medical

A BIG WELCOME FOR THE FLIMFLAM MAN

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

The old Santa Rosa newspapers loved writing about con artists – except, of course, when the crook was an advertiser. Compare and contrast the treatments given these two stories from 1909.

There was much excitement in town when it was announced a large ranch in Glen Ellen was to be purchased and turned into the world’s only Emmanuel Sanitarium.  At the time the Emmanuel Movement was much in the news because it had developed an alcoholism treatment program (the forerunner of Alcoholics Anonymous) and it appeared the organization planned to spend lavishly here to create a luxe facility. The agent, Dr. F. Harry Williams of Chicago, made deals with contractors in Santa Rosa and Berkeley to build the place, including stables for Kentucky thoroughbreds. Williams said that a $1 million bond was in the works to pay for it all.

Come three months later, the contractors had plans ready and the purchase option was about to expire – but Williams was nowhere to be found. Both the Press Democrat and Santa Rosa Republican printed “Where is Williams?” articles, revealing that the man had been fêted by locals and the property owner even advanced him some money. It turned out to be exactly the same con game that was played in Santa Rosa just a year before, when “Baron Von Senden” fooled local real estate agents into believing he planned to buy a huge spread, generously allowing them to pamper him with fine living and the loan of a little cash. (In a wonderful believe-it-or-not twist, the Baron turned out to be an impoverished immigrant whose last job was as a San Francisco rat catcher.)

The Santa Rosa papers denounced Williams as a swindler, even though there were no legal actions taken against him. And for all the fuss, there really wasn’t all that much harm done, except for the waste of several contractor’s time and the loss of (apparently) a small sum loaned by the property owner. This is in sharp contrast to how both newspapers treated James M. Ferdon, a huckster who called himself “The Great Fer-Don.” He conned people out of fairly large amounts of money, probably shortened the lives of a few, and was pursued by the law in at least three states. Yet readers of the Santa Rosa papers knew none of this, perhaps because this con man spent lots of money on ads.

The tale of Jim Ferdon is introduced here and continues in the following essay; it’s an amazing story that has never been completely told anywhere. He started out as a medicine show man, much like The Great McGonigle character played by W. C. Fields in his 1934 comedy “The Old Fashioned Way.” In the years around the turn of the century, local newspapers would first announce a famed expert was coming to town. There would be a free show of some kind and afterwards the audience would have the opportunity to purchase a miraculous nostrum that promised to cure what-ails-you. “Blood purifiers” were popular, and Ferdon’s specialty was the elimination of tapeworms; he would flourish a glass jar with a leviathan floating inside and say it was a gift thrust into his hands by a grateful customer from the next town over.

Selling colored water (or in Ferdon’s case, probably a laxative) as “medicine” is dishonest, but it isn’t what made Ferdon a monster. He crossed that line when he stopped peddling one-dollar bottles of ineffective-but-harmless remedies and began claiming he knew how to painlessly cure cancer and other serious diseases, at fees that probably cost some people everything they had – and not least of it, left victims believing they were cured and didn’t need to seek actual medical help.

Part of the story is also about the role newspapers played in Ferdon’s potentially deadly con game. In some papers, his advertisements didn’t look like ads; they appeared to be regular news articles, although the text was boilerplate provided by Ferdon with a few local details sprinkled in. Other publishers read his outrageous claims and refused to participate in a scam intended to defraud – and maybe, kill – the paper’s readers; most happily took his blood money, and he apparently paid quite, quite well.

Jim Ferdon was probably crooked from the first moment after his birth in 1870. His earliest career is documented in “Snake Oil, Hustlers And Hambones” by Ann Anderson, which is the definitive reference work on the medicine shows. Ferdon was apparently still in his teens when he began working for one of the most well-known medicine showmen, Nevada Ned, who made a popular cold remedy using sweetened milk and cocaine. He also worked in another troupe as the “Boy Wonder,” then struck out on his own and came up with the idea of pretending to be a trustworthy Quaker by the name of “Brother Paul.” Ferdon probably lifted the idea from another medicine show fake Quaker called “Brother John,” who toured under the professional name “The Great Kamama” and always made his entrance in a chariot pulled by four horses. (I am gobsmacked that anyone once walked on this earth who actually had the thought, “I will fool more people into believing I am a Quaker by calling myself ‘The Great Kamama’ and driving a horse-drawn chariot.”)

Ferdon created the Quaker Medicine Company with a failed doctor named J. I. Berry, the two of them wearing wide-brimmed hats and clothes that looked Quaker-ish. Writes Anderson:


Soon they were “theeing and thou-ing” all over the continental United States. Ferdon usually botched the Quaker language, saying things like, “Where’s thou’s baggage?” When questioned. he’d say. “I have lived so long among the world’s people that I have had much of my orthodoxy wore off of me.” Ferdon’s pious act kept the city leaders at bay. He often got away without having to pay a license fee. Timing his appearance just after the harvest, Ferdon caught farmers in a relatively unhurried and introspective mood. They were in a frame of mind to consider their aches and pains, real or imaginary, and spring for a liniment or tonic.

