position where it could be seen form the street. He then, taking the other instrument seated himself in an obscure corner of the room and commenced playing a piece of music, the passages of which were faithfully repeated or echoed by the guitar held by the skeleton, at the same time that the movement of its wooden fingers ,as if really executing the music completed the illusion.

“This strange musical feat drew crows around the house of the ill-fated artist; this sentiment was soon changed in the minds of the ignorant multitude into the most superstitions dread. A rumor rose that Alix was a sorcerer, and in league with the devil. He was arrested by order of the Parliament of Provence, and sent before the court, La Chambre de la Tournelle, to be tried on the capital charge of magic or witchcraft. In vain the ingenious, but unfortunate artist sought to convince his judges hat the only means used to give the apparent vitality to the fingers of the skeleton were wheels, springs, pulleys, and other equally unmagical contrivances, and that the marvelous result produced wat nothing more criminal than the solution of a problem in mechanics.

“His explanation and demonstrations were either not understood, or failed to convince his stupid and bigoted judges, and he was condemned as a sorcerer and magician. The iniquitous judgment was confirmed by the Parliament of Provence, which sentenced him to be burned alive in the principal square of the city, together with the equally innocent automaton figure, the supposed accomplice in his magical practices. This infamous sentence was carried into execution in the year 1644, to the great satisfaction and edification of all the faithful and devout inhabitants of Aix.”


Reprinted from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, December 16, 1865.