few days, he was figuring up the vast sum he was going to add to his already sizable fortune.
But before the race came off, I took Mr. Loomis for more money. I dashed in to say that the judge was afraid and that we needed a couple of hundred dollars to keep him quiet. On another occasion, I told him that the jockey had threatened to expose the whole thing. On one pretext or another, I took him for an additional $1,700.
Then came the day of the race. Mobina didn’t even show. Of course, the race hadn’t been fixed and nothing had been paid to the judge. The only fixing I had done was to give the jockey a couple of hundred dollars to pull the horse, just to make sure it didn’t win.
Sorrowfully, I went to Mr. Loomis and gave him the rig.
“I can’t understand it,” I said. “Something went wrong. It has absolutely cleaned me out.”
Mr. Loomis got his rig. And there is a moral to this story: if he had been willing to make an honest deal for it in the first place, he could have bought it. But he wasn’t willing to pay a fair price and in the end, it cost him $6,700, in addition to whatever he lost on the race.
I tried the same deal, with variations, on other wealthy men. Almost without exception, they were eager to get in on the easy money. I didn’t have my rig as bait, but I played on their natural greed. I asked for a loan and told my story of a fixed race. The amounts I got varied with the individuals. But I never found another who was as gullible as Mr. Loomis.
One day, I approached John R. Thompson, who founded the Thompson restaurant chain. I asked him for a loan of $2,500 and told him my fixed race story.
“If you are desperately in need of $2,500,” offered Mr. Thompson, “and if you can prove it to me, I’ll lend you the money. But I will have absolutely nothing to do with a fixed race.”
I didn’t take anything from Mr. Thompson. I probably could have talked him into the loan, but I didn’t. In my long career, I can truthfully say that Mr. Thompson was the only man I ever met who was one hundred per cent honest.
There was, of course, a limit to the number of suckers who would take part in this con game. After my experience with Mr. Thompson, I went back to touting at the racecourses. I met a man named Frank Hogan and worked with him successfully for a number of years. For a time we operated a bucket shop on La Salle Street, and engaged in other enterprises to separate people from their money.
In the saloons and poolrooms of Chicago, we were known as a pair of young fellows with sharp wits. Our favorite hangout was the saloon of “Bathhouse John” Coughlin, located on Madison Street near La Salle. The Bath was then Alderman of the First Ward. He was a swell fellow, as many another will tell you.
One evening the Bath saw me glancing at a newspaper, The New York Journal, to which he subscribed. A comic sheet had caught my eye. It was called “Hogan’s Alley and the Yellow Kid.”
“I’m through with that paper, if you want it,” said Coughlin.
“I like that comic sheet,” I told him.
“Then I’ll save it for you every day,” said Coughlin.
He did. And I read the comic regularly. The Yellow Kid depicted was malformed, as far as body structure and facial equipment were concerned. He had large ears, an enormous mouth, and protruding teeth with much space between them.
One night a race-horse tout named Jack Mack entered Coughlin’s saloon. It was after midnight, but the saloon never closed. Downstairs was the bathhouse and above was a hotel. Tommy Chamale, who was later to become a millionaire banker and the owner of the Green Mill, the Riviera, and Tivoli theatres, was night porter and bar boy.
Jack Mack had an egg in his hand and he was attempting to stand it up on the bar. That attracted Chamale, who asked what Mack was trying to do.
“I’m trying to stand this egg on end,” replied Mack.
Chamale tried it, but without success.
“I can make it stand up and I can do it without injuring the shell,” said Mack. “How much have you got in the cash register?”
“Twenty-eight dollars,” Chamale returned, after counting his money.
“I’ll wager that twenty-eight dollars that I can do it!” snapped Mack.
Chamale took him up.
Mack had some salt in the palm of his hand. He dampened the end of the egg and pretended to cleanse it in his hand. The salt adhered to the end of the egg, giving it a foundation the same as the legs on a table. The egg stood erect.
Mack collected the twenty-eight dollars and left. A few minutes afterward I retired to the bathhouse to spend the night. When Bathhouse John came in Chamale told him about the wager.
“Where was Weil?” asked Coughlin.
“He was standing at the bar, reading the comic paper.”
“You’ve been tricked, my boy,” said the Bath. “Weil is probably in league with Mack. They worked a con game on you.”
The next morning, when I went upstairs to the saloon, Coughlin said: “Were you here when Chamale made that wager?”
“Yes.”
“Did you and Hogan have anything to do with it?”
I denied this.
“Maybe,” said the Alderman, shaking his head, “but I don’t believe it. I think you and Hogan got part of that money.” His eye fell upon the comic sheet lying on the bar where I had left it. “Hogan’s Alley and the Yellow Kid,” he read aloud. “Hogan and Weil. From now on, you’re the Yellow Kid.”
That was in 1903. And from that time on, I was invariably known as the Yellow Kid. There have been many erroneous stories published about how I acquired this cognomen. It was said that it was due to my having worn yellow chamois gloves, yellow vests, yellow spats, and a yellow beard. All this was untrue. I had never affected such wearing apparel and I had no beard.
Bathhouse John was my friend until his death a few years ago. He began as a rubber in the bathhouse of the old Brevoort Hotel. Later he became the owner of this bathhouse and a protégé of “Hinky Dink” Kenna. He was a politician all his life, though he dabbled in horses and opened an insurance brokerage house on LaSalle Street. He was a big, hearty fellow, loved by all his friends, as well as by the voters who regularly returned him to the city council.
An impressive figure, he had a flair for brocaded vests, which made him even more a person to attract the eye. He gained a reputation as a poet and composer, but it was common knowledge that his stuff was ghost written. Perhaps the most famous of his songs was “Dear Midnight of Love.” This was composed by May de Sousa, the daughter of a detective at the headquarters of Mayor Carter Harrison.
The Bath befriended many underworld characters, but I don’t believe that he ever received a cent from any of their enterprises. He was the sort who would help anybody in need.
Frank Hogan and I dissolved partnership, and he went on to become a prominent investment broker, though the methods he used were shady. When the law was at his heels in 1907 he went to France, where he bought a villa outside of Paris. He never returned to the United States.