Ferdon and Berry claimed that their special mineral water was discovered by prospectors in the Panamint mountains in Death Valley. One swig was the recommended dose for indigestion caused by a diet of sourdough and pork. A spoonful of the desert salts mixed with a gallon of spring water would replicate the water from their secret spring. Their so-called Quaker remedies were supposedly produced by a genius botanist in either Bucks County, Pennsylvania, or Cincinnati. depending on what came into Ferdon’s head while he was lecturing. Quaker Botanical Herbs were to be mixed with eight ounces of whiskey or gin and a quart of water. The resulting mixture tasted awful, but never failed to clean out the user’s intestinal tract in a frightening hurry.

The Quaker ruse may have lent some credibility to sell snake oil to rubes but Ferdon was often in trouble with the law, with a 1906 medical journal noting he had been arrested some fifty times for failing to obtain a license or illegally practicing medicine. That year was also the beginning of the end for all medicine shows, as passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act required ingredients be shown on the label; no more selling ethanol dressed up with a few flavorings as “medicine.” Ferdon’s Quaker show also had numerous imitators – including one with an actual Quaker. It was time to invent a new scam. Inspiration apparently tumbled from the pages of a newspaper.

That summer, newspapers across America carried news that Lolita Armour had been miraculously cured by a European specialist. The young daughter of meatpacking tycoon Philip Armour was born with a dislocated hip and Dr. Adolf Lorenz, known as “the bloodless surgeon of Vienna,” was called upon to treat her. Lorenz was a pioneer in non-surgical orthopedics, where congenital bone deformities and other problems are fixed by using plaster casts or traction. The idea fired the popular imagination; a story soon followed claiming Lorenz was also treating the little daughter of Andrew Carnegie for the exact same condition, which wasn’t at all true – the child was observed limping from a sprained ankle – but shows the public wanted to hear more about the miracle cure (and just maybe, some gratification that ultra-rich families had private sufferings). Inspired, Ferdon grasped that all the public seemed to remember was that there were European experts who could perform surgery without cutting, somehow. And thus a new field of quackery was invented.

A year later in the summer of 1907, we pick up his trail through the Salt Lake City newspapers. Ferdon had met a Dr. Seth M. Wells and enlisted him into the scheme, dubbing him “Boy Phenomenal.” (His “Boy Phenomenal” was not to be confused with better-known “Boy Phenomenon,” who ran a magnetic healing con in the Midwest at the same time.) His new show included the “Diamond Cluster” band which would toodle lively tunes before Ferdon promised miracle cures to be had from the “Fer-Don Medical Experts” now seeing patients at rooms in a nearby hotel. “Bloodless surgery” was prominently mentioned in the advertisements, as was the claim that Boy Phenomenal could even cure cancer.

Business must have been great. Another member of the troupe was “The Marvelous Lopez,” a 26 year-old osteopath named Earl S. Beers. After only a month Ferdon sent him to Ogden, Utah, to open a Boy Phenomenal franchise there. Alas, this satellite office did not long endure; Dr. Beers was beaten to death that September by a husband who discovered the good doctor having an affair with his wife.

Faced with headlines describing Boy Phenomenal being both a cad and dead, a lesser man might have tossed in the towel and sought an honest line of work. Not Jim Ferdon. In a large photo ad in the Salt Lake City Tribune shown at right, it was confusingly (un)clarified that “Dr. Wells was until recently the Boy Phenomenal. He dropped that name because of the disgrace which was brought upon it by the Dr. Beers murder in Ogden.”

It was likely the big advertisement that caused more trouble; Wells was recognized as a fugitive. In 1902, he was arrested for performing an illegal operation (read: abortion) on a woman in Logan, Utah and skipped bail. Now arrested again, he appealed for a new trial and freed on a $1,000 bond as Wells and Ferdon headed to California. Farewell, Boy Phenomenal; Wells was henceforth “the European Medical Expert.”

It’s pretty easy to track The Great Fer-Don over the year that followed. In even the fragmented digital newspapers archives currently available he can be found all over the state, although he mainly stuck around Los Angeles. There’s even a photo of the band from this period taken in Eureka. It was inevitable that eventually his troupe would descend on Santa Rosa, and in the early weeks of 1909, so they did.

WILL BUILD A BIG SANITARIUM
Company Purchases the Dr. C. C. O’Donnell Ranch at Glen Ellen–Extensive Plans

Arrangements were completed yesterday whereby the United States Sanitarium Company purchased Dr. C. C. O’Donnell’s 170-acre ranch at Glen Ellen. Dr. O’Donnell and F. H. Williams, of San Francisco, the latter representing the company were in Santa Rosa yesterday on business connected with the deal, which involves a large sum of money.

The company proposes to erect a large sanitarium on the place in addition to other large buildings. The deal includes the buildings at present on the ranch, with the exception of the O’Donnell residence which the well known physician reserved.

It is announced that the sanitarium will be known as the “Emmanuel Sanitarium,” and it is proposed to follow out the plan of the “Emmanuel Movement,” which is at present attracting so much attention throughout the country and abroad.

On the O’Donnell place are a number of springs famed for their curative agencies, and the number has lately been increased by the discovery of other springs. It is proposed to spend a large sum of money in the ornamentation of the grounds about that sanitarium, which will be located amid the rural scenery that makes the beautiful Sonoma Valley famous. There are many plans that will be developed along this line. The United States Sanitarium Company is now floating bonds in the east for the carrying out of its extensive project on the O’Donnell place. In company with Attorney Alexander Bruce of this city, Dr. O’Donnell and Mr. Williams drove to Glen Ellen yesterday afternoon.

– Press Democrat, March 20, 1909
HOT-AIR FOUNDATION FOR ‘EMMANUEL SANITARIUM’
Now Where is ‘Dr.’ F. Harry Williams Hiding Himself?

Where is F. Harry Williams. doctor of laws and doctor of medicine? He claimed to be both lawyer and doctor when one day five months ago he came to Santa Rosa. Shortly before he departed it was he who gave out the wonderful story that he represented the United States Sanitarium Company, an organization of capitalists, almost as wealthy as old John D. himself, which had purchased Dr. C. C. O’Donnell’s ranch and other property at Glen Ellen for $75,000 for the purpose of erecting an Emmanuel Sanitarium thereon. It was to be a  princely institution and the only one of its kind in the country.

Williams told how it was the intention of his company to float a million dollars in bonds at once for the purpose of making the O’Donnell ranch like unto a paradise, and while not exactly paving the streets with gold, to have them paved with asphaltum; and all that beauty and that wealth o’er gave would be found, he said, at the Emmanuel Sanitarium and its park grounds. As to the price paid for the ranch–or rather what Williams said he was willing to pay–the bombastic fellow said $75,000 was a mere bagatelle.

The proposition and price looked good to Dr. O’Donnell, and it is said that it did not take much coaxing on the part of Williams to get an option and a contract to purchase for that figure out of the doctor, who knows a good thing when he sees it. Williams and Dr. O’Donnell drew up the agreement in the office of Alexander Bruce the erstwhile Santa Rosa attorney now sought elsewhere. Bruce assisted Williams in describing all the glories of the wonderland that was to be made out of the partially-barren O’Donnell ranch. He claimed to have made a nice pile out of the sale of the premises.

But so much for this immense institution and the immense capital back of it. Where is F. Harry Williams? Dr. O’Donnell would like to know. So would Contractor Frank A. Sullivan of Santa Rosa, who got a thirty thousand dollar contract from Williams to erect the sanitarium building and whose time and brainwork in drawing a splendid set of plans are still unpaid for. An abstract concern in Santa Rosa has a little bill for an abstract amounting to $250 which it would like settled; then there is a man here from whom Williams secured $250, who is just as anxious for its return; and still further there is Contractor Armstrong in Berkeley, to whom Williams awarded a contract to construct a bridge across Sonoma Creek to make the sanitarium easy of access, he wants to see Williams very much.

Contractor Sullivan stated Monday night that he did not hesitate in branding Williams a “fakir,” and said further that he ought to be arrested. Dr. O’Donnell said he has been buncoed and that they all think likewise is common report.

When Williams first called on Dr. O’Donnell  at Glen Ellen he brought letters of recommendation from prominent San Francisco lawyers and doctors. When the bargain was struck Williams made frequent trips to Glen Ellen. Just as frequently Dr. O’Donnell met him at the depot and hurried him to his residence in an automobile, where he was wined and dined, the man with the ranch for sale sparing no expense with a $75,000 largess in sight.

In addition to the sanitarium buildings, Williams wanted first-class stables erected for the thoroughbred stock that was coming from Kentucky. Then, as detailed, the contracts for the sanitarium buildings and the bridge and other improvements were let.

The option on the place expired on June 6. A day or two before its expiration Williams sent Dr. O’Donnell  a polite note telling him to have the deeds and abstract and everything ready by the following Saturday, as he was coming to Glen Ellen with the coin.

“Let me know by return, doctor,” he wrote, “as to whether you would like the %75,000 all in cash or part in cash and certificate of deposit. Possibly you may not like to have all that money about with you in the country.” Since then the doctor has not heard anything from him.

They say, too, that Williams got a little advance in coin from Dr. O’Donnell. The doctor admits that he advanced something, but how much deponent sayeth not. He agrees that he was “held up.” He has also investigated the glowing testimonials that Williams presented to him when he first came to see him regarding the buying of the ranch, and discovered, it is reported, that in each instance the names had been used without consent. He is in a quandry as to what to do. He has posted notices on his place to the effect that no material must be dumped theron, and if it is, he will not be responsible for it. Sullivan says “fakir.” Dr. O’Donnell  says “bunco.” Glen Ellen has its biggest sensation and the Emmanuel Sanitarium is not even founded upon the sand, rather on “hot air.”

– Press Democrat, June 29, 1909

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THE CRIMINAL OPERATION

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Almost everything could be printed in turn-of-the-century newspapers except vulgar words, and high on that forbidden wordlist was “abortion.” Search all of the digitized 1909 California papers and you’ll find the a-word only ten times, and then just referring to terminated pregnancy in farm animals. At the same time, editors needed to write about women having abortions because newspapers obsessively covered crime stories, and at the time anyone who performed an abortion was charged with second-degree murder. Thus a vocabulary of euphemisms was born: It was the “criminal operation” or the “malpractice,” sometimes a “treatment.” Thus readers of the Santa Rosa Republican learned that a San Francisco doctor had performed “the operation” that resulted in the death of a local girl, 18 year-old Leora Henderson.

Abortion was far more common in America 100+ years ago than it is today, thanks in great part to the 1873 Comstock Act (no relation to Santa Rosa’s Comstock family), which was a federal law outlawing use of the mails to send contraceptives or information about contraception. Although there are no national surveys for this time period, medical experts have estimated that between one-sixth and one-third of all pregnancies were terminated. While looking through the Register of Deaths for Santa Rosa for possible 1906 earthquake victims, I stumbled across a young woman who died of self-induced abortion just a few weeks after the quake – unusual only because abortions were almost always secretly performed by a physician or midwife. As far is known, none of the local medics performed abortions but it is statistically likely that one or more did.*

Miss Henderson probably found her abortionist through San Francisco newspaper classifieds. The “Medical” column in the SF Call was almost entirely advertisements from “ladies’ specialists” including Dr. West, whose ad read, “Ladies’ specialist and women’s friend for many years. Immediate relief for the most obstinate cases at one visit. No pain, no delay from home. Low fees.” Why she picked him is unknown; others claimed to be cheap or guaranteed “instant relief.” Maybe she liked the promise that there would be “no delay from home,” which sounded like a quick turnaround. Informed of her death, her parents, who had a farm near Santa Rosa, said they didn’t realize she had even gone to San Francisco (or for that matter, was pregnant).

The inquest found Leora complained of pains in her sides and Dr. West referred her to another doctor, with instructions to go to a particular hospital if she worsened. He called a Doctor Boyd and said he should expect to see her at the hospital, “but it was nothing serious.” Boyd was called out of town for the day and forgot, but late that night the head nurse at the hospital contacted him about the case. Dr. Boyd said he would check on her in the morning. By morning she had died of peritonitis.

The coroner’s jury found that yes, “a criminal operation caused death,” yet made no charges against Dr. West. And that was that.

Without knowing more, it’s unclear what conclusions we can draw from the jury’s decision. It appears they narrowly held that she died of medical complications, ignoring that the event leading to her death was considered murder in the eyes of the law. Maybe the jury (all male, as all juries were at the time) viewed death following abortion as a woman’s misfortune, the same as death following childbirth.

From an article in the SF Call the following year, we do know even when “malpractitioners” were prosecuted, just one in four was convicted. Judging by the San Francisco newspapers, it seems that the only time that abortion doctors risked facing jail time is when patients died in their office and they went to great lengths to make sure they weren’t caught with the corpus delicti.

Warning: What follows is not for the squeamish.

A few months after Miss Henderson died, 24 year-old Eva Swan sought an abortion from Dr. James Grant. (In a bizarre coincidence, Grant’s San Francisco office used to belong to Dr. West, who had recently moved his practice to a better location downtown.) In the days that followed, Eva became gravely ill and Grant took care of her at his home. When she fell unconscious Dr. Grant realized she would not live, and after she died ten days later he was prepared to act. He sawed off her legs to fit the body into a trunk, poured gallons of acid over the remains, and hauled it to a house he had rented for the purpose of burying her in the basement. There’s much more to the whole story that you can read here, but as you can imagine, every new revelation in this horrific tale made front page headlines. Such great public outrage was spurred that it was even proposed that abortionists could be prosecuted under the Comstock Act, apparently because they advertised in newspapers which were mailed to distant subscribers. Yet despite the strength of the prosecution’s case, Doctor Grant still got off with a twenty year sentence, of which he served nine.

Incredibly, the Eva Swan case was not unprecedented. Seventeen years before, another San Francisco abortion doctor sawed up the body of a patient who died under his care. And in a Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not twist, the man charged with that murder was none other than Dr. West.

Dr. West went on trial two years later, in 1895. (Trial coverage in the San Francisco Call was quite good for its day.) His defense was that he had not performed an abortion on Addie Gilmour, but had only been asked to look after her by another doctor (who denied it under oath). She died a week later. While strolling down to the Coroner’s office to report her death, West met with Dr. Tuchler who suggested medical students would pay a good price for a female cadaver. Dr. West testified he agreed and when he returned to his office the body was gone. The judge instructed the jury that they were only to decide on whether Dr. West had performed an abortion on the woman. In less than an hour the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

It might have gone differently, however, if Dr. Tuchler had testified; afterwards, he told reporters that he had been called out of town on a medical emergency and wanted to tell the court he believed West was innocent, but he was now angry because West had lied about his role in the matter. According to Tuchler, West dismembered the body and packed sections of it in oil cans which the two of them dropped into San Francisco Bay on the ferry to Oakland. Anatomy students did that all the time to dispose of dissected body parts, Tuchler said. For his role in the dumping, Tuchler asked for Gilmour’s head, the skull of which would complete a skeleton he was assembling. Dr. Tuchler wrapped her head in chicken wire and hung it underwater near Sausalito, telling reporters it was also the custom of anatomy students to leave body parts in the Bay like that to reduce them to bones. Unfortunately for him the encaged head was prematurely found, causing understandable commotion.

Today, West and Grant would probably be prosecuted for murder with depraved indifference. Both hid seriously ill women in their backrooms, not consulting with specialists or seeking a higher quality of care as their condition worsened. While waiting for the women to slowly die, they plotted how to chop ’em up and throw away their parts. They were furtive men; Dr. West said at his 1895 trial that he disguised himself sometimes and it came out that Grant’s real name was Robert Thompson. How typical were they of the army of male “ladies’ specialists” that practiced abortion medicine at the time? That history’s unwritten. (An overview of abortion in turn-of-the-century America can be read on-line: “When Abortion Was a Crime“.)

As for Dr. Grant/Thompson, he moved to Boston when he was paroled and started another abortion practice, this time under the alias “Stanton A. Hudson.” In 1911 Dr. West was again in jail because of a botched abortion and yet again escaped charges (that young woman sought help at an emergency hospital and lived).

Leora E. Henderson’s parents buried her in the Rural Cemetery, adding an inscription to her tombstone: “Budded on earth to bloom in her soul.” I’m not sure what that means, but it certainly sounds very nice.


*It is possible that Madam Preston, who made and sold all manner of nostrums, offered an under-the-counter abortifacient. Among the Preston papers is a 1907 letter from the wife of a Sebastopol farmer who wrote, “I’ve heard you have a preparation that is good to cause a miscarriage…” 
DOCTORS ARRESTED
Complicated in Death of Miss Leora G. Henderson

Dr. E. S. West and Dr. Winfield Bynres of San Francisco are under arrest in that city for their complicity in the death of the Santa Rosa girl, Miss Leora G. Henderson. They were arrested Friday by the police of San Francisco, who say they have information that Dr. West performed the criminal operation on the young lady that resulted in her death. Dr. S. G. Boyd, who is wanted by the police in this matter, did not show up at his office yesterday. Peritonitis followed the girl’s criminal operation and that was the cause of her death.

John Henderson, the girl’s father, when asked about his daughter in San Francisco, stated that he neither knew of the girl’s condition, nor of her presence in San Francisco.

– Santa Rosa Republican, October 23, 1909
WEST FACES MURDER CHARGE
Believed Responsible for Death of Girl

The police of San Francisco are convinced that Dr. E. F. West of 115 McAllister street, performed the operation that resulted in the death of 18 year old Leora Henderson of this city at St. Thomas’ Hospital on Thursday morning. West is in the city prison and will probably be charged with murder after the coroner’s inquest.

West steadfastly denies that he was connected with the case and declares that he never saw the girl, but the  statement to the police of Dr. Winifred Byrne of 894 Eddy street, and Dr. Samuel G. Boyd of 1334 Van Ness avenue contradict his assertions.

Dr. Winifred Byrne, who was questioned by the detectives Friday evening and later placed in custody at the city prison, was released Saturday morning. The police are assured that she was in no way criminally connected with the girl’s death.

In a written statement made by Dr. Byrne Saturday she said that the girl told her a few days after she visited her office on Eddy street that she had been operated on by Dr. West the first day she arrived in San Francisco and that he had advised her to go to Dr. Byrne’s place for care, and if she became worse to go to St. Thomas’ hospital, where Dr. Boyd would attend her.

Dr. Boyd arrived yesterday from Redwood City, where he had been called to perform an operation. He told the police that Dr. West called him up several days before the girl’s death and said he had a patient whom he would sent to St. Thomas’s hospital and wished he, Dr. Boyd, would attend her. Dr. Boyd was busy and forgot about the girl and did not, in fact, at any time see or attend her.

– Santa Rosa Republican, October 25, 1909

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MRS. PRESTON HAS A GRUESOME CURE FOR YOU

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Seriously ill? In late 19th century Sonoma County there were faith-healers, physicians and quacks. And then there was Mrs. Preston, who was something of all three combined.

From 1876 until her death in 1909, Emily Preston practiced medicine by mail and from her home on the Russian River, two miles outside Cloverdale. Or rather, she didn’t “practice medicine,” as claiming to do so could have got her into a world of trouble, seeing as she had no medical training whatsoever. Instead, she saw patients and diagnosed their sickness, then sold them homemade medicines. Completely different thing, right?

(RIGHT: Mrs. Emily Preston. Undated photo courtesy Sonoma County Library)

Madam Preston was not a huckster or a complete spiritualist nutcase like Fountaingrove’s Thomas Lake Harris, but she did believe God communicated with her via otherworldly “photographs” and messages written on “walls of light.” Probably thousands of people believed she had cured them via her hotline to God, some devoting their lives in her service. On the large ranch owned by Emily and husband Hartwell, followers built the community of Preston. At its peak c. 1895-1900, there were up to 200 residents with a school, post office, general store, train station, lumber yard, a water system, bottling works and a church where she preached the “Religion of Inspiration.” There was also Emily and Hartwell’s 18-room Italianate home and a 20-room convalescent hospital (both completely destroyed in a 1988 fire, along with most other buildings). In summer the community adjourned for two months to a camp near Preston Lake, where people from Cloverdale joined them for their Fourth of July festivities. Everyone was likewise welcome at Madam Preston’s sermons at the camp’s Church of the Wildwood, where she read to them what she saw mystically written in the air.

Also called the “Preston Colony,” the village (Emily Preston, mayor) and its Prestonites existed to serve the little industry founded by Madam Preston. They filled mail orders for medicine and accommodated a steady parade of pilgrims seeking a consultation from Madam during her Monday office hours, where she offered patients a glass of cordial as she stared at them for several unspoken minutes to diagnose their sickness. Some of the afflicted would stay on for treatment at the Preston hospital/sanitarium or seek boarding at nearby resorts, maybe in a Cloverdale hotel when all Preston beds were filled. Mrs. Preston also kept an office in San Francisco where she saw patients. But most who sought her help did so through writing, and she believed her divine powers allowed her to “diagnosticate [sic] cases at a distance.”

We know nothing about Mrs. Preston’s true diagnostic skills, but we do know a fair amount about her treatment methods, which were spelled out in her pamphlet, “Price List of Medicines and How to Use Them.” Before discussing that topic, it must be said that apparently many who sought her help were considered hopeless cases by the doctors of that time, and many believed they were better for her treatment. Some of that improvement may be due to bed rest at her country sanitarium with lots of exercise, fresh air and clean water, or convictions that her spiritual powers included miracle cures. But if their health actually improved, it certainly wasn’t due to her remedies.

By the time began she treating patients in the 1870s, her school of allopathic medicine was mostly considered backward and downright dangerous, not far from the distain held for the Middle Ages view that bloodletting was a cure for what-ails-you. People became ill, she believed, because some of their blood circulation had stopped (!) or there was inflammation deep within the body. The cure-all was to create a running sore over the affected area and keep it oozing for 2-4 weeks “according as your strength and nerves will allow.” It was also good to do this when you were healthy, just in case, you know.

This technique was called “blistering,” and Mrs. Preston’s main therapeutic tool was her homemade iodine-based liniment. The patient was instructed to rub this stuff on a spot twice a day until blisters form and rupture, then cover it with a “pad” (an oil silk bandage that the Prestons also sold). “The Liniment penetrates the skin and draws the impurities of the body to the surface in the form of a running sore,” the pamphlet explained. “By applying the Liniment on the parts affected, you draw the disease from the inside to the surface. And when you have made sores enough to cleanse and purify the system, you will feel the benefit derived from the treatment…in chronic cases where the disease is located, it takes many sores before you get much relief.”

Preston’s catalog included other items, including cough medicine, “vagina balls,” “gin and garlic,” “fasting paste,” and some sort of lotion available by the gallon. But the remedies usually centered on that liniment; she even recommended that it be mixed with “sweet oil” (olive oil) and swallowed to cure stomach aches. Rub it all over the body once or twice a week as a preventative (which must have given the Prestonites a unique coppery complexion). The Price List also recognized it wasn’t very comfortable having a seeping wound for weeks: “While using the Liniment, if you feel the need of a tonic, take the Wine Cordial, or Blood Medicine, according to the directions on the bottles.” The Prestons would sell you a jug of their fortified wine at $3.50 per gallon. Honest, reverend, I’m a faithful teetotaler but this is medicine.

The liniment treatment was no harmless placebo, despite Mrs. Preston’s promise that “You can make sores on your arms, legs, feet, or anywhere on the body, and they won’t hurt you.” It was a strong formula that could leave scars; Nathan Bowers, the son of Preston colonists, wrote in 1966 “My body, more than sixty years later, still carries the marks where blisters caused by her liniment went so deep as to leave permanent scar tissue.” Mrs. Preston also promised, “While using the Liniment, the privates and eyes are liable to become sore. Poultice them with scraped potato, or onion poultice, and then wash them with hot water. It is only the disease coming out, and need cause no alarm.” Nathan’s father followed directions and went blind – the green onion poultice drew the lens from his right eye.

Yet despite the scarred child and partially blinded father, the Bowers family did not leave Preston. The community and the place were dear to them, as was hearing Madam Preston’s sermons. Some of her followers would have been happier if she dropped the pose of Physician and/or Mystic Seer to simply become Madam Reverend Mayor, and Mrs. Preston likewise knew she was undermining her religious message and endangering the colony’s future by being branded as a fake twice over. She wrote in frustration about her critics in 1902:


If everybody would look at what we are trying to do, and how we are trying to live, and what our object in life is, they would not want to ridicule or make fun of us. They would say, “I would like to know how that is. I would like to feel that on me.”

So why didn’t she do everyone a favor and dial down the crazy talk, particularly the bit about seeing the words of God written in light? She didn’t really believe that, did she?

Emily Preston was born in upstate New York in 1819. This was at the peak of the Second Great Awakening, a period in American history marked by intense religion passion, much of it spurred by the belief that Christ was about to return. New evangelical cults formed overnight; even common folk were primed to debate merits of the latest -ism and weigh the meaning of new epiphanies and visions. And nowhere in the country was this movement more supercharged than the “burned-over district” of Western New York, which spawned Mormonism, Millerism (an apocalyptic cult that led to the Seventh-day Adventist Church), Spiritualism (as in seance communication with the dead) and others. Growing up in a world where the supernatural happenings were commonplace, it seems less odd that she believed Jehovah was texting her.

(RIGHT: “The covered bridge spanned the Russian River at Preston from 1872-1931. Preston’s commercial district was located west of the river, next to the Northwestern Pacific railroad tracks. The Preston residences, school and church were located across the bridge on the east side of the river.” Description and photo courtesy Sonoma County Library)

Mrs. Preston was confident that her “Free Pilgrims Covenant Church” would survive her death, and left $125,000 to sustain it. Alas, when she died in 1909 her will was undated and unwitnessed; relatives easily had it thrown out. The property went for auction and sold for $19,000, the buyer being Emily’s grand-niece who kept everything as it was, aside from later selling off some land around the edges.

The colony of Preston endured. There were still weekly meetings at the church to sing and pray. There were still jobs at the bottling works. But over the years people drifted away. People died. The train station closed. The post office closed. The bottle works closed. Meetings at the church ended in 1935. Three years later, a reporter from the Press Democrat visited Preston and described the old mansion:

We pushed open the gate and walked through the ruined garden. The house is white and colonial-looking, with a porch clear around it, and dark green trimmings. It looks as if it died long ago everywhere leaves and debris and loneliness. Beyond it tumble-down outbuildings that must have been servants’ quarters. Not a soul, not a sound. We were startled to find three bright silk cushions piled on the step, as if just set there – we went closer and saw they were oriental pottery work. We walked up to the front door and knocked. No answer. We peered through a hole in the shutter and saw a stuffy Victorian parlor, completely furnished, with a paisley shawl on the table and an old-fashioned phonograph with a brass loudspeaker. We knocked and called, but still no answer…now, all quiet, all fallen away. Nothing left but the ghostly, shuttered house, the century plants, the wind in the eucalyptus.

In 1943 a couple bought the property to open a camp and summer school for boys. They unlocked the doors and found her clothes still in the closets, books on the shelf, pill roller on the table. Also gathering dust were 85 boxes of letters addressed to Mrs. E. Preston, Preston, Sonoma Co., California. Madam just stepped out for a spell, and surely would be back soon.


SOURCES AND NOTES: Almost everything in this article specific to Mrs. Preston is drawn from Holly Hoods’ extraordinary thesis, “Preston: History of a Late-Nineteenth Century Religious Community in Sonoma County, California,” which is available at SSU, at the Healdsburg, Cloverdale and central county libraries and at the Healdsburg Museum. It contains much interesting material not covered here, such as how Mrs. Preston answered critics who pointed out that she was functionally illiterate, despite spending decades reading the words of God writ large before her eyes. An appendix includes a reproduction of the 1903 edition of “Price List of Medicines and How to Use Them.”

Hoods’ research is also summarized at the web site for the Preston Historical Research and Restoration Fund, which is welcoming donations to restore the church and other buildings not destroyed in the 1988 fire. There is a 2005 Press Democrat article about the restoration project.

Most information about the Preston Colony comes from “Recollections of 19th- and 20th-Century Communal Life at Preston Ranch,” a project edited by W.M. Sefton. Particularly valuable are transcriptions from local Healdsburg and Cloverdale newspapers. The recollections include descriptions of what happened to Preston after Madam died, including the formation of an artist’s colony in 1969. Warning: Details concerning desecrations of the cemetery are not for the squeamish.

Hoods commented in 2000 that therapeutic blistering “has fallen out of favor in the United States within the last 100 years,” citing an entry in the 1903 edition of Chambers’s Encyclopedia. This was the same printing plate as first used in the 1888 edition (and which continued to be reprinted at least through 1912), so it reveals nothing about 20th century opinions on blistering. Evidence instead shows that the medical community had largely rejected the method even before Mrs. Preston began her medical practice. In an 1869 rebuttal to allopathy, “blood-letting, blistering, cauterizing, physicking, poisoning, freezing, and starving” were denounced as quackery.

Iodine was used medically in the late 19th century as a counter-irritant (1870 reference) and in liniment. A lengthy review of iodine uses in an 1876 handbook of therapeutics specifically warns against iodine solutions strong enough to cause scarring. No references, even Chambers, could be found that describe Preston’s method of using liniment to keep an open sore running for weeks.

MADAM PRESTON IS DEAD AT COLONY SHE FOUNDED
Sudden Passing of Famous Woman Yesterday

Dr. Emily Preston, familiarly known as the founder of the Preston Colony near Cloverdale, is dead.

This noted woman was called from life very suddenly yesterday morning shortly after eight o’clock. Death found her as she was gazing out from the little lattice window of the kitchen of her stately residence, upon the delightful landscape dotted here and there by its beautiful homes and its trees and flowers. At the time she was going about her simple household duties. A sudden attack of heart failure and she was gone.

Four-score years was her life span and when the silver cord was snapped the life went out without a murmur and without a struggle. She was prepared for the rest that came to her. Hers had been a busy life, one devoted to the work of making those about her happy and well.

While no arrangements have been made for the funeral she will be laid to rest in the picturesque cemetery at Preston near by the little church in which on every Sunday morning, rain or shine, winter or summer, she was wont to meet and preach to her followers. She will rest beside the loved ones who have gone before.

Madam Preston ministered to the ailments of the body and of the soul. She taught that a pure mind and pure living are essential to the cure of bodily ailments and the administration of her remedies is said to have produced in many people wonderful cures. While not parading as a healer in the way in which most people accept the term, it was acknowledged by her followers that she was possessed of spiritual gifts of healing. Some ranked her as prophetess, and the use of her herb medicines for bodily ills was accompanied by faith. Her religion found many followers. They came from many sections of the state, and from other states, and in addition she had a large correspondence. There are thousands of people in the cities of this country and throughout the state who knew Madam Preston, either personally or by reputation. She was said to be a woman of some eccentricities, but be that as it may she was a good woman with one of the kindest of hearts. Those who knew her well testify to this.

Madam Preston had lived at the Preston health resort for many years. She was a native of New York state. The little, plain old lady was often seen about the Colony grounds and in Cloverdale, where she had many old friends. She took an active interest in the advance of the country about her and was the inspiration for many years of the fine Preston Colony exhibits at the Coverdale Citrus Fairs. On a number of occasions the writer met her and chatted with her in the pavilion during the arrangement of the Colony exhibit.

From friends at Cloverdale yesterday it was learned that she had not been feeling well and had complained of pains in the region of her heart. As if realizing that the shadows were soon to lengthen over the landscape of her life, she predicted that she would pass away in the manner in which she did. Coroner Frank Blackburn went up to Preston and held an inquest over the remains and the verdict was in accordance with facts related.

– Press Democrat, January 23, 1909

MAD. PRESTON PASSES AWAY
Died Suddenly on Friday at Colony She Founded

Dr. Emily Preston, founder of the Preston colony above Cloverdale, and familiarly known to thousands of people as Madam Preston, died there quite suddenly on Friday. She was stricken with heart failure and death came to her in the kitchen of her residence as she was going about her usual household duties. For some days the deceased had not been feeling well, and complained of pains about the heart. This was the only suggestion of illness which she suffered, and she had not been confined to her apartments.

Coroner Frank L. Blackburn went up to Preston Friday evening and held an inquest. A verdict of death from heart failure was returned. It is stated that Madam Preston had predicted to her friends that her death would occur just as it did, and she seemed to realize that the end was approaching for her.

The deceased woman led a splendid life, and while ministering to the physical ailments of the people, she never neglected their spiritual welfare for an instant. She conducted services regularly each Sabbath day, preaching the gospel to her followers in the pretty little church edifice at Preston, where many were wont to gather and listen to her exposition of the Scriptures. Her religious cult drew many persons to Preston, and the devoted followers of the woman claimed almost supernatural powers for her in the curing of human ailments. Her medicines were compounded by herself, and were principally made from herbs, and the good woman is credited with many splendid cures.

All over the State, and even beyond the confines of the State, she was known as a healer. While many hundreds have visited her place above Cloverdale, many thousands have heard of the remarkable woman, and have corresponded with her.

The deceased was eighty years of age, and a native of New York. She had resided at Preston, which she founded as a colony, for many years past. She was actively interested in everything pertaining to the welfare of the vicinity of her home, and each year she and the other ladies of Preston made an exhibit at the Cloverdale Citrus Fair. She took more than a passive interest in this annual festival, and always attended to view the exhibits. There are many who will mourn her demise.

– Santa Rosa Republican, January 23, 1909

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